L'Institut Boostzone est un carrefour d'échanges construit autour des réseaux professionnels vivants et de ses implications sur le management

Managerialism, an old battle with many similarities with Network Centric Management today

You should read this article “Managerialism and the demise of the Big Three”

by Robert R Locke [Emeritus, University of Hawaii, USA and a specialist of the history of management sciences]. It was published in December 2009 in the real-world economics review, issue no. 51.

This article is relatively long and difficult to read. Too bad if you only read one screen page articles, you will miss it. Now; if you are interested in the history of management and in what kind of lessons history tells us today, it is a jewel.

Robert Locke has been writing extensively on management practices, namely comparing the US and Japanese management systems. This article summarizes his view on why the Big Three lost their battle against the Japanese because they were unable to apply the Japanese rigorous but specific production management techniques.

One of the main reasons is what Robert calls (and denounces) managerialism, i.e. the management by the hierarchy, and in particular by the class of “managers”, as opposed to the collective and community like management of Japanese companies. Now you know why I see this article as a jewel! A striking parallel can be done today with what will happen to those companies that will be able to switch to a more collaborative management and those who will stay with a hierarchical one.

When you read this article just put your brain in a parallel processing mode and while you read about the American and the Japanese organizations in the manufacturing industry, just think of the contemporary challenge we are facing if we accept that networks will drastically change our management models. You will see why the emergence of the multidivisional firm actually led to the possibility of managing large groups but also to the hubris of a few managers who saw their coordination role as the real core value of the group. I let you get glimpses of the analogies.

Locke insists on an old concept incredibly contemporary: the one of a culture of flows versus a culture of structures as elements of management (see page 31 32), an important point because today’s organization has to become nothing else than a series of flows and connections. It has to include some regulation and governance (as with the commons or as in any system with collective responsibilities) for these flows but this is exactly where managerialism failed and where the old hierarchical management might fail in the face of Network Centric Management.

He also looks at how change is made more complex when one cannot reduce the people’ status differences within the Firm, something not really new but so acute within communities (see page 36). New hierarchies have to appear, but they will be based on the quality of contribution and on the quality of individual’s skills, not on status nor on the quantity of contribution. Quality is at the core, as it was in quality management.

He also looks, among other examples, on how the cooperative behavior between suppliers and producers led to better cars (page 39) instead of a client/supplier relationship.

He reminds us that already in the early 70s (page 40 41) there was a very interesting conceptual movement towards considering successful organizations as those able to organize themselves like a natural living system with three basic principles: self organization, interdependence, diversity.

What I like in Locke’s approach, beside the fact that I have been working on these issues since the time of my thesis on Japanese Management, is that he reminds us of the necessity of the tools required for a successful collaboration. And the tools recalled here are not technologies, they are the very tools around the organization of work, see page 42 43, from Quality Control Circles to Takt time to Kanban, to JIT, etc. All these techniques were at the heart of the Japanese success. I think that we don’t have them all yet for Network Centric Management within the corporation even if we are approaching some of them (governance rules, moderation techniques, virtual/real interaction for problem solving, etc.)

The most striking exhibit in this article is the following one. Just replace TPS (Toyota Production System) with Network Centric Management and you will be surprised too. History really has lessons for us.

I let the conclusion of this post to Robert:” Was this management? Not in the Chandlerian sense or in the sense understood by purveyors of the “New Paradigm” in management education. But Management by Means produced much better results.”

Written by Dominique Turcq locke, managerialism, NCM Enterprise 2.0, Management, Uncategorized, WOW world of work No Comments »

Crises and Innovation: intuition, imagination and networking

Terrible to say but a crisis has a positive side to it; you must have heard about the Chinese word for crisis: written with two separate kanji that mean risk and opportunity.  Thus, the crisis is here to tell us that we need to take risks and opportunities shall arise as a result!

From stalling to moving ahead:

1. our economic environment is rethinking its paradigm… surprisingly human-centred,
2. the companies are rethinking their strategy… through network-centric management,
3. we are all rethinking our social ties… through family and neighbourhood solidarity.

None can deny that we have moved forward in a big way in the past few years, despite the terrible financial demise we are facing; if, on one hand, we seem to have gone individually, the reality is something else: we have garnered our systems with networking tools galore… So, what do we do with these, exchange titbits of information or vacation pictures? Much more conducive to humanity’s progress (from the Latin progressus which means: moving forward), let’s plan innovation through idea generation, shared knowledge, and team work.  Yes, innovation is not the private foray of State-run programs or Enterprise R&D’s!

The other day, as I was planning to design my new abode, someone, at a distance, asked that I describe the space so that he could get a feel; I could have taken pictures, assembled them in a way that made sense to my correspondent.  Yet, as a matter of innovation, I thought of an architect software to try out mapping the place; to my biggest surprise, I searched on the net and, within seconds, was scrambling with the floor planner; hours later, I came out with what turned out to be a magical 3D design of my place with mezzanine floors appearing as in reality.  I promise that I did not take any architect lessons in the past; it was just intuitive!

Intuition plays a big role in the current technology world and this is what allows anyone to quickly master any advance.  Have you seen how simple it is to use the most recent digital camera; if you remember the complexity of old photographic equipment, you can be amazed at how elaborate your pictures are today, whilst mastering complex technology functions.  It is the same with anything that you do today: see how simple your world has become if you accept the unconventional of going at things; kids, age 7, are better at most tools than us!

Imagination has developed tremendously as it is the power of bringing images and vision together; with the net as a base, it is so simple to go and get these sources of inspiration that shall lead to the next innovation.  Ok, you may not be the greatest inventor in the world, like Archimedes shouting Eureka when he discovered the water push on the body… in his bath!  But, no reason to feel guilty if you have used all information available to get where you want to go; that is what the net is all about.  More than that, it is also networking!

Networking when you hear what happened with this competition to curing AIDS, the fights between the American and French teams, come on!  How about cooperation rather than competition: is this world just about honours and money?  Granted, it feels good to be recognized but networking can save us time and is not time “money”, in a way?  Advantage, fast assembly through modular design in innovation; share a document on any data base and each can add to the idea.  When will companies realize the power of shared innovation?

Let intuition guide you, let imagination feed you, let networking kindle you: that is innovation in and of itself; if you give yourself, and your network, credit for progress, we will altogether go far ahead in our new paradigm.  Happy New Year to all and let’s innovate together in 2010.

Written by Martin de Waziers Uncategorized No Comments »

Enterprise 2.0 experience: 5 misconceptions

Sometimes when participating in the launch of a brand new initiative, a disruptive one, you may feel a bit like the sorcerer’s apprentice and not too sure how to make things happen. Donning your wizards robe and hat, you go ahead with what seems to be the right things to do, while eager to see how others are doing, and learning from the early experiments. In the past week’s meetings I had with several companies moving into Enterprise 2.0, lessons learned were at the centre of the discussion: what, in the transformation effort, is different from originally expected?  Here are 5 misconceptions that came up in the discussions, all valid considerations.

Misconception 1. Enterprise 2.0 mimics Web 2.0
Because both the term and the concept ‘Enterprise 2.0′ was coined from ‘Web 2.0′, and because the technology behind both have the same roots (’cloud roots’ if I may), because the web outside inspired the enterprise inside, one can think it is just a transposition. Then comes the vision of a plethora of technical features, employees becoming geeks, or staying behind and dragging down the organization, anarchical deployment and use. It did happen to start-ups in early growth phases, but it doesn’t happen to enterprises, because we’re on a different paradigm: we’re  improving an ecosystem. From what I see from corporations who are running the transformation, it gets careful thinking and backing. Moving to Enterprise 2.0 does not change the enterprise’s culture, values and unique specificities, but helps reinforce them. Here are 3 examples on how each organization may get different results from deploying E2.0 within its own patterns: Accenture uses it to invigorate its practices, focus on sharing and exchanging information (and especially the ones they do create), the central pattern is a knowledge network; IBM fosters  innovation and collaboration, getting the employees around the world to unleash their creative thinking and leverage each other’s ideas, the central pattern is collaborative innovation; and Sogeti concentrates on teaming, on sharing and leveraging expertise and experience, the central pattern here is rather corporate efficiency.

Misconception 2. Enterprise 2.0 is a technology issue
As you may already imagine from the above argument, E2.0 is far more than just a technology issue, or the choice of the right technical solution. Technology is the engine: how you will use it is what gives it value - like for a car or a computer. E2.0 is in fact a broad corporate change issue, with dependencies on the corporate culture, a need to be consistent with the corporate strategy (or to update the corporate strategy to make the most of this new paradigm), and organizational impacts, since both hierarchical and transverse work streams will be impacted. It cannot be worked as a normal legacy systems transformation project: while most of the time the CIO is in charge, he must work with the rest of the organization and especially the executive team and HR to make the transformation successful.

Misconception 3. Employees need to be trained before being able to participate
While a minimal training is mandatory (technical: what is a forum, a blog, vs. email, a wiki, etc.; and non-technical: what is collaboration, what are communities, etc.), one can hardly learn and understand the new paradigm without diving into it. The momentum will not come from training at first, though it is indispensable during the transformation. It will come from a common expectation for the organization’s transformation. Remember Enterprise 2.0 is about network and collaboration, and apply the virtuous circle of situated learning: the more people participate, the more they learn, and the more they identify with the wider group, becoming more motivated to participate further.

Misconception 4. Let’s offer it ‘inside’, to prevent employees  joining it ‘outside’
You probably know this argument: what ever happen, people will join the Web 2.0 movement and go on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other Ning things, so let’s offer similar tools internally, so that employees are not tempted any more by the siren’s song. Capture energy, prevent leaks. This argument is still a main one for some solution vendors, while experience has shown that it somehow misleading. First, see Misconception 1, people won’t find ‘inside’ - the empowered enterprise’s ecosystem - what they look for when they go ‘outside’ - extra-curricular activities, communities of practice, etc.-. Both environments are complementary, rather than rivals. Second, having employees ‘fluent’ in 2.0 environments may be a plus - the more they practice, the more they become skilful, adept and efficient - see Misconception 3 - so it is good that they are also present on Web 2.0 platforms. Of course, the corporate policy might help them understand how to represent their company, what to do, what to avoid. And third, last but not least, no company even the biggest can survive isolated: customers, competitors, ideas, insights, research, inspiration… all these are ‘outside’. Being able to go and grub around in the world and fetch intelligence back is an asset.

Misconception 5. Participation should be encouraged by objectives (or rewards)
Because the modern corporation has sustained good results with the management by objectives mantra, one can be tempted to use that process to facilitate Enterprise 2.0 adoption.   This commonly shows as a false-good-idea, a potential ‘faux-pas’ that may turn the effort into a big flop. When deploying Enterprise 2.0 into the corporation, what we seek is adoption, which will result in new work behaviours, strengthen the ties, allow  pooling of  skills and expertise, bring new ideas to light, etc…; and indeed adoption is very sensible to any attempt of control. Short story: an internal community is opened around the subject of Customer Satisfaction. The management is truly interested in getting results, hence it wants its employees to participate, and thus, actively encourages employees’ involvement. Employees get this as a mandatory task that will be checked during year-end appraisal, and they step in the community to ‘please’ the management, rather than because they are interested in the subject or may bring insights to the discussion. At the end of the day, the volume of participants is important, but most contributions are limited to “I agree”, “That may be right” or “Good idea”, i.e. no value add, a waste of time for other members, plus a spiral of disinterest for the few people really engaged with this subject. Lesson learned: one must definitely seek other means to foster adoption, such as viral adoption, value added animation, situated learning, or collective immersion events.  Also, remember that between 1% and 20% of people usually actively participate in Enterprise 2.0 initiatives, depending on the ‘centrality’ of the corporate culture and other factors, and forcing the participation may only get a negative result.

Thanks Didier C., Pierre M., Willem G. And Christian S. for sharing with me their corporate stories.

Written by Cécile Demailly change management, Enterprise 2.0 Enterprise 2.0, Management No Comments »

“Power to the edge” in the media too!

An old habit I kept from my Boston years is to listen to OnPoint Radio, which I enjoy very much. There is nothing comparable in France with such high level debates on the key topics of the moment.

The broadcast of November 19. , “Google vs. Murdoch”, is a great moment and definitely worth listening. Guests were:

• Jeff Jarvis, associate professor and director of the Interactive Program at the City University of New York School of Journalism
• Michael Wolff, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and founder of the news aggregator Newser.com
• Steven Brill, media entrepreneur, founder of CourtTV, American Lawyer magazine, and co-founder of Journalism Online.

If you listen to this great 45mn show, you will hear a lot of interesting comments from professionals who strongly -and often violently- disagree on the business model for the news industry in the years to come. The equation seems impossible to solve: on the one hand, journalists must be paid for their work, and on the other hand, both the subscription and the advertising business models have been damaged by the internet and by Google, which completely changed the rules of the game, by spreading advertising revenues on a wider population of content publishers.

Notwithstanding the obvious need for cost cuts in this industry like in others, it brings a totally new perspective  on the value of information. What are we newspaper readers really willing to pay for? It looks as if there is a general consensus that protecting content through online subscription does not make much sense for general news, because readers do no value repackaged news that they can find elsewhere for free.  Protecting content by IP rights does not work either unless it can be considered as creative work, which is highly questionable for most news articles. Relying on donations is not a very comfortable business model either. So what’s left?

Service.

If our piece of breaking news is published milliseconds ahead of all others, this has value. If it comes from first hand sources that nobody but you can approach, this has value. If you embody a living link between your readers and first hand information sources, this has value. But if you come later on, or if you are several degrees of separation away from the unique source, you are just a commentator. If you are good at it, your readers will reward you by linking to you, thus increasing your reputation as an expert, and hopefully associated revenues too (advertising, keynote, lectures..), but you will not be paid for the news.

So it looks as if the value creation of the news industry is shifting away from the center - formal content producing empires sending reporters throughout the world - to the edge -  intelligence networks of thousands of people acting as sensors and producing content on the fly and relying on aggregators, search engines and of course people to enrich the information and take it to the people who need it.

Sounds familiar? If you’ve read  “Power to the Edge”, a must-read seminal book published in 2003 by the U.S. Department of Defense on information and organization management philosophy, it will ring a bell. And it is likely to be a wake-up call, too.

Written by Martin R. Dugage media newspapers Management No Comments »

Communication… so much of it!

How many times did you feel frustrated with a simple text message when you wished you had had lengthy news? The times of the long letter, handwritten with care, sent with that special feeling (pleasure or chore, as the case may be) are long gone. Now, we get this sense of accomplishment when we have sent that simple “Happy New Year” to our whole contact list on our cell phone! Have you thought about the recipient? Not even, I guess, because, if he or she is part of a huge group, they are no “one in particular”… But, are these short and impromptu messages so bad in the end?

The current risk is communication overload: number of systems and size of messages. Too many notes, said Salieri to Mozart, when everyone knows the beauty of his music; our first reaction is “who is he to talk about the musical giant Mozart was?” but, he may have had a point, and we can take a step back. Why do we often take three sentences to say one simple thing? Could be that we feel compelled to dwell and make sure we are understood, thus going round and round, giving the other one the sense he needs “knocking things in his head”. There is a time for length, there is strength to simplicity. Too many words, was I told recently, I am trying to learn and be more concise.

The good side is what Mark Granovetter called “The Strength of Weak Ties” in a 1973 book. In the way we have developed our work environment, there is true value to these occasional ties: a simple contact to touch base, an announcement to inform of a fact, a mail to give details to a colleague, and obviously much more for the intimate relationships. The “weak ties” keep our groups together; as communication speed has increased, the number of possible contacts as well, yet reduced to the simplest form. This is called networking, the new civilisation paradigm. Hence, the development of Twitter, flash text messages, but also the other tools, including FaceBook that gives an opportunity to “feel the other”.

There is a compromise and that is in the “true thought” you are going to put in that message, particularly important in company communication. A few key rules:
1. Stay in touch; that means “touching the other”, not just zipping by!
2. Think of the content; as a kid, I had to “turn the tongue 7 times in my mouth before talking”, and I am sure there is an equivalent saying in every culture around the world!
3. If it is short and sweet, I can use a text message; if not, it is a mail that (I) I re-read before sending and (II) carefully title in the object box, thus helping the recipient.
4. If I “really” need to respond, I give myself time to think through it and apply #3-I above; if I am one of numerous recipients, I have checked if some responses have already happened and the title (#3-II) will help to do so; if I respond, I do not necessarily copy everybody (think of an invitation to a meeting, respond only to the organiser). By the way, do I “really” need to respond or am I not showing off?
5. And I never forget that a short telephone call can be best with a “voicemail” if need be; that means being short and “to the point” on the message. I, for one, still need to learn!

Yes, the current communication craze is great, as it allows us to “stay in touch”, with our business and social networks. But try to “really touch the other”. A simple message is great for the recipient, as long as there is the sense that you have really thought of him or her in communicating; the word comes from the latin communare, which means being together, sharing something. And, business or social, around Christmas time, you can send a thousand text messages and help your operator make loads of money, but you can select a few special recipients that will get a thought-through message from you, it shall touch someone!

Written by Martin de Waziers etiquette communication mail Uncategorized No Comments »