For me, fellow Change Agent Harold Jarche triggers more deep thinking than any other blogger; and this post is no exception – getting larger and more menacing every day is the looming shadow of realisation that the future ain’t what it used to be!

All knowledge workers are under threat – from information overload and big data, from automation and outsourcing. The futurist Ross Dawson says: “…in a connected world, unless your skills are world-class, you are a commodity.”

The only way out?

Expertise, Relationships, and Innovation. Welcome to the network.

From Jarche:

“We are seeing experiments in new forms of work all over the place. These range from co-working spaces, to shareable communities, to our non-traditional consultancy, Internet Time Alliance… We need to create our own network effects, but (this is important) it has to be within our own networks, not inside someone else’s walled garden.”

For me, the online networks I participate in – like CAWW – can provide practical “how-to” information, but there is something much more fundamental at play: we are co-creating our network of future colleagues, start ups, supporters, cheerleaders, swashbucklers, bosses, confidants, possibly even a hero or two.

In many organizations, it is ‘me against the world’ – and it is the network that is there to help us through a hoop, over a hurdle, out of a sticky situation.

Jarche also talks a lot about PKM (personal knowledge mastery): it boils down to sense making and getting things done. Participating in networks, whether various Yammer networks at work and beyond, or other professional groups, has greatly assisted in my PKM – so that I can succeed better at work, or investigate bigger issues – like the future of (my!) work.

I look forward to making sense(!), getting things done, and creating trouble with my network in 2014.

←This Much We Know.→