Work as most of us know it

How would you challenge default work tools as email, telephone, face to face interaction and saving ones documents on your local drive?

I’m a strong believer in the power of web 2.0 tools. They can offer leaders and workers the possibility of increased transparency in organisations, better transfer of knowledge and better products and services. Not to forget about revenues – o la la.

Transform the way we work, please

However, if you were to take on the challenge of transforming these fundamental ways of work, where would you start? Is it possible to change our ways of work as dramatically as I guess is necessary in order to change these four powerful streams of work routine? I’m not sure if it is necessary to get rid of them. However, alternative tools for cooperation and communication must prove more valuable in order to be viewed as relevant alternatives.

The reason I’m asking is that I’m currently involved in a project that is about to roll out a set of online collaborative tools that will hopefully alter the way we work across our company. I find it quite hard to actually believe that the majority of people will actually switch to sharing their work documents online, collaborating online, edit a common workspace (wikis, if you like), leave their email behind and unless it demonstrates quickly that it contributes financially or practically to improve the end product or service. I think this is the core challenge of social media: it hasn’t yet proven relevant to most of the people.

I’d be happy to listen to feedback and ideas on this.

Create organisations where people have a say

Gary Hamel peeks into the future of management. It is participatory.

Management guru Gary Hamel presents the core message from his new book’The future of management’ (2008): enable your organisation to fit the human beings of your corporation. Not vica versa.  ‘Organisations should not be less human than we are’, Hamel claims. Only then it will be possible to get the most out of a company’s most talented people.

Management 2.0 and the future of management

In case you are looking for ideas on how to adapt your organisation to needs of smashing corporate silos and facilitating knowledge sharing, please check out my summary of a Hamel’s wonderful article on management 2.0 and co-creation.

Power to the people and cash to the share holders

Management 2.0 facilitates informed decisions and allows companies to tap into the power of the interactive web.

Gary Hamel, a web and management guru, suggests five ways for companies on how to unleash the collaborative potential of their employees by providing them with today’s web tools. The main challenge is to change the mindset of the the top management in order to launch technological platforms that supports their need for informed decisions. He shows how traditionally viewed offline challenges can be solved with web-based solutions.

Below I’ve chosen two of his suggestions which I find most inspiring:

1. Organisational design flaw # 1: Share of voice equals share of power: That is, your position in the corporate hierarchy decides your influence on key issues.

A web based solution: The internet is thoughtocracy. The best analysis can actucally beat position. How? Encourage your employees to write critical inhouse blogs. Track the numbers of posts read, the numbers of readers the most popular writers reach, how many people forward posts to colleagues, etc. Thus, tap in to the ‘authority index’ .

2. Organisational design # 2: Under-informed decisions: It’s virtually impossible for a small number of top executives to accurate estimate the cost and benifits of a certain decision. However, decisions need to be taken. How to decrease the risk?

A potential web-based solution: Create ‘opinion markets’ online. Allow employees to buy securities ‘that would pay out only if the initiative achieved a predermined rate of return’ when launching a new, big project. Say, when launching a major organisational change programme or merging with a competitor, the number of employees interested in buying securities in the project will decide the price of the securities. The corporate number crackers will be able to present a market logic to how this may work. The point is that an opinion market will express the people’s belief in an initiative and at the same time encourage innovative thinking, because if a project turns out successful in the when it was originally not thought so, it will actually pay out to have taken the risk.

Further reading:

• You may read Gary Hamel’s all five suggestions in his article ‘Moving Management Online (part two)’ at page 5-7 in Management Lab’s newsletter.

• You may also listen to Mr Hamel talking about this issue in one of his Harvard Business Online podcasts (but, ehem, listening to him is quite boring).