Category: The Future of Work

Personal Branding, Social Business, Story + Narrative, The Curious Will Inherit The World, The Future of WorkLeave a comment

Using My Online Personal Brand To Discuss Personal Branding

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I was recently asked to share some thoughts with young communicators in Vancouver on kick starting your career. The event is today. Upon gathering my notes / ideas together, a core one of which is working out loud, I realised that I might have already articulated my thoughts. In other words, if I work out loud, I probably have the content online, in the open, already. So, I perused just 4-5 weeks of tweets and voila! there it all was, in plain sight. This is called walking the talk. Phew. An hour in Storify later and I had a flow … Continue reading Using My Online Personal Brand To Discuss Personal Branding

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There Are Change Agents, And There Are Change Agents. It’s #FutureOfWork Checklist Time! #CAWW

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Fellow CAWWer Catherine Shinners has a good review of recent thinking on what organizations need for breakthrough performance via the Conference Executive Board: read her article for some detail. I will suffice here with listing the CEB checklist of differentiating competencies for high performance: prioritization, teamwork, organizational awareness, problem solving, self-awareness, proactivity, influence, decision-making, learning agility and technical expertise. I like! All of these are in reach of all of us. Attitude, and forward momentum is all that is required to get us on this road… Shinners also shared a Future Work Skills 2020 study that sees successful trends to be: sense-making, … Continue reading There Are Change Agents, And There Are Change Agents. It’s #FutureOfWork Checklist Time! #CAWW

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#Unsquirrel 6: I Come Back Sounding Strange Even To Myself

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Travel remains a journey into whatever we can’t explain, or explain away…I know in my own case that a trip has really been successful if I come back sounding strange even to myself; if, in some sense, I never come back at all, but remain up at night unsettled by what I’ve seen. –          Pico Iyer, “The Place Across The Mountains” in Sun After Dark. I am not sure of the ratio, but let’s say it is 1000:1. One thousand pieces of data and knowledge wash over me; but one of those pieces changes something. Maybe not everything – though … Continue reading #Unsquirrel 6: I Come Back Sounding Strange Even To Myself

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#Unsquirrel 5: Frivolity And Boredom

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The frivolity and boredom which unsettle the established order, the vague foreboding of something unknown, these are the heralds of approaching change –          Hegel, preface to The Phenomenology of Mind. How many leaders have you met who laugh(ed) at the rise of social business over old-school-tie-who-you-know business, the power of networks over hierarchy? Do you, perchance, find them frivolous and bored, like the Court of Louis XVI? Off with their heads! ←This Much We Know.→ Continue reading #Unsquirrel 5: Frivolity And Boredom

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#Unsquirrel 1: Concerning Owls

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From The Natural History of Iceland (1758):  The entirety of Chapter XLII, “Concerning Owls.” There are no owls of any kind in the whole island. Sometimes, we need to waste a little energy to move forward. Not everything we share MUST add value. This is a huge get over it! requirement for 80%(?) of us. The very act of sharing, of working out loud, of considering “Maybe, just maybe, someone out there in my community might find value from my knowledge, data, content” – this is the critical transition from ‘Who knows?” to “Who knew!” ←This Much We Know.→ Continue reading #Unsquirrel 1: Concerning Owls

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How To Flock In 3 Easy Steps

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Here is a short video that illustrates the amazingness of flocking – the ability of birds (and other animals) to work together in a network with only very limited, local sets of rules. Graphic designer Craig Reynolds developed this computer modeling called a Boids model many years ago; wherein randomly moving objects are given three simple rules of engagement in the network: Collision avoidance – cohesion Velocity matching – alignment Flock centering – separation and, lo! a flock is formed in real time, with absurd coordination and cooperation, yet without any central controls. This, friends, is how we need to model … Continue reading How To Flock In 3 Easy Steps

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I Must (Re)Learn to TRUST

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In my recent reading about networks and the future of work, I have seen the word ‘trust’ flash like a lighthouse. Here are just a few quotes I have recently squirreled away. Seth Godin says: “The connection economy isn’t based on steel or rails or buildings. It’s built on trust and hope and passion.” Stowe Boyd talks of the need for ‘swift trust’ in the future of work. Harold Jarche, meanwhile, believes “Connected leadership starts by organizing to embrace networks, manage complexity, and build trust.“ Nilofer Merchant, in a great Wired article, has this to add: “Relationships are to the social … Continue reading I Must (Re)Learn to TRUST

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Embracing Complexity: Enterprise Social Networks

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I participated last year as an interviewee in a MSc dissertation on social information theory, and a quote from another participant struck a chord with me. The company asked in an employee survey, “Do you use the Enterprise Social Network platform?” and compared the answers of all questions of the people that answered “Yes” with the answers of those that said “No”. The “Yes” scores were roughly 10% higher in questions like “my ideas are listened to”, “I can communicate across business lines”, “I understand the strategy.” These people have sought active engagement with their workplace, the nuance and disagreements, the … Continue reading Embracing Complexity: Enterprise Social Networks

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Embracing Complexity: Office Space

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Just as in cities, offices that are complex, alive, interactive are the ones where things happen. This was proven by Thomas Allen. The Allen Curve posits that “interactions between different workers declined exponentially depending on the distance between their offices.” Indeed, “researchers on different floors almost never had anything to do with each other. This effect starts to take place when people are 50 metres or more apart.” Newer office design encourages interaction. Steve Jobs famously (via his biography) decreed that his (Apple, Pixar, NeXT etc.) offices limit the number of toilet blocks and have them in a central place that … Continue reading Embracing Complexity: Office Space

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Entropy: How Crap Communicators Waste Energy

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So, here I am talking about how great! exciting! embraceable! is complexity. And about how entropy (the cost of moving data) is a good thing! Yet, of course, it is never that obvious. We will all have “Yeah, but…” examples of what a pain in the arse it is too. So, here’s mine. One of my pet peeves is how complex and complicated communicators make so much of their work. It is either rank inefficiency they teach communicators, or a fear that – like the Emperor’s new clothes – if they did not actively pursue complex and overblown solutions, then … Continue reading Entropy: How Crap Communicators Waste Energy

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Go Ask The Person Of Whom You Are Least Certain

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Picking on yesterday’s post on entropy, I see this discussion of the cost of moving energy / data pops up in many ways. There is a lot of good writing on how weak ties are good for you. Facebook prospers by driving ‘many lightweight interactions over time.‘ These are various embraces of complexity. It seems perverse to introduce this cost of data into one’s ecosystem, but no! Entropy is good for you. From this great Fast Co article, In information theory, “entropy” is the term used to describe how much actual information there is in any given set of data; … Continue reading Go Ask The Person Of Whom You Are Least Certain

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Why Complexity, Why MOOCs? Renaissance, That’s Why

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Another short reflection on taking a MOOC on complexity from the Sante Fe Institute. I am not certain I need to know too much about biological systems, fractals, and mathematical logarithm formulas, as discussed in the MOOC, but I do need to own my journey through the ever more interconnected hivemind of work. We need each other, and we need to cultivate large, random, nuanced networks of co-conspirators. We need more data, and we need support to filter and synthesize it. We need to be anti-fragile enough to deal with complexity and constant change. From a google docs report on … Continue reading Why Complexity, Why MOOCs? Renaissance, That’s Why