KM 2.0 based on Social Media fuels Complexity. Managing complexity necessitates new culture and new leadership competences
In Tech Boom 2.0: Boom but no bubble?, I highlighted the collaboration centricity of new investments:
A new emphasis on social networking and connecting people, rather than e-commerce, which consumers did not trust in 2000.
Given the dismal failure of so many KM implementations - which were often poorly thought-out and brittle databases - a shift to the use of Social Media for collaboration is proving itself as a worthy (albeit horribly late) successor to email.
A role for unmuddling
There is a huge lag between the multitude of Web 2.0 tools available and the average skill-level of the general population to adopt these tools. Workers have a dizzying array of choices, and the need to get Corporate Knowledge rationalized as an asset for the firm fuels corporates to adopt standards, and fuels a boom in demand for training.
Promise in Collaboration Power
Imagination is more important than knowledge… Albert Einstein
Social Media is a powerful addition to Org Chart and HR-driven Incentives, as employees don’t need support of their boss to find out what another department does and to start working with peers in far flung part of the company. The reduction in the manager’s responsibility to explicitly transmit communications make interacting across the enterprise much cheaper, opening up all sorts of new possibilities for very different types of innovation because thoughts aren’t just being amplified by the people you’ve already met and agreed with, instead they are being looked at by fresh minds, who can fill in gaps and use your case to amplify their own needs. The transparency affords the company’s staff with the ability to swarm to what they find most interesting, raising engagement and productivity in the firm. Social Media is Middleware for Thoughts.
New Leadership Demands
However, the number of people you can maintain a sequence of interactions with changes from 7-12 (the typical Span of Control) to theoretically proportional to the square of the number of employees in the firm, which gets to 1,000,000 connections with 1,000 people. Such a radical increase in complexity is a step off into the unknown for leaders. Moving to this model requires a strategy centered on collaboration rather than control, methods to recognize complexity (in place of problems that are merely terrifically complicated), a culture dedicated to the aims of the firm, and a (sometimes blind) trust that it will all actually turn out for the best.
This can be difficult for Today’s Leaders
Every generation discovers the world for itself and adopts the best tools available to it, but the bulk of today’s workers and leaders don’t have this experience.
Consultancies can help
My job is helping leaders and managers see this new world. I can help support your business case with adoption models, stories from the field and using minimal interventions to affect and inform change. We help clients enhance Growth and Innovation using key interventions across a set of interrelated systems in ten dimensions: Governance, Strategy, Process, Information Technology, People, Culture and Change and Measurement and how these play out through Purpose, Identity, Reputation, Trust, Commerce, Transparency, Networks, Boundaries and Real Time Collaboration.
The result is a strategy facilitating the development of Collaboration and Culture that takes advantage of such Complexity.
