A complete stranger to me – Wouter Ijgosse – asked me to share “some of the strategies you apply to make your life or business antifragile.” Sure. Off the top of my head, I replied back to Wouter: I read widely, and … Continue reading How Are You #Antifragile?
The most humbling work experience of the last 10 years has been realising that I cannot do it all alone. When I seek guidance, assistance, support, things happen. When I work a blind, deep furrow alone, everything becomes much more … Continue reading Leap, And The Net (Work) Will Appear
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
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
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
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
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
So, we are looking at the Future of Work, heavily disrupted, perhaps, from our experience of yesterday. In the last post, I listed five requirements for sponsoring disruption so you can, at least, surf the enterprise social tsunami to safety: <Model> <Upskill> <Bulk-Up> <Polemicize> <Show Up>. Today, let’s discuss Model. The social enterprise is personal, flat, equalized. It does not run by diktat, but through cooperation and collaboration. Therefore, you cannot impose social and expect it to work. Flip through any social business report and you will see very average deployment success rates <return in future post on the need to … Continue reading Sponsor Disruption 1: Model
This Much We Know 