Holidays: Yes! Weekends: No!

At Harvard Business, Tammy Erickson asks, Do We Need Weekends?

Let’s talk some more about redesigning our organizations – “hacking” the enterprise. Here’s another fundamental assumption upon which our organizations are built that I think has got to go: weekends.

I totally agree! Weekends are an outdated concept and fly in the face of a burst workplace. The idea of a prescribed "down-time" is absurd. There is no reason in this day and age that people shouldn't be free to pick their own downtime. The idea of any work function being defined by something as absurd as the clock makes no sense whatsoever. (Unless you're working in some sort of task that requires synchronicity-- like milking cows.)

That said, I think national holidays are wonderful. I love the idea of everyone enjoying some collective downtime for reflection and celebration.

Photo courtesy of Timothy K. Hamilton

QOTD: Rob Patterson on connecting

Rob Patterson from: The Science of Love and how this works in the 2.0 World

I am increasingly aware that the great potential for social software and the 2.0 world is not exclusively to make our business world better but to make our larger world better - to reconnect us to each other in a more human and more social way.

I like that because it is so happening. I feel sorry for those that are letting this moment pass them by.

The looming leadership paradox

At the Metaverse U conference a week or so ago, Byron Reeves of Stanford asked, "Do you know who the guild leaders are in your organization?" He went on to comment that IBM had just completed a survey of its management and found that they had 1000s. I've been thinking of that off-and-on ever since.

The basic idea Byron was expressing is that the current generation of business leaders are sorely prepared to deal with the modern Enterprise 2.0 world with its flatness, lack of hierarchy, transparency, burstiness, lack of presence, and new metrics for measuring performance. He mentioned that the next generation of business leaders might better be selected from those that are adept at leading online virtual teams in executing complex missions. The very skills being developed by accomplished gamers.

So it was with interest that I read this Paul Hemp piece in Harvard Business: Does Your Leadership Development Strategy Include World of Warcraft?

This echoes a theme in the interview I did with HBS professor Linda Hill that appeared in the January issue, entitled “Where Will We Find Tomorrow’s Leaders.” One of Linda’s key points is that organizations risk overlooking potential leaders because they are “invisible” – that is, lack the high-profile personal characteristics such as compelling communications skills that we associate with leadership. Ironically, these invisible leadership candidates may in fact possess characteristics – for example, modest egos that don’t get in the way of collaborative work – that are ideally suited to tomorrow’s business environment.

And therein lies the paradox. How will the current generation of business leaders, with their gregarious "people skills" find, value, and promote this next generation of leadership? The current generation of leaders are making personnel decisions, and most haven't a clue about these new tools, and new ways of working. They don't use the tools, don't understand them, and are often frightened by the very organizational culture necessary to make them work.

The next generation of leader doesn't look anything like the current, and I don't see the one truly valuing the other any time soon. We are headed for a serious disconnect. It'll be interesting to watch how this all plays out.

Infinite touch points as a strategy

Logic+Emotion has a good read, and some great graphics on how the concept of place is changing: Infinite Touch Points

I am fairly certain that we are moving toward a time where the way we interact with brands and their products and services will seem infinite.

The post mostly talks about marketing and brands, but I see no reason why it couldn't be applied to all organizations that are still centered around the concept of their touch points being a physical place. The obvious question, if the touch points are infinite, and selected by the client, learner, customer, constituent... what is the significance of your physical presence? How will that change? What percentage of your budget should be allocated to maintaining it? Where do people work? When do they work? Office hours?

What is your be everywhere strategy?

Social media and mass communication survey

Interesting new study coming out of Canada on the growing importance of social media: SOCIAL MEDIA MORE IMPORTANT THAN MASS MEDIA, ONE IN TWO BUSINESS LEADERS SAY

One in two Canadian business leaders say social media is becoming more important than mass media. 46 per cent say social media tools such as Facebook, YouTube and blogs are becoming even more important than television, radio, newspapers and magazines.

I find this a little surprising, but it's good to see that so many realize that a major change in society is underway. But then it has this:

The survey also found that executives are sharply divided over the use of social media in the workplace. Two-thirds (66 per cent) said employees shouldn’t use social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook at work, while 34 per cent said it is important for employees to participate in and understand the medium.

This tells me that they have awareness, but that they don't yet understand. They don't understand how it is impacting business practices, and the shift to burst. Progress none-the-less. I'm guessing most people see the train right before it hits them.

Why organizations can't ignore Facebook

Facebook announced this week that they are going to expose user profiles to Google search. I saw this in Blogstorm: Is Facebook the new Wikipedia:

Facebook has 18.5 million incoming links. Wikipedia has 47 million so it is fair to assume it won't struggle with rankings. Wikipedia features at the top of almost every search term you can think of at present.

Expect Facebook to feature in the top 3 results for 90% of people you search for within 3 months.

When this happens the game is over. Actually, the game is already over. One of the rules of the burst economy is that there is no such thing as a work life and a personal life. There's just life. Attempts to containerize one or the other will fail. If your profile isn't on Facebook you won't exist as people won't look deeper than the first page of a Google search to find you.

Getting to burst productivity

I've been following with great interest the discussion of burst versus busyness:

There’s a productivity paradox emerging with the rise of Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, and social networking approaches and technologies. That is, the end users that engage in these new ways of working see their productivity occur in “bursts” of activity and innovation, versus a more incremental, plodding progress measured by the time clock.

This is at the heart of the hyper-productivity of Enterprise 2.0 tools. Moving to burst seems more critical to adoption than the tools themselves. Burst embodies a fundamentally different philosophical approach to "work".

How can you tell if you're getting to burst-- look at your logs. When does the work occur in your wiki, when are people chatting, when do your code check-ins occur? When are your organization's blog posts written? (Your organization does have tons of blogs correct?) If you've made it to burst there should be no enterprise-wide pattern. I'm not talking about individual productivity, and when specific individuals do their work. In true burst mode that doesn't matter one darned bit. I'm talking about your whole organization's pattern of work.

If you're truly making the transition to Enterprise 2.0 the bursts of productivity shouldn't be happening in a 9-5 window. If the bulk of your organization's work is occurring primarily within the traditional workday you're old an old economy organization. You can tell how serious your problem is by simply looking at when the real work takes place. Everything your organization does is recorded somewhere-- just look.

Some more burst links worth reading:

• Web Worker Daily: Busyness vs. Burst: Why Corporate Web Workers Look Unproductive
• Fast Forward: ABC News Discovers the ‘Burst’ Economy!
• beyond utility: Busyness Economy v Burst Economy
• James Governor's Monkchips: Ready Your Company For The Burst Economy: Kill PR, mashup IT and marketing. A 7 Step Program