Some thoughts on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
I have been all but floaded with posts and tweets on the above subject in the past few hours. It is an interesting issue, hotly debated in the United States, and it covers two issues, that I have first discussed in Robert Paterson's blog:
- How you treat corporations from a legal standpoint : treating corporations as legal persons (see corporate personhood) would almost naturally bring you to the decision taken by the Supreme Court;
- How corporations think and act internally, given the (overlooked) fact that they are legal persons that employ scores of natural persons, and yet, are not democracies.
I discussed in my latest post why it was important to change the way a corporation thinks, using the OS analogy. The basic idea was that the increasing complexity of the economic, social and technological environment stretches the limits of the corporation's old industrial OS (taylorism, hierarchy, monolitic culture), and that social technologies provide an opportunity to reengineer this OS.
If I push this idea a bit further (which is anyway where I want to go), what we also see is that, by working on ideas more than on products (intangible assets more than on tangible assets), corporations are slowly but firmly changing the human dimension they target. Let me be clear : industrial corporations helped increase the general well-being by developping utilities, infrastructures, basic products and services and (even though this is also often overlooked) by making hunger (in industrial countries) a sad exception. Corporations in the now-ending knowledge economy increased the part of intangibles in their operations.
I think this is fundamentally changing. Today, as most markets are mature and saturated (who would want to market cars, today ?), companies will compete for a share of attention, which is also a share of mind, of talent, of influence of each one of us. The human dimension that some of these new type corporations target is not physical well-being nor general consumption but values, beliefs, meaning. It's having all information flowing freely in the world within a "do no evil" philosophy; it's providing the people a technology so that they can invent new usages (see what Umair Haque has to say about ideals beating strategy in the 21st century).
So we have some corporations working on the very fabrics of society. And, oh, by the way, banks have taken on the business of creating money (and then using it to pay themselves bonus, that they can use in the real economy).
Another point. I will not speak here of SMEs, entrepreneurs or your average Mom & Pop business. Some corporations, though, are huge. Really impressive. I think McKinsey published something on mega-corporations being a key trend for this century. I do believe that is true. Some corporations are really too big to fail (from a social point of view).
It is because such corporations have been given the legal person status that we have an issue to think about. Such corporations, today, try to have an influence on the landscape they compete in (business is business) and, with this Supreme Court decision, they have no real limit on what they can do.
Here, what we basically have then, are social structures (huge corporations ARE social structures) with influence in government affairs that are NOT democracies. Given the power that corporations will be gaining in the coming decades, when they work on ideals and attention, this will be entirely different from having industrial conglomerates that can lobby for the price of raw materials ... These corporations already behave as small societies, and some have for years already replaced the state or society for basic public services such as health, insurance, ...
I might be pushing this, but how different is this from having one of the 50 states not being a democracy ?
So, my opinion on all this ? Having corporations being able to influence political life is a real issue and I quite agree with people thinking about constructive capitalism, or with people trying to bring new, more collaborative ways and structures into the corporation. It's what I do. I also think the court decision did not really delve into what a corporation really is.
And that is what we need to think about now. I feel it is high time corporations governance included some references to democracy in the way key orientations are taken. Once they reach a certain size, I certainly do not see why they should be governed by shareholders. And that seems a really tough political question to tackle
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Has the web changed the way your corporation thinks ?
The year 2010 has but started and the web seems brand new to me these days as I read blog after blog : is it becoming a predictive, squared, intention web ? And as the persons polled by Edge underline, will it change the way each of us thinks, individually ? Will it make this thinking shallower (or deeper) ? Will it push people from thinking to searching ? Will it allow rediscovering ways long ago forgotten ?
All of this and probably much more the web has accomplished or will accomplish shortly. Deeper, though, what the web is empowering is a new, key infrastructure in our society, a human infrastructure that changes the reach of our individual and collective thinking - and acting. This is, I believe, just a fact: the millions of people connected through social networks, the communities emerging, pursuing a purpose and dying in the social web, they have become a new human infrastructure. Look at what Brian Solis has to say about contextual networks.
How our individual thinking evolves is a question that will be debated for a long time, as it touches fundamental questions about what we are and what we are becoming. People like Ollivier Dyens or Ray Kurzweil have thought deeply about it.
To me, a more pressing and actionable question is, has the web changed the way your company thinks ? We all know that the web, along with this emerging human infastructure, is an environment for which the traditional, industrial company, is not ready. Young start-ups, the Googles and Facebooks of this world, were born in this environment. Not so for older companies, that still make the wast majority of an economy's players.
So, have you thought lately about your company's brain ?
From corporate OS ...
Because companies think, right ?
If we take some time to look back, companies, "enterprises" were at the beginning just that, enterprises born of the individual initiative, that is so cherised by neoliberal economists. Did they actually think ? It is likely that the question did not have a meaning for a long time. Companies accomplished things, almost naturally (build, sell, ...). People in these companies had their thoughts, for sure, but if any thought was to be said to be a "company thought" that was the thought of the boss, the owner, the leader.
With industrialization, corporations began to think. Their thinking was like that of our first computers : limited and slow. But then, so was the economy. This thinking was based on what can be thought of as the first «corporate OS» : taylorism, hierarchy, corporate culture. If you think about it, one of the objectives of taylorism was to avoid shop-floor employees making decisions, in fact doing anything that had not been predicted by the management system, whether it was mechanical work, problem solving or even learning. Some people have defended that the very objective of all this was to be able to make predictions on profit (see André Gorz), and you cannot make (economic) predictions without accounting. It would not be that difficult to jump to the conclusion that accounting was the basic, unevolved thinking of the industrial corporation. We should also add some ideas about marketing and demand, and, more recently, TRS. Not quite poetry.
Complexity, in markets and in the economy at large, fostered a response from the corporation. As complexity grew, corporations began doing things that were not in their original genetic code. They began their mutation. Their environnement was hitting them hard with an accelerated stream of demands, social, economic, as the infrastructured that linked them to other companies, to the society, to the economy, began to grow and become more efficient.
We started thinking about the knowledge worker when the key issue was probably the knowledge corporation, this really being of a different kind than the industrial corporation. I think off the knowledge corporation as an evolved industrial corporation, still using the same OS, but adapted, stretched to its limits, to be able to manage relations in an evolved environment. Windows XP or Vista, if you want an analogy.
Just push that analogy a bit further and you will understand why, today, it is time to change that first corporate OS and help our corporations grow the brain they need to enter the conversation.
... to "deep brain"
Let me come back to that idea of corporate OS (I talked about it first in the French blog of Talent Club). We could look at the industrial corporation as a system with:
It's not about intranet 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 or Social Networks, stupid ! It's not about challenging hierarchy ! It's about building the system (brain, organization, call it what you wish) that allows the corporation to adapt to the new competitive environnement by making its internal human infrastructure better than the existing, web based, human infrastructure. It's about reaching your corporate objectives (oh, you will need to revisit those, by the way) - satisfying your clients (oh, you also need to think again about client satisfaction) - rewarding your stakeholders (oh, you really need to know better who your stakeholders are).
Building your company’s deep brain and getting ready for the enhanced web in 2010
I wrote before that a deep brain was what a company needed to exist in this new, realtime web environment. And by exist, I mean business and meaning. It is the new, people-centered, corporate working environment that leverages both the strengths of the organization and of the social networks and technologies. I also wrote that the main difference between a company's brain and the internet-based, free, human infrastructure (quick brain) lied in how and why people made connections and what those connections were intended for.
My work in 2009 has allowed me to push those ideas just a bit further. If you want to build a deep brain (or, plainly speaking, if you plan to adopt social technologies in the interest of your company - and I mean interest in the context of constructive capitalism), here are a number of ideas you might look into.
All of this and probably much more the web has accomplished or will accomplish shortly. Deeper, though, what the web is empowering is a new, key infrastructure in our society, a human infrastructure that changes the reach of our individual and collective thinking - and acting. This is, I believe, just a fact: the millions of people connected through social networks, the communities emerging, pursuing a purpose and dying in the social web, they have become a new human infrastructure. Look at what Brian Solis has to say about contextual networks.
How our individual thinking evolves is a question that will be debated for a long time, as it touches fundamental questions about what we are and what we are becoming. People like Ollivier Dyens or Ray Kurzweil have thought deeply about it.
To me, a more pressing and actionable question is, has the web changed the way your company thinks ? We all know that the web, along with this emerging human infastructure, is an environment for which the traditional, industrial company, is not ready. Young start-ups, the Googles and Facebooks of this world, were born in this environment. Not so for older companies, that still make the wast majority of an economy's players.
So, have you thought lately about your company's brain ?
From corporate OS ...
Because companies think, right ?
If we take some time to look back, companies, "enterprises" were at the beginning just that, enterprises born of the individual initiative, that is so cherised by neoliberal economists. Did they actually think ? It is likely that the question did not have a meaning for a long time. Companies accomplished things, almost naturally (build, sell, ...). People in these companies had their thoughts, for sure, but if any thought was to be said to be a "company thought" that was the thought of the boss, the owner, the leader.
With industrialization, corporations began to think. Their thinking was like that of our first computers : limited and slow. But then, so was the economy. This thinking was based on what can be thought of as the first «corporate OS» : taylorism, hierarchy, corporate culture. If you think about it, one of the objectives of taylorism was to avoid shop-floor employees making decisions, in fact doing anything that had not been predicted by the management system, whether it was mechanical work, problem solving or even learning. Some people have defended that the very objective of all this was to be able to make predictions on profit (see André Gorz), and you cannot make (economic) predictions without accounting. It would not be that difficult to jump to the conclusion that accounting was the basic, unevolved thinking of the industrial corporation. We should also add some ideas about marketing and demand, and, more recently, TRS. Not quite poetry.
Complexity, in markets and in the economy at large, fostered a response from the corporation. As complexity grew, corporations began doing things that were not in their original genetic code. They began their mutation. Their environnement was hitting them hard with an accelerated stream of demands, social, economic, as the infrastructured that linked them to other companies, to the society, to the economy, began to grow and become more efficient.
We started thinking about the knowledge worker when the key issue was probably the knowledge corporation, this really being of a different kind than the industrial corporation. I think off the knowledge corporation as an evolved industrial corporation, still using the same OS, but adapted, stretched to its limits, to be able to manage relations in an evolved environment. Windows XP or Vista, if you want an analogy.
Just push that analogy a bit further and you will understand why, today, it is time to change that first corporate OS and help our corporations grow the brain they need to enter the conversation.
... to "deep brain"
Let me come back to that idea of corporate OS (I talked about it first in the French blog of Talent Club). We could look at the industrial corporation as a system with:
- Ressources - raw materials, capital, people, ...
- Users - basically, management, employees, clients
- Applications - the practices and machines that allow users to make the system work
- An OS - the principles that allow coordinating the activities of the different applications and allocating resources to them. In the industrial corporation, this OS included the org chart, hierarchy and some basic principles of corporate culture (management practices, ways of working).
- Organization charts are being challenged (or complemented) by corporate social networks. A corporate social graph is surely better suited to identify and involve ressources in companies that compete in a market gone realtime;
- Hierarchy as the only organizing principle is being challenged (Jon Husband explains this better than me) and new ways are being developed. I, for one, work most of my time at helping my clients develop their own collaborative ways;
- Finally, the old, windows-based ways of working are being replaced with the new, more open, dynamic and collaborative ways of working that come from adopting and adapting web 2.0 tools.
It's not about intranet 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 or Social Networks, stupid ! It's not about challenging hierarchy ! It's about building the system (brain, organization, call it what you wish) that allows the corporation to adapt to the new competitive environnement by making its internal human infrastructure better than the existing, web based, human infrastructure. It's about reaching your corporate objectives (oh, you will need to revisit those, by the way) - satisfying your clients (oh, you also need to think again about client satisfaction) - rewarding your stakeholders (oh, you really need to know better who your stakeholders are).
Building your company’s deep brain and getting ready for the enhanced web in 2010
I wrote before that a deep brain was what a company needed to exist in this new, realtime web environment. And by exist, I mean business and meaning. It is the new, people-centered, corporate working environment that leverages both the strengths of the organization and of the social networks and technologies. I also wrote that the main difference between a company's brain and the internet-based, free, human infrastructure (quick brain) lied in how and why people made connections and what those connections were intended for.
My work in 2009 has allowed me to push those ideas just a bit further. If you want to build a deep brain (or, plainly speaking, if you plan to adopt social technologies in the interest of your company - and I mean interest in the context of constructive capitalism), here are a number of ideas you might look into.
- First, technology. You do not buy technology anymore, you develop several platform strategies. Internalize key skills and leadership. Build a prototyping mode. Look first into your employees and clients future challenges. If your idea is just to have "collaboration technologies", stick to old MS Office;
- Some examples here : do not buy a search engine, why not try developing the algorythm that fits you ?
- Do not buy a social network, why not think about your own people-centered HR strategy ? And if that is not enough, involve the marketing and PR guys and make them think about client / partner collaboration;
- You are all about idea generation software, folksonomy and social bookmarking ? First, why not try some evolution of your internal ways of working ?
- And finally, management ... big question, what happens with management ? In my experience, nothing much, unless you give them a mission : make "social collaboration" (or whatever you want to call it) happen. I am lucky enough to have a client that has done just that. Obviously, you have understood also, that how he set people out on the mission was critical.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Changing the way I think
I was not among the people that were asked "How is the Internet changing the way YOU think?" by Edge. I just found out about this initiative as I was getting ready for a lecture on New Ways of Working.
Reading through the answers and reflecting on the question, I have to say that the internet has indeed changed the way I think.
First, I now relate differently to my sources. I rely less on names and official sources, on known bloggers or writters, and allow myself to search without precise direction for some time, relying on luck - in fact, believing in serindipity. Where I was used to reading I know have conversations with those sources, even though it takes me forever to finish a presentation or a post.
I spend much more time thiniking, in fact, than I used to, and thinking has become a structured activity, with different steps (deciding, looking for ideas, discussing the ideas, going back to the initial thought, formalizing, challenging, engaging in conversations). It's as if thinking today was not the same activity as it was some time ago.
Then, when I think, I now read, look and listen (to Ted, for instance), that is, I use more senses than I was used to.
And, more importantly, I am totally connected, with my reader, twitter, communities, all becoming available resources to help me deepen an issue. I prepare for non-connected periods, where I know I will do two things : some final deep thinking (but it rarely works well) or some easy, low value tasks (that I have to call thinking, because without them, I will not remember my own production).
So yes, definitily, the internet has changed the way I think. What I believe, though, is that my intellectual structure was already there, and probably because of that I am able today to manage these different sources, trends of thoughts, ideas, pieces of information, manage them and add my own little input.
After all, it's probably obvious the internet has changed the way we think. The important question is how the internet will change the way future generations think if it becomes the main element structuring their thoughts (as books ad teachers used to be for us). I am rather optimistic, not sharing what Maryssa Mayer thinks in the Edge piece, much more what Anderson writes. And in the end, being rather happy to participate in this new era that could deliver some collective wisdom.
Reading through the answers and reflecting on the question, I have to say that the internet has indeed changed the way I think.
First, I now relate differently to my sources. I rely less on names and official sources, on known bloggers or writters, and allow myself to search without precise direction for some time, relying on luck - in fact, believing in serindipity. Where I was used to reading I know have conversations with those sources, even though it takes me forever to finish a presentation or a post.
I spend much more time thiniking, in fact, than I used to, and thinking has become a structured activity, with different steps (deciding, looking for ideas, discussing the ideas, going back to the initial thought, formalizing, challenging, engaging in conversations). It's as if thinking today was not the same activity as it was some time ago.
Then, when I think, I now read, look and listen (to Ted, for instance), that is, I use more senses than I was used to.
And, more importantly, I am totally connected, with my reader, twitter, communities, all becoming available resources to help me deepen an issue. I prepare for non-connected periods, where I know I will do two things : some final deep thinking (but it rarely works well) or some easy, low value tasks (that I have to call thinking, because without them, I will not remember my own production).
So yes, definitily, the internet has changed the way I think. What I believe, though, is that my intellectual structure was already there, and probably because of that I am able today to manage these different sources, trends of thoughts, ideas, pieces of information, manage them and add my own little input.
After all, it's probably obvious the internet has changed the way we think. The important question is how the internet will change the way future generations think if it becomes the main element structuring their thoughts (as books ad teachers used to be for us). I am rather optimistic, not sharing what Maryssa Mayer thinks in the Edge piece, much more what Anderson writes. And in the end, being rather happy to participate in this new era that could deliver some collective wisdom.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
When realtime is not enough - recap on Leweb09
As Billy Flynn says in the musical Chicago, "it's all show business". And I did enjoy listening to keynote speakers deliver their messages, watching some cool new ventures like Stribe or Tigerlily
and having the feeling to belong to one great family. I got a number of insights and the general impression that, whatever Gary Vaynerchuk says about not caring about money, it was all business.
As I gather some thoughts from these two days, I wonder whether realtime is related to content shrinking. It's an idea from Sean Percival: as mobile devices become the first access to the web, content is adapted in size and content consumption time is going down. I would add that status-oriented applications like Twitter or Plancast are also making content shrink. But then, Sean says, some day we will have fat birds instead of tweets, or, as I understand it, dense tweets, that will convey more information. Twitter and other status-oriented services remain basically information/relation transport facilities. Content is indeed shrinking, but mostly in the mobile world.
Considering it from an individual point of view (I do not like the word user), some people like to pass information through, some others like to indulge into some deep thinking. Mobile is fine for passing or obtaining situation-related information. But fixed platforms with huge screes still have a use for deep thinking. Even for passing information. Everyone was connected to his laptop, at LeWeb, probably because there were other things to do than just twitting. Realtime is not enough, not yet.
The second idea I find interesting is Facebook Connect being the social glue of the internet: the service that allows you to bring your social information with you wherever you move. The idea of the glue is interesting, and I find it very similar to what some services do with your credit card numbers, for instance. If Facebook is the social glue, I would say that companies need to make their own glue, and become the insurance glue or the banking glue of the internet. Just as your social data on Facebook follows you everywhere, so should the other, less fancy but probably at least as useful data about your insurance policy, banking accounts, social security status and so on. It's a good approach to your personal identity on the web.
The lasting impression I get, though, is that business is maturing quickly. Applications, for instance, are a grown-up business: 300 have more than a million users on Facebook. But applications are not for developers, they are for well equiped companies, that can deliver them for free and make money out of the business these applications link you to. Applications are like websites, and you do not make money through a website, you make money by delivering a customer experience.
In this maturing business environment, some strategy seems to be needed. I liked the argument between Brian Solis and Matthias Luefkens about ROI. While Matthias argued that you can only try to understand "Return on Involvement", Brian stressed how, today, you need to understand the inverstments your are making in this realtime web.
Jeremy Owyang was the one that really got my attention. This post's title is taken from his presentation (When Real-time Web is not Fast Enough). You need to look at his slides about the web moving from Asynchronous to Realtime (today) to Intention (what I plan to do). And understand about corporations, today, not being able even to keep up with the Asynchronous web. That is why he recomends to personalize social technologies, engage an army of unpaid volunteers and build information systems. A really interesting approach.
I would humbly add a "human factor" slide to each of the three steps in the strategy Owyang proposes:
Realtime is not enough. Corporations need to worry about engaging their real people.
and having the feeling to belong to one great family. I got a number of insights and the general impression that, whatever Gary Vaynerchuk says about not caring about money, it was all business.
As I gather some thoughts from these two days, I wonder whether realtime is related to content shrinking. It's an idea from Sean Percival: as mobile devices become the first access to the web, content is adapted in size and content consumption time is going down. I would add that status-oriented applications like Twitter or Plancast are also making content shrink. But then, Sean says, some day we will have fat birds instead of tweets, or, as I understand it, dense tweets, that will convey more information. Twitter and other status-oriented services remain basically information/relation transport facilities. Content is indeed shrinking, but mostly in the mobile world.
Considering it from an individual point of view (I do not like the word user), some people like to pass information through, some others like to indulge into some deep thinking. Mobile is fine for passing or obtaining situation-related information. But fixed platforms with huge screes still have a use for deep thinking. Even for passing information. Everyone was connected to his laptop, at LeWeb, probably because there were other things to do than just twitting. Realtime is not enough, not yet.
The second idea I find interesting is Facebook Connect being the social glue of the internet: the service that allows you to bring your social information with you wherever you move. The idea of the glue is interesting, and I find it very similar to what some services do with your credit card numbers, for instance. If Facebook is the social glue, I would say that companies need to make their own glue, and become the insurance glue or the banking glue of the internet. Just as your social data on Facebook follows you everywhere, so should the other, less fancy but probably at least as useful data about your insurance policy, banking accounts, social security status and so on. It's a good approach to your personal identity on the web.
The lasting impression I get, though, is that business is maturing quickly. Applications, for instance, are a grown-up business: 300 have more than a million users on Facebook. But applications are not for developers, they are for well equiped companies, that can deliver them for free and make money out of the business these applications link you to. Applications are like websites, and you do not make money through a website, you make money by delivering a customer experience.
In this maturing business environment, some strategy seems to be needed. I liked the argument between Brian Solis and Matthias Luefkens about ROI. While Matthias argued that you can only try to understand "Return on Involvement", Brian stressed how, today, you need to understand the inverstments your are making in this realtime web.
Jeremy Owyang was the one that really got my attention. This post's title is taken from his presentation (When Real-time Web is not Fast Enough). You need to look at his slides about the web moving from Asynchronous to Realtime (today) to Intention (what I plan to do). And understand about corporations, today, not being able even to keep up with the Asynchronous web. That is why he recomends to personalize social technologies, engage an army of unpaid volunteers and build information systems. A really interesting approach.
I would humbly add a "human factor" slide to each of the three steps in the strategy Owyang proposes:
- Personalizing social technologies, and basically socializing your whole customer experience is the way to go. It's important to remember, though, that there are real people behind the social technologies that a corporation can implement. And as I see social personnalization as rather straightforward, I think motivating and training people to the uses and behaviours that are needed in this realtime web is the key issue;
- Engaging an army of unpaid volunteers is the second step. In other words, you want your clients to work for you, in exchange of reputation, fun or a particular experience. The best way to get there, obviously, is by having been as lucky as Apple, that has developed a strong customer community throughout the company's life. Other than that, what we are really saying is that we want our employees to work with customers, because advocacy programs will not work for every business. If employees work with our customers to, say, design a compelling experience, they will be building a real community, that could transform into an army of advocates. Advocacy programs may work for large companies, but for smaller ones, I have the feeling it will be employee generated customer communities;
- Last and certainly not least, the systems. Nothing to say here, I basically agree that you need to integrate your social media data with the CRM data. There is one system, though, that you need to change before the three steps do work, and that one is management system.
Realtime is not enough. Corporations need to worry about engaging their real people.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Beyond "enterprise 2.0": age of the builders
I finished my former post worrying about the corporation as a bot ... Was I ahead of mysef ? As Google Wave keeps me thinking about changes to come, and this time not in society, but within the corporation, I contend that change will outpace most corporations that do not put collaboration platforms at the center of their strategy. Because, in so doing, corporations might be evolving into something different from what we are used to.
Those that do will be entering the age of the builders, and for them profit must become a second priority.
Changing ways of working : entering the "I have to automate it" era
And what is Google Wave if not the first premium-priced corporate collaboration platform available ?
It’s easy to assume that the impact of collaboration platforms like Google Wave will first be felt in our ways of working, that these platforms will replace email. That will be good, because, in corporations, mail is a poor IM tool, but a huge collaboration platform (think about MS Outlook). Bankers and consultants have been using email like IM for years and this has now become a general trend. In our mails, we add files and links, and sometimes invite people to collaborate with us using versioning applications. But, as everyone knows, that is not what it was intended for in the first place.
This first change then, could be welcomed. We would go from fighting misplaced usage of email to adopting a convenient tool for a company gone realtime. I am not saying this will be adopted easily, but it should not be very difficult.
When a platform like Google Wave is adopted, the difficult thing will be to adapt to bots, to make them more friendly, and then to develop new ones, adapted to real needs. At that point, people are going to start discovering that many of the tasks or activities they do could be better delt with through a bot. If the corporation is clever enough to have a pool of wave developpers at hand, anyone could feel like a software product manager ...
As a matter of fact, we already have bots all around us, we just did not know they were bots until someone (Google) called them by their names. But those old bots were cumbersome and difficult to develop and maintain. In the new corporate platform, bots will be created all over. Because, the objective of the platforms is to give everyone the skills (and the programming power) to build bots. We thought platforms were just for developers ... for them to make cool apps for most social networking sites ... wait until corporations widely understand what's at stake if you want to see real change !
This evolution will probably take some more time. We will be changing our current ways of working and also our understanding of what work is. We will be slowly entering a new era, the «I have to automate it era».
In this «I have to automate it era», we’ll go from solving problems to designing systems that solve problems. And, thinking about it, that is just what every successful entrepreuneur does. Designing a system (business model) to solve a problem or meet a demand. Absolutly. Create the right platform, and you’ll have a perfectly automated corporation. A corporation where entrepreuneurship is the dominant culture.
It seems to me that English (or Chinese) are going to be replaced as the must know language. Tomorrow, we need to learn to talk to the machine. Technology skills will be basic skills for the future blue-collar or white-collar worker.
Workers : from users, to contributors, to builders.
Let’s now deepen into what happens to these blue and white collar workers, as it is them that will suffer the changes in their ways of working.
If we go back in time some years (say, 1970) everybody was a user. People had to learn how to use machines, and then typing machines, and then Wang, and then a word-processor, and then Microsoft Office, and then ... Microsoft Office again, and again once more ... and so on.
That, of course, is still going on.
But slowly, in some enterprises, Enterprise 2.0 is gaining speed. In these workplaces, people are still users, but they need to get ready to continuously master new usages. Not learn them once or twice. Continuously change usages. If they succeed, the next challenge is to become contributors. In a world where reputation is a pillar for influence and where influence is a key professional asset, being a contributor to the collective knowledge of the corporation is key to professional development. Blogs, microblogs, internal wikipedias, folksonomies, we have all kind of systems to contribute through.
Mastering the usages, though, and the systems, is not enough. As the number of contributors grow, corporations are going to find ways to identify and select the best contributions - actually, HR systems have always done that (or tried). They will now look for different contributors, and selection will probably be collective, not individual, but it should keep happening anyway.
Now let’s think forward. Project some years ahead. When these corporate collaboration platforms are widely spread, we are going to become builders. We will be users and contributors but we will need to become builders of the future corporation: identify a problem; find a solution; build a bot. That’s it, builders of the intelligent corporation.
Of the deep mind.
This "I have to automate it" era is going to last for some years ...
And eventually, having entrepreuneurs increasingly quickly solve most issues that arise will push us to the new era. Because, once there are bots all over, we’ll be in the «what do I do next era». Not convinced ? Look at this short video from SalesForce. I love the part when the bot decides whether or not to call a human assistant ... And more seriously, we already are experiencing this: how about this assumption, "people loose their jobs quicker than before because what they have to bring takes less and less time to produce value". Projects are done quicker; corporations are built quicker; success is almost built over night. Have you checked lately how old Google is ? Right.
Training is the answer today to people obsolescence. Not enough. Because not everyone can be trained at the same pace, and training is still an industrial process, based on a mechanical view of the corporation. Adoption of collaboration platforms should also lead towards changing our mindset as organisation and value are concerned.
Organization and value : making profit a second priority.
Let’s consider the user - contributor - builder evolution. Of course, at any given moment in time, there are users, contributors or builders in any corporation. What is interesting is how the majority shifts from one category to the other. And how this impacts how value is created.
Users build value by executing tasks and activities through systems that are conceived in advance. Value produced by users can be easily evaluated, as it is expected by the system. The best example is the assembly line.
Today, most corporations have become automated. Anything that could be conceived in advanced and automated has been automated : and these machines include assembly lines, obviously, but also the ERPs, CRMs, BIs, and most other business softwares. Office work has had its MS Office automation too ...
The issue with this approach is that conceiving in advance is less and less efficient. The economy has gained speed. The systems do not deliver the value they should for very long. Not do the users ...
Contributors build value differently. They are helping the corporation built another key system : if we assume the IT network was built for users, now we needed the knowledge network for contributors. And, of course, not a Knowledge Management network. Who ever said knowledge had to be managed ? Anyway, once they can collaborate and use the existing knowledge network (think of an internal, business focused web 2.0 environment), they can start reacting to fast appearing issues. Something common these days ...
Just an observation. Contributors trust each other. They feel responsible for what they do. And dollar compensation is just one of the rewards they expect. Far from a user perspective, don’t you think ?
Value built by contributors is more difficult to evaluate, as it is not assumed in advance. You can always price a car and from that derive worker compensation. But now, how do you do that when you are selling, say, service, that comes from the collective contribution of a 1000 people firm ? Are you compensating based on position ? Not so easy, when positions are all but dissapearing in the new, knowledge network based corporation.
What about builders ? We have builders all over in our corporations : leaders, researchers, managers, ... But they are still in the minority side of the company. That’s why there is a chasm today (at least in France) between people above and people below a very difficult to define line.
When collaboration platforms are adopted, more and more people will be considered as builders, because building will be expeced of them. By building bots, corporations will be automating knowledge activities and problem solving. Many of the «tasks» that people do in a knowledge-network based corporation might disappear.
Consider what happens when the majority changes. When users become a minority in the corporation, and afterwards, when contributors become a minority ...
Users are left with a difficult choice : become a contributor or go be a user to any other, lesser, corporation; similarly, contributors are left with the choice to become builders or go contribute some-place else. Even builders, once they have put all they had in a bot, will have to learn to build bots for something different or go build solutions to other, lesser corporations.
Productivity gains are here to stay, it seems. It might be that being an entrepreneur will become a real option for more and more people ...
For corporations, value then (at least, financial value), will come from productivity. When everyone is a bot (I mean, when every problem or issue is solved by a bot), more value is produced with less people. How many workers does Facebook have ? Or an investment bank ? There are already companies, I believe, were builders are the majority ...
Or maybe not most value will come from productivity ... maybe, as some companies already do, people development will become the central process of the corporation. Because, in this age of the builders, if every copany concentrates on productivity and does not invest in people development (meaning long term human capital investment), what happens to global demand ? Is it not based on worker compensation, somehow ?
With all the changes we are living through, there is one thing that has not changed : leadership. It is high time it did. In the time of the builders, they will need to become builders themselves. Forget about delivering quarterly earnings to shareholders and begin concentrating on what the corporation is becoming. Think about value, about values, about the social impact of the corporation.
Corporations are not bots. They are machines from hell. Whatever is expected of them, they do. Today, leaders expect quaterly earnings from corporations, at whatever cost. It will be good to challenge this short term vision.
At this point, one thing is clear to me: leaders are needed to define what the corporation needs to become. Otherwise, the disparity in household income that we consider high today, will have just been the beginning of a sad story.
I started this two-post series thinking around Blade Runner. A sure thing: for corporations, waves will not be lost «like tears in rain».
Those that do will be entering the age of the builders, and for them profit must become a second priority.
Changing ways of working : entering the "I have to automate it" era
And what is Google Wave if not the first premium-priced corporate collaboration platform available ?
It’s easy to assume that the impact of collaboration platforms like Google Wave will first be felt in our ways of working, that these platforms will replace email. That will be good, because, in corporations, mail is a poor IM tool, but a huge collaboration platform (think about MS Outlook). Bankers and consultants have been using email like IM for years and this has now become a general trend. In our mails, we add files and links, and sometimes invite people to collaborate with us using versioning applications. But, as everyone knows, that is not what it was intended for in the first place.
This first change then, could be welcomed. We would go from fighting misplaced usage of email to adopting a convenient tool for a company gone realtime. I am not saying this will be adopted easily, but it should not be very difficult.
When a platform like Google Wave is adopted, the difficult thing will be to adapt to bots, to make them more friendly, and then to develop new ones, adapted to real needs. At that point, people are going to start discovering that many of the tasks or activities they do could be better delt with through a bot. If the corporation is clever enough to have a pool of wave developpers at hand, anyone could feel like a software product manager ...
As a matter of fact, we already have bots all around us, we just did not know they were bots until someone (Google) called them by their names. But those old bots were cumbersome and difficult to develop and maintain. In the new corporate platform, bots will be created all over. Because, the objective of the platforms is to give everyone the skills (and the programming power) to build bots. We thought platforms were just for developers ... for them to make cool apps for most social networking sites ... wait until corporations widely understand what's at stake if you want to see real change !
This evolution will probably take some more time. We will be changing our current ways of working and also our understanding of what work is. We will be slowly entering a new era, the «I have to automate it era».
In this «I have to automate it era», we’ll go from solving problems to designing systems that solve problems. And, thinking about it, that is just what every successful entrepreuneur does. Designing a system (business model) to solve a problem or meet a demand. Absolutly. Create the right platform, and you’ll have a perfectly automated corporation. A corporation where entrepreuneurship is the dominant culture.
It seems to me that English (or Chinese) are going to be replaced as the must know language. Tomorrow, we need to learn to talk to the machine. Technology skills will be basic skills for the future blue-collar or white-collar worker.
Workers : from users, to contributors, to builders.
Let’s now deepen into what happens to these blue and white collar workers, as it is them that will suffer the changes in their ways of working.
If we go back in time some years (say, 1970) everybody was a user. People had to learn how to use machines, and then typing machines, and then Wang, and then a word-processor, and then Microsoft Office, and then ... Microsoft Office again, and again once more ... and so on.
That, of course, is still going on.
But slowly, in some enterprises, Enterprise 2.0 is gaining speed. In these workplaces, people are still users, but they need to get ready to continuously master new usages. Not learn them once or twice. Continuously change usages. If they succeed, the next challenge is to become contributors. In a world where reputation is a pillar for influence and where influence is a key professional asset, being a contributor to the collective knowledge of the corporation is key to professional development. Blogs, microblogs, internal wikipedias, folksonomies, we have all kind of systems to contribute through.
Mastering the usages, though, and the systems, is not enough. As the number of contributors grow, corporations are going to find ways to identify and select the best contributions - actually, HR systems have always done that (or tried). They will now look for different contributors, and selection will probably be collective, not individual, but it should keep happening anyway.
Now let’s think forward. Project some years ahead. When these corporate collaboration platforms are widely spread, we are going to become builders. We will be users and contributors but we will need to become builders of the future corporation: identify a problem; find a solution; build a bot. That’s it, builders of the intelligent corporation.
Of the deep mind.
This "I have to automate it" era is going to last for some years ...
And eventually, having entrepreuneurs increasingly quickly solve most issues that arise will push us to the new era. Because, once there are bots all over, we’ll be in the «what do I do next era». Not convinced ? Look at this short video from SalesForce. I love the part when the bot decides whether or not to call a human assistant ... And more seriously, we already are experiencing this: how about this assumption, "people loose their jobs quicker than before because what they have to bring takes less and less time to produce value". Projects are done quicker; corporations are built quicker; success is almost built over night. Have you checked lately how old Google is ? Right.
Training is the answer today to people obsolescence. Not enough. Because not everyone can be trained at the same pace, and training is still an industrial process, based on a mechanical view of the corporation. Adoption of collaboration platforms should also lead towards changing our mindset as organisation and value are concerned.
Organization and value : making profit a second priority.
Let’s consider the user - contributor - builder evolution. Of course, at any given moment in time, there are users, contributors or builders in any corporation. What is interesting is how the majority shifts from one category to the other. And how this impacts how value is created.
Users build value by executing tasks and activities through systems that are conceived in advance. Value produced by users can be easily evaluated, as it is expected by the system. The best example is the assembly line.
Today, most corporations have become automated. Anything that could be conceived in advanced and automated has been automated : and these machines include assembly lines, obviously, but also the ERPs, CRMs, BIs, and most other business softwares. Office work has had its MS Office automation too ...
The issue with this approach is that conceiving in advance is less and less efficient. The economy has gained speed. The systems do not deliver the value they should for very long. Not do the users ...
Contributors build value differently. They are helping the corporation built another key system : if we assume the IT network was built for users, now we needed the knowledge network for contributors. And, of course, not a Knowledge Management network. Who ever said knowledge had to be managed ? Anyway, once they can collaborate and use the existing knowledge network (think of an internal, business focused web 2.0 environment), they can start reacting to fast appearing issues. Something common these days ...
Just an observation. Contributors trust each other. They feel responsible for what they do. And dollar compensation is just one of the rewards they expect. Far from a user perspective, don’t you think ?
Value built by contributors is more difficult to evaluate, as it is not assumed in advance. You can always price a car and from that derive worker compensation. But now, how do you do that when you are selling, say, service, that comes from the collective contribution of a 1000 people firm ? Are you compensating based on position ? Not so easy, when positions are all but dissapearing in the new, knowledge network based corporation.
What about builders ? We have builders all over in our corporations : leaders, researchers, managers, ... But they are still in the minority side of the company. That’s why there is a chasm today (at least in France) between people above and people below a very difficult to define line.
When collaboration platforms are adopted, more and more people will be considered as builders, because building will be expeced of them. By building bots, corporations will be automating knowledge activities and problem solving. Many of the «tasks» that people do in a knowledge-network based corporation might disappear.
Consider what happens when the majority changes. When users become a minority in the corporation, and afterwards, when contributors become a minority ...
Users are left with a difficult choice : become a contributor or go be a user to any other, lesser, corporation; similarly, contributors are left with the choice to become builders or go contribute some-place else. Even builders, once they have put all they had in a bot, will have to learn to build bots for something different or go build solutions to other, lesser corporations.
Productivity gains are here to stay, it seems. It might be that being an entrepreneur will become a real option for more and more people ...
For corporations, value then (at least, financial value), will come from productivity. When everyone is a bot (I mean, when every problem or issue is solved by a bot), more value is produced with less people. How many workers does Facebook have ? Or an investment bank ? There are already companies, I believe, were builders are the majority ...
Or maybe not most value will come from productivity ... maybe, as some companies already do, people development will become the central process of the corporation. Because, in this age of the builders, if every copany concentrates on productivity and does not invest in people development (meaning long term human capital investment), what happens to global demand ? Is it not based on worker compensation, somehow ?
With all the changes we are living through, there is one thing that has not changed : leadership. It is high time it did. In the time of the builders, they will need to become builders themselves. Forget about delivering quarterly earnings to shareholders and begin concentrating on what the corporation is becoming. Think about value, about values, about the social impact of the corporation.
Corporations are not bots. They are machines from hell. Whatever is expected of them, they do. Today, leaders expect quaterly earnings from corporations, at whatever cost. It will be good to challenge this short term vision.
At this point, one thing is clear to me: leaders are needed to define what the corporation needs to become. Otherwise, the disparity in household income that we consider high today, will have just been the beginning of a sad story.
I started this two-post series thinking around Blade Runner. A sure thing: for corporations, waves will not be lost «like tears in rain».
Monday, November 23, 2009
Do Bots Dream of Electronic Corporations ?
I was watching Blade Runner when it struck me that, much like androids in that movie were dangerously close to humans, bots in Waves (Google Waves, that is) are, potentially, dangerously close to employees.
Think about it : why all the hype about Google Wave ? After all, it is just another platform, and the fact that platforms are the key component of any corporate strategy is already (widely) understood (this article, for instance). There is great technology in Google Wave, that, I agree with, but we are used to living with increasingly great technology.
No, the more I think about it the more I believe that calling bots its applications and giving them participant status in conversation is the killing idea. Thinking further, while it is a fact that Google people are masters at buzz marketing, there are, I believe, deeper reasons behind the hype:
After Guttenberg ...
Culture production in this new environment, in this Quick Brain, is becoming very different with what it used to be. Thomas Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark (his document) has intelligently simplified the debates by stating that we are coming out of the Guttenberg Parenthesis, a long period in which culture production became individualistic because of the nature of printing press. In the web 2.0 environment, production is definitely more collective and dynamic : a blog, for instance, is not only interesting in itself, but also as part of the network built by incoming and outgoing links. As the blog evolves, so do the other blogs it is linked to. In this ecosystem, we are continuously adapting our own individual reading and learning processes.
Two or tree years ago, we used to build our paths in the blogosphere, identify our preferred bloggers and thinkers, and usually go back to them for reference. Unlike the ones presented in a book, the ideas that we found there kept evolving, because posts were updated, because its links were changed and mostly because other links had been created. Today, even our preferred thinkers and bloggers are not our only references as the realtime web accelerates connexions between ideas (see what Brian Solis has to say about contextual networks).
I would like to argue that, by providing a platform for collective thought, Google Wave goes one step further, which could prove to be a giant step.
In the first place, a wave is a dynamic conversation. I tell my clients that forum conversations are key learning objects that should be built carefully (from an individual point of view) as they will help others quickly catch up with the thought process of the conversation. To my mind, conversations are key building blocks of communities.
A wave brings another dimension to the conversation. It is at the same time horizontal and vertical. Horizontally, the conversation can linger for ages, as new people or ideas come in. Vertically, every step of the conversation can be deepened. This is something that could be done before in Q&A forums, for instance, but it somehow appears more natural in a wave.
If Twitter, for instance, is a tool for improving the Quick Brain and creating endless contextual networks, then I would say that Google Wave is a tool for building deep brains all around. It has the potential to exponentially increase the thinking power of the web. Other tools and applications had a similar potential maybe (think about social networks), but none of them gave participants to the tool the same power that I think wave participants can have. Through bots.
Yes, secondly, and more important to my mind, a wave brings in bots. The bots in itself are interesting, but not a revolution : after all, we live in a world where more tasks are executed by automated machines (mecanical or virtual) than by humans. As I said before, the point with bots is that they are given participant status in the conversation. Here is where we go back to the androids of Philip K. Dick.
Let’s push further : with basic programming skills, almost anyone can create a bot (an avatar) to add a permanent value to the conversation. That has mind-boggling implications: a person with a brillant idea that can be transformed into a bot could be participating in countless conversations. Well not him, his avatar. Or his bot. Or is actually his bot really his bot ?
Google Wave strikes me because it provides a platform for building deep brains all over, and deep brains in which humans, some day, will not be needed to keep adding value and meaning to the wave (if bot development takes on, then new bots could go back to existing waves and keep adding value to the existing conversation).
And so it is that, in this post-Guttenberg era, we go back to a dynamic, continuously evolving culture. In this cultural environment, books still provide starting points for conversations but, for that matter, so can a blog post or a tweet. And, compared to the pre-Guttenberg era, we have reached a speed level in culture production that was not conceivable before. Why ? Because today, we are not only a human society, we are also a technological society.
... and before "the singularity"
Ollivier Dyens has argued (and brilliantly in my humble opinion) in his book La Nature Inhumaine, that we have reached such a step in our technological development when we need to look at society with new eyes. Biological reality is only a vision of reality. Our key principles (what it is to be alive, human, conscious) are based on that biological reality. It is time to question them.
If you read that book, you will be prompted to change your understanding of what technology is (what is built and transforms matter or perception). For Dyens, we live in a world that is more technological than biological, if you admit that everything we have built, starting with the language, is a technology.
Assuming Dyens position, you may actually wonder whether a book was not already a bot. A participant in any conversation. After all, what it is we are doing when we quote a book (or someone) if not bringing him/her/it in the conversation ?
It seems then, Google did not invent anything. Bots were always here. We used to call them books, or songs, or paintings, or .... Just vehicles for smart ideas. And then, the Guttenberg Parenthesis was not really a parenthesis. Just the time it took us to admit books in the conversation ...
I have to admit it then. Google people are masters at buzz marketing. They just helped me understand the society we have been living in, and that we still look at through our old, romantic, pre-industrial revolution eyes. Just the same eyes many of us still use to look at our professional environment, at our good old organizations.
An, in my opinion, if there is a bot that we should worry about, it is precisely the corporation. I have little doubt that the best ones will take advantage of cheap, easy-to-install and easy-to-program platforms like Google Wave is. Why, if you think about it, why not replace maintenance-intensive FTE with easy-to-develop and maintenance-light bots ?
I’ll be writing about that in a future post.
No, the more I think about it the more I believe that calling bots its applications and giving them participant status in conversation is the killing idea. Thinking further, while it is a fact that Google people are masters at buzz marketing, there are, I believe, deeper reasons behind the hype:
- As a social platform, Google Wave is born at the crossroads of two major social evolutions, that have been dubbed «the end of the guttenberg parenthesis» and «the coming of the singularity»; analyzing bots helps better catch the meaning of these evolutions;
- As a business platform, it pushes platform strategy into daylight, and provides the first «mass market» platform for corporate revolution.
After Guttenberg ...
Culture production in this new environment, in this Quick Brain, is becoming very different with what it used to be. Thomas Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark (his document) has intelligently simplified the debates by stating that we are coming out of the Guttenberg Parenthesis, a long period in which culture production became individualistic because of the nature of printing press. In the web 2.0 environment, production is definitely more collective and dynamic : a blog, for instance, is not only interesting in itself, but also as part of the network built by incoming and outgoing links. As the blog evolves, so do the other blogs it is linked to. In this ecosystem, we are continuously adapting our own individual reading and learning processes.
Two or tree years ago, we used to build our paths in the blogosphere, identify our preferred bloggers and thinkers, and usually go back to them for reference. Unlike the ones presented in a book, the ideas that we found there kept evolving, because posts were updated, because its links were changed and mostly because other links had been created. Today, even our preferred thinkers and bloggers are not our only references as the realtime web accelerates connexions between ideas (see what Brian Solis has to say about contextual networks).
I would like to argue that, by providing a platform for collective thought, Google Wave goes one step further, which could prove to be a giant step.
In the first place, a wave is a dynamic conversation. I tell my clients that forum conversations are key learning objects that should be built carefully (from an individual point of view) as they will help others quickly catch up with the thought process of the conversation. To my mind, conversations are key building blocks of communities.
A wave brings another dimension to the conversation. It is at the same time horizontal and vertical. Horizontally, the conversation can linger for ages, as new people or ideas come in. Vertically, every step of the conversation can be deepened. This is something that could be done before in Q&A forums, for instance, but it somehow appears more natural in a wave.
If Twitter, for instance, is a tool for improving the Quick Brain and creating endless contextual networks, then I would say that Google Wave is a tool for building deep brains all around. It has the potential to exponentially increase the thinking power of the web. Other tools and applications had a similar potential maybe (think about social networks), but none of them gave participants to the tool the same power that I think wave participants can have. Through bots.
Yes, secondly, and more important to my mind, a wave brings in bots. The bots in itself are interesting, but not a revolution : after all, we live in a world where more tasks are executed by automated machines (mecanical or virtual) than by humans. As I said before, the point with bots is that they are given participant status in the conversation. Here is where we go back to the androids of Philip K. Dick.
Let’s push further : with basic programming skills, almost anyone can create a bot (an avatar) to add a permanent value to the conversation. That has mind-boggling implications: a person with a brillant idea that can be transformed into a bot could be participating in countless conversations. Well not him, his avatar. Or his bot. Or is actually his bot really his bot ?
Google Wave strikes me because it provides a platform for building deep brains all over, and deep brains in which humans, some day, will not be needed to keep adding value and meaning to the wave (if bot development takes on, then new bots could go back to existing waves and keep adding value to the existing conversation).
And so it is that, in this post-Guttenberg era, we go back to a dynamic, continuously evolving culture. In this cultural environment, books still provide starting points for conversations but, for that matter, so can a blog post or a tweet. And, compared to the pre-Guttenberg era, we have reached a speed level in culture production that was not conceivable before. Why ? Because today, we are not only a human society, we are also a technological society.
... and before "the singularity"
Ollivier Dyens has argued (and brilliantly in my humble opinion) in his book La Nature Inhumaine, that we have reached such a step in our technological development when we need to look at society with new eyes. Biological reality is only a vision of reality. Our key principles (what it is to be alive, human, conscious) are based on that biological reality. It is time to question them.
If you read that book, you will be prompted to change your understanding of what technology is (what is built and transforms matter or perception). For Dyens, we live in a world that is more technological than biological, if you admit that everything we have built, starting with the language, is a technology.
Assuming Dyens position, you may actually wonder whether a book was not already a bot. A participant in any conversation. After all, what it is we are doing when we quote a book (or someone) if not bringing him/her/it in the conversation ?
It seems then, Google did not invent anything. Bots were always here. We used to call them books, or songs, or paintings, or .... Just vehicles for smart ideas. And then, the Guttenberg Parenthesis was not really a parenthesis. Just the time it took us to admit books in the conversation ...
I have to admit it then. Google people are masters at buzz marketing. They just helped me understand the society we have been living in, and that we still look at through our old, romantic, pre-industrial revolution eyes. Just the same eyes many of us still use to look at our professional environment, at our good old organizations.
An, in my opinion, if there is a bot that we should worry about, it is precisely the corporation. I have little doubt that the best ones will take advantage of cheap, easy-to-install and easy-to-program platforms like Google Wave is. Why, if you think about it, why not replace maintenance-intensive FTE with easy-to-develop and maintenance-light bots ?
I’ll be writing about that in a future post.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Dépasser le capital humain ?
Dernière journée de travail sur le capital humain, organisée par RH&M, qui a regroupé un ensemble de personnes passionnés par le sujet, comme Jean-Marie Descarpentries, Philippe Masson, Wilfrid Raffard, Catherine Kettner ou Sylvie Cresson, entre autres.
Très belle journée, à mon sens, qui m'a permis d'avancer sur le sujet, mais aussi de le remettre en cause.
Avancer sur le sujet, d'abord, parce qu'une journée de travail en commun nous a permis de trouver une approche et une définition du capital humain qui est plus riche que celle que je connaissais jusqu'à maintenant:
Le capital humain :
1 - Est la conjugaison des talents et comportements individuels et collectifs, organisés et développés par l’entreprise pour créer durablement de la valeur
2 - Est aussi une dimension majeure de l’actif et du passif aujourd’hui non entièrement comptabilisée
3 - Il résulte de:
Remise en cause de cette approche du capital humain.
D'un point de vue très personnel, ce sont plutôt les réflexions d'un groupe sur "pourquoi mesurer le capital humain" qui m'ont le plus fortement marqué, et notamment la réflexion suivante : en mesurant le capital humain, ne sommes-nous pas en train de répondre à une contrainte externe (lisons: financière ou actionnariale) qui nous demande de ramener la dimension humaine de l'entreprise à des notions connues et qui s'intégrent bien dans la vison comptable de l'entreprise ?
Ce même groupe a souligné l'intérêt qu'il y a, dans cette approche du capital humain, à dépasser le cadre de gestion existant aujourd'hui. Je m'explique : si la mesure du capital humain est importante, ce n'est pas pour ramener la dimension humaine de l'entreprise dans les cadres actuels (organisation industrielle et gestion comptable), mais bien pour contribuer à poser les bases d'autres types d'organisations, et d'autres modes de valorisation de la production de l'entreprise.
C'est pourquoi, à mon avis, partagé par plusieurs des participants, ce débat autour du capital humain, qui ne fait que commencer, pose bien la question du rôle du DRH dans la direction de l'entreprise. Et cette question est posée non pas autour du type d'indicateur qui permettrait de "légitimer l'investissement dans le développement des collaborateurs d'un point de vue financier", mais bien autour de la notion même de la valeur produite pour l'entreprise, qui n'est certainement pas que financière et que la communauté des DRH, en s'emparant du sujet sur le capital humain, pourrait contribuer à remettre sur le devant de la scène.
Très belle journée, à mon sens, qui m'a permis d'avancer sur le sujet, mais aussi de le remettre en cause.
Avancer sur le sujet, d'abord, parce qu'une journée de travail en commun nous a permis de trouver une approche et une définition du capital humain qui est plus riche que celle que je connaissais jusqu'à maintenant:
Le capital humain :
1 - Est la conjugaison des talents et comportements individuels et collectifs, organisés et développés par l’entreprise pour créer durablement de la valeur
2 - Est aussi une dimension majeure de l’actif et du passif aujourd’hui non entièrement comptabilisée
3 - Il résulte de:
- L’épanouissement individuel et collectif
- La performance du travail collectif
- Les avantages compétitifs
- La valeur actionnariale
Remise en cause de cette approche du capital humain.
D'un point de vue très personnel, ce sont plutôt les réflexions d'un groupe sur "pourquoi mesurer le capital humain" qui m'ont le plus fortement marqué, et notamment la réflexion suivante : en mesurant le capital humain, ne sommes-nous pas en train de répondre à une contrainte externe (lisons: financière ou actionnariale) qui nous demande de ramener la dimension humaine de l'entreprise à des notions connues et qui s'intégrent bien dans la vison comptable de l'entreprise ?
Ce même groupe a souligné l'intérêt qu'il y a, dans cette approche du capital humain, à dépasser le cadre de gestion existant aujourd'hui. Je m'explique : si la mesure du capital humain est importante, ce n'est pas pour ramener la dimension humaine de l'entreprise dans les cadres actuels (organisation industrielle et gestion comptable), mais bien pour contribuer à poser les bases d'autres types d'organisations, et d'autres modes de valorisation de la production de l'entreprise.
C'est pourquoi, à mon avis, partagé par plusieurs des participants, ce débat autour du capital humain, qui ne fait que commencer, pose bien la question du rôle du DRH dans la direction de l'entreprise. Et cette question est posée non pas autour du type d'indicateur qui permettrait de "légitimer l'investissement dans le développement des collaborateurs d'un point de vue financier", mais bien autour de la notion même de la valeur produite pour l'entreprise, qui n'est certainement pas que financière et que la communauté des DRH, en s'emparant du sujet sur le capital humain, pourrait contribuer à remettre sur le devant de la scène.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Un capitalisme plus humain ?
J'ai eu la chance de participer hier à la première journée organisée par RH&M sur la mesure du capital humain. Mon impression personnelle: la remise en cause d'une certaine approche de l'entreprise par nombre des personnes présentes. Moments choisis:
L'approche de Philippe Masson sur les péchés capitaux du capitalisme, que je cite
La défense, de la part de Martine Clavel, d'APAX, de la responsabilisation des actionnaires sur la stratégie et la gestion RH, comme élément différenciateur et créateur de valeur.
Enfin, tout au long de la journée, les modèles alternatifs à une organisation classique, ceux qui défendent des principes ou des valeurs différents à la seule valeur aux actionnaires ont été égrainés d''une liste que j'espère voir grandir:
L'approche de Philippe Masson sur les péchés capitaux du capitalisme, que je cite
- L'Utopie de la sécurité au travailleurs contre le profit aux entrepreuneurs,
- L'Illusion plus actuelle de l'engagement des collaborateurs comme prix de leur employabilité,
- La Gourmandise coupable de quelques dirigeants, tombés dans un jeu d'égos
- L'Opacité sur les stratégies et les raisons sinon sur les chiffres
- La Frénésie qui mène à des performances sans lendemains
La défense, de la part de Martine Clavel, d'APAX, de la responsabilisation des actionnaires sur la stratégie et la gestion RH, comme élément différenciateur et créateur de valeur.
Enfin, tout au long de la journée, les modèles alternatifs à une organisation classique, ceux qui défendent des principes ou des valeurs différents à la seule valeur aux actionnaires ont été égrainés d''une liste que j'espère voir grandir:
- Mutualité,
- Franchises,
- Partnership,
- Ecosystème de PME,
- MulitSided Platforms,
- Entreprises en réseau,
- Capitalisme familial,
- ...
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Séquestrer des dirigeants, ou l'absence de dialogue
Je ne rentrerai pas dans le débat de la justesse ou la légalité de ces faits qui se multiplient sous nos yeux. Je voudrais souligner le fait, plus grave, qu'ils traduisent : l'impossible dialogue, aujourd'hui, entre une logique financière et une vision plus humaine de l'entreprise.
Les faits, tels que je les comprends : depuis un an, se débloquent sous nos yeux les positions de risques extrêmes prises par des opérateurs sur les marchés financiers. Ces opérations ont porté un coup fatal aux intermédiaires financiers, responsables du financement, de la liquidité et du crédit de l'économie, donc des entreprises. Sauver ces intermédiaires est apparu aux dirigeants des principaux états comme indispensable. Cela a été fait et, au premier trimestre 2009, les grandes banques renouent avec le profit.
L'économie non financière s'adapte plus lentement aux bouleversements vécus par les marchés financiers. Devant l'absence de crédit ou liquidité, l'activité diminue; prévoyant la diminution, les entreprises se préparent, déstockent, suppriment les frais variables qui peuvent être supprimés, notamment les frais de personnel.
Pourquoi cela ? Je vais simplifier, mais je dirai qu'il y a deux grandes raisons:
Nous ne sommes plus à une époque où les salariés peuvent être assimilés à des coûts variables. Les conséquences sur le tissu social français sont trop graves; les conséquences sur la confiance que les prochaines générations auront dans leurs entreprises et leurs dirigeants sont trop graves; les conséquences de cet état d'esprit sur la société française sont trop graves.
Lorsque la démocratie abdique à la porte de l'entreprise, il ne suffit plus de regarder la loi. A quels extrêmes sommes-nous arrivés pour que des salariés en soient réduits à séquestrer les dirigeants auxquels ils ont un jour fait confiance ?
Les faits, tels que je les comprends : depuis un an, se débloquent sous nos yeux les positions de risques extrêmes prises par des opérateurs sur les marchés financiers. Ces opérations ont porté un coup fatal aux intermédiaires financiers, responsables du financement, de la liquidité et du crédit de l'économie, donc des entreprises. Sauver ces intermédiaires est apparu aux dirigeants des principaux états comme indispensable. Cela a été fait et, au premier trimestre 2009, les grandes banques renouent avec le profit.
L'économie non financière s'adapte plus lentement aux bouleversements vécus par les marchés financiers. Devant l'absence de crédit ou liquidité, l'activité diminue; prévoyant la diminution, les entreprises se préparent, déstockent, suppriment les frais variables qui peuvent être supprimés, notamment les frais de personnel.
Pourquoi cela ? Je vais simplifier, mais je dirai qu'il y a deux grandes raisons:
- Pour des TPE et PME, c'est leur survie qui est en jeu; aujourd'hui, alors que les attaques sur les "patrons" se multiplient en France, on entend les histoires de patrons de PME ou TPE qui ne se payent plus depuis le début de la crise;
- Pour des grandes entreprises, notamment pour des entreprises cotées, il s'agit de continuer de satisfaire aux critères financiers qui sont devenu la pierre angulaire de leur gouvernance.
Nous ne sommes plus à une époque où les salariés peuvent être assimilés à des coûts variables. Les conséquences sur le tissu social français sont trop graves; les conséquences sur la confiance que les prochaines générations auront dans leurs entreprises et leurs dirigeants sont trop graves; les conséquences de cet état d'esprit sur la société française sont trop graves.
Lorsque la démocratie abdique à la porte de l'entreprise, il ne suffit plus de regarder la loi. A quels extrêmes sommes-nous arrivés pour que des salariés en soient réduits à séquestrer les dirigeants auxquels ils ont un jour fait confiance ?
Monday, April 6, 2009
If collaboration is bad for you, make it better
An interesting article by Morten T. Hansen underlines the need to carefully analyse whether to launch a collaboration project or not. While he underlines important aspects of successful collaboration, in my opinion, he does not delve long enough in how to build the perfect conditions for successful collaboration within an organization. And what collaboration, exactly ?
I am always pleased to see people taking the time to think about how to make collaboration successful and stressing how difficult this can be. The whole E2.0 movement sometimes seems to forget that collaboration in corporations did not start with the arrival of E2.0 technologies, and that companies have developed skills and capabilities for improved collaboration.
This is, to my mind, why the article by Hansen comes at the right moment. He gives precise examples on why collaboration could fail (overestimating financial results of collaboration, ignoring opportunity costs or underestimating collaboration costs), and therefore contributes to a necessary reassesement of collaboration projects.
Still, I found two aspects of his article that would deserve further research:
I find even more important to go further into the analysis of the projected return of collaboration, depending on the depth of the collaboration project. Obviously, making two different units or teams collaborate at a given point on a given project generates costs and the returns can only be in terms of cash generated.
But shouldn't Hansen go deeper in analyzing the projected returns of collaboration projects that actually change the DNA of the organization ? Because, in my opinion, when he points that "the collaboration imperative is a hallmark of today's business environment", it is not collaboration as usual.
The hallmark of today's business environment is the development of collaboration as an alternative to hierarchy for a precise number of business situations. We are not speaking about making BUs or teams learn to collaborate transversally (even though this is important). We are speaking about giving the organization a new organization dimension, based of people who are able to identify each other and organize to solve a business problem.
It is about governing and giving responsibility for transversal collaboration that does not need hierarchical micromanagement.
I am always pleased to see people taking the time to think about how to make collaboration successful and stressing how difficult this can be. The whole E2.0 movement sometimes seems to forget that collaboration in corporations did not start with the arrival of E2.0 technologies, and that companies have developed skills and capabilities for improved collaboration.
This is, to my mind, why the article by Hansen comes at the right moment. He gives precise examples on why collaboration could fail (overestimating financial results of collaboration, ignoring opportunity costs or underestimating collaboration costs), and therefore contributes to a necessary reassesement of collaboration projects.
Still, I found two aspects of his article that would deserve further research:
- First, when analyzing the projected return of the collaboration project, Hansen seems to concentrate on the cash-flow it can generate;
- Second, when analyzing collaboration costs, he does not seem to take into account the potential for improved collaboration due to E2.0 technologies.
I find even more important to go further into the analysis of the projected return of collaboration, depending on the depth of the collaboration project. Obviously, making two different units or teams collaborate at a given point on a given project generates costs and the returns can only be in terms of cash generated.
But shouldn't Hansen go deeper in analyzing the projected returns of collaboration projects that actually change the DNA of the organization ? Because, in my opinion, when he points that "the collaboration imperative is a hallmark of today's business environment", it is not collaboration as usual.
The hallmark of today's business environment is the development of collaboration as an alternative to hierarchy for a precise number of business situations. We are not speaking about making BUs or teams learn to collaborate transversally (even though this is important). We are speaking about giving the organization a new organization dimension, based of people who are able to identify each other and organize to solve a business problem.
It is about governing and giving responsibility for transversal collaboration that does not need hierarchical micromanagement.
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