infoarch

Just before the weekend I wanted to share this interesting 10 minute talk with you about hierarchies and networks. For one because it's just fascinating to watch how RSA visualizes this talk. Secondly because of the talk itself. Manual Lima's talk about "The power of networks" is fascinating. He gives an overview of how we used to try to structure everything in hierarchies and trees, because we like order and simplicity. And how we now shift to using networks more because trees simply can't describe reality. Knowledge, species, bacteria, our brain, our body, societies, etc. are highly connected. He wraps up his talk by asking if there is a universal structure? Well, do you think there is one? Of course there has been lots of thinking and talking about what this means for organizations, people and technology. The shift Lima describes is the shift 'social business' and 'enterprise 2.0' is describing. And it's the shift social technology is...

Breakout participants: Bart Schutte, Cordelia Krooss, Jean-Yves Huwart and myself. I thought I'd share some of my notes about the breakout and continued discussion we had about the role of the Enterprise 2.0 Manager, now and in the future. The discussion started where we left off after Cordelia presented her vision on this role . One of the main discussion points was whether we will need a e2.0 manager in the future organization (organization 2.0, as Cordelia called it). The notes and statements are not my own, but are a collection of what we shared in our breakout. When 2.0 principles are pervasive in the organization we don’t need the e2.0 champion. But doesn’t it depend on the type of organization? Does it change all organizations fundamentally? Does it apply to all businesses? Transparency and externalization are business trends. E2.0 tools give the company a means to relate to these trends. Organizational levels and structures will continue to exist, but there impor...

I listen to the HBR Ideacast regularly. Recently Gary Hamel was interviewed about his HBR article 'First, Let's Fire all the Managers' . As you may know Hamel has devoted a large part of his life to thinking about better ways to organize and manage companies. What kind of management (if any) does this time period need. Of course, Hamel goes into why he wrote an article about this topic. But to me the most interesting part was that Hamel provides examples of companies that don't have management. When I was listening I caught myself thinking: Yeah, less management would be great, but can we really live without them? Hamel shows it can be done. He points to one company called Morningstar for instance. Very interesting and thought-provoking! What do you think? Can your company or could you live without management?

Back to work after a wonderful vacation in the US! Really enjoyed being there. My sister lives there. We went to the Gulf of Mexico with them and stayed there for a week. And we also travelled to Washington D.C. Went to the Museums in D.C. (we had already 'done' the monuments in a previous trip), went hiking in Shenadoah National Park, etc. Now back to work. Worked through my email, feeds and tweets. One post I saved to read was  this interesting post by prof. John Kotter, Hierarchy and Network: Two Structures, One Organization . A must-read for all social media and social business people! Lots of discussion there. I also commented on the post. I wrote: Wow, lots of discussion here. I liked the post as well. I blogged about this topic a couple of times. I agree with some of the comments made stating the hierarchy and business is older than the 19th century. I do think you can say the 19th century made hierarchy the way to go. I think this is one of the reasons social media is...