Mesh working rather than Matrix working

Read this very good post by Andy Mulholland (Cap Gemini CTO) about the impact of Web 2.0 collaboration on organizational structure and working practice. Andy identifies the new working practice as Mesh working: http://www.capgemini.com/ctoblog/2007/11/this_is_going_to_be.php Here is how Andy defines Mesh working: <<[…] The change in how people work is focused on Web 2.0, and I have chosen to label this as Mesh Working to differentiate it from Matrix Working. Matrix working is broadly the capability for individuals to work at the specific tasks in which they specialise for a variety of managers, and is made possible by using client-server to allow the separation of the client activity from the data consolidation on the server. However it is at heart a data centric transaction based working method where relationships both between people and systems are ‘managed’ through a close coupled environment. Put simply the relationships in Matrix working are always pre determined, fully defined and use known data. Put equally simply Mesh working is loose coupled, for both the people and systems, relying on forming the relationships required through the ‘interactions’ leading to the definitions of who, and what, should be found and used. The Mesh of people and systems is potentially a never ending huge open environment extending externally as well as internally rather than the closed internal world of Matrix working. […]>> A Mesh of people is really what I also have in mind when I think of a Web 2.0 collaborative environment. It is organized chaos. Andy ends his post with this good assessment of what this means from a competitiveness point of view: <<[…] Competitive advantage is shifting from the cost management of transactions in the back office to business optimisation in the front office and the external market. Globalisation is forcing all enterprises to compete in this space so ultimately Mesh working is being driven as a necessary response to a changing Business world. It’s a World that takes us way beyond internal agility, and flexibility, through Matrix working, and into external responsiveness through Mesh working. >> I totally agree with this conclusion. However, leaders need to be careful about what they first need to do about it. Essentially, it first depends on their organization’s current culture. Mesh working is not compatible with an environment with a heavy hierarchical structure, where horizontal communication – let along team working - other than for prescribed “routine” processes is scarce. You cannot declare mesh working, you cannot impose it. You need to nurture it, gradually implement a conducive organizational environment, starting with a clear and unconditional support from all the CxOs. A “do what I say but not what I do” behaviour will surely not succeed. If as a leader you want your collaborators to willingly share their knowledge outside routine business processes, you must lead by example. Maybe start a corporate personal blog accessed by all and use it to tell your vision. Mesh working is not a concept that can be applied only to the grass roots of your organization and leave the upper echelons unchanged. Mesh working implies a fundamental change structurally, culturally and technologically. All organizational values, processes and methods must be reviewed and progressively adapted to the new way of working. For example, the pay and reward mechanisms must cater for the new importance given to knowledge-sharing, idea generation and innovation. Now, Andy implies in his article that Mesh Working is in fact not an option and that it is happening whether you like it or not. Thinking that as a leader you have today a choice to ignore it would be like if in the late 80’s/early 90’s, you would have been thinking the same of the Matrix working brought by the networked PC and the Information Age that followed. “Symptoms” of Mesh working can very probably be detected in your organization. One obvious reason is that millions of people have already socially embraced this concept largely thanks to the Web 2.0 and, seeing the benefits, it is only natural that they try to extend this behaviour in the workplace. Another reason is that some of your customer or supplier organizations will have already made the transition to Mesh working, and their collaborators will expect the same behaviours from your collaborators. The pressure will therefore mount on all organizations to fully embrace the Knowledge Economy. Traditional Intellectual Property (e.g. Brand name, patent and trademark) will no longer suffice to build and maintain competitive advantages: Intellectual Capital leveraging through effective and efficient Mesh working is to become the key to successful business. Peter-Anthony Glick

The Age of Collaboration

Read the following article in CIO Today: http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0020006F2KP6&page=1 It starts with this unfortunately correct quote from an Accenture executive:

  << When it comes to collaboration, many companies have a long way to go. "We are early in the cycle, maybe the second inning," says David Smith, head of the human performance practice in North America for Accenture, a global consulting and technology services firm. "Companies are beginning to attack it. Very few are getting it right." >>

The Age of Collaboration as the article defines it below is a direct consequence of the Knowledge Economy, considering Knowledge as the most important asset: 

  <<[…] The 21st century is likely to be the age of collaboration because many of today's problems are complex, often demanding cross-disciplinary expertise. Collaborative technologies are also in demand by companies that have global staffs and greater numbers of employees who telecommute. Supply chains demand collaboration among dozens of companies. Some technical problems are so expensive to tackle that even competitors collaborate. For example, IBM, Samsung Electronics and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing cooperatively develop semiconductor manufacturing processes. ST Microelectronics and others recently joined them. Finally, there's evidence of a societal shift toward collaboration as more workers network around the clock via cell phone and computer. In the July-August 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review, authors Neil Howe and William Strauss discuss the effects of generational differences on this trend. Those born between 1982 and 2005 -- the first generation to grow up with mobile digital technology -- expect nonstop interaction and cooperation with peers. "They will tend to treat co-workers as partners rather than rivals ... and use information to empower groups rather than individuals," the authors write. […] >> 

And the article concludes with this short but to the point warning: 

  <<[…] In the years ahead, the winning organizations will be those that learn to be collaborative and share employees' knowledge. >> 

How many of these articles will be needed for the majority of leaders to finally understand the importance of a knowledge-sharing culture for their organizations? The ones who wait for their competitors to try it first will regret it. 

 Peter-Anthony Glick http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com/

European organizations are failing to effectively create and manage their intellectual capital

[Post written in 2007 about an article on the 2006 gobal MAKE winners (link no longer available) ]

The 2006 Global MAKE Winners have been recognized as leaders in: 

 • creating a corporate knowledge-driven culture 

• developing knowledge workers through senior management leadership 

• delivering knowledge-based products/solutions 

• maximizing enterprise intellectual capital

 • creating an environment for collaborative knowledge sharing 

• creating a learning organization 

• delivering value based on customer knowledge

 • transforming enterprise knowledge into shareholder value 

[..] Successfully managing enterprise knowledge yields big dividends. The 2006 Global MAKE Winners trading on the NYSE/NASDAQ showed a Total Return to Shareholders (TRS) for the tenyear period 1995-2005 of 24.2 % – over twice the average Fortune 500 company median. 

[...] The most visible trends over the past nine annual Global MAKE studies are:

 • A growing number of organizations are taking on ‘Global’ characteristics – especially consulting and professional services firms, financial services, energy and media companies. These ‘Global’ organizations tend to operate as ‘independent’ companies within a Federal structure and without the traditional corporate head office. 

• The capability to innovate and create new products is seen as the competitive edge across a wide range of business sectors. 

• Asian knowledge-driven organizations are competing on an equal knowledge ‘footing’ with their European and North American counterparts. 

• European organizations are failing to effectively create and manage their intellectual capital. Although US companies maintain a lead in this area, Asian businesses are rapidly narrowing the gap and may surpass American firms as regional wealth generators within the next five years. 

I let you draw your own conclusions. If you're a leader of a European Company, I hope you got the message loud and clear. 

Knowledge is only in our minds or not?

Nimala recently asked on her blog to suggest KM topics for her to write on. I suggested the following:

 "Recently, I have been confronted with "KMers" (not sure I agree that they are) that consider that you can only manage information and not knowledge because "knowledge" is only in people's minds, and that what can be communicated is only "information". What would be your arguments to support the view that knowledge can be "managed" and is not only found in our minds?" 

 Read her interesting response and my subsequent comment here: http://nirmala-km.blogspot.com/2007/06/can-we-manage-knowledge.html#links 

 http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com/

Asking the right questions to assess an Organization’s culture.

Nirmala Palaniappan (or Nimmy as she seems to like to be called) an experienced KM professional with Wipro based in India, wrote a post on Bob Sutton’s blog comments, and spotted a very good comment by one of Bob’s readers (in fact it is one of the best comment to a blog post I’ve seen) Wally Bock, a leadership consultant (http://www.threestarleadership.com/ ). His comment was in response to a question asking what are the questions to ask employees of an organization to get a feel of the dominating internal culture. Wally suggests the following 3 questions:

• What kind of people gets promoted around here? The behavior and performance you reward is what you'll get more of.
• What "bad" behaviors are tolerated here? This is good for patterns of behavior.
• What kinds of stories do people tell each other? Stories are the carriers of culture. Beware if all they tell are "dumb boss" stories. Understand that service is a value if what you hear are "heroic service" stories.

Reading these excellent questions, I realised that answering them would give you a hint whether the culture is conducive to knowledge sharing or not. In other words, whether the 16 syndromes are present or not. 

 For instance, when promotion depends more on whom you know above you in the hierarchy rather than on your achievements, experience and competences; this would indicate a lack of trust, constant political games and most probably a highly hierarchical structure. 

When the tolerated bad behaviours include selfishness to meet personal objectives, it would indicate strict Job Description framing, lack of availability of experts, rewards only for individual achievements, and only short-term objectives. 

When the stories often speaks of ‘them’ versus or against ‘us’ for example, highlighting the differences between groups/departments/teams within the organization; this would tend to indicate a culture of information silos with poor communication/collaboration between them. A general lack of awareness of useful internal knowledge that people could benefit from is also very likely in such a context; and probably the groupthink effect is frequent as well. Also recently, an APQC newsletter directed me to an article written by Susan Elliott Blashka about a presentation Nimmy gave during the APQC’s May 2006 KM conference. Nimmy’s KM toolkit is very interesting and I might write about it in another post. However, I will here highlight the list of questions she suggested for helping a company assess its capacity to leverage knowledge though capture and dissemination:

 <<… Asking the following questions, Palaniappan said, can help a company gauge its capacity for explicit knowledge capture:

• Do we know what we know?
• Are our practices, structure, processes, and systems well known and easily accessible?
• Do we look toward the past and capture our learning?
• Do we know who’s who?
• Are we able to recognize patterns in our business?
• Do new employees get into the groove quickly?
• Does our workflow consider knowledge needs?
• Do we have processes and tools to manage our knowledge artefacts on a continuous basis?

She posed other questions that relate to explicit knowledge dissemination and utilization:

• Do our systems work together? Are they integrated?
• Do we find ourselves reinventing the wheel?
• Do we use the knowledge that we capture? Do we leverage technology to retrieve and access knowledge?
• Does the organization get together and learn? Does the organization work together—sharing and collaborating?
• Are there sharing mechanisms in all our knowledge-intensive processes?
• Does the workflow consider knowledge needs?
• How easy is it to find and utilize information?
• Is there consistency in the performance of functions across the organization?

[…] To determine the state of an organization’s tacit knowledge capture, Palaniappan said, individuals must ask themselves:

• Do our people policies and practices emphasize learning, sharing, and teaching?
• Does the organization spare the time to stop, think, and learn?
• Is it easy to find and access people (experts)?
• Does the organization have listening and questioning habits embedded in its culture?
• Is “retiring work force” a serious challenge?
• Does the organization operate primarily in the area of consulting and knowledge-intensive services?

And for the last category, tacit knowledge dissemination and utilization, Palaniappan presented the following questions:

• Does the organizational culture emphasize trust, win-win, and excellence and innovation through collaboration?
• Are like-minded people or people with similar interests able to locate and work with each other?
• How fast is the organization learning?
• Do people make time for mentoring and thinking and learning together?
• Does the organization know who needs whom?
• Are roles defined based on knowledge needs? Is succession planning knowledge-focused?
• Does the organization understand its knowledge requirements to a significant level of detail?
• Is the captured explicit knowledge under-utilized?

Using Nimmy and Wally’s questions, we should be able to assess fairly well how conducive to knowledge-sharing an organization’s culture is. This strengthens my view that in order to successfully make an organization become knowledge-driven, one must start by addressing the internal culture. The early introduction of new tools and technologies should only be to support this necessary cultural transformation. Furthermore, the less conducive to knowledge-sharing an organizational culture is, the more the drive for change must come from the Organization’s leadership. 

http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com