TRANSFORMATION OF THE ENTERPRISE

As an experienced entrepreneur, Don Tapscott explains the new model of the collaborative and transparent leader and discusses the idea of networked Intelligence for a new paradigm in organizational, data and talent management.

Leadership

There is a new paradigm emerging in business and society as the industrial age comes to an end.

This is a time of uncertainty, confusion and calamity. Understandably, the idea of transformation will be received by some with coolness, even hostility. Vested interests are of course opposing this change. Leaders of the old paradigm are having the greatest difficulty embracing the new. And understandably there is a crisis of leadership emerging.

To succeed, we need a new kind of leader in industry – one who sees improving shareholder value as complementary to improving the state of the world and who understands that businesses must operate with a new set of principles. We leaders in government, who are focused on real change rather than personal power and who see citizens as active participants in the democracy rather than passive spectators. We need civil society leaders who break from the old tradition of bureaucratic NGO’s working in a traditional elitist model.

We need leaders everywhere who understand that this is a time of transformation and taking us beyond old debates: Should we tweak regulation for financial services or not? Should we fiddle with the healthcare system or not? How can we monetize newspapers? How do we stop young people from “stealing” music? What should be done to make the United Nations of G20 more effective? How can we reduce government costs? This book has attempted to show that while all of these may be valid questions they are insufficient to solve what ails us. Our problems are not fixable by fine-tuning old organizations and structures. And that rather than predicting some future state, the heaving transformational collaborations and communities of today show us a relatively clear road ahead.

Most important, it is becoming clear that many leaders of today’s old, stalling institutions are not equipped for this challenge and that leadership will come from new sources. Additive to business, government and civil society organizations, today each of us — as that “Fourth Pillar of society” — can and should claim the mantle.

Don Tapscott explains the challenges of leadership, the new model of the collaborative leader and uses breath-taking footage of “The Mumuration” to discuss the idea of networked Intelligence and leadership for a new age.

He argues, inspiringly, that process of transformation is proving to be challenging, exhilarating and sometimes agonizing. But given the stakes there is not really any alternative than to go forward and forge a new future. With the opportunity for each of us to participate, this is surely an amazing time to be alive.

Reinventing Talent Management for the Networked Age

The continuing global economic crisis is a wakeup call to the world, demanding new thinking about everything. We need to rebuild many of the organizations and institutions that have served us well for decades, even centuries, but are no longer able. Many pillars traditional economic and social pillars of the industrial age have come to the end of their life cycle and must be reinvented on a new, networked model.

Simultaneously a new medium of human communications, the Web 2.0, is becoming a platform for collaboration enabling self-organization and communities. At the same time the Net-Generation has come of age. The children of the baby boom, aged 13-30, are not only the largest generation ever — they are the first generation to come of age in the digital age. These two factors are causing companies to rethink recruiting, compensation, training, collaboration, retention and the management of talent.

Don Tapscott argues that now is the time to rethink HR and management. He discusses conclusions from the $4 million research project that led to his books Grown Up Digital and Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. He argues that a new paradigm in management – Talent 2.0 – is changing how every winning company will harness the power of human capital.

Jazz as a Metaphor for the New Enterprise Model

If there is a musical metaphor for the new enterprise it’s not the military band, or the symphony, it’s jazz.

In a two-part session Don Tapscott explains that both the new enterprise and jazz are based on similar principles. He then brings a world-class jazz group onto the stage and performs with them (playing keyboards) will interacting with the band members to explain how a subset of these principles work in a jazz ensemble.

The 10 principles are:

Global view. Jazz has no country. It harnesses diversity.

Porous boundaries. Jazz gigs and productions mix and match professionals that move inside and outside ensemble boundaries.

Value Innovation. Jazz in all about innovation, creating something new. The best innovations are disruptive – that create an entire new genre. Creativity drives jazz.

Intellectual property. Jazz is an innovation commons. Jazz musicians have a portfolio of IP – some closed (e.g. copy written songs) and some open (solos, chord structures, other elements) that others are encouraged to use.

Modus Operandi. Unlike a hierarchical symphony, marching band or choir jazz is a peer to peer mode more than it is hierarchical. Musicians collaborate each with their own area of authority. There may be a strong leader who is the ultimate arbitrator, not unlike in an open source community.

Processes. Jazz follows clear processes, that are visible and well understood by all players. There is a key, time, structure, melody, harmony, lyrics, solos, counter rhythms, syncopation, rifts. Take Five in E Flat, horns, drums, keys solos – refers to a song written by Dave Brubek written in 5-4 time with a bridge played twice with solos played by specific instruments. Rather than being hardwired like symphony jazz uses re-useable and re-configurable modules and sequences then for the combined effect as appropriate.

Human and Knowledge Capital. The foundation of good jazz is strong knowledge and expertise by individual musicians who openly share this knowledge with others in an ensemble or band. Hoarding knowledge is an offense that will get you kicked out of band. Knowledge and musical capability is viewed as an infinite resource that is realized and translated into art through not just personal mastery but collaboration.

Information Liquidity. Jazz is transparent. Each musician knows what the other is doing and listens to them. There is no place to hide. Trust is established when individuals are considerate of the interests of fellow band members and abide by their commitments – ranging from showing up for gigs to playing the right chords at the right times. Jazz involves vulnerabilities – there is no place to hide. If you’re not a good value creator, or team player everyone knows. Jazz musicians are naked – and if you’re going to be naked, you better be buff.

Experiences. Jazz is not a product or service. The goal is to create and experience for the musicians and more important the listeners. If things go well musicians can create a transformations – as happened at the first Monterey Jazz Festival, or when Jane Bunnett brought a collections of Cubans to North America to create a new jazz idiom.

Technology. Jazz required good tools, but more. There are no silos – jazz interoperates. Jazz consists of activities that result in what could be called service functions (outputs) – what musicians do, not how they do them. Jazz is based on clear standards – including the foundations of music built over centuries and millennia – regarding how elements work together. These include the building blocks such as principles of harmony but extend to complex compositions that become standardized – “jazz standards.”

Five Principles for Business Success in the Digital Age

Organizations can succeed and even thrive in the new environment by embracing five principles for the Age of Networked Intelligence: collaboration, openness, sharing, integrity and interdependence. Don explains how years of research convinced him that these are not only key business principles; they are principles for achieving a world that is secure, prosperous, just, and sustainable.

The New Analytics

To be competitive in this new environment, organizations need to analyze complex business environments in enough time to respond effectively— and that requires a better approach to the explosion of data and information.

The amount of data pouring into the social web is staggering. Every minute of every day, 48 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube, 47,000 apps are downloaded from Apple, 684,478 items are shared on Facebook, 100,000 new posts appear on Twitter and 2 million search queries are sent to Google. Combining this with company data, whether it is structured (customer relationship management, supply chain, point-of-sale) or unstructured (social media, blogs, call centre recordings) and organizing it in a user-friendly way is a huge challenge.

In the past, analytics focused on internal information that supported tactical decisions aimed at cost avoidance. It informed a few select executives whose scope of analysis remained inside firm boundaries. Interfaces were complex and access was limited to sophisticated IT experts. The systems themselves were static, producing a series of standardized reports. Finally, they supported sporadic strategy planning processes that were subject to rigid rules.

A new approach extends analytics to a broader range of employees, as well as external stake- holders. It enables and supports collaboration within and outside the enterprise. An articulated transparency strategy defines who receives what information, under what conditions, with what frequency and in what formats. Integrating internal and external information enables competitive advantage. Cost reduction is no longer the only focus: managers use data about customer behavior, supply chain performance and the market to drive revenue growth. Tools are visual and interactive, enabling non-specialized users to identify and act on opportunities and challenges. Information delivers predictive insights in addition to historic analysis, enabling a continuously evolving strategy plan guided by corporate performance management criteria.

As corporations grapple with ever increasing volumes of data, they need to deliver it to the decision-making individuals in the front lines. Younger workers are comfortable with interactive tools and expect access to the information they need to perform effectively. By engaging and collaborating throughout the firm and with its entire b-web, a firm drives decisions to the points of highest impact.

Don shares the result of a recent research project called Rethinking analytics for the Social Business, discussing topics like:

how social changes analytics
the new role of analytics in marketing, supply chain, manufacturing, R@D and business strategy
how to leverage structured and unstructured data for competitive advantage
lighthouse case study examples of how companies are getting it right
how to monetize “information exhaust”
what organizational changes (in structure and philosophy) are required.

Radical Openness

Don Tapscott, author of 15 books, most recently Radical Openness expands his renowned TED talk. Social media is rapidly becoming a platform for enabling self-organization, new business models and new ways of orchestrating capability to innovate, create goods, services and even public value.

One of the most important ideas to emerge from this transformation is an astonishing one: radical openness. Smart organizations are shunning their old, secretive practices and embracing transparency, widely sharing intellectual property and collaborating on an astronomical scale. And movements for freedom and justice are exploding everywhere as organizations like Wikileaks spread information faster than ever before.

Don Tapscott, who more than any other thinker has invented this topic shares insights about how this revolutionary new philosophy is affecting every facet of our society, from the way we do business and how we manage talent to whom we chose to govern us.

But while radical openness promises many exciting transformations, it also comes with new risks and responsibilities. How much information should we share and with whom? What are the consequences of disclosing the intimate, unvarnished details of our businesses and personal lives? How do companies and governments develop a transparency strategy? What are the implications for Talent, talent management and the nature of management itself?