Virtual Collective Mind

The Projected Impact Of Collective Ability On The Enterprise Scale

2011-09-29T01:59:00.000-07:00

Roberto Setubal, the CEO of Brazil’s Itaú Unibanco was aware of the hidden power of teams. Desirous of maintaining his company's edge over the competition he decided to unlock the hidden power in his organization. The following interview provides an insight into the goals, milestones, problems and impact of enterprise scale transformation to an open culture. The key requirement is vision at the top. Given that, it requires great driving energy, persistence and follow-up. We can confidently state that assisted by our infrastructure Itaú Unibanco would have gone twice the distance in half the time, with IT providing much of the organizing and driving energy apart from assuring the culture base.

Link: Transforming a high-performing company: An interview with Roberto Setubal

(As reported in The McKinsey Quarterly, dated April, 2009)

Direct Link:
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Organization/Change_Management/Transforming_a_high-performing_company_An_interview_with_Roberto_Setubal_2312

A new name for the black cat in .....

2011-09-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

I used to describe my work as Intelligent Energy. It created problems. I was seen as presumptuous. Those that were charitable thought I meant something artificial and believed my time would come in the future. Only a few, a limited few sought clarification.

So, as a first step I shall give my infrastructure a moniker: waykm or the Way of Knowledge Management, pronounced as Wake'em.

As the second step I shall change its interpretation to Super-energy, This is not less than Intelligent Energy but more. It means my creation organises, anticipates and drives interactions to bring about diualogue on each event, and has the inexhaustible energy to perform the task 24x7.

Keep It Simple ......

2011-09-18T01:09:00.000-07:00

I got a valuable Comment on my entry for Mahindra's 'Spark the Rise' competition. It reminded me that sometimes we complicate our thinking:

Pawan Kumar: In your project updates I read your answer to the simple questions: 1)" What exactly is your product? 2) Is it a service, a philosophy, a methodology, a software, or what? Your slide 4/6 gives the answer in two simple lines: 1) The Breakthrough: Intelligent Energy & 2) Converges: philosophy, personal & collective needs, technology. Perhaps the questioner wished to understand Convergence. Now, that may require an explanation of the concept of Intelligent Energy. I would say your update ‘Need for a war on the Obvious' (see last Update on Sep. 16, 2011) makes an excellent beginning. Let me clarify: 1) Killing the Obvious needs a superhuman energy for it is so omnipresent 2) An autonomous System, one with its own energy source, that works seamlessly offline and online for the conduct of administration is superhuman 3) Your work is an autonomous System. It is a Service, a Philosophy, a Methodology and a Software rolled into one. Perhaps I should add that ‘the One’ satisfies Personal and Professional needs because you have gone to great pains to establish it is compelling. For such a System transformation would be a sleight of hand. I would like to see it in operation.

My slide 4/6 referred by Pawan is repeated here:

Pawan inspired me to attempt an imaginary Q & A for the interested reader:

Just what are you doing?

I am engaged in assisting organisation personnel to align for emerging the reality behind the obvious and foster an innovative response.

Next: Now how do you accomplish this amazing feat?:

There is a proven philosophy to it that concludes Feedback will accomplish the job.

Next: How do you manage Feedback?

By arranging all interactions as a discussion string with rich context.

Aha. How do you manage the impossibility of capturing all interactions with rich context all the time w/o depending on the personnel and driving them crazy?

Easy. I have developed a single Knowledge process that is compelling for the conduct of interactions in daily work.

But a single Knowledge process is an impossibility!! Knowledge is a possession. Its sharing is discretionary!

Yes. The one-size-fit-all process is impossible. I have got around that by creating the all-sizes-fit-one Knowledge process.

Now, how did you do that?

Teamwork has evolved. I have studied the norms of evolution and programmed them into software to offer a platform on net technology that replaces email with a facility 50 times more powerful.

Oh really?

Well, I should be saying 100 times more powerful cause it is not a dumb protocol like email insensitive to worker needs. I am not claiming that cause I am in the beta stage and am not a techie. Plenty of scope for improvement.

In my next post I shall introduce the new name Pawan has helped me conceive for my work. I thank him.

What Is The Product?

2011-09-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

It is possible that till Drucker came up with his famous question in the early 90s: “The first question in raising productivity in knowledge and service work has to be: What is the task? What do we try to accomplish? Why do it at all?, the technologists had a field day in defining what they saw and declaring it a valid answer to the product question. Post the double loop learning concept of Argyris made famous by Senge in the mid 90s, even Drucker was not enough. The person and his thinking became part of the problem.

My last post was the Drucker and Senge in me. Now I am going to attempt a conventional answer, touching all the bases I must.

My Post 'Transforming the Enterprise-3' of February 6, 2011 defines the nature of Knowledge and the force it creates to reduce the Collective Ability. The next post 'Transforming the Enterprise-4' of February 7, 2011 states the theory of Feedback for overcoming the Knowing/Doing gap. The post 'Transforming the Enterprise-6' illustrates Feedback on the net. It has to be far richer in categorisation to be useful within the enterprise. Not shown here is the relationship between Feedback and innovation defined by Nonaka by way of the Knowledge spiral.

My post 'A Perspective of the possible Service' of September 14, 2011 explains how Feedback operates to create the Knowledge force. Alignment is a by-product. Its importance is explained at the Project site:

Mahindra Spark the Rise | Activating Moore's Law for the Rise by creating Intelligent Energy

The goal of my product then is creation of Feedback to drive the Knowledge Force. The force overcomes the Knowing/Doing gap to drive success and operates the Knowledge Spiral to foster innovation.

As of today no means, mechanism, philosophy or system exists to achieve Feedback in the modern workplace. The Colonial administration had achieved it in the past with its paper systems.

The main components of my product to deliver Feedback are as follows:

A single Knowledge process. All Knowledge flows on an event are composed of a finite number of repeatable Actions that drive its circulation for decision-making. Universal norms derived from evolution of teamwork assemble the repeatable Actions that progress circulation. The Actions possible on an event are anticipated given the history of Actions already assembled.
Design of the flexible organization. Task forces, the basic work units of the enterprise, report to a specific Post within a Community at each level of a hierarchy. The concept aids flexibility of assignment and also offers a ready support group for Socialization. The structural flexibility is built in by enabling swift reallocation of the reporting hierarchy for the task forces. According to Nonaka (1996) the bureaucratic structure defined by the hierarchies efficiently accumulates and exploits new knowledge through Combination and Internalization, while the Task force is indispensable for creating new knowledge through Socialization and Externalization. He concluded that a dynamic synthesis of the two structures, termed by him as the hypertext organization, reaps benefits from both. The organization can be as flat as desired.
Categorization of the Knowledge event. The Reasons why decision events arise in an enterprise are mostly known in advance. Additions may be captured on-line. These Reasons are distributed amongst the task forces. The distribution creates a framework that may be applied to the event for defining its owning task force and meta-data. The data aids conduct of the norms governing collective action. The unstructured part of the event may be a word file, a presentation, a work sheet, email, etc., or their combination. It is captured as a document in its environment.
The conduct of the Process. The event is categorized and captured with the aid of the framework. The routing is decided by the Action selected from among those possible per the norms. The Actions circulate the event among dynamic team members selected from the organization structure per the logic of the Action. The circulation defined by the Action may either be in series to a single recipient or in parallel to multiple recipients. The recipients may be across boundaries. The User may record an opinion before executing the selections. All meta-data along with the expectation of the Action selected is recorded for organizing a dashboard to select a particular event for working. The process assembles the Knowledge of the Collective on the event in the Feedback format of Post-6 above. The process coordinates the ad-hoc team working on an event regardless of space, time, connectivity and chaos. This makes it over fifty times more appealing, powerful and relevant than email for business communication. Its implementation is non-disruptive.

Each of the components stated above solves a hitherto intractable problem. The Knowledge process alone changes the IT paradigm from a tool to energy. The concept of Intelligent Energy is explained in the referred project. I should be calling Intelligent Energy the product for it is the means for the produce – the transformation - but the problem is it cannot be seen and can be felt only by the initiated. The system assures its own adoption because it is the most painless way of working to circulate events, a daily necessity for the Knowledge worker. The system leverages this circulation and the intelligent categorisation for the flow and systematic capture of all Knowledge exchanged. The Knowledge exchange is represented in the Feedback format to generate the Knowledge force that creates alignment and drives the collective towards the vision.

The Anonymous 'Tip Off'

2011-09-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

On Sep. 14th I got a genuine feedback:

" What exactly is your product?
Is it a service, a philosophy, a methodology, a software, or what?
Some concrete example will do wonders for the readers who want to understand what you are trying to do. I have glanced through your posts and all I see are some musings on various management related issues, all heavily infused with management speak."

I responded:

Product: Transformation of the enterprise with culture induced by technology.

That was loose. I ought to have said ‘Produce’ instead of 'Product'. But at the frontier one does tend to engage in the spirit and not the semantics. I developed my last post to define and explain the delivery. Back came the banana skin I had left lying around:

Transformation is the end result; it cannot be the means - which is what I mean by product.

My transformation relates to metanoia or the change of the mind. It is a produce that deals with the world within a person. It cannot be seen for it has to do with better judgments and execution. The nature of transformation must first be understood for it is a by-product. Since it follows from philosophy it cannot be understood from a grasp of the product.

There is little to grasp from the product for it is a system for the daily interactions. Its USP of compelling adoption and delivery of Feedback can be comprehended only if the nature of transformation is understood. The audience must know what they are looking for.

Transformation is like talking of God. He lies in the story. My last post is a story. It is difficult to define God for those who have not experienced his roots. For 5000 years man has progressed in the belief there is no God in the organisation. People like Sun Tzu and Senge talked of him but could not create him. Man still had to drive success with battle plans and principles. There was no Faith. This explains the mess today.

It took me five years to create the product but thereafter ten years to understand the nature of transformation. I would still have been struggling had it not been for Deming and Senge. They have gained fame for their understanding of Knowledge but not flourished cause they could not create the organisation and energy to drive transformation. They failed to create Faith. I have created the intelligent energy to organise and drive the Knowledge force that brings about transformation or change of mind for better working and action and emergence of reality as well as Collective Wisdom. The product or the means is the infrastructure I set up. It operates a compelling process for the daily interactions. Transformation in thinking follows with the Feedback created.

I have an academic paper coming up in a renowned systems journal on the subject of transformation and how it follows from interactions. The emphasis is on the specific properties of the interactions. Collaboration is also interaction but it is incapable of delivering transformation except in very very rare cases. That is why Enterprise x.0 will fail like E 2.0. Till the paper is published I would urge the interested reader to see my project description at:

http://www.sparktherise.com/projectdetail.php?pid=497

The project is the end product of years of philosophy development, remarkable success with a prototype and ready software for an enterprise scale pilot. I need the pilot to establish the new reality. Words and pictures cannot reveal the possible to the uninitiated. For new Knowledge one has to make up the mind: is the possible desirable? If the answer is yes then one has to follow Einstein:

“The problems we have created in the world today will not be solved by the level of thinking that created them.”

Before concluding this post is abstract ask yourself:

Why has collaboration, with all its hyped and clear product definitions and case studies, failed?
Why is Japan, a highly advanced Knowledge creating economy, in the pits?
Why is the US struggling despite the best 'products' technology has to offer?
Why have administrative reforms failed in India since 1956?
What is needed for success and growth?

Perhaps the answer is more than what a product or a case study can provide. They may only confuse and confound. Till a clear systemic answer going to the roots of the problem emerges to the last question we shall be at cross purposes for the black cat can be sighted only in a lighted rtoom. I or my posts cannot be blamed for the absence of light. You may be looking for a different light. Experiments/pilots are an acknowledged way for distributed people to share the same page. Even prototypes may have meaning only for the creator since scale differences spawn a lot of questions. So the real questions are: Is the need the pilot addresses worth it? Is the philosophy powerful enough? Is there an alternate philosophy over the horizon?

A Perspective of the possible service

2011-09-14T03:12:00.000-07:00

System Perspective: My universal process converts IT from a tool to compelling and inexhaustible intelligent energy, supported 24x7 by replication technology, for the daily interactions. It institutes a Knowledge Assembly Line, commencing with a support group, to assemble the Knowledge of the enterprise on each event in a Feedback format. The Feedback develops a Knowledge force that propels the organization towards growth and success. Collective Ability over 50% is possible in 3 years. The cycle above illustrates operation of the system:

Like the cycle above is a cycling system with a process for collective effort my IT infrastructure creates a communication system where the process unifies the thinking and action of the collective.
Like the cycle chain unites individual effort to create collective power, the process for interactions implements the discipline for ad-hoc coordination on each event. Regular Feedback, delivered as a byproduct, forges Trust and Teamwork, energizes the latent Collective Ability, and aligns the collective to raise the Collective Ability.
Like for the tandem cycle, individual ability is of little consequence. Efficient collective action is possible only when there is team learning. The process fosters team learning.
Like each rider focuses on pedaling, personnel focus on their interactions. The system does the rest. The process easily links to external workflow systems for interactions.
Each rider’s participation contributes to team performance. The leadership guides direction.

The Knowledge Assembly Line has much in common with Taylor’s Mechanical Assembly Line created for raising Manufacturing productivity about 1908. Following the first manufacturing productivity leap with the Assembly Line, the next quantum jump came with the Quality Circles that developed around the Line after 1960. The Circles fostered Trust and Teamwork, and what is today known as Systems Thinking. Drucker (1992) has estimated that manufacturing productivity increased over forty five times in the 20th century. In the absence of a process to align the thinking and action of a collective for producing Innovation, Learning and Execution, the Knowledge work quality and productivity stagnated in the same period. The quantum jump in Collective Ability and Agility delivered by the system has the potential to activate Moore’s Law or IT’s exponential rate of growth for the conduct of business administration.

The Way Forward

2011-09-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

Today the vision concept is silent on the force needed to drive it. The collective has to struggle to align and perform. Supported by the redefined System of Profound Knowledge (last post) early realization of the vision will become possible with unleashing of the Knowledge force for raising Collective Ability. Launching the possibility requires unfailing energy to organize and drive all Knowledge work and interactions for initiating the systematic Feedback at the core of the redefined System.

The conventional wisdom deems a single Knowledge process to harness IT is impossible and self-organization by busy personnel is the only way to drive vision. The IT industry has submitted to the wisdom by not exploring beyond the linear one-size-fit-all process. The non-linear possibility of a single all-sizes-fit-one Knowledge process to convert IT to inexhaustible intelligent energy for organizing and driving the vision in place of dependence on self-organization by personnel is today inconceivable; it lies beyond the frontier of Knowledge. It has great potential to advance Management beyond the system limitations of the linear cause and effect machine age where it has languished since the late 80s.

Finding common ground with Deming

2011-09-09T00:30:00.000-07:00

Deming believed grasp of his System of Profound Knowledge (1993) would induce managements to progress his principles for raising the quality of decisions, i.e., assuring Learning, Innovation and Optimization. The System did not flourish though those who invested the effort did like Marshall Industries. Perhaps the complex effort demanded was too much for most managers. This blog suggests redefining the System to encourage Feedback. Conduct of Feedback is simple and its power to create the force of Knowledge for producing Learning, Innovation and Optimization is well founded:

Old System of Profound Knowledge:

1.Appreciation for a system: understanding the overall processes involving suppliers, producers, and customers (or recipients) of goods and services;

2.Knowledge of variation: the range and causes of variation in quality, and use of statistical sampling in measurements;

3.Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge and the limits of what can be known;

4.Knowledge of psychology: concepts of human nature.

Revised System of Profound Knowledge:

● Appreciation for a system to foster growth: The Knowledge Spiral defines the inter-dependent components for Knowledge creation: A vision for the collective, Socialization, existence of support groups, and free cross-border interactions in context across the organization.

● Knowledge of the universal force that enhances folly: The Knowing-Doing Gap is universal. It lowers the Collective Ability to define the root problem and apply Knowledge effectively.

● Theory of the power of constructive Feedback: The Systems Theory of Senge concludes that cross enterprise Feedback builds a Knowledge force for innovation and good execution. The force is enhanced by systematic Feedback to practice the Fifth Discipline of Systems Thinking.

● Knowledge of power of the Freedom to interact: The Freedom fosters Feedback. Managed without threat it fulfills the primal desire to learn as also live in Freedom with the recognition, respect and dignity earned. The intrinsic motivation makes Feedback a self-reinforcing practice. The success that follows instills faith in the practice for success and growth of the collective.

Transforming The Enterprise - 13

2011-02-16T08:09:00.000-08:00

Immense energy is needed to assure feedback in the conduct of interventions for superior application of Knowledge across the enterprise. All that is needed to transform IT to inexhaustible intelligent energy for driving transformation is a model that leverages human nature, and uses science to solve the problems of Knowledge work with technology, i.e., stradles both the internal and external worlds. Based on the remarkable performance of prototypes in demanding environments we can confidently assure a rise in Collective Ability to well over 50% of the potential. All round growth follows.

The image above gives a perspective of how our work delivers. The Ability possible with just IT takes Knowledge Management into account. It is eliptical, i.e., skewed because of non-uniform adoption across the enterprise. Total, i.e., uniform adoption of our work is assured because its primary use is a compelling means for the daily work and communication across the enterprise. Dialogue is a by-product.

Transforming The Enterprise - 12

2011-02-15T08:34:00.000-08:00

Significance Of Our Breakthrough

Faith is an accepted human power. No problem is too big or a hurdle too high for Faith to overcome. The image shows David, immortalized by Michelangelo's sculpture created as a gift to the citizens of Florence, confronting his adversary Goliath. Goliath, the Phillistine champion warrior, had for forty days challenged the Israeli army to single combat and infused fear with his size and tales of prowess. David took up the challenge armed only with his sling ----- and Faith in the God of Israel. That he slew Goliath with his own sword after felling him with a slingshot is part of legend, and as excavations establish, history.

My work infuses Faith among personnel that they can get what they want:

Replaces email for all interventions

Cuts anxiety: Leaders empowered to mentor
Creates Time: Functions seamlessly offline.

System manages Knowledge flow in chaos

IT converted to intelligent energy for Dialogue

Delivery of dialogue by IT rewrites the Wisdom

Fosters Collectives, Feedback & Sense making.

Faith develops: Compelling way --> Success

Induced Culture heals organizations from within.

Transforming The Enterprise - 11

2011-02-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

Our Breakthrough

Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, declared in 1895. "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." And yet on December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright successfully flew the first powered heavier than air craft. The right science can enhance the frontiers of possibility. My work too extends the frontier earlier articulated by Peter Drucker in 1990: "In Knowledge and service work partnership with the responsible worker is the only way; nothing else will work at all.”

The following defines the nature of the breakthrough and the facts that make it universally applicable:

Focus on the worker and not the event
Interventions are a necessity for decisions
Team interventions: a product of evolution
Norms decide next possible step of worker

Enable a single knowledge process for events

Integrate with a flexible organization structure.

Process anticipates and conducts next step

IT energy organizes communication for feedback

Our IT engine transforms without disruption.

Transforming The Enterprise - 10

2011-02-13T05:16:00.000-08:00

Transformation Objectives
Basis Intervention Control

My next post shall address the all important matter of creating intelligent energy for establishing Dialogue/Feedback. Personnel energy is no longer sufficient to assure Dialogue across the modern extended enterprises. As stated earlier, the conventional wisdom believes it is impossible to harness IT for the effortless delivery of Dialogue.

Transforming The Enterprise - 9

2011-02-12T02:32:00.000-08:00

Conventional IT Is Just A Tool

The governing wisdom of IT is 'if the user cannot organize Knowledge work how can IT do so?' Correspondingly, since IT is just a tool and the user must self-organize work, IT systems for Knowledge work are user driven. For all practical purposes we are still plodding along in the bullock cart age shown by the image above. The load on the user makes it next to impossible to tame interactions for responding to the irrational nature of Knowledge application. All that the industry can do is struggle along and hope as detailed below:

No change in the Conventional Wisdom:

Only personnel can organize and drive interactions

Incentives are essential for sharing.

A single process for conversations impossible

IT is today a passive tool for knowledge interactions.

Knowledge work focus: fixes, not reality

Fixes are a temporary solution.

Hope for taming interactions:

Education/Leaders will foster Openness

Personnel will willingly self-organize to share

They will use IT to invest energy/time/volition/discipline.

No Philosophy --> No Method --> Status Quo

Transforming The Enterprise - 8

2011-02-11T04:31:00.000-08:00

The Means For Dialogue Needs To Evolve

The image above shows the cycle as we know it today took close to a 100 years to evolve. The practice of Dialogue too has evolved. It has its norms that distinguish it from Discussion as summarised in my last post. Its use on the enterprise scale for remarkable results was celebrated by Drucker:

Last use: the Indian colonial administration
File based dialogue gave results despite

Remote and inaccessible areas

100 administrators reporting to one Principal.

Drucker (1988): Its free form interactions and free-flow a model for the 21st century.

Changes: culture, volume, spread & speed
File system swamped. Personnel overloaded

Evolution essential for Energy/Time/Volition/Will

Those who comment on web news stories may have already experienced the next step enabled by technology.

Transforming The Enterprise - 7

2011-02-10T02:27:00.000-08:00

Interactions à Conversations

The image above illustrates that conversations are a product of interactions. There are two kinds of conversations:

Discussion/Collaboration – practice today

Usually synchronous, i.e., in same time and space

Ignores feedback, patterns and systematic recording

Poor control over wishes - ego can prevail.

Dialogue – freedom to question the basis

Fosters teaming regardless of distribution

Assures feedback for emerging the Reality

Builds force from within: taps deep drive to Learn.

Only Dialogue develops Collective Ability

Problem: The only mechanism for Dialogue is manual.

Transforming The Enterprise - 6

2011-02-09T09:50:00.000-08:00

Just Interactions Create Feedback

The single actiivity for Feedback is Interactions . They are at the heart of any intervention by personnel. Their conduct on an event determines decisions and hence will influence the behavior of the enterprise, i.e., will decide the DNA of the enterprise. In the conception of the Knowledge mechanism, conduct of interactions is the single activity - the pedaling - that drives Feedback to propel the organization.

Transforming The Enterprise - 5

2011-02-08T03:03:00.000-08:00

Mechanism To Follow The Path

The tandem cycle image above illustrates the need for a Knowledge work mechanism to follow the path. Cycling is very similar to Knowledge application. It is not enough to know cycling; one has to practice it to acquire the skill. Further, for the team cycle above, the individuals must not only know cycling but practice it together. This requires time and energy and volition. However, once this barrier is crossed, the simple act of pedaling the tandem mechanism is enough to unite effort and volition with the leader, and achieve greater force in the desired direction. The chain is the heart of the mechanism.

Based on the tandem cycle one may project the nature of the desired Knowledge work mechanism:

Must drive members to learn as a team
Must synch volition & effort with the leader
Must focus individual on a single activity
The single activity must drive feedback
Delivery: Reality and concerted action.

The 'pedal' for the mechanism ...........(next post)

Transforming The Enterprise - 4

2011-02-07T10:42:00.000-08:00

Path For Superior Application
(The HOW is per 20th Century)

It is easy to snap a twig but a bunch of twigs is another story. The concept of unity does not easily translate to humans though the lesson is not lost in translation. The problem is humans need a reason to unite and remain so. Fortunately the reason emerges from the need for superior application of Knowledge to overcome the negative force or the Knowing/Doing gap for driving success.

The way to success was clearly known as far back as 500 BC. It was recorded by Sun Tzu:

If you know the enemy and know yourself,

You need not fear the result of a hundred battles

i.e., Success follows emergence of Reality

In 1990 Peter Senge identified emerging the reality needed the following skills:

Surfacing assumptions and generalizations
Team Learning and Team sharing
System thinking to define and solve problems.

Senge concluded Feedback for Constructive Disagreement developed the skills

Feedback = Knowledge free-flow in context

= Coordination of interventions

= Trust and Teamwork.

Success makes Feedback a lasting glue for forming a Collective

In brief: Feedback creates the Collective. The success achieved provides the Collective the reason to remain unified. Free-flow in context is a property of Feedback. It implies exchange of Knowledge with capture of content alongwith all references to define context. Organization for its delivery has proved to be a major stumbling block that IT has yet to cross.

Transforming The Enterprise - 3

2011-02-06T11:21:00.000-08:00

Nature Of Knowledge Application

The image above shows three photos:

Image of an Apple and an Orange sewn together (Photo source - http://www.nextnature.net/tag/hypernature/page/10/): Assumptions, mental-sets, wishful thinking, laziness and biases lead to multiple interpretations as different as Apples and Oranges for any set of facts. Such is the nature of perception among humans. It was termed Maya by the ancient Indian philosophers. Stitching together an Apple and an Orange does not create a new fruit, i.e., a single interpretation for cohesive collective action.
Photo of a Mist (Photo source - http://www.netstate.com): Only the nearest trees are clearly visible. Much like the rapid fading of trees with distance past events lose recall as they recede in the mist of time. Also, the obvious present dominates the fuzzy future.
Pool Photo (Photo source - http://www.britainexpress.com): The pool is bounded. Algae, if introduced, will grow rapidly till the boundaries. Thereafter, growth will be highly disproportionate to any accelerator, e.g., fertilizer. Similarly, hunger for Power, Self-interest, Desire, Defense reactions and Learning disabilities compounded by scarcity of energy and time limit appreciation of problems for collective action. Senge (1990) observed personnel live in comfort zones to cope with the huge demand on their limited resources and abilities.

The photos drawn from nature explain the nature of Knowledge.The nature in fact leads to the prevalence of a negative force in the business place among decision makers variously called irrationality or collective folly. It creates the Knowing/Doing gap that lowers the collective ability.

Transforming The Enterprise - 2

2011-02-04T01:59:00.000-08:00

Anatomy Of Knowledge Events
(What is constructive thinking?)

The application of Knowledge is very personal and hence not rational. This is why the same facts give rise to multiple interpretations making it essential to deduce the reality behind the facts, i.e., the root. Unless the root is diagnosed there will be only fixes and temporary solutions. The symptoms will reappear and mistakes will be repeated. The ability to reach the root of problems and take corrective action defines the Collective Ability of the Organization. It is determined by the ability to think and act constructively.

Transforming The Enterprise - 1

2011-02-04T00:05:00.000-08:00

The Transformation Challenge

The dual image above manifests the universal goal of transformation. The common desire is a paradigm change with the application of technology to knowledge work. It is rarely achieved for the technology focus is only on the external world whereas Knowledge straddles the internal world as well. Facts are processed by our Comfort Zone and Knowledge passes through our internal filters before it is applied. Because of this process Knowledge has a nature and its application is not a rational exercise. The personal internal world is ignored by technology and therefore mere application of technology is fruitless. The followng points summarise the prevailing state of affairs:

Transformation entirely dependent on the leadership

Manage Knowledge, Competencies, Attitudes, Trust, etc

No Process To Raise Knowledge productivity

Collective Ability between 5 and 30% since 1900

Manufacturing productivity has grown ~ 50 times.

Assumed: no Knowing/Doing Gap. Unreal.

Nature of Knowledge work ignored
Change focus from external to internal world .

Unlocking hidden potential

2011-02-03T10:01:00.000-08:00

Unbelievably, it is four years since I began this blog. I have had few comments but the blog has helped immensely to articulate just what is missing in the pursuit of success by enterprises.

McKinsey have found successful enterprise transformations are limited to a mere 8%. It is clear administrations are not benefiting from technology for the rate of change rendered by technology is exponential. Genetics is an example. The Human Genome project had a delivery target of 13 years or so. At the end of seven years just 1% of the project was complete. But the delivery doubled each of the following seven years for completion about the target date. After well over two decades of IT networking the value of the benefit delivered by IT is still mired in controversy.

The purpose of IT is to create Energy/Time/Volition/Will for following a known path. Over the next 13 posts I shall explain why IT has failed expectations for Knowledge work. I shall go on to define a philosophy for assuring the transformation possible with technology. My insight is based on my success in harnessing technology for raising the collective's ability to think constructively. Today no reliable means exists to achieve this. The collective ability has stagnated. My work has the power to raise the Collective Ability of any enterprise with the same personnel by a factor which could be as high as ten. Read my Transforming The Enterprise series of posts that follow to understand constructive thinkling and why my work succeeds.

Gary Hamel is emotional

2010-12-27T10:44:00.000-08:00

In trying to come to terms with the low score of management personnel on ethics Gary Hamel observes that the tectonic plates of individual interest and institutional interest are moving in different directions. In seeking to explain this he defines trust: "Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns." He goes on to conclude that this form of trust is absent in organizations and talks of means to enrich the connection of individuals with institutions.

The line of reasoning does offer a reason for the declining ethical standards in the corporate environment but it does not fit in with my experience of the work place. Trust in the professional environment is not decided by amity/goodwill but perception of merit. The present and future have great significance in our perception of security and meaning contributes far more heavily to them than emotion. It is possible there is another interpretation of trust in the professional environment, one that provides a direction to take constructive action.

My last post emphasised the importance of Feedback to success. Feedback follows from free-flow of Knowledge in context. I surmise trust is a product of free-flow, i.e., it prevails where free-flow exists. Free-flow gives meaning to the concept of a collective - they support the free-flow by having a shared belief in it. Thus trust and teamwork are synonymous in the professional workplace. Trust and teamwork (TnT) has a very high correlation with performance. Davenport has reported a study that found a 10% rise in TnT led to a 30% rise in performance. The relationship could be local but it is an indicator.

Understanding TnT as a product of free-flow explains the decline of institutions and the growth of self-interest among the leaders. The conduct of free-flow is overwhelmed as organizations grow in size. Interactions increase geometrically with size. Their undisciplined conduct emphasises self-interest, power and politics. The opposing tectonic movement is initiated.

Discovering Feedback

2010-12-27T04:17:00.000-08:00

Feedback is the most powerful force known to engineering to enable a system get what it wants. Success stories like Hewlett Packard under David Packard, Nucor Steel during the time of Ken Iverson and others like South Western Airlines and Walmart have established the reality and power of the force for Management systems as well. I truly understood the relevance of Feedback to my work in the process of creating a submission for a Management Innovation contest. I created eight articles for the contest to explain my compelling delivery of Feedback and its importance. They did not win the contest but they did raise me to a higher and simpler level of understanding which I propose to explain in a future series of posts.

The eight articles in their logical order are as follows:

Perspective: The last article I wrote was The Hack 'Solving the ages-old problem of the 'ignorant diagnosis''. It introduces the fundamental and unsolved problem of Management.

1. The Hack ‘Achieving the ends of Knowledge with feedback’ presents the goals of Knowledge Management and analyzes why they were not achieved. It explains why Feedback will attain the goals, and leverages my sketches to introduce the delivery of its content and value with Dialogue.

2. Reliable means to raise Collective Ability is the core need for superior performance or success. My Barrier ‘Absence of a means to exploit the latent collective ability for pursuing success’ explains how the growth of interactions has overwhelmed means for collective creation and introduces the Conventional Wisdom that has held up progress.

3. Rich wisdom has accumulated on the way to success but Managements are unable to apply it. My Barrier ‘Neglect of the accumulated Management Wisdom’ defines the neglect of wisdom and how a compelling Knowledge Assembly Line may be conceived to manage the organization and discipline for taming Knowledge interactions.

4. My Barrier ‘The importance of dreaming about the free flow of Knowledge’ presents the deep significance of Dialogue and why free-flow is a rare phenomenon in the business scape.

5. The Hack ‘Creating a common language to unite stakeholders’ explains the development of a language for bringing the Knowledge Assembly Line into common usage and for converting the Knowledge captured into Dialogue for raising the Collective Ability.

6. Empowerment is the single most powerful force for Management Transformation. My Barrier ‘Change from within is a citadel that must be stormed – from within’ represents it is not enough to possess Knowledge, be empowered and perhaps even know how to apply Knowledge. It explores the internal barriers to successful empowerment and how they may be overcome.

7. The Hack ‘Compelling Energy for a quantum jump in organization performance with the same resources’ explains my harnessing of IT to deliver the Knowledge Assembly Line and its amenability to a swift roll-out across the enterprise.

The Irony of a Collective

2010-05-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

It is easy to believe that it is more difficult to manage a collective than manage ones own self. The reality is, however, quite different.

To succeed the individual must organize the self to progress learning. Self-organization demands discipline and this is never easy. The individual must manage on her/his own. The organization of the collective depends on conversations. Given our breakthrough IT can be employed to not only efficiently manage conversations but also conduct them for learning. This makes it easier to drive a collective towards success than seek success as an individual.

Cycling and the Art of Success

2009-09-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

Success today is looked upon as an art. Enterprises take great pains to recruit persons not only knowledgeable but also capable of leading teams. Senge, in his 'The Fifth Discipline', noted that the pursuit of success was an art but believed the art would be made simpler with the practice of the disciplines. That was in 1990. Two decades later Learning Organizations, those that engage to learn the disciplines or skills for success, are still rare. The problem, as noted in my last post, is the availability of intelligent energy to drive practice of the skills. Like cycling, no amount of theory can drive learning of the skills. They can only be acquired by practice. Today, personnel unless inspired or driven by culture simply do not have enough energy to spare for the practice.

The shortage of the energy today is generating rage in the workplace. My post 'The Big Bump' mentions the study done by Theresa Welbourne on the growing incidence of rage. The murder of Yale student Anne Le reminded me of the study. I repeat here the reported comments of the police officer investigating the case:

At a news conference Thursday New Haven Police Chief James Lewis called Le's death a case of workplace violence. "It is important to note that this is not about urban crime, university crime, domestic crime but an issue of workplace violence, which is becoming a growing concern around the country," Lewis said, adding that he would not rule out additional charges.

I hope to soon launch a solution to the problem of intelligent energy shortage. I believe my conversion of IT to inexhaustible intelligent energy has the simplicity to succeed on a global scale.

Redefining education

2009-07-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a meeting between Hillary Clinton, US Secretary Of State, and Aamir Khan, a leading Indian actor and Director who has made his mark on the subject of developing minds with his film Taare Zameen Par on sensitive education, was televised. A member of the audience noted that what distinguished her from the under privileged children she was teaching was her ability in the English Language. She asked whether this would be the norm and whether the US was doing anything about it.

Mrs. Clinton lauded the question. She observed that commerce and opportunities would indeed be determined by English, that the internet was driven by English, and that the US too was divided by language. She concluded by stating that America had yet to find an answer to the teaching of language as ethnic backgrounds that made up its diversity like Spanish, Latins and Chinese, needed to be preserved. Aamir Khan ventured that perhaps language was not as important an issue as the development of the mind and this could proceed in any language. To preserve culture and values perhaps education should be progressed in the native language and English could serve as the link language.

The question asked by the audience addresses a key issue: the acquisition of Knowledge vs. the application of knowledge. Enron, Kodak, the car industry in the USA and closer home, Satyam, underwent convulsions not because of their lack of knowledge. The car industry of USA has perhaps the most advanced use of technology to mine data for information. Enron had an outstanding vision for Knowledge Management (not application of knowledge). Satyam was a leading company in the use of technology. These enterprises lost their market equity because of their failure to apply knowledge. They succumbed to human nature.

Perhaps participation in world power shall be determined by use of language for learning, sharing and emerging the reality as the internet makes the acquisition of knowledge free. As for enterprises, what will distinguish countries will be the ability to apply knowledge. Today personnel energy is critical to follow the disciplines needed for good application of knowledge, in particular the feedback needed for emerging the reality, developing team learning and embracing system thinking. It follows intelligent energy must be created to supplement personnel energy for organizing and driving feedback as, given their nature, personnel have reached the limit of their delivery.

It is ironic that in our focus on survival and progress we, as humans, are consumed by sourcing physical energy. Our future shall actually be determined by intelligent energy to protect us from our own base nature as well as promote the key force for human prosperity - innovation.

The idea of Reforms

2009-06-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

Recently the McKinsey Quarterly presented an excellent case for reforms. However, by offering the gamut of solutions from customer consciousness and quantitative measures to change agents it revealed precisely why reforms fail. It is not because the transformational-change efforts are short of leadership capacity, money, and management talent. It is because the idea of reform is devoid of a guiding philosophy. Leaders can encourage the way but their efforts have to follow a philosophy that will deliver. Best practices, quantitative measures, etc., make sense only in context of a philosophy. This has been amply demonstrated by the efforts of American managers to copy Kaizen from Japan. For years they gained nothing by aping what they saw. The consciousness needed for effective thinking eluded them.

In the 90’s Peter Senge defined the concept of the Learning Organization based on the nature of man and the anatomy of success. He identified feedback was the single most important ingredient of success and defined the powerful skills it fostered. Dialogue, his panacea for learning and success, was proven in practice. It was simple enough to follow but Learning Organizations continue to be rare. The energy needed to organize and drive knowledge flow for dialogue in the daily operations is immense. Today this energy can only be provided by personnel and they are overwhelmed by political considerations, power equations established by the possession of knowledge, low trust, misguided incentives, unsupportive cultures, and heavy odds created by the pace of change and uncertainty. The present offering of IT is just tools for collaboration. They are incapable of organizing and driving feedback in context amidst chaos.

It follows that reforms are only the symptoms of the cure needed. The core need is intelligent energy that can organize and drive feedback in context for trust and teamwork. They possess the power to emerge the reality and drive responsible action in response to directions established by inspirational leaders.

Teams in perspective

2009-04-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

Technology helped organize and drive the assembly line. Taylor and later the Quality Movement progressed learning on the system defined by the assembly line. The sustained improvement has resulted in a fifty-fold increase in manual worker productivity since the inception of the assembly line between 1908 and 1915. At the core of the Quality Movement is thinking about the Manufacturing System as a whole. On it rest all the economic and social gains of the 20th century. Technology has yet to create means to assemble the thinking of a group on a decision event. Knowledge worker productivity has stagnated. Personnel largely function as islands, sharing knowledge at their discretion. Consequently, the ability of personnel to think of the enterprise as a whole has suffered though its importance is appreciated.

My previous two posts dealt with the concept of Learning Organizations. They extend the learning behavior of Quality Circles to teams for the knowledge work and services that drive an enterprise towards its goals. Unfortunately, today there is a glass ceiling on the performance of teams. Often the possible is known, can be strategized for but remains out of reach because personnel have reached the limits of their time and energy in coping with the demands of the work place. I propose to highlight the contribution of teams here to reveal the nature of their latent potential. The internet is silent on estimates of this latent potential.

The sharing of vision together with feedback for group learning builds teams.

Teams overcome Defense reactions/Learning disabilities:

These are unconscious behaviors that serve to reduce stress. Their purpose is to hide the reality. Honest flow of knowledge leverages the thinking of a team to emerge the underlying reality behind the obvious events and symptoms.

Teams isolate the assumptions and generalizations:

The flow of debate reveals the biases and mental sets that camouflage the reality.

Teams emerge the reality:

Thinking driven by short term gains often falls prey to either the obvious or to biases. The obvious can engage personnel effort in pursuit of fixes instead of success while biases can derail judgment. To a considerable extent the reluctance of personnel to venture out from comfort zones created by defense reactions, learning disabilities, assumptions and generalizations furthers the distortion of reality. Free flow, with its spirit of openness, stretches the comfort zone to aid the perception of reality. It stands to reason that growth in the pace of change has shrunk the comfort zone and made it more rigid.

Teams harness the unconscious:

Teams have the power to progress the natural desire to learn and participate. It facilitates open thinking. This is a known force for harnessing talent to drive innovation.

Teams create time:

Ability to work and interact at ones own convenience is one aspect of time creation. Personnel take time to appreciate the reality if left to their own resources. The process of dialogue amongst team members speeds up the emergence of reality. This reduction of the time to reality is another and valuable aspect of time creation.

Per Jim Collins excellent organizations average seven times the performance of comparative companies in the stock market. They number under 1% of the stock market. This tallies with my own estimate that teams access under 20% of their potential ability.

I expect my work to shatter the glass ceiling with its creation of intelligent energy to organize and drive the free flow of knowledge.

The Big Bump

2009-04-04T02:06:00.000-07:00

John Seely Brown of Xerox made a very pertinent observation in 2003: "Senge’s five disciplines provided instant utility for learning to organizations in 1990, yet learning organizations remain rare to this day."

And the potential for Learning Organizations has further declined since 2003. Senge expressed dismay in 2006 that CEOs are not interested. Why?

Organizations are besieged by stress in the 21st century. Stress was there earlier as well but it was perhaps bearable. Defensive reactions and corporate learning disabilities served unconsciously to keep the stress manageable. It is possible unconscious mechanisms are no longer adequate with the growth of stress. An authoritative study has established growing incidence of rage in the workplace due helplessness to deliver results. Personnel exhaust themselves in coping with change, power differentials, internal politics, short term interests, poorly administered incentives, unsupportive cultures and just old-fashioned overload. It is inescapable that personnel now simply lack the time and energy to organize and drive themselves for overcoming the handicaps to success.

Rage is only one of the many downstream effects of the helplessness that follows from bumping against human limits. Terrorism, environmental degradation, pervasive under-development, and the melt down could very well be amongst the consequences. The need is a means to empower organizations, including governments, to leverage the latent collective ability lying neglected today for want of organization. It will offer a new lease of life to the disrupted process of peace and happiness encompassing balance with nature, healthy living, protection of human and animal rights, regulation of power and social stability.

The powerful philosophy of Learning Organizations shows the way to unlock the huge latent potential for success with existing resources. All that it needs is reliable means to drive the free flow of knowledge across the space, time, cultural, hierarchical and departmental boundaries that exist within organizations and across their business partners. Man has organized and driven the flow of knowledge since genesis. His peace and happiness today is hostage to this dependence for Drucker did say rather vehemently in 1990: “nothing else will work at all”.

IT tools for collaboration have given hope to the intelligentsia. Seely Brown observed in his review in 2003: “I think, therefore I am” has paled. “We participate, therefore we are” is where we’re heading. Here’s to the next 20 years. The hope is a new culture driven by the need for survival. With almost half their projected horizon traversed there is practically no change in culture. I hope the transforming power of the inexhaustible intelligent energy possible with IT will be appreciated and it is given a chance to overcome the limit man is experiencing today.

I have begun the journey to transform IT from a tool to intelligent energy.

Progressing Good Outcomes

2009-04-01T01:27:00.000-07:00

Ian Davis of McKinsey has written a thought provoking article to crystallize thinking on the nature of Government participation in context of the bail outs taking place to save national economies. I have interpreted the article in the context of Learning Organizations.

An unregulated economy tends to be driven by short term reasoning. By its very nature such reasoning is based on the linear assembly of Cause and Effect. It is now evident that it progresses the eco-system to a melt-down. Only the Government can balance short term interests with long term thinking to address the underlying factors at play like an abused environment, natural avarice of those in power, social welfare, depleting resources, etc.

Balanced Government participation is particularly important for developing economies. In them Government participation has tended to follow the ‘bad outcome’: policies that restrict much needed flexibility. With their head start in Government participation, guided by greater coordination and transparency to emerge the reality that lies beyond Cause/Effect reasoning, the developing economies can progress to safely exploit the known drivers of their growth, namely productivity gains, technology adoption, and cultural and institutional changes. The balance they achieve will protect them from the capitalist danger of a meltdown as well as the more imminent one of social instability.

It becomes clear that the philosophy of Learning Organizations must permeate Government thinking. Only this is capable of emerging the reality that lies beyond Cause/Effect reasoning. As discussed in my last blog, the potent philosophy of Learning Organizations is today rendered powerless because of its dependence on personnel energy. Without reliable means for learnng the ‘bad outcomes’ of government participation and erosion of investor confidence are more likely.

Whither IT?

2009-03-05T23:05:00.000-08:00

In late January, 2009, McKinsey Quarterly published the views of Prof. Hal Varian, Chief Economist with Google, on how IT needs to be understood so that it may be applied for best results.

Must family, including my 6 year old nephew, understand email to keep in touch with my brother away on an overseas assignment? No, and that is the power of technology.

Based on my work I have raised a few questions on Prof.Varian's views to define what I believe to be possible:
Is cheaper information the critical unsatisfied need for raising value-add? Will its economic stimulus match that of the assembly line or quality control movement? The massive investments in IT have not changed the ‘IT is a tool’ Knowledge work paradigm. The demand on personnel time and energy for self-organization and sharing ignores Davenport’s query of 2003: ‘We’ve been experimenting with IT support for knowledge work for several decades now. When will we figure out what works?’ The low return on investment in IT this implies may be a cause of the downturn.

Senge’s ‘The Fifth Discipline’ presents the complete philosophy of Learning Organizations for thinking beyond the shallow cause and effect reasoning common with IT:

Feedback forms the core of team culture
The free flow of knowledge emerges the reality:

Overcomes defensive reactions and disabilities
Tests assumptions and generalizations

Free flow urges holistic thinking over tunnel thinking
The group learning and sharing following free flow build the team.

In sum, free flow matures enterprises to progress executive action for superior pursuit of success. Means to assure a culture for free flow is today inconceivable. Delivering an assured means to organize work and drive free flow will convert the IT paradigm to ‘IT is intelligent energy’. It will elevate IT to a major factor of production and knowledge flows to a dominant factor of success. The present goal of averting mistakes may only transfer problems across the enterprise.

Why have serious attempts at improving knowledge interactions failed to evolve the IT paradigm? Knowledge work is unpredictable, discretionary and unstructured. A one-size-fit-all process for anticipating and driving interactions is logically impossible. The ruling wisdom avers knowledge workers must self-organize for results. Per Drucker ‘nothing else will work at all’. The wisdom has smothered ambitions for a compelling IT means to conduct Knowledge interactions. Knowledge Management swept the market in the late 90s but failed to change the work culture. The IT industry has resigned itself to urging responsibility on busy workers for a work culture to progress knowledge sharing.

Must IT remain a tool? It is possible that a mindset has prevented evolution. The eminently possible all-sizes-fit-one knowledge process can deliver the desired compelling means. Only norms are needed to assemble the repeatable actions that constitute all knowledge processes and conduct teamwork. The evolution of teamwork over centuries should establish them.

I agree with Prof. Varian that leveraging IT is critical. However, just availability of knowledge to support cause/effect deductions is not enough. This conventional use of IT only leads to short term fixingof mistakes and symptoms and not a cure. The cure can only come from appreciating the reality and responding to it. The delivery of IT must foster the flow of information, exchange of insights and testing of assumptions in context across boundaries to emerge the reality and progress unified action. Else, like the big three automobile manufacturers, the enterprise shall be left gasping in the wake of a crisis despite an advanced IT culture.

Free Flow vs. Knowledge Sharing

2008-10-09T22:05:00.000-07:00

Knowledge Sharing is a voluntary action. It fails to be a process designed for achieving specific ends, in particular understanding the internal and external environments. Thus, it may by-pass the need to work smarter: (Drucker, 1992) “The first question in raising productivity in knowledge and service work has to be: What is the task? What do we try to accomplish? Why do it at all? The easiest – but perhaps also the greatest – increases in productivity in such work comes from redefining the task, and also from eliminating what needs not to be done.” In addition to its limited focus, Sharing ignores the need to understand how one’s own actions contribute to problems. Sharing asssumes that the participant will self-organize and can surmount biases at will to pursue a well informed motive at all times. Leaders have revealed themselves to be rather avaricious and deceitful. Besides, the time and energy available to busy administrators rarely permits this approach.

The natural questioning of generalizations, assumptions and goals in free flow of knowledge reveals the defensive reactions that protect from threat and embarrassment, and learning disabilities that confound reality. Free flow is a process that emerges the reality, aligns team thinking, opens minds, promotes application of knowledge free of personal biases and drives comprehensive thinking. It has to be organized and practiced for development of skills to stretch team members beyond their comfort zones. Only then can learning, superior definition of reality and an effective response o it progress.

Today systematic knowledge flow and the need to interact do not converge. Knowledge Sharing is the best that Knowledge Management ambitions for. This best is not enough for effective application of knowledge. It is perhaps responsible for the failure of Knowledge Management even where it has been pursued with diligence as in case of Enron.

The Process Of Truth

2008-10-08T10:29:00.000-07:00

At the outset I clarify that presently my blog is not based on evidence. At one time I thought the writings of Peter Senge, Peter Drucker, Tom Peters and their kind were evidence enough but the editors of major Journals were quick to point out they were popular writers while rejecting my efforts to publish my work. The best I can say about my views is that they are supported by my experience, remarkable success of my prototype on the departmental scale, and can be inferred from the writings of acknowledged sages of management.

Per Senge mankind now creates far more information than anyone can absorb, fosters far greater interdependency than anyone can manage, and accelerates change far faster than anyone’s ability to keep pace. Yet, today, busy personnel are the only source of energy for driving knowledge flows. This over-aged and over-burdened paradigm for the driving energy develops an intricate web of downstream human problems that simple sharing of knowledge with normal language rarely penetrates. The web of problems obfuscates operation of the comfort zone.

Senge identifies greater pressure promotes defensive routines and learning disabilities to keep the demand on personnel energy, responsibility, time, and risk bearable. The pressure in effect discourages learning that unsettles the beliefs and actions one is comfortable with, i.e., questions the comfort zone. Submission to comfort denies success by lowering team ability.

Knowledge Management does not address the comfort zone. It only responds to events like mistakes, and to symptoms like the Knowing-Doing gap. They divert attention from the root causes of problems.

Free flow with its controlled process of disagreement strips away the defensive routines that mask reality to avoid pain; the learning disabilities like fixation on the obvious, dodging decisions, enemy-is-out-there and unconscious obsessions stand revealed. Personnel get a passage to the reality behind the obvious. The truth emerges.

The Power Of A Law

2008-10-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

Warren Buffet saved his investment firm Hathaway from the sub-prime induced ruin by categorically ordering it to withdraw from sub-prime investments even as the market was heating up. He perceived the reality that investments could not be safely anchored on hollow promises. Big investment firms that lacked the discipline to perceive the reality behind the windfall opportunity for profits went on to perish with the crash of the real estate market. It was a classic case of system forces at play: the blame lay not in the crash of real estate, i.e., out there, but in the avarice induced blindness of the leaders that made a mockery of the financial system.

In a sense the ruin was predicted by Sun Tzu thousands of years ago (~500BC):

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

On the threshold of a law

2008-08-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

Long time! Innovation demands persuasion for adoption and that can prove quite demanding: ".... the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it. " - Machiavelli (The Prince, 1513).

My work offers a compelling method for communication. Its free flow of knowledge will create time and energy as well as the means for organizationl learning and team empathy with the barest of disruptions. But that is not enough. I do not have the proof point, i.e., the evidence, to convince wary enterprises that my work delivers free flow and that free flow is the way to success. The big IT players, pre-occupied with their products and strategies, do not wish to participate.

Why is free flow the way to success? Peter Senge and Daniel Goleman have in seminal works established that it emerges the reality and imparts teams the power to get what they want. However, free flow today demands sustained organization and drive, i.e., a culture for sparing quality time and energy to share knowledge. The culture is so rare that the path of truth invokes more cynicism and less belief amongs senior professionals.

It is possible that a proof point of my work will establish free flow as a law for the delivery of success. The belief in truth for the happiness of mankind is as old as religion, be it Christian, Moslem or Hindu. The only missing element to establish the law, on the same plane as the laws of Thermodynamics, is a reliable means to deliver free flow.

Who is the enemy?

2008-02-17T23:26:00.000-08:00

Virtual Workgroups, Creating and Sharing information and business agility is the perspective Microsoft adopted post winning the browser war. Business @ The Speed Of Thought to progress success, articulated by Bill Gates in 1999, was the mission. It envisioned a Digital Nervous System for enterprises to learn, evolve, heal themselves, be as agile as small companies and get what they want. It concluded that all it needed was well-conceived digital tools and a culture to use them and share information. The culture has proved most difficult to establish though the desire for success is universal among CEOs and the tools have matured considerably. It is possible that the delay in progressing its mission is causing MS to rethink. Should it embrace its competitor’s mission?

In the meanwhile Google has progressed its mission to organize the world’s information and is seeking to open up the huge enterprise market. In principle there is a limit to the value Google can deliver the enterprise as E 2.0 has yet to work to transform the enterprise. However, a “cloud” has practically formed over the Microsoft domain and Google is not the only marauder. The internet has joined in with its open source and stealth operators like Xcerion. Microsoft is doing a great job of battling back but perhaps a perspective has been lost.

Earlier the enemy in Microsoft’s crosshairs were the forces that deny success to enterprises. As late as 2006 Bill Gates spoke of frictionless computing to make it easier for personnel to apply their talent, share their ideas, work hard and lead richer, more productive lives with a greater sense of fulfilment. Success would be a by-product. Microsoft would keep its hold over the desktop. Even, perhaps exploit the Knowledge – ad. link to generate ad. revenues. Now, with the pressure on its captive markets, it is possible MS perceives Google as the prime enemy.

The transformation of priorities has major implications. The customer is left alone to battle for success. This is a battle that has been fought with human energy since the dawn of organizations. Sun Tzu perhaps wrote the first book on the pursuit of success about 500 BC and it is as valid today as during his time. The change is that the environment has become far more demanding. The imbalance between the demand for energy to pursue success and its availability is growing. It would be a pity if the industry locks itself into a battle that is of no relevance to the war looming for mankind.

Business@The Speed Of Thought

2007-10-09T10:41:00.000-07:00

That was a great vision articulated by Bill Gates in 1999. But for thoughts to possess speed they must first flow. It is not sufficient that they are created. That would be like the archer shooting his quiver of arrows into the ether - delighting in the speed of the arrows but bidding goodbye to any target. Thoughts cannot flow on their own - they need a stream of knowledge. For the stream to exist there must be energy to initiate the flow. But Drucker has said : "In knowledge and service work, partnership with the responsible worker is the only way; nothing else will work at all.” This implies that thoughts can only move at the speed set by personnel. So Busineess@The Speed of Thought emerges just as a chimera and events since 1999 have proven it to be so.

I shall leave the reader with a thought: What if there were a language for the progress of interaction on an idea across the organization?

Knowledge Management vs. Knowledge Application

2007-07-16T01:05:00.000-07:00

Recently I interacted with the Chief Editor of a well established journal. In one of her columns she had opined that raising revenues was a superior way to impact the bottom line. In this context she had opined that IT could help to better leverage the knowledge that employees have about the business:

‘I am not proposing large extensive Knowledge Management campaigns but simply improving the method by which information flows between the employees and management and how that data can be accumulated, analyzed and understood.’

I was taken aback when she denied me my breakthrough in application of knowledge to deliver results. After all had I not only improved on the method to conduct knowledge flows by organizing dialogue over discussion, but also created a source of intelligent energy to drive dialogue? It took some hard thinking to understand that perhaps Knowledge Management needed to be distinguished from Knowledge Application:

Knowledge Management: It creates the framework for shared thinking:

Methods & Tools: The method encompasses recording of the key words that communicate meaning and progresses to define a structure for understanding or applying any explicit knowledge. The tools ease the conduct of the method and promote it. An important function of the method is to create a common language, so that when a reference is made everybody knows what is meant. Talking the same language assists the rapid exchange of information within or across projects.
Cases: A collection of theoretical material or explicit knowledge that has been captured per the method and placed in a repository for swift access.
Experience: Relates to previous engagement with the method and cases. It assists their interpretation, application and exploitation for better thinking, and may be passed on in a discussion in context at the discretion of the owner.

Personnel must self-organize and follow a discipline to take advantage of the methods, tools, cases and repositories of Knowledge Management. Experience is tacit knowledge and depends upon its owner’s volition to share it. Knowledge Management is known to be the mainstay of successful consulting. The paper Exploring Management Consulting Firms As Knowledge Systems (Werr, Stjernberg, 2003) details successful use of the concept.

Knowledge Application: It enables a group to achieve together what they cannot hope to achieve individually even if invested with the combined intelligence of the group. The context and possession of knowledge is best defined by the Knowledge Management method. Lack of a solution to the problems a team experiences in applying its knowledge for greater ability raise the gap between the possession of knowledge and its effective use on each event or the Knowing-Doing gap.

The Search For Magic

2007-06-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

It is a relief when years into an odyssey one comes across an identity of views with a leading light. I quote here the view expressed by Tom Davenport in his blog on March 21, 2007:

"Most of the barriers that prevent knowledge from flowing freely in organizations – power differentials, lack of trust, missing incentives, unsupportive cultures, and the general busyness of employees today – won't be addressed or substantially changed by technology alone. For a set of technologies to bring about such changes, they would have to be truly magical, and Enterprise 2.0 tools fall short of magic."

Magical delivery demands an integrating process. Email is a tool for business exchange but a process for personal communication. Tools must be supported by skills, organization, discipline, culture, and energy for universal adoption and consistent delivery. This imposition on personnel by tools quickly dispels their claim to magic. A successful IT process organizes, anticipates and drives 24x7, and, as in case of email, can induce culture. IT alone cannot anticipate to drive knowledge processes since personnel themselves do not know the next step in advance.

The science I have established for driving the flow of knowledge is based on the evolution of teamwork. It creates a compelling natural language for the daily conduct of interactions personnel must engage in for performing their work. Like email for personal communication, it assures its own adoption for all business communication. Free flow of knowledge is a by-product.

The Rainmaker

2007-05-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

This blog is linked to an interview Knowledge@Wharton conducted with Ray Ozzie, the person who harnessed IT to create the collective. The canvas covered was vast but the talk on clouds did stand out. It is what everybody is talking of these days. It got me wondering when all the cloud seeding will result in rain? The business landscape urgently needs fertility to grow innovation, judgments, and cooperation to cope with the rapidly changing times. But what is growing are more tools, more choices and perhaps a more liberated workforce. Counter arguments abound. Managers have to work harder to stand still. The old knowledge work paradigm of dependence upon administrators to self-organize and share their knowledge has only grown stronger. And, taking Ray Ozzie on his word, the industry has its hands full:

"In each solution within our business, the people who are running those businesses should look at their customers and say, "Given these new tools at my customers' disposal, how should we reshape this?" And I think that is potentially disruptive innovation in a positive way."

The thought is: Must this be the question that decides our future? Must the industry be run by the tools it has created? Amounts to the tail wagging the dog. Why must the customer be conceived of as an individual operating tools. Can IT now not progress to organize the collective? Actually get administrators to engage in collective thinking. Do something to overcome the self-interest that prevents them from sharing knowledge for the good of the organization they serve. Unburden them from the honorous task of organizing themselves for more effective working. In other words, develop the courage to change the centuries old knowledge work paradigm that now appears to be holding mankind back. If IT could get administrators to engage in free flow of knowledge in context - that would be rain. Fertility would follow.

The Daily Wish Of Leaders And Managers

2007-03-05T22:10:00.001-08:00

O Lord, if people could listen and respond, I shall be happy to follow.

This has been the substance of the refrain ever since Taylor succeeded with his scientific management in the early 20th century and ran into heavy weather with his championing of top down power. The refrain has become markedly stronger with the coming of age of the knowledge worker though nobody denies that top down power is essential.

Communities attest that people are quite happy to listen and respond when there is:

An effortless system for concerned people to progress a consensus
Easy access to past exchange for sense making
Swift focus per selected parameters
Easy response to follow up and anxiety
Contemplation at convenience, viz., work anytime/anywhere/offline
Management of chaos.

This is far more demanding than collaboration - what IT offers today - and demands a compelling means for organizing, driving and channneling interactions, viz., constructive team working or purposeful collaboration. The science of collaboration, proven on a prototype scale, makes this possible.

The Power Of The Collective

2007-02-23T20:19:00.000-08:00

The Maginot Line (Per Wikipedia): The fortification system, built at huge expense of time, money and material resources, utterly failed to contain the Germans in World War II. The term is sometimes used today to describe any comically ineffective protection.

Collective ability, in command of all enterprise resources including technology, is the civilian equivalent of the coordinated and disciplined might of the Germans in WW-II. The similarity ends with the effect of coordinated power. It has to be induced to ward off adverse politics and cannot be established by the command control culture that drives the army. Personnel must enjoy autonomy of thought and control over their actions without sinking into chaos.

The compelling way of working fosters the collective by anticipating the permissible actions and driving their execution. Dependence upon discipline is eliminated. Reliable and intelligent application of security ensures access is confined to selected personnel. In addition, space, time, continuity, mobility, focus, direction, anxiety, etc., are all easily satisfied by the automatic organization of data, information and knowledge to assure adoption. The leadership acquires powerful means to create and influence the collective mind in the virtual space, and is spared the frustration of reasoning with inaccessible and distributed minds.

Survey results at Calgon Carbon (~1999) establish the power of collective ability: For every 10 percent increase in trust and teamwork, the company can achieve a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in financial results within two years.

The only protection against collective intelligence is another collective intelligence focused on the pursuit of success.

Top Down Or Bottom Up?

2007-02-15T05:56:00.000-08:00

Prima facie, Enterprise 2.0 and Presence software require a supportive culture. Their adoption is therefore top-down dependent. However, their potential to sustain adoption makes them bottom-up friendly. In contrast, the Science induces its own culture. Hence, once it is introduced by the management, its spread is bottom-up.

The question has overtones. It also addresses the Jeffersonian belief that no human being is fit to wield power over others. This has proved itself often enough in the corporate and world stage yet the reality is that organization performance depends on top-down management power. Drucker sought to liberate employees with Management By Objectives, which still underpins most management practices. It enables subordinates to work with autonomy and "self-control" rather than as pawns manipulated from above.

The operational question then becomes: Do the 2.0 avatars enable autonomy and self-control? They could if they were to foster communities of practice but they securely belong to the paradigm that ‘IT is a tool’, viz., they cannot assure a practice within the community. The tools have the potential to nurture ‘freedom’ but the fact is they do not.

The science delivers an architecture that is bottom up in adoption as well as in its creation of communities of practice. Yet, it respects the importance of management power by creating a reliable mechanism to spread the influence of leadership.

The Return Of The Fizzle

2007-02-14T00:41:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the common factor behind the fizzling out of ERP, Dotcom 1 and Knowledge Management was the failure of the industry to converge with knowledge work. I say this on good authority:

Conclusion of five ERP case studies (Scott Elliff A, Organizing for Excellence: Five Case Studies, Supply Chain Management Review, Winter 1998): Even the best-conceived process initiatives will fall well short of potential without aggressive organization of people.

Tom Davenport, pioneer of Knowledge Management (July , 2003): “We’ve been experimenting with IT support for knowledge work for several decades now. When will we figure out what works?”

The conventional wisdom today is that the flow of knowledge cannot be organized and driven by IT. Hence, whatever advance takes place loses steam because personnel must consistently spare their energies and observe discipline to either respond to it or adopt it. This dependence upon a support culture applies to use of Web 2.0 within the enterprise and has led to the inevitable:
Review of a recent Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young report: While venture capitalists invested $455 million in Web 2.0 companies in the first three quarters of 2006, not a single Web 2.0 startup went public during the year. Perhaps more worrisome, just four Web 2.0 companies were acquired - can they make money?

It is possible that convergence of IT with teamwork is the missing element for catalysing a coming together of ERP, KM, SaaS, SOA, Dotcom 1&2, etc., to satisfy the huge unsatisfied demand for raising collective ability. Today only hype connects them.

The Case Against “Presence”

2007-02-06T03:37:00.000-08:00

In May 2005, when the pieces of the present Collaboration market were falling into place, Jonathan Spira, CEO of Basex Knowledge Consultants, published in the Basex Newsletter a letter he had written to the editor of Business Week . Its theme sentence was provocative:
“Two of the world's largest software companies just don't get what collaboration and knowledge sharing is and their products reflect a lack of understanding of the needs of knowledge and information workers and how they work.”

Few were willing to define standards for collaboration back then though “community of practice”, viz., free flow of knowledge among a group driven by common interests, and its value for raising "collective ability" were established concepts. Collaboration was so difficult to achieve in practice that any form of collaboration was welcome. To a great extent this applies even today.

Recently Passerini of P&G was quoted as saying: "For collaboration tools to help, they must be completely embedded in the work processes”. This is an echo of Davenport (Nov., 1999): “.. knowledge management has to be “baked into” the job. It’s got to be part of the fabric of the work to import knowledge when it’s needed and export it to the rest of the organization when it’s created or acquired”. Knowledge Management fell short of creating a community because it became focused on methods for knowledge sharing. Similarly, collaboration today is being understood as a product of tools. The goal of collective ability is over-shadowed.

The Live Communication Server (LCS) of Microsoft integrates with various applications so co-workers can collaborate from a spreadsheet, a document or line-of-business system, such as CRM. It also integrates with videoconferencing, Web conferencing, phone systems, e-mail, calendar, directory programs and public IM systems to create a presence-enabled work environment. This is expected to have a major impact on the way the enterprise collaborates, communicates and operates. Likewise, Lotus has assembled all the social networking capabilities it thinks are useful under a single umbrella.

Provision of tools is a far cry from organizing people and driving their individual effort towards a collective goal. A horde of strong men could have replicated the strength of Hercules but directing the strength to channel a river for cleaning out the Augean stables demanded the binding and driving force of organization and purpose that only Hercules could manage. Similarly, harnessing IT to sweep away the problems of collective ability requires a clear understanding of the force sought to be released so that its thrust may be organized and suitably channeled in the desired direction.

Collaboration quality must be defined not in terms of half way marks like knowledge sharing or a tool attribute like 'presence', but in terms of assurance of a coherent community where people share, listen, learn and evolve, in the words of Mary Parker Follett (~1926), ‘composite ideas'.

The Progress Towards The Collective

2006-12-31T18:15:00.000-08:00

The collective is simple to conceptualise. It is difficult to organize because people are so bent on pursuing their interest. The politician makes a living and enjoys power only because of her/his superior ability to organize and influence the collective.

Tom Peters reports 'In Search Of Excellence' that the excellent organizations identified by him took decades to develop the collective cultures that anchored their extraordinary performance.

After crunching three decades worth of data at Gallup, Marcus Buckingham reports in Fast Company (2001):
There is no such thing as a corporate culture. Companies are made up of many cultures, the strengths and weaknesses of which are a result of local conditions.

Buckingham goes on to give us the startling revelation:
US working people belong to one of three categories: engaged – 26%, not engaged – 55%, and actively disengaged – 19%, viz., three out of four people in any organization are not engaged in helping the company.

With such a record human nature appears quite unsuited to sustain constructive collaboration. Achieving collective thinking consistently over time or establishing communities of practice appears more remote, even inconceivable.

Conventional collaboration software may have failed to progress the collective mind but it did serve to demonstrate that the virtual space offered a real 24x7 accessible venue for diverse people to progress towards a consensus. The only hurdle left for forming the collective mind was the conventional wisdom articulated by Drucker that "In knowledge and service work, partnership with the responsible worker is the only way; nothing else will work at all.”

This wisdom is as old as mankind itself. Rewriting it by transforming IT into intelligent energy for organizing and driving the pursuit of excellence, from simply offering tools, viz., passive energy, should revolutionize administration over time. It is reasonable to expect that if we graduate the exploitation of collective ability from just 5% (the prevailing value) to well over 70% (the possible value with rewriting of the wisdom) then society can expect some tremors.

It is an exciting prospect to carry forward into 2007.

Solving The Problem Of Quality Collaboration

2006-12-17T11:01:00.000-08:00

IT today only provides the virtual space for the collective mind to exist as an entity. It takes constructive dialogue to converge the Enterprise Virtual Space with the collective mind and impart it the ability to drive success. Any collaboration will not do.

Constructive dialogue and convergence demand a compelling universal process for focused and continuous knowledge flow on each decision event from its inception till its conclusion. The conventional wisdom articulated by Drucker in 1991 implies it is impossible to conceive a one-size-fit-all process to deliver a universal end-to-end workflow of collaboration. The IT and Knowledge Management community accept this as the gospel truth and are working within it with tools like Business Intelligence, Web 2.0, Presence sensitivity, etc., insisting there is no escape from dependence on a supportive culture for achieving the desired collaboration. This makes any collaboration acceptable whether or not it develops and applies the collective mind for superior ability. Thus the development of collective ability for better enterprise performance is today corrupted in translation.

The science of interactions delivers architecture to converge the Enterprise Virtual Space (EVS) with the collective mind for superior ability. Its primary features are:

Focus on team worker, not process
Team worker has evolved. Hence norms exist
Grammar & vocabulary created to anticipate any knowledge process as it unfolds step by step
They develop an IT driven language (infinite use of finite means) to assemble all interactions
There is 100% adoption for the daily intra-enterprise communication
Email is replaced as the communication backbone by smart use of replication technology.
Capture and transformation of the knowledge into systematic dialogue in context.

In effect the science transforms IT from a tool or passive energy into inexhaustible intelligent energy for organizing, driving and channeling knowledge flows anytime/anywhere including offline. Its daily use for communication with by-product of corporate dialogue induces a collaborative culture and develops the collective mind. The collective cannot fail to act on the information surfaced by Web 2.0 tools. This bridges the Knowing-Doing gap, and enhances sensitivity and ability.

The means for constructive dialogue shall spare personnel the need to be pro-active as individuals - a cradle for mistakes. Instead, the collective intelligence fostered by IT drives the group to be pro-active. The creation of collective intelligence on call in the EVS is a breakthrough that rewrites the conventional wisdom articulated by Drucker in 1991. It provides means to overturn the centuries old dependence on personnel energy for superior knowledge work productivity and the pursuit of success.

Collective Ability Demands Quality Collaboration

2006-12-17T10:44:00.000-08:00

It is appreciated that better collective thinking and working, viz., ability, offer the only means to cope with the rapid pace of change. In particular, the knowledge processes and practices that raise collective ability are well understood today:

The pursuit of excellence. ‘In Search Of Excellence’ (1981) by Peters & Waterman and ‘The Fifth Discipline’ (1995) by Peter Senge provide handsome detail on best practices and the importance of trust and teamwork. They need channeled but free flow of knowledge.
Superior execution: Converting Strategy Into Results. The acclaimed book ‘Execution–The Discipline Of Getting Things Done’ (2002) by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan is devoted to this topic. Needs robust dialogue in specific areas.
Collective Intelligence. Delivers superior response to events. The turnaround of Microsoft in 1995 is an example. Needs extensive focused participation.
Competent Culture. It arrests chain mistakes. ‘How to Avoid the Chain of Mistakes that Can Break Your Company’ by Robert E. Mittelstaedt Jr. states the case. Published 2004 by s+b. Needs a culture for listening internally.
Preparation For Change. Peter Drucker has discussed it in depth in ‘Managing For The Future’ (1991). Needs flexibility in structure and mindset.

Studies by Tom Davenport have established that companies have no reliable strategy to improve the delivery of their knowledge work, viz., collective ability. The reason is revealed by an insight into the components of quality knowledge work:

Organization of context and focusing of interaction content
Free flow of knowledge with continuity of thought
Knowledge of responses in similar situations
An understanding of the opinion owner
An understanding of the case history
Clarity on goals, etc.
Systematic and total capture of opinion
Follow up by expectations, groups, role, etc.
Means to define security
Means to study the trend of emerging opinion, influence responses and work towards a consensus 24x7.

For reasons of time, energy, self-interest, etc., personnel rarely serve support systems to deliver quality knowledge work. The organization is required to instil culture to sustain discipline for the required investment of time and energy. However, collaboration per se does not deliver the required free flow of knowledge. Discussion does not fit the bill as the ego can intervene to switch off its free flow any time. Constructive dialogue or purposeful free flow of opinion across boundries is an established means for the required collective thinking or quality of knowledge work and interaction.

IT supports knowledge interactions in the virtual space. IT can conceivably supply the energy to conduct constructive dialogue in the Enterprise Virtual Space (EVS). In this sense the virtual space is a possible repository of the collective mind. The EVS that exists today is weak in its support of collective ability:

Web tools with just 0.01% participation within the enterprise (% of internet users that impart meaning to Wikipedia) cannot establish any truth.
Today IT at best offers tools for interactions and creating content. The ‘IT is a tool’ paradigm is unreliable because of inconsistent adoption, limited participation, poor query response and discontinuities created by time spent away from the network.
It does not deliver most of the requirements for better collective ability.

Making IT indispensable for constructive dialogue, viz., focused, purposeful and free knowledge flow, on each decision event, can converge the virtual space with the collective mind to offer a powerful means for raising collective ability. It requires transformation of IT from a tool to intelligent energy.

Enterprise 2.0 And The Knowing-Doing Gap

2006-12-17T10:42:00.000-08:00

The cases 'for' and 'against' Enterprise 2.0 need to be reconciled to achieve superior collective ability. Social software presents an excellent means to surface and access facts, and coordinate ad-hoc participation in developing and linking facts across space and time. However, it is not a means to define responsibility and accountability for executive action, promote the work environment, guide best practices, or inspire and channel the thinking of personnel, viz., not an enabler of the business administration that determines collective ability. It also does little to make life easier for personnel, e.g., manage their anxieties or observe the discipline essential for collective working.

The cases 'for' and 'against' Enterprise 2.0 can be simply reconciled by separating the infrastructure for information gathering and verification from that for business administration, viz., by acknowledging the Knowing-Doing gap. It is likely that superior business administration will foster adoption of the social software and hasten the required critical mass for its sustained and reliable operation. It will certainly raise collective ability.

While IT has succeeded in leveraging its virtual space to raise social interaction for better knowing, it has yet to succeed in investing intelligence in the virtual space for superior business administration. The abandonment by the FBI in 2006 of a new $170 million computer system, developed to upgrade its Case File System, demonstrates this. In a paper at my website I have identified the problems that must be resolved by any attempt to raise collective ability. It would be wishful thinking to believe that use of social software alone shall be enough to raise the level of collective ability.

The problem in improving knowledge work productivity for raising collective ability was identified by Peter Drucker in his ‘Managing For The Future’ published in 1991:
“Capital cannot be substituted for people in knowledge and service work. Nor does new technology by itself generate higher productivity in such work. In making and moving things, capital and technology are factors of production. In knowledge and service work they are tools of production. Whether they help productivity or harm it depends on what people do with them, on the purpose to which they are being put, for instance, or on the skill of the user.

Drucker, for all practical purposes, stated the conventional wisdom that applies even today. It implies that only personnel possess the intelligence to organize and drive superior collective ability. Personnel rarely have the time and energy to spare. Superior collective ability with any consistency is rare.

The Case Against Enterprise 2.0

2006-12-17T10:38:00.000-08:00

"It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things ........ lukewarmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it. " - Machiavelli (The Prince, 1513)

Divining a pattern is not as simple as connecting dots - that could amount to wishful thinking. False starts will inevitably take place before missing pieces of evidence are identified, found and a genuine pattern emerges. A structure to surface dots only develops facts. It:

Does not deliver a structure for connecting the dots or taking informed action.
Fails to drive the evolution of opinion towards a consensus for concerted action.
Is impervious to time deadlines.
Does not encourage recording and submission of sensitive information.

On the internet a mere 0.01% of the over 1000 million population contributes to the English Language wikipedia. Yet over 100,000 individuals emerge to establish meaningful content. For any enterprise to benefit from “social software” it needs to persuade employees, who may number thousands, to begin blogging and creating wikis all at once. Else, the critical mass needed for meaningful data is unlikely. Consistent collaboration by a multitude today requires a supporting culture. The secret to achieve it has yet to be divined.

The New York Times article ‘Open-Source Spying’ has a telling report: “…. Clay Shirky of N.Y.U. points out, most wikis and blogs flop. A wiki might never reach a critical mass of contributors and remain anemic until eventually everyone drifts away; many bloggers never attract any attention and, discouraged, eventually stop posting. Wikipedia passed the critical-mass plateau a year ago, but it is a rarity. “The normal case for social software is failure,” Shirky said.”

The success of Enterprise 2.0 for raising collective ability requires not only a culture for adoption of Web 2.0 tools but also an effective means to invite sensitive information as well as take collective action on the intelligence that surfaces.

The Case For Enterprise 2.0

2006-12-17T10:28:00.000-08:00

Note: ‘Open-Source Spying’, published on December 3 in The New York Times by Clive Thompson, describes a focused implementation of Web 2.0 within the enterprise.

All definitions of Enterprise 2.0 thus far describe it in terms of the potential released by Web 2.0 tools - Search/Link/Author/Tags/Extensions/Signals or SLATES or social software tools for short. Andrew McAfee has devoted his blog to development of its potential for raising collective ability. The US intelligence community is betting big on Enterprise 2.0 as it urgently needs to overcome its bureaucratic chain of command to combat an agile network like Al Qaeda. Its approach reflects the case for Enterprise 2.0 powering superior collective ability:

If personnel were encouraged to post personal blogs and wikis on the community’s private network — linking to their favorite reports or the news bulletins or blogs they considered important — then mob intelligence would take over. The rapid self-organization would inexorably refine facts and draw together disconnected information, hard to sort through, for unearthing plots like 9/11.
Far-flung personnel around the world could contribute day or night without the constraints of being in context.
Once the community has a robust and mature wiki and blog knowledge-sharing Web space it shall achieve agility in responding to unforeseen demands.

The US intelligence community is putting in place the security structure needed to support the required shift from the prevailing ‘need to know’ culture to a ‘need to share’ philosophy.

Perspective: Latent Potential Of IT

2006-12-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

Each of the great inventions of mankind – the steam engine, electricity, IC engines, telephones, etc. - transformed society’s productivity deeply and unambiguously. IT has so far transformed entertainment, communication, individual productivity but not the society’s productivity. It is in fact believed that the productivity increases since 2000 are not due to IT. The problem is not computing power. We already have computers that are fast enough for any task most of us want to perform.

Collective ability today represents the greatest if not the only source for the pursuit of extraordinary enterprise performance. While the potential for collective formation has risen steeply over the centuries, the collective ability exploited has more or less stagnated.

The practices and processes that develop the collective mind are well known. IT has all that is needed to raise collective ability and sensitivity – connectivity, programmability, speed, storage, access, mobility, productivity tools and social software – but has yet to make an impact across the enterprise. Achieving the transformation with IT demands a compelling business model to ensure IT is adopted for constructive team work by each member of the enterprise.