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.

Whither IT?

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:

1. Overcomes defensive reactions and disabilities
2. 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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.