If the organisational leadership has the will, the technology available today can be molded into solutions that would help the frontline staff to act with agility in an environment of information overload and quick decision making requirements.
Simplicity is the new Competitive Advantage in a World of More, Better and Faster – Bill Jensen (Simplicity)
An important guiding principle for organizations and people – Whoever is faster at changing rules will win more often.
It is possible when organization empowers its people to do less of what doesn’t matter and more of what does or in other words Working Smarter in a World of Infinite Choices. This means we have to start changing two habits that create work complexity and confusion:
1. We need to use time differently by changing how we organize and share what we know – how we create meaning and make sense of things.
2. We need to work backwards from what people need to work smarter. Most everyone is a lot smarter than we are letting them be.
The technological solutions provided by Portals, Enterprise Content Management, Groupware, Business Process Management in conjunction with User Experience Management (UXM) practice promise to provide a platform for building SIMPLE, user friendly and empowering solutions.
The above combination of practices are the ones which can play very important role in helping organizations to become SIMPLE. Following is a high level elaboration of this assertion:
1. Faster at changing rules more often – Business Processes enabled with state of the art BPM (Business Process Management) and BRE (Business Rules Engine) tools can empower the users to define, visualise, simulate, monitor and control business processes without overdependence on detailed coding skills.
2. Do less of what doesn’t matter and more of what matters – Workplace and Portals personalized to the role of the person removing all the clutter of information and choices. BPM and EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) managing the complexities arising out of investment in different legacy applications
3. How we organize and share what we know – Taxonomy of the knowledge and content, collaboration tools
4. How we create meaning and sense of things – Enterprise Search, Information Access and Discovery tools which index and present the structured and unstructured information from across the information silos ON DEMAND.
5. Work backwards from what people need – Usability and User Experience Management (UXM) practices for designing the interfaces to ease off the presssure on the users
We have the ingredients for the solution but each organization will have unique challenges. Hence, how these components come together to meet the needs would have to be designed imaginatively and creatively.
Showing posts with label Bill Jensen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Jensen. Show all posts
Dec 24, 2008
Globalization 3.0 and Work 2.0 (The New Contract)
Reading Thomas Freidman's World is Flat and Bill Jensen's work on Simplicity gives some interesting angles to what most of organisations in knowledge economy are not getting it right.
Friedman suggests the world is "flat" in the sense that globalization has leveled the competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries. In his opinion, this flattening is a product of a convergence of personal computer with fiber-optic micro cable with the rise of work-flow software. He termed this period as Globalization 3.0, differentiating this period from the previous Globalization 1.0 (which countries and governments were the main protagonists in) and the Globalization 2.0 (which multinational companies led the way in driving global integration). “Globalization 3.0,” is where instead of countries and rulers, or multinational corporations being the forces driving globalization, it is empowered individuals that now “collaborate and compete globally.” They are able to do this thanks to the spread of new technology such as the personal computer. Globalization 3.0, argues Friedman, allows for a more level playing field so that individuals all across the world now have a chance to participate in important matters and to compete.
Jensen takes the concept of power of individuals inside the organisation. He mentions the shift happening in the nature of workforce and names the new generation as GenY. GenY is the first generation in human history that has been raised on the total democratization of information. This generation has not experienced lack of internet and any thing that comes in the way to free flow of connectivity with information, resources and other people - colleagues, friends, common interest groups etc.
The New Contract is a must read and follow for making the most of Globalization 3.0 within the confines of 'organisation' else attrition is something that will always remain a fact of life.
For the first time since we entered a knowledge and service economy, employees are proposing a work contract that any leader could love. The themes that run through this new contract:
Productivity. Innovation. Speed. Ease of execution. Making a difference. Satisfying customers. Learning. And lots more. Parts of this new covenant between employee and employer read like a leader’s fantasy come true. It’s all about completely new competitive opportunities, reduced costs, more profits, and more success for your organization.
But there is a catch:
Work 2.0 lays out four beacons for 21st-century leaders. These rules are hardwired into the nature of knowledge work. The key premise is that the people you most want to keep, care deeply about these rules. They are watching, but not waiting, to see what you will do.
1. Embrace the Asset Revolution
Employees are seeking daily/weekly/monthly returns on the assets they invest in your company — namely, their time, attention, ideas, passion, energy, and social networks. The new war for talent will be fought over who provides the best returns on these investments.
2. Build My Work My Way
Business must focus on personal, not just organizational, productivity. The future of work is customized, personalized, and tailored to each individual.
3. Deliver Peer-to-Peer Value
Your employees are setting new standards for collaboration without you. Leaders must do more than get out of the way of those exchanges; you must add increasingly greater value. That means bottom-up criteria will drive more and more of your collaboration budgets and strategies.
4. Develop Extreme Leaders
The future of leadership includes greater accountability for performance through greater willingness to be challenged on, and address, work-level details.
Now compare the realities of current organisation in terms of
- policies that bring up artificial barriers in the name of units, departments, processes, projects, geographies
- restriction on access to information, resources - approval processes that stop free flow of work
- complexity of soft infrastructure - multiple applications, multiple access controls, user interfaces designed with no clue of what individual user needs are.
My take is that organisations' top coping strategy to benefit from Globalization 3.0 would be to make all out effort to embrace Work 2.0 else be prepared to be in the queue with the dinosaurs.
Let me know what you think!
Have a nice day.
Friedman suggests the world is "flat" in the sense that globalization has leveled the competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries. In his opinion, this flattening is a product of a convergence of personal computer with fiber-optic micro cable with the rise of work-flow software. He termed this period as Globalization 3.0, differentiating this period from the previous Globalization 1.0 (which countries and governments were the main protagonists in) and the Globalization 2.0 (which multinational companies led the way in driving global integration). “Globalization 3.0,” is where instead of countries and rulers, or multinational corporations being the forces driving globalization, it is empowered individuals that now “collaborate and compete globally.” They are able to do this thanks to the spread of new technology such as the personal computer. Globalization 3.0, argues Friedman, allows for a more level playing field so that individuals all across the world now have a chance to participate in important matters and to compete.
Jensen takes the concept of power of individuals inside the organisation. He mentions the shift happening in the nature of workforce and names the new generation as GenY. GenY is the first generation in human history that has been raised on the total democratization of information. This generation has not experienced lack of internet and any thing that comes in the way to free flow of connectivity with information, resources and other people - colleagues, friends, common interest groups etc.
The New Contract is a must read and follow for making the most of Globalization 3.0 within the confines of 'organisation' else attrition is something that will always remain a fact of life.
For the first time since we entered a knowledge and service economy, employees are proposing a work contract that any leader could love. The themes that run through this new contract:
Productivity. Innovation. Speed. Ease of execution. Making a difference. Satisfying customers. Learning. And lots more. Parts of this new covenant between employee and employer read like a leader’s fantasy come true. It’s all about completely new competitive opportunities, reduced costs, more profits, and more success for your organization.
But there is a catch:
Work 2.0 lays out four beacons for 21st-century leaders. These rules are hardwired into the nature of knowledge work. The key premise is that the people you most want to keep, care deeply about these rules. They are watching, but not waiting, to see what you will do.
1. Embrace the Asset Revolution
Employees are seeking daily/weekly/monthly returns on the assets they invest in your company — namely, their time, attention, ideas, passion, energy, and social networks. The new war for talent will be fought over who provides the best returns on these investments.
2. Build My Work My Way
Business must focus on personal, not just organizational, productivity. The future of work is customized, personalized, and tailored to each individual.
3. Deliver Peer-to-Peer Value
Your employees are setting new standards for collaboration without you. Leaders must do more than get out of the way of those exchanges; you must add increasingly greater value. That means bottom-up criteria will drive more and more of your collaboration budgets and strategies.
4. Develop Extreme Leaders
The future of leadership includes greater accountability for performance through greater willingness to be challenged on, and address, work-level details.
Now compare the realities of current organisation in terms of
- policies that bring up artificial barriers in the name of units, departments, processes, projects, geographies
- restriction on access to information, resources - approval processes that stop free flow of work
- complexity of soft infrastructure - multiple applications, multiple access controls, user interfaces designed with no clue of what individual user needs are.
My take is that organisations' top coping strategy to benefit from Globalization 3.0 would be to make all out effort to embrace Work 2.0 else be prepared to be in the queue with the dinosaurs.
Let me know what you think!
Have a nice day.
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