A Personal Commitment To The Person To Person Economy

This week I was involved in an online conversation with fellow CAWWers, including the inimitable Luis Suarez, concerning Sharing Economy services such as AirBnB and Uber, and Luis made this point: It’s more down to P2P, right? As in People … Continue reading A Personal Commitment To The Person To Person Economy

TRANS-Enterprise Social Networks: Impact Hub Westminster

So, I’m reflecting on how ESNs are limiting, and that the new frontier of work is TESN (TRANS-enterprise social networks). We are moving beyond relative boundaries of the industrial age. We are, instead, availing ourselves of new opportunities to commune and collaborate with the very best people in our networks. Recently, I attended the #ResponsiveOrg unConference in London at Impact Hub, Westminster. As with Hive YVR, the environment is a mix of hot desk and semi-permanent work stations, and community and collaboration are at its heart. As their website states: We provide flexible access to workspace and curate a supportive, … Continue reading TRANS-Enterprise Social Networks: Impact Hub Westminster

TRANS-Enterprise Social Networks: #_unBound Vancouver

Yesterday, I mentioned HiVE Vancouver. Today’s trans-enterprise social network is a pop-up version, the first Vancouver #_unBound at the Microsoft office. A few ESN fellow travellers converged to a neutral venue to work (on our own stuff), to discuss (commonalities), and to network. No agenda, no required outcomes, just a space to be held where firewalls are forgotten for a few hours. Boundaries dissipate, inside-outside is put to one side – a trans-enterprise social network. You look around the table at people who are trying to move in a similar direction, and the comradeship is effortless, natural, unforced. It was … Continue reading TRANS-Enterprise Social Networks: #_unBound Vancouver

TRANS-Enterprise Social Networks: Hive Vancouver

I spend a lot of my time studying, considering, activating in the area of ESNs (enterprise social networks). It has been my entrance to the world of net work (sic). A key issue I face with ESNs is that it always becomes a conversation about technology, rather than about people (deploying that technology). As I an oft to say: the ESN is just a tool. So, I spend quality time reading and exploring around the theoretical and practical edges of ESNs, and lo! what do I find but PEOPLE…everywhere! Inside the firewall, I spent a week working out loud under … Continue reading TRANS-Enterprise Social Networks: Hive Vancouver

The #unSquirrel Manifesto: The Visual

Post-it notes are the best way you can include many people into a process to learn. Adults learn by doing, writing something down and sharing it in the open puts skin in the game for everyone. All meeting should involve post-it notes. It is the #unSquirrel manifesto in action: #unSquirrel today! ←This Much We Know.→ Continue reading The #unSquirrel Manifesto: The Visual

Manifestos…To Understand: Responsive Org

As with yesterday’s Manifesto of the Cloud, the Responsive Org Manifesto is less one to live by as to understand. The shifting sands of organizational design and experience behooves any worker who wants to remain relevant and politically successful in their organization to ‘get the future.’ I happen to know some of the #ResponsiveOrg crew, and their mission is a meaningful one. They understand that technology will only get you so far. The technology is already available to fundamentally change organizations (for the better!) This technology flattens hierarchies, creates live and living communities of practice that can start up and dissolve … Continue reading Manifestos…To Understand: Responsive Org

Manifestos…To Understand: The Cloud Revolution

Early on in the blog, I wrote a few posts about manifestos that proved quite popular. I reviewed them at the end of the year with this thought: People like directions. Me too. I like simple, evocative calls-to-action; they stir the Head-Heart-Hand. Manifestos drive conversation – it is not necessarily about believing everything in them; but using them as a riff / filter for your own thoughts and ideas. In the interim, I have found a few more manifestos. Let’s continue the series, and also continue to use them to riff on our own thoughts and ideas… I discovered The Cloud … Continue reading Manifestos…To Understand: The Cloud Revolution

Redundancy And Repetition Are Good For You: Revisited

Reading a recent Harold Jarche post – Ten Years, Ten Thoughts – thought 7 reminded me of a few posts I wrote last year that are worth revisiting, not least because redundancy and repetition are good for you! Jarche reminds us that: An informal professional learning network, with its redundant connections, repetition of information and indirect communications, is a much more resilient system than any designed professional development program can be. I made a few tangential points in this direction. In How we learn, channeling an older version of the Jarche post: [Repetition and redundancy] sounds luxurious, but it is not. Digital, networked … Continue reading Redundancy And Repetition Are Good For You: Revisited

Change Agents Are Peasants On A Hillside, Hearts Open, Mouths Shut

Undertaking some garage spring cleaning on Easter Sunday, I found some old picture frames, one of which is worth resurrecting from storage TODAY. Ripped from the intro page of a Paul Theroux book, if memory serves, it highlights perfectly my own #FutureOfWork point of view as an advocate of change. “A peasant must stand a long time on a hillside with his mouth open before a roast duck flies in.” I have been there, for years too long, alongside colleagues too many, a powerless peasant in a system I neither controlled nor understood. Yet… “The movements which work revolutions in the world … Continue reading Change Agents Are Peasants On A Hillside, Hearts Open, Mouths Shut

Manage For Today, Lead Into The Future?

The wholly despressing stat of the day from LeadershipABC via Jon Husband: only about 2.4% of management time (40% x 30% x 20%) is focused on building a corporate view of the future. If management is the work of today, then is leadership the work of tomorrow? The description implies forward momentum. If so, who will lead us? Who will vest their time now for tomorrow’s benefit? Who is brave enough to commit their energy to this endeavor? ←This Much We Know.→ Continue reading Manage For Today, Lead Into The Future?

Commit To Something, Remain Open To Change

Let’s talk about commitment. It’s tough. There are so many temptations! Something shinier, newer, more exotic, cooler. Standing for SOMETHING asks a lot. But we all need a place to stand. A place to call home, at least for the night. I have been enjoying reading the excellent e-book from Harold Jarche ($25 from an ebookshop near you!) Jarche, in his own approach to work, is living out this search in real time. His is a search for perpetual beta and this is beautifully, subtly captured in the book’s intro: Beta is more than Alpha, as you have to affirm … Continue reading Commit To Something, Remain Open To Change

My Preferred Role: Chief Digital Officer #CDO

Those of us who follow, and perhaps instigate, “social technology” trends and practices experience a fair deal of angst. Nobody ‘gets‘ us. There is no preferred language around which we can create a movement (of change) – hence my use of ” ” around social / technology. We keep saying this is the year, then wonder when the tipping point will (ever?) happen. So, I am always looking for insight into how to define the change and the role required to make it happen. Because that role – the one that makes organizations and teams and people go BOOM! – … Continue reading My Preferred Role: Chief Digital Officer #CDO