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Keeping an organization performing is a constant battle. Every organization is trying to overcome its inertia, to gain momentum, and to become more productive. This battle with inertia means there is constant change-change that people often resist, deny, and frequently become angry about.Ultimately, everyone in the organization wants higher performance. This occurs at its highest levels in spite of resistance to change when people are clear what their team or personal goals are; understand the business outcome that their team or personal goals contribute to; and ensure that each task they do supports these goals. One way to raise the performance of an organization is to help all individuals become more efficient and effective in their daily tasks. Historically, leaders have tried to develop this effectiveness and efficiency in their people by using two approaches: A command-and-control approach: Controllers lead their people as if they are herding sheep. Their mind-set is to train their people well enough to be able to control them. It works, but it costs a lot of time and energy. A knowledge-based approach: It is often assumed that if people have more information, they will be able to do things better based on that information. This is the organizational equivalent of reading a book on golf and expecting to be able to play at the level of a professional. More often than not, it is not a lack of knowledge that blocks performance, but a lack of consistent, accurate implementation of the knowledge that people already have that blocks individuals, teams, and organizations from performing at their best. People in organizations are rarely stupid, but they often suffer interference that blocks their performance.

Whole Service: Some service systems provide "whole service" to the people within them. For example, a city provides "whole service" for its citizens and visitors, including flow of things people need (e.g., transportation, water, food, energy, communications), development activities for people (e.g., buildings, retail, finance, health, education), and governance (e.g., laws, security, dispute resolution, etc.). To a lesser degree, but similar in kind, a luxury cruise-ship provides "whole service" to its passengers. Even old-time homestead farms and ranches, because they had to sustain families and hired hands sometimes over multiple generations with minimal external inputs, are to some degree providing "whole service" to those people living within them.

Holistic Service Systems: To first approximation, the study of holistic service systems is concerned with how well these entities provide "whole service" to the people within them. Whole service deals with a conjunction of three types of service, namely (1) flow of things people need, (2) development activities for people, and (3) governance for individuals and institutions. A holistic service system is defined as "a service system that can support the people within it, with some level of (1) completeness (quality of life associated with whole service - flows, development, and governance), (2) independence (from all external service systems),and (3) extended duration (longer than a month if necessary and in some cases indefinitely)." Noteworthy levels of completeness, independence, and extended duration of "whole service" are the three defining properties of holistic service systems.

Listen up, budding Masters of the Universe about to start boot-camp week at business school (and sign away $100,000 over two years). For all the wonderful instruction at places like Harvard, Wharton and my alma mater, the Stern School of Business at NYU, remember that making money involves so much more than columns in a spreadsheet and the ever shifting assumptions behind them. Keep in mind:

1. If it ain't broke, still fix it. One of the hardest decisions business owners have to make is turning their backs on cash when it's flowing. But that's exactly what you must have the courage to do at times to protect your franchise.

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2. Unless you end up at Goldman Sachs, forget what you learned about finance. "In a 12-year finance career with large respected companies," says one of my former classmates, who is finance chief for the unit of a large manufacturing firm, "I can count on two hands the number of IRR [internal rate of return], DCF [discounted cash flow] and NPV [net present value] analyses I have completed." He adds: "A career in corporate finance is nothing like what is taught in school. The job is largely to be the conscience of the business--expecting and demanding explanation for decisions and [being] well versed in most topics."

3. Take your financial models with a boulder of salt. "Too often people in business rely upon a model demonstrating projections out 15 to 30 years," says another biz-school mate, now a health care consultant. Really? In school we worked in more modest 3- to 5-year increments, with an understanding that anything beyond that was magical thinking. "Believe it or not," he went on, "I have seen some done out that far for deals [acquisitions] and often for public-private partnerships."

4. Overpromise and try to deliver. Underpromising and overdelivering may work on conference calls with Wall Stree

Here are five things that people introducing new technology to help collaboration should think about:

People in your organization already collaborate.
Not everyone likes to share.
Email is not going away.
People need to collaborate outside as well as inside the enterprise.
No single piece of technology will satisfy all types of collaboration.

The 21st Century: Analysis and Definitions
Are You Ready For The 21st Century ?

February 2009
A Future in Crisis

Intuitively, people everywhere are now sensing that they are living on credit … borrowing from the future in terms of the economy, the environment and sources of energy. People from all walks of life are beginning to realize they are borrowing from an uncertain future to finance current levels of prosperity. It's becoming clearer and clearer that the current models for society are mortgaging the quality of life from future generations in order to fulfill current desires.

Thus, mental models are beginning to change, and people don't want a range of disparate studies on various disconnected problems; rather, they are seeking concrete analyses and approaches that can help redirect or remedy difficult and complex situations.

This section of the web site offers readers a framework that explores some new mechanisms for addressing the complexities of the emergent post-industrial society.

I forked yesterday for the first time. I'm pretty thrilled. Not about the few lines of code that I posted. If anyone notices and thinks the feature is a good idea, they'll re-write my bit from the ground up.* What's thrilling is seeing this ecology in operation, for the software development ecology is now where the most rapid learning happens on the planet, outside the brains of infants.
Compare how ideas and know-how used to propagate in the software world. It used to be that you worked in a highly collaborative environment, so it was already a site of rapid learning. But the barriers to sharing your work beyond your cube-space were high. You could post to a mailing list or UseNet if you had permission to share your company's work, you could publish an article, you could give a talk at a conference. Worse, think about how you would learn if you were not working at a software company or attending college: Getting answers to particular questions - the niggling points that hang you up for days - was incredibly frustrating. I remember spending much of a week trying to figure out how to write to a file in Structured BASIC [SBASIC], my first programming language , eventually cold-calling a computer science professor at Boston University who politely could not help me. I spent a lot of time that summer learning how to spell "Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh."
On the other hand, this morning Antonio, who is doing some work for the Library Innovation Lab this summer, poked his head in and pointed us to a jquery-like data visualization library. D3 makes it easy for developers to display data interactively on Web pages (the examples are eye-popping), and the author, mbostock, made it available for free to everyone. So, global software productivity just notched up. A bunch of programs just got easier to use, or more capable, or both. But more than that, if you want to know how to do how mbostock did it, you can read the code. If you want to modify it, you will learn deeply from

The general principles of this rapid-learning ecology are pretty clear. First, we probably have about the same number of smart people as we did twenty years ago, so what's making us all smarter is that we're on a network together. Second, the network has evolved a culture in which there's nothing wrong with not knowing. So we ask. In public. Third, we learn in public. Fourth, learning need not be private act that occurs between a book and a person, or between a teacher and a student in a classroom. Learning that is done in public also adds to that public. Fifth, show your work. Without the "show source" button on browsers, the ability to create HTML pages would have been left in the hands of HTML Professionals. Sixth, sharing is learning is sharing. Holy crap but the increased particularity of our ownership demands about our ideas gets in the way of learning! Knowledge once was developed among small networks of people. Now knowledge is the network.

The cycle of serendipity (or not) came to me while having coffee yesterday with Valdis Krebs: "what you know depends a lot on who you know which depends a lot on what you know which depends a lot on who you know"…iteratively.  If you stay within those confines, your network remains fairly constant and self-selected.  Your chances of learning something new, of encountering 'happy accidents' is reduced, perhaps not zero, but not high.  It's when you venture outside of that circle that your network, and knowledge, starts to expand - you 'know' more people so you 'learn' more which leads to knowing more people and on and on. As I reflect upon how I know what I know, almost all of that knowledge & network has been serendipitous - Random Collisions of Unusual Suspects (#RCUS), to quote Saul Kaplan.   Let's look at Random (and then examine the other words over the next few weeks before BIF-7).  The OED defines Random as "Having no definite aim or purpose; not sent or guided in a particular direction; made, done, occurring, etc., without method or conscious choice; haphazard."  Originating in the 14th Century with an unclear origin, it meant impetuosity, sudden speed, violence.  In the mid 17th Century, it took on the meaning of haphazard, from the Old French randon (v. randir "run impetuously, fast") from the Frankish rant "running" from the prehistoric German randa.  But here's where I think it gets very interesting.  Originally, randa meant 'edge' - which lead the English rand, an obsolete term for 'edge' (now the South African currency).[2] It is this last, or very very early, meaning of 'edge' that intrigues me.  Innovation, especially disruptive innovation, comes from the edges, from the fringes.  So, for the next week or so, just try to put yourself in Random situations - situations that are not planned, not directed and even perhaps at the edge of your usual business or personal world and see what

To have a successful digital workplace (which I define as 'work is something you do, not a place you go to') it is vital organisations have the right strategy, culture, environment and infrastructure to exploit the benefits fully. It needs to become the natural way of working so everyone is more effective and productive and your organisation more efficient and successful.

My 'must have' principles for a great digital workplace include: Strategy: it is vital that your digital workplace strategy is aligned with your organisation's overall strategy.  There is no point planning to invest time and resources to move in one direction if your organisation is going in the opposite way. Engagement: this is needed at two levels.  Firstly with stakeholders you need to endorse your strategy.  Secondly with early adopters who will embrace enthusiastically and spread the word. Governance: a consistent, relevant and appropriate level is needed that minimises risks and enables the maximum benefits to be achieved. HR policies: policies need to encourage people to change their way of working that also benefits the organisation. IT infrastructure: people need to be confident they can use what they need for their work when they need to - simple!

Four pillars of collaborative leadership

Today's myriad interconnected social networks - Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc - mean that most people are already connected in a collaborative way to others beyond their traditional domain. It's a question of how to leverage that in the office. In their HBR article, Ibarra and Hansen suggest four pillars:

1. Play global connector. "The first piece is really how you yourself build a network that allows you to add value collaboratively because you can connect," says Ibarra. "If you are stuck in your function, in your group, in your business unit, in your country, how can you see what's going on out there? How can you see the array of opportunities that could be passing you by?"

2. Engage talent at the periphery. "How do you think about the talent that you are bringing to the table?" Ibarra asks. "Everybody espouses the value of diversity, but saying it and doing it are very different things. We see very clearly that leaders who engage talent from the periphery - and that periphery could be geographical or generational or gender diversity - are going to be much better placed to collaborate."

3. Collaborate at the top first. "A lot of times, collaborations get mired in politics, or groups have great ideas that don't get accepted because the top is divided politically into turf wars," points out Ibarra. "You cannot encourage collaboration on the front line and then not collaborate with each other as a top team."

4. Show a strong hand. "Collaboration doesn't mean consensus on everything," says Ibarra. At some point, the discussion has to end and someone has to make a decision. "You need to understand as a leader when you step back, and then when you do come back in make sure people know who's got the right to make the final decision."

Buy-In Saving Your Good Idea from Being Shot Down-by John Kotter and Lorne Whitehead So, you believe in a good idea. You're convinced it is needed badly, and needed now. But, you can't make it happen on your own. You need support in order to implement it and make things better. You or your allies present the plan. You present it well. Then, along with thoughtful issues being raised, come the confounding questions, inane comments, and verbal bullets-either directly at you or, even worse, behind your back. It matters not that the idea is needed, insightful, innovative, and logical. It matters not if the issues involved are extremely important to a business, an individual, or even a nation. The proposal is still shot down, or accepted but without sufficient support to achieve all of its true benefits, or slowly dies a sad death. What do you do? This is not a book about persuasion and communication in general, or even about all the useful methods people use to create buy-in. Instead, here we offer a single method that can be unusually powerful in building strong support for a good idea, a method that is rarely used or used well, and that does not require blinding rhetorical skills or charismatic magic. We have seen that this method of walking into the fray, showing respect for all, and using simple, clear, and common sense responses, can not only keep good ideas from getting shot down, but can actually turn attacks to your advantage in capturing busy peoples' attention, helping them grasp an idea, and ultimately building strong buy-in.

A do-ocracy (also sometimes do-opoly, which is a more obvious pun on "duopoly") is an organizational structure in which individuals choose roles and tasks for themselves and execute them. Responsibilities attach to people who do the work, rather than elected or selected officials. The term is popular with libertarian management afficionados and BurningMan participants. It also has a Zen nature that can be hard for some people to fathom. "Why is it Lion who posts so many big ideas on CommunityWiki?" "Because Lion posts so many big ideas on CommunityWiki." Doing a task is in itself justification for you being the person who does that job.

Gratton outlines five forces that will shape the future pattern of work: Technology (think 5 billion people, digitized knowledge, ubiquitous cloud). Globalisation (think continued bubbles and crashes, a regional underclass, the world becoming urban, frugal innovation). Longevity and demography (think Gen Y, increasing longevity, aging boomers growing old poor, global migration). Society (think growing distrust of institutions, the decline of happiness, rearranged families) Energy resources (think rising energy prices, environmental catastrophes displacing people, a culture of sustainability emerging).

There is a deep gulf between the sterile, one-way and almost Orwellian practices of the corporate IT network and the rapidly-evolving, chaotic organism of today's Intranet.

What would it look like if the social world of Web 2.0 collided with the corporate Intranet? What would happen if information was disseminated from outside in, instead of inside out; from the people working on the front line? This is precisely what an interesting experiment at global consulting firm Capgemini is revealing. Many of the company's 110,000 people are based on site at client locations and it is here that 'real-world' challenges must be addressed. The IT consultants in particular, who form about half of the workforce, are in an environment where the information they use goes out of date very quickly.

To help keep its teams up-to-speed, and to stay on top of the disruptive changes in their operating environment, Capgemini began a few years ago experimenting with Yammer, a private and secure enterprise social network that allows colleagues to hold conversations, read posts and actively collaborate with their co-workers in real-time. CTO Andy Mulholland says that it is contributing to the "collective consciousness of the 20,000 people who subscribe to Yammer internally."

Management's changing role. Capgemini uses Yammer for: aligning activities, problem solving, information sharing, providing clarification. Now think about the things managers do for a living - and you quickly end up with a pretty similar list. Social networking technologies, in other words, are increasingly being used to provide the support and input that employees used to get from their managers. This frees up managers, in turn, to spend more time on the real value-added work - such as motivating their employees, structuring their work to make it more engaging, developing their skills, securing access to resources, and making linkages to other parts of the organisation. Warren Buffett is famous for saying that it is only when the tide goes out that you can see who is swimming naked, and the same metaphor applies here: when employees can get all the basic support they need for their work through Yammer, rather than through their line manager, the real qualities of the line manager are exposed and some are found wanting.  

Tom Friedman has penned a thought-provoking oped, "One Country, Two Revolutions."

In discussing the ongoing social media revolution underway in Silicon Valley, Friedman turns to 21st century leadership:

Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.com, a cloud-based software provider, describes this phase of the I.T. revolution with the acronym SOCIAL. S, he says, is for speed - everything is now happening faster. O, he says, stands for open. If you don't have an open environment inside your company or country, these new tools will blow you wide open. C is for collaboration because this revolution enables people to organize themselves within companies and societies into loosely coupled teams to take on any kind of challenges - from designing a new product to taking down a government. I is for individuals, who are able to reach around the globe to start something or collaborate on something farther, faster, deeper, cheaper than ever before - as individuals.

Mind-blowing visualizing of teleconferencing from the past. Amazing how prescient people were.

Thomas Van Der Wal. Social Tools Need to Embrace Granularity What we have is partial likes in others and their interests and offerings. Our social tools have yet to grasp this and the few that do have only taken small steps to get there (I am rather impressed with Jaiku and their granular listening capability for their feed aggregation, which should be the starting point for all feed aggregators). Part of grasping the problem is a lack of quickly understanding the complexity, which leads to deconstructing and getting to two variables: 1) people (their identities online and their personas on various services) and 2) interests. These two elements and their combinations can (hopefully) be seen in the quick annotated video of one of my slides I have been using in presentations and workshops lately.

Donald's contrarian and practical viewpoint on how people learn.

Ignite is a rapid-fire form of presentation. The presenter must present 20 slides in 5 minutes. Every 15 seconds a new slide advances automatically. It is amazing how much information one can cover in 5 minutes if you boil the message down to essence. It takes me longer to prepare a 5-minute Ignite session than a one-hour presentation. And I suspect people retain more information when I've finished, too. Talk about making meetings efficient. Watch some of these and give it a try.

InsideOut Development founder, Alan Fine, began his career as a tennis coach working with up-and-coming tennis professionals. As he worked with athletes, he realized that the biggest performance challenge wasn't that people didn't know what to do, but rather that they didn't do what they know. In other words, performance breakthroughs come from the inside out.

From these experiences, in mid- to late-1980, Fine and two other collaborators, Graham Alexander and Sir John Whitmore, developed the GROW Model--one of the world's most recognized and influential coaching models today.

GROW is an acronym representing the four core components in any significant decision-making process. The meanings of the first three letters are shared by all major iterations of the model. "G" represents the "Goal" the individual seeks to achieve; "R", the "Realities" a person should consider in the context of the decision process; and "O", the "Options" open to the decision-maker. "W" has been interpreted in a variety of ways. But Fine defined it as "Way Forward"--a specific action plan that he feels maximizes the precision and proactivity of the GROW Model.

When I ask Hamilton, skeptically, if it is possible to conduct a conventional business meeting in a virtual environment, he answers that of course you can - but why would you? He is convinced that the zaniness of virtual environments plus the steep learning curve of making your avatar function from a keyboard is an effective icebreaker, especially important when partners need to overcome differences in cultural traditions, languages, work ethics, and political systems in order to complete a project together. Second Life's oddities lend an improvisational quality to interactions that it's harder to achieve in formal business meetings. "Playing in a band I learned that you need to leave spaces for others to fill," Hamilton insists. "Given this opportunity, people step into the gap. Talented teams connect, commingle and co-create."