Work smarter, not harder.

Have you heard that?  I did, in my first job out of college; my boss said it, but it wasn’t clear what it meant.  What does ‘work smarter’ mean?  I already thought I was working smarter.  Well, as I’ve learned (in conjunction with my ITA colleagues), it means a number of things that organizations can, and should, do.

So, what is known about when we work smarter? We work smarter under a number of conditions: when we have a clear goal of what we’re supposed to achieve and we recognize it’s importance; when we’re free to experiment, explore, and even fail; when we have colleagues to collaborate with; and  when we have the resources we need available ‘to hand’.  This provides some guidance about what an organization should be doing to optimize the likelihood of success.

We need to be doing meaningful work that we’re excited about.  We need to be connected to a vision, and understand how our role contributes.  There needs to be transparency above and below as well as ahead, so we can see how the parts are working together.

We also need a culture where that transparency is empowering, not threatening. It has to be safe to perform in public, to share our thoughts, and to both provide and receive help to others.  Where, when mistakes are made, the lessons are learned and shared.

We need to see it as important to contribute, and be enabled to communicate to the right people, and be able to work together to get the job done.  We need time to reflect as well, to take time to think about what we’re doing. We should be doing that publicly too. We need to learn out loud and together.

Finally, we need the tools available. We shouldn’t have to take time to go multiple places to get what we need, and use inconsistent interfaces to use them. We should have an environment where we’re focused on our tasks, and can get who and what we need to stay focused.

How to work smarter isn’t a mystery. The mystery is why  more organizations aren’t systematically breaking down the barriers to working smarter.  Are you ready to get going?

A post I wrote for the ATC conference:

As I prepare to talk to the Australasian Talent Conference I’ve naturally been thinking about the intersection of that field and what I do. As I recently  blogged, I think there’s an overlap between OD and the work of trying to facilitate organizational performance through technology. I think Talent Management  similarly has an overlap.

While technology is used in talent management, it really is more focused on the management part, supporting the role of HR in recruitment, competencies, and more. Which  is good, but now there’s more on the table.  We now have the benefits of Web 2.0 to leverage. To understand how, it helps to look at the charateristics of Web 2.0.  Brent Schlenker talks about the 5-ables:

• findable – the ability to use search to find things
• feedable – the ability to subscribe to content
• linkable – the ability to point to content
• taggable – allowing other to add descriptors
• editable – allowing others to add content

At core, this is about leveraging the power of the network to get improved outcomes. When others can add value, they do. We have seen that in learning and development, and the drivers there are not unique to the area.

Things are moving faster, and information is increasing. Worse, that information is more volatile, as well. As if that weren’t enough, competition is increasing.  The luxury to plan, prepare, and execute is increasingly a thing of the past.  As a consequence, optimal execution is only the cost of entry, and continual innovation is the necessary differentiator.

As a result, the old top-down mentality is no longer a solution, one person can not do all the necessary thinking for a team. Instead, forward-thinking organizations are finding the solution in empowering their people to work together to come up with the necessary solutions. They are devolving problem-solving, research, design, innovation further down in the organization, and realizing real results from the process. Instead of having to own all the content, learning units are instead facilitating the development of answers from among the stakeholders.

Note that by doing so, organizations are also making work more meaningful and consequently more rewarding. As Dan Pink’s Drive demonstrates, individuals are more motivated by the opportunity to engage than by artificial rewards. And these results are not unique to high-tech, but being seen in organizations engaged in manufacturing, medicine, and more.

This revolution can, and should, be seen in talent management as well. Throughout the lifecycle of talent, the network can add value. Beyond recruiting, networks can be used for talent evaluation, and then within the organization for onboarding, development, performance management, and even debriefing and alumni activities.

The point is to think about how to tap into the power of people. And even when you are now hiring people, you are not just hiring what is in  their heads, but what’s also in their networks. Similarly, they are choosing organizations on how well they use networks. As the Cuetrain Manifesto documented, an organization can no longer control the message. If an organization is inauthentic externally, it is a safe bet that it is similarly dysfunctional internally.

Social media is much more than just marketing, it’s a tool to take advantage of for many reasons. More meaningful work, better outcomes, and a better connection to the market are just the top level benefits. Social, it’s not just for parties any more.

On principle (and for pragmatic reasons), I regularly think about how to define what I do, and to look for areas that are related.  As a consequence, I wonder if there’s another area I’m falling into, and more importantly, an interesting intersection that might warrant some exploration.

With my ITA colleagues, I’ve been looking at how to help organizations broaden the scope of the learning function to include informal and social learning, and leverage them to make organizations more successful.  And, given that it’s not about the technology, it ends up being a lot about how to create environments where social media can be used effectively.  This led me to wonder what was the proper category for that work. Is it business information systems?  However, that seems largely to be about databases. Is it industrial/organizational psychology?  That largely seems too focused on the individual, and on psychometrics.  That’s when I looked into organizational development (OD; as our associate, Jon Husband has champions with his wirearchy work).

If you read the definition of OD, you see “effort to increase an organization’s effectiveness and viability”. That’s largely what we’re on about, too.  As the Working Smarter Fieldbook says:  “We foresee a convergence of the ‘people disciplines’ in organizations. As the pieces of companies become densely interconnected, the differences between knowledge management, training, collaborative learning, organization development, internal communication, and social networking fade away.”   However, some of these fields are reasonably technology savvy, while others are more focused effective people processes.

As I look through the suite of approaches that OD takes, it feels very familiar.  Workshops, facilitations, the interventions used resonate very comfortably with what I’ve used and seen work.  The goals are also very similar.  However, I don’t see a lot of awareness or interest in technology.  I’m wondering if I’m missing a huge swath of work in leveraging technology to facilitate organizational development.  Or whether there’s a need and opportunity to start some cross-talk and look at the intersection for opportunities to leverage technology as a tool to increase an organization’s effectiveness and viability.  Kevin Wheeler, who’s organizing the talent event I’m presenting at in Sydney and has background in OD, opted for the latter.  What do you think?

Eileen Clegg from the Future of Talent Institute (and colleague, we co-wrote the Extremophiles chapter for  Creating a Learning Culture)  pinged me the other day and asked about my thoughts on the intersection of:

1. The new role of managers in the results-oriented work environment (ROWE)
2. The  topic of  blending the Talent and Learning functions in the workplace.

She’d been excited about Cognitive Apprenticeship years ago after hearing me talk about it, and wondered if there was a role to play. I see it as two things: orgs need optimal execution just as the cost of entry: that’s where apprenticeship fits in, but they also need continual innovation. That needs collaboration, and we are still exploring that, though there are some really clear components.  Though one of the nice things about cognitive apprenticeship is that it naturally incorporates collaborative learning, and can develop that as it develops understanding of the domain.

I admit I’m a little worried about ROWE from the point of view that Dan Pink picks out in  Drive, about how a maniacal focus on results could lead to people doing anything necessary to achieve results. It’s got to be a little more about taking mutual ownership (producer and whoever is ‘setting’ the result) that the result is meeting the org need in a holistic (even ‘wise’ way).

What has to kick in here is a shared belief in a vision/mission that you can get behind, individuals equipped to solve problems collaboratively (what I call big L learning: research, design, experimentation, etc), and tools to hand for working together. You apprentice both in tasks *and* learning, basically, until you’re an expert in your domain are defining what’s new in conjunction with your collaborators.

Expressed by my colleague was a concern that there was a conflict between”(a) supporting someone’s learning and (b) being invested in the success of their work product”. And I would think that the management is NOT directly invested in the product, only in the producer.  Helping them be the best they can be and all that.  If they’re not producing good output, they either need to develop the person or replace them, which indirectly affects the product.  However, this isn’t new for mentors as well: they want their charges to do well, but the most they can do is influence the performer to the best of their ability.

As a component, learners need to develop their PKM/PLN (personal knowledge management, personal learning network). And 21st century skills aren’t taken for granted but identified and developed. In addition, the performance ecosystem, aka workscape – not only formal learning but also performance support, informal learning, and social learning – is the responsibility of the integrated talent/learning functions (which absolutely should be blended).  And ‘management’ may move more toward mentorship, or be a partner between someone strategizing across tasks and a talent development function in the organization.

As an extension to my ‘slow learning’ model, I think that the distinction between learning and performing from the point of view of support needs to go away. We can and should be concerned with the current performance and the long-term development of the learner at the same time.  Thus, the long term picture is of ongoing apprenticeship towards mutually negotiated and understood goals, both work and personal development.