Building smarter
organizations
KM@KSU Webinars
#smartorg
@dynamicadaptatn
Gordon Vala-Webb
February 2013
Our agenda
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Our agenda
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Introductions
Why we need smarter organizations
What has been the response so far
Why are our organizations dumb?
What we can do about it
If we get it right
Questions
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Introductions
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Introductions
Who are you?
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Who is me?
Advice / teaching
Dynamic Adaptation
Previously KM Director:
• PwC Canada
• Gov’t agency
Global lead (design /
value) PwC social
network
15 years in public sector
No profit
Non-profit
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:(
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Why we need smarter organizations
(Drucker, Dilbert and Debs)
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Drucker
“Most of what
we call
management
consists of
making it
difficult for
people to get
their work
done”
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The Dilbert index . . . most workers could not care
less about their work
71%
Of American workers are
"not engaged" or "actively disengaged“
in their work
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What would Debs think?
Sickness absence, presenteeism and labour
turnover costs the UK economy yearly
£26bn
Source: UK Foresight Project on Mental Capital and Wellbeing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jul/15/happiness-work-why-counts
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A comparison
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Sheep
Large
organizations
Slow
?
Follow the flock
?
Not fun
?
Can’t fly
?
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Meanwhile the “new” world puts new demands on
our organizations
Old world
New world
Stable
Complex
Repeatable processes
Discontinuity
Authoritative knowledge Ambiguous
Adapted from Kent Greenes, “Knowledge Leadership, KMWorld 2011
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The pressure is mounting
. . .Global hyper-competition
. . .Power shifting from West to East
. . .Slow growth
. . .Youth unemployment
. . .Public sector fiscal crises
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The result, in the most extreme cases, extinction!
Image source http://stevedenning.typepad.com/steve_denning/2011/01/is-the-problem-with-capitalism-that-people-try-to-fix-it.html
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What has been the response so far?
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The response so far . . . Belt tightening
Exhortations “do more with less”
Cost control / layoffs
Business process re-engineering
Mergers / acquisitions
Offshoring
More to come:
. . . cloud, remote working
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Why are our organizations dumb?
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For cities, bigger is better
With each doubling of
city population, each
inhabitant is, on
average, 15 percent
wealthier, 15 percent
more productive, 15
percent more
innovative, and 15
percent more likely to be
victimized by violent
crime
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Source: http://www.pnas.org/content/104/17/7301.full
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Larger size: cities versus companies
Cities – get smarter
Companies
- don’t or
get less
smart
Power rules – city versus companies
Source: http://kallokain.blogspot.ca/2012/11/why-cities-live-and-companies-die.html
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For organizations size matters - but not in a good
way
In companies with
over 1,000
employees, the
average productivity
of an employee drops
by more than ¼ for
each order-ofmagnitude increase
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Source: http://www.cybaea.net/Blogs/Data/Employee-productivity-as-function-of-number-of-workers-revisited.html
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Work has been getting “smarter”
Source: http://cdn.dupress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Screen-Shot-2012-10-01-at-9.20.13-PM.png?2b7236
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And now makes up 41% (and growing) of jobs
https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Preparing_for_a_new_era_of_knowledge_work_3034?srid=520
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Three reasons
1) The Maze-trix
2) Mind the gap
3) Old think
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1) The maze-trix: boundaries increase efficiency
within a unit but make co-ordinating across difficult
Big
Cheese
Assistant
2nd Level
Cheese
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2nd Level
Cheese
2nd Level
Cheese
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1) The maze-trix example: approving a contract
change request at an aerospace company
Source: http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/the-focused-company.aspx
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1) The maze-trix: symptoms
• Exponential growth of decision intersection points
• Unclear reporting lines
• Meeting overload
• Email overload
• Slow information flows
• Lack of “complete picture”
• Decision paralysis
We need to schedule a
meeting
To plan for the meeting
To discuss why we have
so many meetings
http://www.zazzle.ca/i_need_to_schedule_a_meetingto_plan_the_meeting
_mug-168219332576188320
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2) Mind the gap: Bigger = bureaucratic mgmt.
= less engaged /
high performing staff
Complexity
Mgmt
& rules
% of highly engaged /
performing staff
Adapted from: “Netflix Culture” http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664#text-version
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2) Mind the gap: symptoms
Increasing bureaucracy and formality
Inefficient internal processes
Decrease in % of high performers
Decrease in % of engaged or highly
engaged staff
• Over-engineering
• Wait times
•
•
•
•
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3) Old think versus new think
Old think
New think
Control culture
Integrative culture
Thinking animals
Feeling animals
External reward
Internal reward
Selfish
Connected
Brain is fixed
Brain is plastic
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3) Old think: hierarchy is in our corporate blood
“U.S. corporations are historically
imprinted with a hierarchical model—
you develop something at
headquarters, you scale it, and then
you diffuse it.”
Rakesh Khurana
Harvard Business School
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00164?pg=all
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3) “Old think”: symptoms
Leadership by command and broadcast
“SMART” performance goals
Monetary rewards
Fault-finding
Low trust levels
http://c15056394.r94.cf2.rackcdn.com/MITSMR-Deloitte-Social-Business-What-Are-Companies-Really-Doing-Spring-2012.pdf
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What we can do about it
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It can be done . . .
“less than 30% of
the top banks we
studied were able
to improve their
efficiency while
maintaining
healthy growth”
Source: http://www.europeanbusinessreview.com/?p=6500
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Three approaches
1) Leadership renewal
2) A new organizational bicycle
3) Simplicity
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1) Leadership renewal
Concentration of power equals
abuse of power . . Such
concentrations are blood clots in
the circulatory system of society. .
. The circulation of wealth,
resources, and, especially, ideas, is
blocked. In a healthy system,
information flows are unimpeded
by clots of power or the sclerosis
of hierarchy.
Philip Slater, The Chrysalis Effect
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1) Leadership renewal: “The fish rots from the
head down”
• Reject the “control” culture
• Establish shared goals
“The soft stuff is
the hard stuff”
Jack Welch
• Connect through conversation
• Embrace emergence
• Transparency in decision making
• Build trust
• Learn to use social media
• Authentic selves (Empathy versus egotism)
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2) A new organizational bicycle
“A bicycle makes man the most efficient mover on the earth.
A computer is a bicycle for our mind.” Wilson Miner
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2) New bicycle
Emailed
Knowledge
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2) New bicycle: First we kill all the emails
With emails . . .
With social networking . .
. . . information, ideas and
questions become isolated - they
only go to the people who received
the message
. . . trying to have a conversation is
really hard
. . . it becomes a guessing game
when working on a document
together (“who made what
changes to which version?”)
. . . the information disappears
over time so that anyone joining
the conversation late has a hard
time coming up to speed
Source: http://www.pwc.com.ar/es_AR/ar/publicaciones-por-industria/assets/transforming-collaboration-with-social-tools.pdf
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2) New bicycle: Enhancing knowledge flows
Non-social
Closed (one to few)
Push
Inside
Ephemeral
Broadcast
Social
Open (many to many)
Pull (subscription)
Outside
Persistent
User-generated
“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
Marshall McLuhan
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2) New bicycle: Flows across boundaries
Outside
Near-side
Inside
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2) New bicycle: Some issues
Lost productivity
Regulatory
requirements
Records
management
Intellectual
property
leakage
Security
Privacy /
Confidentiality
Reputation
$
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3) Simplicity: Not that simple
Manage down the complexity:
• Products
• Processes
• Organizational capabilities
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If we get it right . . .
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If we get it wrong . . . extinction!
“It’s not the strongest of the
species that survives, nor
the most intelligent, but the
one most responsive to
change.”
Charles Darwin
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If we get it right . . .
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Source: http://www.slideshare.net/dhinchcliffe/enterprise-20-summit-2012-closing-keynote
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If we get it right . . .
“By fully implementing social technologies, companies have an
opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers—high-skill
knowledge workers, including managers and professionals—by 20 to 25
percent.” McKinsey Global Institute, July 2012
Google’s share price
An IBM study of 1,700 worldwide CEOs found that companies who
outperform their peers are 30% more likely to identify openness – often
characterized by the greater use of social tools – as a key influence on
their organization.
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Questions?
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Questions? Comments?
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Thank you . . .
Gordon (at) DynamicAdaptation.com
www.DynamicAdaptation.com
Twitter: @dynamicadaptatn
416-565-3217
This publication has been prepared for general guidance on matters of interest only, and does
not constitute professional advice. You should not act upon the information contained in this
publication without obtaining specific professional advice. No representation or warranty
(express or implied) is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained
in this publication, and, to the extent permitted by law, Gordon Vala-Webb and Dynamic
Adaptation does not accept or assume any liability, responsibility or duty of care for any
consequences of you or anyone else acting, or refraining to act, in reliance on the information
contained in this publication or for any decision based on it.
© 2013 Gordon Vala-Webb. All rights reserved.
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