Waking Up Sleeping Giants

Something is in the air.  Is it change?  Could it be?  Is the business world really ready to work a little differently?  Evolve business models and offerings?  Offer new solutions?  Or will we cling to how it's always worked for us in the past?  Maybe you work in sector where advances in technology and evolving human behavior hasn't affected what you do.  But most of the readers here are feeling the change.  Feeling it daily—sometimes hourly, seconds, nanoseconds.  Growing pains.  Friction.  Tension. If your lucky—growth.  And in many cases success.  Most of us work in organizations with clearly defined hierarchies.  Some of us work in organizations that support working in both hierarchies AND networks.    Regardless, I have to wonder if change is in the air for real?  Have we really woken up the sleeping giant—and if so, what will happen next?  Some food for thought to chew on as we witness the sometimes awkward waltz between digital natives and digital immigrants:

"Agile is the new rigid. In order to thrive in the digital age—individuals, brands and business must adapt, evolve and demonstrate a nimble flexibility that bends rather than breaks. Flexibility rules in the form of never-ending beta releases, experimentation and innovation. In the digital age—planning will be essential, but improvisation will be required."
~Digabilities (Experience Matters)

"OK, it's not necessary for everyone to be able to build the next great Facebook app, but everybody needs to be curious about and aware of what kinds of digital innovations are cropping up and where marketers might fit into them. Crew's Ms. Wall said her account team "needs to be on top of the Facebook open application program or the new [Apple] Leopard blogging software."
~The Digital Skills Job Seekers Need To Survive Now (AdAge)

"We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having one million (subscribers), having at least 10 million-15 million in every corner of the earth,"
~Rupert Murdoch

"The changes that we are all feeling in the workplace and within our industries which are requiring us to think and work slightly differently.   We can no longer afford to over-analyze our challenges. We must try to get things launched—learn from these experiences and refine.  We must define ourselves and what we do more broadly while retaining the potency of our our crafts.  It's about going from left brain to right brain and ending up on "light brain".  We must become "fuzzy".
~The Fuzzy Tail


(Visual By Idris Mootee)

"These talents are the innovators or collaborators of innovation. They make it possible for companies to come up with new business model that help them to survive today's rapidly changing and disruptive business environment. They are the people who produce and manage the intangible assets that are the primary way companies in create economic value. Unfortunately the educational system of the world is to provide a uniform level of competence based on the faulty metaphor of education as a factory ( It's worth recalling that Steve Jobs' brief college career included an utterly impractical interest in calligraphy."
~Enterprise 2.0 and the concept of Virtuality

It's important to remember that while we may be feeling the shifts—in reality it may take much longer for outdated models to reform.  But it's hard to deny that the world is spinning.  The giants are waking up.  The only question is how long will it take?  So has your job changed in the past 5 years?  If so—how?  I'd love to hear about it.

Update:
Just found out that the agency.com Dallas office closed it's doors. I worked at agency.com (Chicago) with some really great people for nearly six years.  That office is still present—yet most of the people I worked with have moved on.  Digital and non digital companies alike are not immune to change.

Comments

[Gavin Heaton]

Most large corporations describe this as matrix management. If you work in the matrix your challenge is to exert influence in such a way that your project is successful (rather than relying on sheer political command/control power).

What is interesting is that social networks now provide some form of cohesion across the matrix -- formalising the connections that are already in existence in the loosely coupled corporate matrix. My guess is that those organisations with a matrix structure will benefit from opening up to social apps like Facebook, while those with rigid hierarchies will resist.

[David Cushman]

My job has changed from being a centre-out journalist to being an edge-in advocate for change.
I wrote about the requirement to change in a white paper: Don't just witness the power of the network, be part of it.
It's free to download (or contribute to) on my blog: fasterfuture.blogspot.com

I believe, like Darwin, that in order to adapt to survive in a changing environment, you have to live in it.

So if you want to succeed in the networked non-silo'd world, you had better start living in it.

[Graham Hill]

David

The death of organisational hierarchies is greatly overestimated. As Harold Leavitt described in his article 'Why Hierarchies Thrive' - http://people.stfx.ca/slyons/BSAD361/Articles/leavitt%202003.pdf - in the Harvard Business review, hierarchies still fulfil many organisational needs like providing a sense of identity within an organisation, being a marker of progress up the organisational ladder and being the best way to manage complex projects. Hierachies are clearly here to stay.

But that doesn't mean that they can't be adapted.

Rather than matrix organisations, which have their own problems, a better way to combine the best of hierachies with the best of networks (markets) are 'hybrid' organisations - http://esnie.u-paris10.fr/pdf/textes_2004/Chabaud_Zenger2002.pdf . I worked with a credit card company almost 10 years ago implementing a hybrid organisation with a flexible, adaptable network front-end that was close to the market, combined with an efficient, effective hierarchical back-end that operated standardised core processes that serviced the market.

Networks whether communities of one kind or another, or looser social networks, are difficult to direct, manage and motivate. Although some work on 'swarm organisations' is being done by the US military - http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1100/ - these are still early days. And despite the success of the Open Source network, still represents the exception that is unlikely to break the rule of hierarchies.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager

[Robert Hartt]

Organisational working environments are changing but I think it will take a few more years until we see a majority of corporations acting differently in their corporate cultures.

Nowadays, leaders and managers are asking themselves how to do things differently and a few ideas are starting to gain favor:

1) Intellectual networking - realization that innovative and economically valuable ideas arise from thinking from different disciplines and from outside of one's organization.

2) Employee growth strategies - a "real" focus on helping each employee grow and push their knowledge levels.

The speed of how this transformation happens will depend on how quickly CEOs and corporate leaders assign importance and effort these initiatives.

[DA]

Thanks for the thoughts.

Graham, I'm sure you noticed that I stressed that some organizations embrace networks in addition to hierarchy, NOT in place of. Hierarchy isn't bad and it's essential. Hell, most successful organizations have someone at the top supporting key initiatives. What I am saying is that many organazations have employees comfortable working in the "networl" model, hence the "+".

Many are also very uncomfortable with this and prefer hierarchy only. And also long for the good 'ol days.

[jon burg]

Thanks for sharing!

So how would you recommend building an agency/media infrastructure that is always ready and able to adapt?

There will always be a hierarchy, there will always be structure. Building a business model that speaks to the rapid fire shifting nature of the digital environment is the challenge. Google's approximately 70/30 focused/experimental structure works extremely well - but I'm not convinced that this model will yield the future innovations of tomorrow.

I could go on and on, but rather than speak my mind I'd rather hear all of your thoughts!

How would you build a business model that is flexible, innovative and adaptive yet efficient? Could a modular solution be the answer?

[DA]

"So how would you recommend building an agency/media infrastructure that is always ready and able to adapt? "

Big question Jon. Not sure I have the answer. But I think it starts with the hierarchy empowering teams to work in clusters, networks and "cells" while they fill a dual role of navigating the hierarchy and ensuring that the best work gets done. Likewise, those working more often in the "network" model have to realize that their efforts can only go so far unless they have the backing of the hierarchy.

I guess what I'm saying is one hand washes the other. But I'm not an expert in this area—more of an observer.

[Ellen Weber]

Great post and discussion - and I especially enjoyed the many colors and shapes tossed at this topic. It seems to me that before networks can replace a few of the more archaic hierarchies - far more effective facilitators would be needed.

The growing success of blogs alone speaks for the need of more networks ... and now it's a matter of learning to draw from diversity in ways that offer higher dividends all around. It can happen ... as this site shows so well. Thanks!

[Graham Hill]

I fully agree with Ellen's suggestion that facilitation is required to make this brave new world of hybrid or networked organisations work.

There is a well established migration path from hierarchical to hybrid structures which starts with informal social networking (the 'shadow system' that exists in all organisations), evolves to X-functional teams to start collaboration, evolves further to formal coordinators/facilitaters to drive collaboration out to the whole organisation and finally evolves to a more formal hybrid organisation. Facilitation of this kind typically takes up 40% of my time in the hybrid organisation client work I do these days.

But this misses out the whole outside world of customers, partners and the market as a whole. Why draw the organisations boundaries like an impervious wall, when it need not be. We need more 'open thinking' to bring in customers for customer-driven innovation, marketing and self-service like Tony Ulwick, Eric von Hippel and Patty Seybold describe, and partners and markets for open innovation like Henry Chesbrough describes and to do it all in real-time like John Arquilla and Peter Gloor describe. And guess what, all of these are going to need strong facilitation if they are to get started and to work within and for organisations.

Graham Hill