Transforming The Enterprise - 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  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

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

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

 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.