A Conversation Today: Culture & Transformation

Met with a good friend and colleague today. He asked for a list of thought starters on culture and transformation at the enterprise level.

Here's my response.

Culture & Transformation -Thought Starters

“I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game – it is the game.” L. Gerstner, former CEO, IBM

What experts and consultants don’t talk about when meeting a CEO.

• · Today, there is no organization that has the time necessary to achieve the cultural changes they seek

• · If it is true that “all politics is local”, then it is also true, that all significant business transformation is local and then networked

• · Transformation on an enterprise level is dependent on identifying inhibitors to knowledge sharing, revealing the communication blocks and making work visible

• Visibility = Accountability in effective silo busting activities

• · It is possible to measure trust. Trust in people and trust in systems.

• · Collaborative behaviors speed transformation across traditional boundaries

• · The Change Management element is to put the executive into the mix. Not outside the mix, reviewing and providing approval

• · Culture is a living entity. It is both powerful and fragile. Think of the Petri dish. Culture can be inhibited and even destroyed. Or, it can grow as it is supposed to.

• · Changing the lens to view culture as continuous development professionally, and personally, is the power to transform the enterprise

• · Web 2.0 provides us with the ability to organize critical conversations. It also changes fundamental roles and responsibilities. Stories help identify workplace realities.

• · Alignment of key roles and responsibilities from the communities’ perspective is an imperative in today’s networked environment

• · Time is on your side when a continuous improvement approach is enabled

Answering a Question

Someone asked "whether social media/networking helps or hurts business?" on a social networking site a couple of days ago..

Here is my response:

In some ways, even asking the question becomes awkward in today's workplace.

However, you ask a perfect question for us to confront. Living in a Web 2.0 environment changes our perspectives on knowledge sharing and traditional OD frameworks.

"Conversations" become understood as critical. However, with Web 2.0 both meaningful transformation and speculative hype are possible. Tools like ONA (Organizational Network Analysis) and VNA (Value Network Analysis) are tremendously useful to create clearer pictures of a current state for communication patterns and role sharing.

Even when given this kind of scientific imaging, many companies remain the same, as if the information is "interesting".

We are always faced with the fundamental question of any technology advance. What are our intentions? It is a more important question than what is the value of the technology change.

The tools will continue to develop, but it is the intention that is always the best focus to achieve results.

I do not believe that many organizations have really sought to understand the complexity and abilities of Social Networking. The irony is -- that no one can stop it.

We can only learn the need to understand more. My reason for saying that even your question (though perfectly appropriate), may be awkward, is simple.

It's like saying we are at a family reunion but we don't want to admit there are new children in the flock.

Social Networking affects every business and community on earth. Whether we include or exclude critical conversations is directly related to our overall intentions.

Paternalistic communication modes still exist in many organizations but it's getting more difficult not to hear the new kids at play.

Whether social media/networking helps or hurts is up to the communities and what they really want. One can enjoy the sound of new kids in the family or be annoyed at having to share the room tone.


Sal

Innovation and Measurement - The US Economy

This January 2008 report sent by a colleague, focuses on issues like:

Why is it important to measure innovation?

"While we recognize that the American economy is changing in fundamental ways—and that most of this change relates directly to innovation—our understanding remains incomplete. Indeed, data collection and measurement, while seemingly mundane, loom large in understanding these changes. Policymakers, investors, executives, managers, consumers, and researchers require accurate and complete information in order to make informed decisions. The centrality of the need to advance innovation measurement cannot be understated".

A Report to the Secretary of Commerce by The Advisory Committee on Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy January 2008

http://www.innovationmetrics.gov/Innovation%20Measurement%2001-08%20rev%20040908.pdf

Click above or cut and paste to see full PDF report.

Sal

Sports Analogies?

I usually stay away from sports analogies when discussing the work place. However, professional sport is a work place.

Currently, two New York baseball teams are under great scrutiny for individual and team performance.

Fans are outraged at the lack of consistency and questioning everything from recruitment of new players to actual business models. Both teams, the NY Yankees and the NY Mets are currently building new stadiums.

The new stadiums are clearly geared for the "corporate high end private box" crowd as opposed to the everyday "fan". The business management teams will argue that these new arenas with fewer low cost seats, are really designed to help business in general and provide the average fan with a better view. The fans are not buying it.

What's interesting as well, is the sudden rising success of the Los Angeles Dodgers on the West Coast. It has been noted that Joe Torre, the former NY Yankee manager has helped to solve an in-house problem amongst players.

It seems that Joe, with his well known management style, has been able to bring together the younger athletes and the seasoned veterans. A long-term difficulty in the Dodger club house.

The current NY teams are also going through a difficult transition -- building very young players abilities in the face of a real baseball season in the big leagues. And, it is showing. Some believe it's prep time for the new stadiums. That this season is a "write-off" so that next year, really competitive teams will appear in a new money generating environment.

This is conjecture but good stuff for sports fans to argue. However, think about the players. Baseball represents a grueling travel and work schedule. More relentless than we, as observers, can imagine.

What does it mean when young gifted new comers have to work and align with seasoned vets? And, what does it mean to have to work with younger players who offer different views and experience.

Many people who are working in large organizations today, may not carry any of the baggage from the re-engineering days of their company's "journey".

And, research by organizations like Watson Wyatt articulate the rapid number of people turning fifty every day in the U.S. and how that will affect the productivity of organizations as we dwindle the number of workers with deep knowledge.

Two NY teams are suffering right now from a transition of power and lack of ability to adjust to a new composition.

I think about the "keywords" that professional resume writers place into the credentials of "older workers" just to get the resume passed the first line of software logic that sorts peoples' lives into relevant or not relevant.

How do we help understand the workers with knowledge and the workers with thirst for knowledge?

Actually, I don't see this as a sports analogy. Rather, as a U.S. loved activity like baseball, providing a glimpse into our work ethic and enjoyment. A function that baseball has always provided.

Sal

Have a Global Beverage?

Today, Pepsi (second largest beverage company) announced improvement in quarterly earnings in spite of the rise in commodity costs. International sales were sighted as the financial thrust.

The bottling leg of Coca-Cola announced a significant drop due to high commodity costs.

Starbucks announced lower than anticipated quarterly earnings due to the U.S. consumer lack of spending.

I keep thinking about the hot dog vendors in Times Square who now take Euros.

Sal

Web 3.0 - Is It The Promise of Re-engineering?

I was looking at some quotes regarding web 2.0 since I have become interested in pursuing what web 3.0 may offer us in the workplace.

Here's one from Auren Hoffman CEO, Rapleaf.

"We (the community) have time to create linux, which is amazing, we have time to create wikipedia, we have time to put reviews on yelp, and read and write blogs. We just have way to much time on our hands, maybe that was all time we were doing passive things watching TV, now all that passive time has become active time and we are creating stuff".

I found this quote interesting having spent several years working on large scale re-engineering efforts. How does this move to 2.0 and now 3.0 allow us to create "stuff" that's valuable?

1. Early Intranet development really enabled a power change. People began to understand that they could make decisions faster than management. Intranet created an ability to shift power and distribution of information while Internet enables a change in the distribution of labor, services and goods.

2. The move to "common process" was not easy and many organizations still have not realized the fulfillment of process/processes changes decades after their re-engineering

3. Knowledge Management thinking is changing as companies like IBM take a new look at "conversations"

Is web 3.0 the fulfillment of what re-engineering promised?

In a world where communication and implementation are often the same/simultaneous customer experience, what is it that we want from collaborative information sharing capability? What "stuff" are we talking about.

What do you think?

Sal

Some other good quotes:

Web 2.0 CEO Quotes From TechCrunch Video

http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/web-20-ceo-quotes-from-techcrunch-video

Report: Low Grad Rates in US Cities

By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press

Posted: 2008-04-01 01:23:56

WASHINGTON (AP) - Seventeen of the nation's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report, issued by America's Promise Alliance, found that about half of the students served by public school systems in the nation's largest cities receive diplomas. Students in suburban and rural public high schools were more likely to graduate than their counterparts in urban public high schools, the researchers said.

Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma and about 1.2 million students drop out annually.

"When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe," said former Secretary of State Colin Powell, founding chair of the alliance.

His wife, Alma Powell, the chair of the alliance, said students need to graduate with skills that will help them in higher education and beyond. "We must invest in the whole child, and that means finding solutions that involve the family, the school and the community." The Powell's organization was beginning a national campaign to cut high school dropout rates.

The group, joining Education Secretary Margaret Spellings at a Tuesday news conference, was announcing plans to hold summits in every state during the next two years on ways to better prepare students for college and the work force.

The report found troubling data on the prospects of urban public high school students getting to college. In Detroit's public schools, 24.9 percent of the students graduated from high school, while 30.5 percent graduated in Indianapolis Public Schools and 34.1 percent received diplomas in the Cleveland Municipal City School District.

Researchers analyzed school district data from 2003-2004 collected by the U.S. Department of Education. To calculate graduation rates, the report estimated the likelihood that a 9th grader would complete high school on time with a regular diploma. Researchers used school enrollment and diploma data, but did not use data on dropouts as part of its calculation.

Many metropolitan areas also showed a considerable gap in the graduation rates between their inner-city schools and the surrounding suburbs. Researchers found, for example, that 81.5 percent of the public school students in Baltimore's suburbs graduate, compared with 34.6 percent in the city schools.

In Ohio, nearly 83 percent of public high school students in suburban Columbus graduate while 78.1 percent in suburban Cleveland earn their diplomas, well above their local city schools.

Ohio Department of Education spokesman Scott Blake said the state delays its estimates by a few months so it can include summer graduates in its calculations. Based on the state's methodology, he said Columbus graduated 60.6 percent of its students in 2003-2004, rather than the 40.9 percent the study calculated.

By Ohio's reckoning, Columbus has improved each year since the 2001-2002 school year, with 72.9 percent of students graduating in 2005-2006, Columbus Public Schools spokesman Jeff Warner said.

Warner said the gains were partly because of after-school and weekend tutoring, coordinated literacy programs in the district's elementary schools and bolstered English-as-a-second-language programs.

Cleveland's current graduation rates are also higher than the statistics cited in the new report, school district spokesman Ben Holbert said.

Spellings has called for requiring states to provide graduation data in a more uniform way under the renewal of the No Child Left Behind education law pending in Congress.

Under the 2002 law, schools that miss progress goals face increasing sanctions, including forced use of federal money for private tutoring, easing student transfers, and restructuring of school staff.

States calculate their graduation rates using all sorts of methods, many of which critics say are based on unreliable information about school dropouts. Under No Child Left Behind, states may use their own methods of calculating graduation rates and set their own goals for improving them.

The research was conducted by Editorial Projects in Education, a Bethesda, Md., nonprofit organization, with support from America's Promise Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The alliance is based on a joint effort of nonprofit groups, corporations, community leaders, charities, faith-based organizations and individuals to improve children's lives.

On the Net:

America's Promise Alliance: http://www.americaspromise.org/