The “Average” Knowledge Worker Today Faces Lots More Change

(cross-posted a couple of days ago at Intuit’s TheAppGap blog)

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Much of what the average knowledge worker of today sees as "work"  is through the daily communion with the computer screen on her or his desk. They access the software with which they work and communicate with other employees through portals, on the company’s infrastructure of applications, or (increasingly) via the Web.

As we have learned more about how to integrate all growing software-based capability into our daily work lives, we have seen various forms of employee portals, partnership portals, project management portals and, more recently, comprehensive real-time enterprise computing applications take root and grow in many organizations. Organizations’ IT infrastructures, coupled with ongoing growth in the scope and use of smart software, will create a type of integrated nervous system, providing top management and workers with an improvement-and-learning focused feedback loop.

When software connects customers directly to business processes, and employees have "line-of-sight" responsibility for making a clear contribution or directly impacting business results – when most of an organization’s strategy and value proposition is directly coded into its CRM, ERM and B2B applications, will the types of supervision and management we learned in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s continue to be effective? There’s a very real issue here that is helping to create the emerging dynamics – the more that work activities are encoded and embedded into integrated systems, the more the human will and spirit needs to surface, assert itself.  This polarity is, I think, here to stay and is behind much of the ongoing discussion of conversation, collaboration and social computing.

The proliferation of information technology, business process re-engineering and wrenching changes to established business models created by the rapid development of the Internet are exerting significant pressure on long-standing business hierarchies. Top-down, command-and-control management structures and dynamics struggle to maintain effectiveness in the face of free-flowing streams of content-rich information, coming from all directions. The dynamics of how people relate – to work, to markets, to bosses and to each other – are changing. A new organizing principle posited on network dynamics - "wirearchy" - a dynamic flow of power and authority based on connections and conversations, may be emerging as a social dynamic for organized activities in  both business and society.

Wirearchy is an informal but pervasive emerging structure of governance, strategy, decision-making and control based on knowledge, trust, meaning and credibility. Things get done and results are achieved through the interplay of vision, values, connections and conversation. Wirearchy is generated by an open architecture of information, knowledge and focus, enabled by connected and converging technologies.  It suggests a fundamental change in the dynamics of human interaction in – and with – organizations of all sizes, shapes and purposes, and represents an evolution of hierarchy as an organizing principle and dynamic. Wirearchy will not render hierarchy obsolete, nor the need for direction and control; rather, it will render them more necessary. However, it will change the meaning of those terms and how they are used and experienced.

People won’t accept authority easily any more. While old-guard keepers-of-the- keys still cling to authority and power, the older models of how to lead and follow are unravelling. Organization charts are still useful, but only as they become more fluid. Certainly, they appear in a much wider range of shapes than before, and often convey new messages about power, status and control. "Organigraphs," or pictures of the ways organizations flow and operate, are clearly more pertinent, accurate and useful, according to strategy and organizational structure guru Henry Mintzberg.

How do today’s leaders and senior managers respond to these forces? Clues are evident in initiatives emerging in the fields of customer and employee relationship management, organizational development, human resources management and organizational change: The use of techniques such as scenario planning, dialogue, open space, 360 degree feedback, emotional intelligence, coaching and mentoring have all grown significantly over the past several years. Together, these soften the rigidity of outmoded structures, and help people respond and adapt.

Most organizations carry out ongoing initiatives to create, clarify and improve capabilities in each of these emerging areas. Indeed, a large percentage of the global consulting industry is focused on diagnosing, developing and implementing strategies for these goals. Wirearchy is significantly different in that it focuses on the structural and psychosocial dynamics generated by interconnectivity and access to knowledge. It begins not only with what’s happening at the top, but also what’s happening in the roots and branches of an organization. Where hierarchy created focus and meaning through the control of knowledge, wirearchy implies that the control and use of knowledge acknowledges and involves a much wider range of stakeholders..

Yesterday’s success factors involved secrecy and control, size, role clarity, functional specialization and power. Today’s emerging factors are openness, speed, flexibility, integration and innovation. The concept of wirearchy allows readers to develop a strategy for creating, implementing these factors in ways that respond with value to continuously changing conditions. Its core components are:

* a crystal clear vision and values
* a strategically designed and integrated technology infrastructure
* comprehensive, clear and completely open communications
* pertinent objectives and focused measurement
* characteristics of culture that create, support and enable responsiveness, adaptability and fluidity
* leadership that is clear, focused, open, authentic and shared

It will take time and experience in this new era to know what "success" and "effectiveness" mean and look like. In such an era,  where there is literal meaning in the phrase, "everything is connected to everything else," we will have to watch, learn and imagine how to lead and manage in ways that foster continuous developments in the effectiveness of individual workers, small working groups, the organizations with which they work and the societies in which we all live.

Clay Shirky is a well-know Internet / Web expert who has just published a new book titled "Here Comes Everybody".  While it does not focus exclusively on the workplace, it’s a decent bet that the concepts and dynamics Shirky addresses will have major impact on the future of work.  As the forces he describes continue to spread throughout society and grow in impact, this organizing principle – Wirearchy — is likely to impact the design of collaborative software and the architecture of workplaces, business, governments and societies in ways that we have never before encountered in human history.

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