Social technological disruption: The disruption that hits hardest

This is the 5th post in this series on disruption. This post was updated on the 15th of September 2020.

It is a common mistake to think that the contest is only about technology in the form of hardware, software, services or processes. These are the most visible features of new technologies that can more easily be compared, measured and integrated into existing operations. In these visible forms, technologies can be procured off-the-shelf (or from a website or an app store) and can be adapted in an existing operation. The nature of the disruption for the technology adopter then mainly concerns the inconvenience of changing routines, systems and arrangements. Technology and operational managers often spend months planning, preparing and carefully integrating these kinds of change into their operations to try and mitigate the effects of the disruptions.

In many organisations in the public and the private sector, operational managers focus on ensuring that their system designs and processes are able to resist all kinds of interference and disruption, as these introduce potential variations, risk and uncertainty into their finely tuned operations. This is true for a factory, and it is also true for a hospital or a government department or a post office. Any process that is striving to attain a certain level of efficiency must be protected against unnecessary changes. Change means costs. The downside of striving for efficiency is a loss of flexibility. 

In more modern production and organisational systems, the topic of flexible configuration and agile process design has enabled many newer products, services and processes and their supporting systems to allow for more flexibility. However, many older or more conventional products, services, processes and systems are vulnerable to being overly rigid (meaning resistant to change) as they are often more sensitive to minimum scale and efficiency thresholds.

The most difficult disruption to cope with is at the level of business and organisational models. This is where a new technology market requires a complete or significant rethink of the business strategy, organisation, operations and leadership frameworks. Many new business models that have emerged in the last twenty years have overcome previous market and technology limitations, meaning that even an inefficient provider using newer technology may have an advantage over an older organisation using their older technology efficiently. 

New business models that leverage new digital technologies often make for a potent competitive advantage once a leader can break free from the pack. These new entrants are often free from many of the constraints and limitations that older, more established firms face. They are also closer to the edge or just on the other side of the current regulations and controls that restrain many more established competitors.

These innovations in business models often draw on new social technologies. Social technologies could change the internal or external arrangements of the organisation. Internally, social innovations can be about how workplaces are organised, how decisions are made, how people from different business units relate within an organisation, how communication takes place and so on. However, in my experience, when organisations are arranged innovatively on the inside, this is often mirrored in their relationships with external partners, suppliers and clients. 

In many spheres of society, these new social technologies are challenging older paradigms. For the companies, regulators, government departments and communities that have become intertwined with existing social arrangements, changing the business or organisational models is very hard if not impossible. It is often simpler to start something new because the old arrangements are so deeply entrenched. Think for instance about the shift from coal mining to renewable energy and its effect not only on the mining companies but the communities, the financial markets, the downstream buyers of coal, the suppliers of equipment and technology and the specialised public and private institutions that have emerged around the coal industry. Do not forget about the labour unions, local charities, churches and other social partners. The new energy market will eventually take over from this older market with its more established social arrangements, but the players and institutions will look different, will be funded differently, will use more modern regulatory frameworks, and will most likely also be located in a different place using different skills and very different social arrangements. This disruption is not going to look pretty, and local stakeholders all have good incentives to dig in their heels to resist the disruption for as long as possible. 

If a society cannot foster the emergence of new institutions and social innovations for new configurations to be developed in the local market, then the local system becomes even more vulnerable to international disruptors in the longer term. The implication is that if the government cannot enable new competition to incumbent arrangements in the shorter to medium term, then in the longer term the intensity of the disruption caused by new social technologies may be more severe. Many governments resist promoting new business and technologies because of the entrenched positions of business, labour and civil lobby groups. Yet even while agreeing that promoting new technologies to disrupt or challenge existing arrangements is a good policy, it may be very hard to implement.

The reason why new technologies are hard to implement is because of the many simultaneous investments and changes that may be required; in other words, the coordination failures that may make a new market and all its dependent institutions and networks harder to establish. This is one reason why so many developing countries are being reduced to being users of new technologies: because it is so hard to create the densely interrelated market systems that enable new technology adaptation and development. New markets often leverage older market institutions and norms, so it is not as easy as simply allowing a new market to be established. A whole web of other supporting arrangements is needed.

Ultimately it is not about the use of new technology. The biggest challenge lies in the business model and network arrangements that are needed to make a new technology market viable. This is where the most serious disruptions occur, namely when one country’s social institutions and social arrangements are displaced by those from another country. An example is where high-tech companies embedded in one country’s market system disrupts another country with weaker or inferior market and organisational arrangements. Local funding markets, tech entrepreneurs, regulators and policy makers will constantly be on the defensive and will be caught between those that want to completely resist the uptake of the technology and those that want to adopt the new technology.

Now we turn to the question of why these new social arrangements often originate in the USA and Canada, and why Europe and Africa are often on the back foot. A closer look reveals that many of the new social arrangements actually originate from only a handful of cities and locations, and to simply paint the whole of the USA as a hotspot for new business model innovations is perhaps a bit optimistic. Somehow, to develop new business models requires a tremendous amount of trust between individuals and the hierarchies that they form part of. Yes, even a flat hierarchy still has rules, and in fact, it depends on a certain singularity of mind of what the organisation is trying to achieve. In societies where much importance is attached to degrees, years of work experience, social hierarchy, and professional pedigree, social innovations are much harder to achieve. Not impossible, just harder. The same applies to societies where people need to be directed, where only a few have the vision while the rest just grind away at what they are told to do. 

Here in South Africa, with our low trust, it is tough to manage or lead a team, even if it is a team of professionals. Almost all our efforts at innovating in South Africa are focused on building systems and procedures that must make up for what we cannot draw on from the broader environment. Managers are constantly checking up on subordinates. The ecosystem around most organisations has a trust deficit, so any team or organisation must make up for what is lacking on the outside through structures and functions on the inside. This shows in our economic data. In almost any market here in South Africa, there are only a handful of companies (public or private) that have managed to achieve a scale or a semblance of stability. They are often like self-contained islands. Their supply chains often don’t look like chains, they look rather like pipes that extend from the bigger buyer. I suppose this is social innovation in its own right, but it does not help us to navigate a future where a small and even unheard of competitor from abroad can come in and very quickly establish a new market because of its combination of social and technical innovations.

I am often asked how ready we are for technological disruption. Mastering a new product, service or gadget may seem easy enough. But I shudder to think of the rigidity and readiness of many of the companies and public organisations that I know of. They have been successful at defending themselves against many external threats, but have often not embraced many social innovations that are now already widespread elsewhere. I think that social innovations and new social technologies are potentially the biggest disruptors. 

Is it different in your context?

How are the organisations that you work with experimenting with or tracking new social technologies? 

What social technologies are you tracking because you think that these have the potential to create completely new business models or market arrangements?

Technological disruption over time

This is the fourth post in this series about disruption. This post was updated on 15 September 2020.

I have previously written about technological change cycles where I explored how the nature of innovation changes over time. This time I would like to explore disruption more from the perspective of the challenge to a business model as well as the broader sociological impact of disruption. 

Time is another dimension that must be considered if we are to understand disruption. In the short term, new technologies often disrupt incumbents (firmly entrenched existing players) who are dominant in a particular technology market segment. New technologies force existing companies in the market to rethink their products, services, operations and networks. They may decide to resist change, or adapt or retreat to market segments where their scale and operations are still competitive. 

In the shorter term, the most significant disruptions are at the level of functions and applications (or products and processes), and the disruptions are often felt by competitors who identify with a particular market or technological paradigm. The new technology may allow a better or different way for a function to be performed, and as a result a new need may be created. All competitors must scramble to get newly-introduced competing solutions integrated into their current offerings.

In the medium term, technological change may disrupt consumers and global technology markets, as new products and services might make existing alternatives incompatible or redundant. As the uptake of a newer technology increases, it may become more visible to other (unrelated) markets and user types. The result is that a technology that was developed for a particular niche market may be taken up or adapted to new markets. Technology providers benefit from more scale, and their attention often shifts from developing the products/services to improving their processes and systems. Users benefit from better-developed products/services and support, increasing compatibility and the establishment of standards, etc.

In the longer term, technological change disrupts investments in fixed infrastructure and social institutions such as universities, economic regions, job markets, regulators and industries. Some jobs, industries, key infrastructure or technologies may become redundant. From a spatial perspective, the way municipal boundaries or functional economic regions are drawn may be challenged, and regional infrastructure may suddenly become redundant or expensive to maintain.

In the longer term, technological change disrupts investments in fixed infrastructure, social institutions like universities, economic regions, job markets, regulators and industries. Some jobs, industries, key infrastructure or technologies may become redundant. From a spatial perspective, the way municipal boundaries or functional economic regions are drawn may be challenged, and regional infrastructure may suddenly become redundant or expensive to maintain.

As new technology becomes more prevalent and as it reaches a more mature phase, its influence may spread to other more indirect markets in a slow, ever-expanding series of mini-disruptions. This is where convergence and spill-overs become a risk to those who are ignorant or complacent, as technological developments in unrelated economic activities may spill over into a deeply rooted and rigid technology marketplace. It may take a long time for this kind of disruption to slowly build up, but once it arrives, the changes are sudden and often catastrophic to the economic actors who are affected. 

The challenge is then not the new technology per se, but the organisational and social innovations that have been refined in the new technology market place. Many improvements at the product or business process levels can be copied (or perhaps licensed). However, new business models with different forms of financing, novel arrangements with suppliers, new partnership structures or with creative business logic are very hard to copy. It is especially hard to respond to business model innovations when an organisation is already set in its ways (or is successful). This is the real disruption, and it is not only the private sector that is vulnerable to this – The public sector and even the NGO sector can be disrupted by business model innovations.

In the course of my career I have worked with many leaders of companies and public organisations or technologists who have been caught off guard by technological change. They all describe the same pattern.

They were once globally competitive and could benchmark their operations, technologies and efficiencies against global peers. Then some competitors started choosing alternative technologies that were emerging at the time. Some competitors fell behind, while others appeared to have a small advantage. However, they were increasingly losing competitive bids for contracts. Some competitors were able to clinch contracts at prices and volumes that were just out of reach. By working hard, and staying close to their customers, they could make up for some of the disadvantages. They could justify their current path and decisions based on sunk costs and their reputation. They improved some processes and changed some arrangements, but were aware that other important priorities were not receiving attention. The status quo could be maintained for many years. Then suddenly, almost overnight, the performance gap was too big. The new technology was taken up by some local competitors, or one or two customers started insisting on the use of the new technology or higher performance standards. No amount of blood, sweat and tears could secure a deal. At this moment, they were disrupted. They had been left behind. They could not meet the criteria, the volumes or the market prices. It was not just a question of ordering a new production line, as the new technology required different systems, different suppliers, different volumes and different skills throughout their organisations. Key staff left. Funders no longer extended credit so easily. 

They were suddenly behind on all fronts. It started happening slowly, and then it happened suddenly. Their financiers, government officials and industry bodies all claimed they had been overtaken overnight. But this sudden disruption took many years. 

In hindsight, they could see where they had made the wrong decisions. Often it was not a big decision that caused them to fall behind, but rather the cumulative effect of many decisions building up over time.

In hindsight, they could see where they had made the wrong decisions. Often it was not a big decision that caused them to fall behind, but rather the cumulative effect of many decisions building up over time.

Some of these (disrupted) companies are still operating today, but they are now just a shadow of the successful companies that they once were. They still have some loyal customers who use their services, but they are no longer the leading suppliers or the default choice in their industries. One of these companies that I know well used to manufacture precision metal parts for the automotive sector to very high tolerances, and now they manufacture coarse grinding balls used to crush rock in the mining industry. Another company used to make trains, another used to make buses, and another used to design and build aircraft. They have all been disrupted over a period of more than ten years. It started happening slowly, and then it happened fast.

I also know of regions that have been disrupted. The town where I grew up also went through this (see my angry rant in a post about this town from some years ago).

Change in my home town also happened slowly. First, the biggest company in town moved some headquarters functions to a nearby city. They had problems attracting certain kinds of staff and supporting service providers to the small town where I lived. More functions followed a year or two later. Local government was not focused much on reversing this outflow of talent, investment and expertise. Next, certain equipment maintenance functions were moved elsewhere to consolidate operations in another city. Spouses and families moved in pursuit of jobs, and the local brain drain was gathering momentum. At some point, the existence of the local railway station and the small airfield could no longer be justified. Non-related industries such as agriculture suffered. As more and more functions moved from the town, more and more shops, restaurants and smaller companies closed down. It felt like the whole town had changed in just a few years. What started as a technological disruption in one sector quickly affected many others. 

In many of the examples that I have shared in this post, technological disruption started elsewhere through the technology choices of other organisations and companies. Without anybody noticing, the seeds of disruption had been sown. The effects would only be felt some years down the line, and then it was simply too late to start scrambling around to try and reverse what had happened.

Who is being disrupted, and by whom?

This is the third post in this short series on disruption. This post was updated on 15 September 2020.

In simple terms, technological disruption implies at least two actor groups: those that are being disrupted, and those that are doing the disruption. However, to assist societies, institutions, governments and businesses to be better able to adjust to, mitigate or even lead technological disruption this simple description is not useful.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler

Albert Einstein

Closer scrutiny of any technological disruption reveals many more actor groups that are both directly and indirectly involved in technological disruption. The more you dig, the messier the picture becomes. There are four groups that quickly spring to mind: you will probably be able to think of more if you focus on a technological disruption about which you have more detail.

  1. On the technology supply side, there are many concurrent contests where promoters and early adopters of new technologies are trying to gain a foothold in technology markets by achieving a viable scale. If an existing technology market is too firmly established (or protected), then an alternative technology market may emerge. Over time, this new technology market may disrupt the incumbent technology market, leading to further disruptions in many other related markets downstream. However, Clayton Christensen made us aware that in many cases incumbents are able to quickly learn from new disrupters, and they are often able to use their scale and operations to adapt quickly to their operations, and so beating the new challengers. It is only in rare instances that a new technology disrupter manages to unseat an incumbent, but there are many celebrated examples where this has happened.
  2. On the demand side, there are those who are disrupted when their suppliers, clients, employers or regulators select one technology over another. Markets and actors are disrupted by other markets and actors that they are dependent on. Users of technologies may have to master new skills to continue performing certain functions. To replace an older technology with newer technology may also involve investing in and mastering a whole range of other technologies. Occasionally an incumbent could even be disrupted by its own technology development. Remember the story of Kodak and the development of digital camera technology? Another more recent example is Apple’s iPad technology that disrupted its own computer technologies, but at least Apple has since adapted and even thrived. There are many examples out there with happy and sad endings.
  3. Occasionally, an incumbent could even be disrupted by its own technology development. Remember the story of Kodak and the development of digital camera technology? Another more recent example is Apple and the iPad technology that disrupted its own computer technologies, but at least they have since adapted and even thrived. There are many examples out there with happy and sad endings…
  4. Wherever markets are forming, changing and disappearing, a range of market-enabling and market-supporting institutions are affected. These institutions could be in either the public or the private sector, or in some hybrid form. An institution could be in the form of a combination of formal rules and informal norms as well as regulations, or it could be in the form of organisations. Whenever a new technology market emerges, it challenges the incumbent market and supporting institutional arrangements. Think of how the formal hospitality market is challenged by the emergence of homestay holidays and the ease with which a property owner can now rent out a property online. This has consequences for existing providers of hospitality, for regulators, for local authorities, other property owners affected by these transactions, and also for buyers of the new hospitality services. The implication is that the speed with which a country can create, adjust and adapt its market-supporting institutions will have a direct bearing on the pace and the effect of how disruptive the new technology may be, and how equal and fair the uptake of the new technology will be. It is very hard to add new market regulations and rules after technology has already become widely adopted.

When considering disruption, it is useful to think a bit further than the disrupted and the disruptor. We have to consider the networks that these two groups form part of, but we must also think of the social institutions and market-supporting organisations that enable these technology markets to exist in the first place.

Society bears the costs of late disruption

Attempting to mitigate the risks of any possible disruption may be a nuisance for many businesses that are just trying to cope. However, when many companies or whole industries do not adequately consider potential disruptions, the costs of disruption spread from the shareholders to the broader society. It is therefore important that policy makers, government departments, local governments, industry-representative organisations and labour representatives should also take into consideration technological change and the interdependence between different systems. 

In markets where competition is too low, or where the markets are dominated by just a few thought leaders, incumbents may be able to avoid being disrupted in the shorter to the medium-term through their defensive innovation strategies. However, in the longer term, these champions may become more vulnerable to technological disruption. This means that all the other systems are at risk whose success is highly dependent on the success of the leading firms.

It is a bit difficult for policy makers and industry bodies to imagine how disruption can be managed. It may even be necessary for countries and regions to intentionally disrupt their own industries and local social arrangements, as I heard they do in Singapore. I was told that the logic of purposefully introducing disruptions is that having more frequent small disruptions is better than losing big battles against global competitors already operating at scale.

The old Zollverein Coking Plant World Heritage Site in Germany is one of my favourite places to visit to witness how technological change can challenge a region. Click here to see more photos of industrial heritage in Germany

Over my 25 years of working experience, I have worked with disruptions in many different forms and contexts. To me, disruption is not an abstract term. Sometimes it is about being optimistic, trying to introduce a change. Other times it was about pain, trying to find a way out of a mess. I have worked with governments and industry bodies that were trying to find ways to resist disruption, or that were desperate to figure out how to catch up after being left behind. I supported innovative teams to use the logic of disruption to explore how they could break into or gain a foothold in an established market. I have experienced the desperation of stakeholders in regions where key industries have been disrupted, where those that have remained behind are struggling to reignite a depressed economy. I have also worked with technology extension programmes that were trying to introduce (disrupt) new technologies into existing markets. These experiences all exposed me to different practical challenges of disruption, being disrupted, disrupting others and trying to resist disruption. I am sharing these experiences because disruption is a very different experience based on who you are and what you are trying to achieve. 

Defining disruption

This is the second post in this short series on disruption. It was updated on the 15th of September 2020.

Disruption can be defined as the act or process of disrupting something: a break or interruption in the normal course or continuation of some activity, process, etc.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Disruption means that somebody or something is interrupted by somebody or something else; plans may no longer be valid as priorities have changed. It means more than just being surprised that something is now possible, as being disrupted implies inconvenience.

When we think of global disruptions, periods of economic turmoil or political change typically come to mind. For instance, the effects of the global financial crisis are still echoing around the world. The effects of the technological disruption enabled by the increasing reach of the internet are still reverberating around the world. Think of how smartphones have challenged fixed-line communication technologies, and how internet connectivity is reaching into factories, schools, churches and households. 

There are other forms of disruptions, such as natural disruptions that are often felt more intensely at local or regional levels. Disruptions caused by politics is a reality in many regions and countries in the world, with the biggest disrupters being regional or global conflicts.

Supply chains can also be disrupted by regional and international events. For instance, during the Covid-19 pandemic, many supply chains were disrupted as ports closed, and as suppliers, routes, logistics centres and shops were closed.

Our local retailer ran out of stock during the Covid-19 lockdown due to a combination of panic buying and the disruption caused to supply chains. This disrupted our dinner plans and required us to completely re-think our frequency and way of shopping.

What makes any form of widespread disruption hard to plan for is how interconnected different systems are. A disruption caused by political turmoil may quickly lead to economic and technological disruptions, or a disruption caused by nature may lead to political, economic and technological disruption. We often do not know how the systems we rely on in turn depend on other systems.

From a resilience perspective, this interconnectedness is called “coupling”. In highly coupled systems a small disruption in one area could lead to a domino effect elsewhere. In loosely coupled systems, failure or disruption in one area could be contained or isolated in that area. With the increasing convergence of technologies, the interdependencies between systems are increasing. Just think of how many systems would be disrupted if a country’s internet connectivity were to fail. 

Every leadership team should be aware of the potential disruptions that may affect their operations, their networks and their plans. These disruptions may originate externally to the organisation, or they may originate within the organisation. Being more aware of potentially vulnerable points in the organisation and the broader context can help to rapidly reallocate resources and reconfigure arrangements when something unexpected happens. I find it interesting that some domains use “surprise” disruptions to build something akin to muscle memory for their organisations. Think of emergency response teams such as medics or firefighters using scenarios to challenge their assumptions and to reveal dependencies. 

What does it mean to be disrupted?

Updated on 15 September 2020

It felt to me as if the refrain that technology is disrupting our lives had reached a crescendo in 2019 and early 2020. For most people, it feels as if the implications of technological advancements are creeping slowly but surely into their everyday lives. The “industrial revolution” is not happening in distant factories or remote industries or in faraway countries. A continuous stream of technological changes is confronting us and demanding that we change how we travel, commute, engage with government, learn, shop and work.

During the Covid-19 pandemic which caused the global lockdowns imposed by governments and the decision by some to self-isolate, the refrain changed a little. Now, the downsides of technological advancement are mainly concentrated on topics of unequal access and the challenges of the dissemination of misinformation (and fake news). Talk of a “new normal” and a post-COVID world includes forecasts that more people will in future work from home, that education will increasingly occur in a more hybrid digital and physical mode and that governments and corporations will have to become more digitally savvy.

Messenger pigeon released from British tank 1918 IWM Q 9247

A message-carrying pigeon being released from a port-hole in the side of a British tank on 9 August 1918. This is photograph Q 9247 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums. The photograph was taken by David McLellan, and was retrieved from the Wikimedia Commons Imperial War Museum Collection.

I even heard a futurist on a radio talkshow forecast the imminent closing of business districts and corporate office buildings in favour of everyone working from home and the demise of shopping malls and inner-city promenades.

I have three objections to these sweeping statements about the speed of technological change and disruption:

  1. They ignore the architecture of technologies. Technologies, industrial revolutions and disruptions are all dumped into broad and ambiguous categories with vague boundaries. While this makes the message easier to spread and receive, it does not help those who must make short and longer-term investment decisions.
  2. They ignore the embeddedness of technologies. Lumping many technologies together makes it harder for all of us to understand what and who will be disrupted, and what the implications of the disruptions are for policies, communities, enterprises and social institutions. Increasingly, we also have to worry about control of data, usage rights and even the concentration of wealth, and the fact that many technology companies are behaving as if they were beyond accountability.
  3. They ignore the irregularity of technological change. In the photo reproduced here of a British tank taken on 9 August 1918, it can be seen the military technology has advanced further than the communications technology. With the wisdom of hindsight, many historians have also questioned how well social arrangements regarding tank warfare in the British Military had evolved in the early 20th century. There are accounts of how military strategies and the organisation of tank commanders were still mainly dictated by what worked for the cavalry that dominated the battlefields over the previous three centuries.

Previously I described the different kinds of disruption in some detail. In the next series of posts I will explore:

A big shout out to Harold Jarche

A few years ago, I completed the Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) programme by Harold Jarche. I was then struck by how well thought through his training programme was. I could immediately use many of these ideas to improve how I develop, nurture and organise my knowledge on a daily basis.

One key idea that Harold promotes is the idea of sharing emerging thoughts and ideas, even if they are half-baked. He calls this “living in perpetual beta”. He predicts that our future will require much more of this mode of knowledge creation. For several years, I followed his advice to live in perpetual beta here on this blog site and elsewhere. However, somewhere along the line, I stopped sharing my half-baked ideas and concepts. It felt to me as if I should rather write about ideas that I am fully convinced about and concepts that I have thought through.

As many of my readers noticed and commented, I blogged less. When I blogged, the ideas were already further developed, language edited and almost final. Some complained that my posts were too long. I forgot about living out loud. I became afraid of making a mistake in public, of sharing a half-baked idea that was dumb! Of making silly grammar mistakes in my excitement to capture and share an idea. I was afraid of writing in my own voice!

It was not as if I have been short of ideas during the last 6 months. I have been living in perpetual beta behind the scenes. I have been pondering how societies and communities can make more decisions in decentralised ways. This was emphasized to me in the way the South Africa government handled the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The whole lockdown in South Africa was managed in a very directed top-down manner. Dialogue, feedback or critique was (and is) simply avoided or suppressed. There is almost no focus on building credibility, trust or information flows. Even though I believe decisive action was needed to avert an even bigger crisis, I am disappointed that building trust and resilience never became a priority. Along these lines, I have been brooding on ideas about how to get institutions (like local governments, or small enterprise support organisations) to be more sensitive to the challenges their constituencies are facing today and in the near future. It feels as if distributed knowledge, decentralised decision making, and being more sensitive to weak signals and emerging trends were all connected in a very messy way, and those local institutions that are close to communities must play a central role. Thinking about how we can get institutions and organisations to adapt, make transparent decisions and think about the future filled my days and my restless dreams. Yet, I have little to show except lots of loose ideas. I started to worry that I would lose some snippets of knowledge along the way.

I wrote to Harold to ask for some advice, and he replied by promptly enrolling me to take his course again. For free! (The option to re-enrol is a standing offer to his alumni that I had completely forgotten about). I was sort of hoping he could give me a one-sentence solution, or a link to an app….

The idea of another on-line course during lockdown was daunting. Even though I am used to working from my home office, I have been feeling frustrated by my output and productivity during this lockdown. To my relief, others could better describe how I felt, as novelist Amy Sackville so brilliantly put it here in the Guardian. It felt like I had holes in my thinking, and also in my calendar.

As a result, I approached the course with some apprehension. At first, I rushed through the course. I skipped some of the exercises. Every now and then I would pause at an idea or an insight that I realised had already become part of how I develop new ideas and concepts. I was searching for a simple solution and hoping it would be described in the next lesson.

After rushing through the course, I realised that there were also some key ideas that I had not adopted that could enhance how I work. Some topics required more thought and changes in my habits. For instance, the course contains great concepts on curating information flows and sensing weak signals. I could immediately use these frameworks in my current research.

After a few days of simmering in the back of my mind, I decided that I had to give the course more attention. I went back through the material a second time, this time paying more attention to the ideas that I could adopt to improve my practices. I followed the many links to other sources and authors and managed to only get a little distracted along the way. I immediately made changes to some of my folder structures, how I recorded notes, and how I organised my snippets of ideas.

In addition, I decided to take Harold up on the invitation to his learners for a 30-minute coaching call. Our scheduled 30-minute call turned into almost 2,5 hours of reflection and coaching. Not only did Harold provide me with some useful pointers on personal knowledge management, but he also shared his experience on time management. He listened to the research I am busy with, and connected me to the work of Marshall McLuhan and some others. Thankfully our call was on a Friday afternoon, so I did not have to rush into something else afterwards.

After pondering our conversation for a few days, I decided that my first blog post in five months should be to publicly thank Harold Jarche for sharing his thinking so persistently. I really hope that some of my friends and clients would also take his course. I do not get a commission if anybody signs up. I think that Harold’s ideas are fundamental to what we are trying to get right in economic development and in building more knowledge-intensive economies, and therefore I want more people to know about Harold’s resources.

The answer to my concern that I feel incoherent and overwhelmed with these many loose ideas is to simply share them with my friends and my readers and to allow others to contribute to the refinement of these ideas. Instead of hoarding ideas and snippets and then writing it up when I confident about their coherence, I must be courageous and put my ideas out there. I will better curate the ideas I find interesting.

My intent with this blog is to help the people I care about to make better decisions or to make better sense of their options and potential strategies. I feel better equipped now to share frameworks and material that can achieve this aim.

Harold, you have set a high standard with how you develop, write and share your thoughts. You are a master curator. I will follow your blog more diligently going forward. There is still much for me to learn, and many new habits for me to cultivate to improve my perpetual beta and personal knowledge management.

I guess there are many people that using your ideas without giving you due credit. Despite this selfish behaviour by some, you still continue to develop, refine and share your material. I thank you and I want you to know that your ideas and concepts are valued and are helpful to many.

Thank you for being a role model worth following!

PS. My mid-August resolution is to live in perpetual beta mode. I will share my half-baked ideas more frequently. Watch this space.

Leveraging the novel capabilities of newly acquired technologies

The measures applied to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic have certainly forced many organisations, teams and individuals to use digital technologies in new ways. However, I doubt whether the new ways of using technologies have transformed the way organisations work, or the way that work is organised. Let me explain.

The term “technology” is a combination of two Greek words, techne and logos. Techne means art, skill, craft or the way, manner or means by which a thing is gained.  Logos means word, the utterance which expresses inward thought. 

This means that technology is the expression of how we do things. It is the way in which we achieve certain outcomes. We are constantly using many different technologies without giving the process much thought. Language is a technology, the software I am using to type this blog is a technology, and my smartphone is also a technology. These and many other technologies that I use on a daily basis are in many ways interconnected. The coffee machine is one of my favourite technologies. Technologies are not just about physical objects, software and systems. Behaviour, routines and recipes are also technologies. For instance, the way in which a meeting is chaired is a social technology, which in turn is enabled by many other physical and social technologies. The organisations we work in are social technologies, and even the communities we live in are nested structures of physical and social technologies. The technologies that we use and depend on often incorporate many features of our environment.

When we substitute an existing technology with another new technology, we not only replace the “what”, but the new technology also typically allows us to change the “how” and perhaps even the “why” of what we are trying to achieve. For instance, when we replace a physical meeting with a digital meeting application, the digital technology allows us to change the how, the why and the way of conducting the meeting. If we only substitute one part of the “old” technology, we are not fully embracing the capabilities of the new technology. This means that we have not transformed the how or the why, we have merely replaced the what.  If we only replace the what of the technology, there could be an incremental improvement in our efficiency or costs, but we are still limited by the capabilities and functionalities of the older technology.

I received this image via Whatsapp so I do not know who to credit.

I have been thinking about the different levels of taking up the capabilities that new technologies offer us. Here is my first attempt at describing it.

The simplest way of adapting a new technology is to use it for the features that replicate the features we are already familiar with from the old technology. It is basically a substitution. If you use only the functions that you associate with the old technology, you are still largely constrained by the limitations of the previous technology.

Adoption means that you have to change how you use the new technology, such as by making changes in other related technologies. Perhaps some functions of the newer technology are much easier now, and may perhaps even make certain procedures and processes redundant. Adoption implies that you have to change some arrangements and behaviours, and some of the logic of how you use the technology. 

When you adapt a new technology, you may even have to tweak the new technology itself to fit into your context or to work with the other technologies you have chosen. To adapt a technology requires some level of mastery, either of the technology itself or of the other supplementary technologies that you are using. Geeks often overcome the limitations of a new technology by combining it with other (incomplete) solutions. 

The highest form of leveraging new technology is to integrate the new technology into how you do things, and then re-organise and adjust the technologies around the new capabilities. There are two simultaneous movements here. You adapt the technology and at the same time you reorganise, or remodel, your process and organisations around this new capability. As you remodel why, how and what you are doing around this new capability, you are able to adjust, tweak, modify or even discontinue other technologies. In real life this often happens in an iterative process of mastering a new technology. As you discover new possibilities to improve the arrangements, you reorganise yourself around newly recognised capabilities to take advantage of them. This is when we leverage the functionality of new technologies, and in many cases the newer technologies could even make some complementary older technologies work better. 

Then there is the concept of exaptation, which is like co-opting something for a purpose for which it was never intended, like off-label use of a medication. An example of exaptation is where equipment developed to scan for fine cracks in aircraft wings has been modified and re-engineered for scanning for tumours.

One of my favourite quotes by Bill Gates is: 

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

Bill Gates

I think Mr Gates will forgive me for substituting the word “automation” with “digital”. Digital technologies will amplify poorly designed, undermanaged and inadequately thought-through processes. These technologies will reveal our inability to think through, consider and respond to the capabilities offered by newer technologies and the remodelling that they require. That is why it is not so easy to take a process that works in the physical world and just replicate it online. Amazon is far more than a bookstore with a webpage. If you want to use the new capabilities offered by the network of digital technologies to their fullest extent, you have to re-think your complete business, your relations with suppliers, clients, banks and more. 

To really harness newer digital technologies demands that we reconsider and think through the underlying and complementary processes, systems and arrangements. These are all enabling technologies. But we must also think of the constraints, side-effects and downsides of the existing technologies we are replacing. Key questions to ask are:

  • Can we break with some of the dependencies that we no longer need? 
  • By overcoming some of the constraints of our legacy arrangements and capabilities, where can we innovate in the how, the why and the what we do?
  • How can we manage some of the new limitations or challenges of using a newer technology? How do we overcome the hesitation of users to change how they engage with us?
  • Which inherited arrangements, legacies, rules, habits and routines no longer serve us to reach out goals?
  • What does fully using the new capabilities demand from us in terms of product, process, system and business model innovation and change?

It is not always necessary to think through all the implications of adopting and harnessing a new technology beforehand. We usually select a new technology based on explicit features that we believe are beneficial to or more effective than current technologies. We often discover new capabilities as we use a new technology. The Covid-19 pandemic has made this decision for many of us. At other times, shifts by clients, competitors or government regulations force us to confront new technologies. As we learn how to use a new technology, we discover potential adaptations, tweaks and new arrangements. The problem is that this can sometimes take a very long time. In order not to fall behind, or be seen as incompetent or ignorant, we have to purposefully explore these new capabilities if we wish to be faster than our competitors and increasingly, our digitally conversant clients, suppliers, competitors, regulators and, dare I say, children?

In conclusion, if you have merely replaced a physical meeting with a digital meeting, or a physical document with a digital document, you have not yet transformed. You have just substituted one way of doing things for another, and you will most likely revert to the old way when conditions allow. If you have simply substituted one way for the other, you will still be held back by the constraints of the older technology. 

When you harness the capabilities that come with adopted new technologies and then change the “what” and even the “why” of how you are doing things, then you have transformed. In most cases this requires us to let go of some of our ways of organising ourselves around earlier capabilities.

Now is the time to think about what is next after what is next

Updated and improved on 18 April 2020, Originally published, March 19 2020

I have found the past month a bit surreal, to say the least. When I travelled through an international airport at the end of January I saw paramedics treating a person who had collapsed. The paramedics were not wearing masks and gloves, while a gaping growing crowd gathered to watch, despite the fact that they already knew about the Covid-19 virus. That was the moment when I realised that I would have to suspend my travels for a while.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve received many calls and emails from business and government leaders asking me to help them to think through their options. Some even asked for scenarios. First, let me explain why just jumping straight to scenarios is not a good idea right now with all the contradictory information we are being inundated with.

With all the uncertainty and confusion right now, public and business leaders need some vision of the future to work towards. Hence the image of this blog is a meerkat looking away from whatever the others are occupying themselves with. But different leaders have slightly different motivations. While some people require very little information to make decisions, others need lots of evidence and data. The first group are most likely the innovators and creators of new markets and business models, while the second group may be those that are more focused on incrementally improving what already exists or what is in place. I will refer to the first group as the innovators and the second group as the system optimisers.

We need both innovators and system optimisers to create the future, but they are driven by different motivations and often take different paths if you do not get them to explore a shared mental map. The first group, the innovators, needs a problem to explore and space to try new things, while the system optimisers need a target to reach and sufficient authority over resources to get there. The system builders will look at the facts and data and will think you are crazy if you want to talk about a post-crisis positioning strategy. The innovators will go nuts if you ask them to improve the system when they feel that the way the world works is being questioned. You need these groups to work together – one shared picture, and different yet complementary skills.

So if I had to help your team think about the options right now, a first step would be to think of what could possibly happen next. Yes, it is that simple. Maybe it takes only a few minutes. But this gives us some possible trajectories, and we can explore the ups and downs of each. At least we then have some options to choose from.

I agree that looking at the immediate options is not enough. That is too short term. So we have to ask a second round of “what’s next?” questions and try to explore the decision branches from the previously identified possibilities. Now the innovators can start thinking about new arrangements, new connections, new formulations of what already exists. The system builders will most likely already be a little frustrated with all the hypothetical talk, so they need to be enabled to start thinking of what must be decided or put in place to go down certain paths while avoiding others.

I know this is very simplistic, but my experience right now is that it is very hard to ask people to think six months or three years in advance. But for us to shape what is coming, we have to get more leaders thinking about what is emerging and what is emerging after what is next. This is hard to type, but it is even harder to ponder.

I know that some of my mentors, like Dave Snowden, will baulk at me even proposing a two-by-two matrix as the basis for a scenario exercise, so I hope he will not see this post. Using a simple matrix is a straightforward way to get people to think of alternatives that they struggle to consider if you don’t take them on a structured thinking journey.

Here is a simple scenario matrix that I have been using this week to guide some of my clients. They are all facing a lot of uncertainty about how to make decisions in the next few weeks.

On the Y-axis at the top is “Change initiated by us”, and at the bottom is “Change initiated by others” (Yes, I know that looks as though it is the past tense, but just humour me). On the X-axis on the left is “Past orientation, focused on evidence and recent data” and on the right “Future orientation, focused on what is possible next … and next”.

Yes, again the immediate focus. My sense right now is to think shorter term just for a few days. Just get your team to start building a shared mental map. Then you can push further into the future.

Let us now think through these quadrants. Simply combine the statement on the Y-axis with the statement on the X-axis. You can start in any of the quadrants. I find it easier to start on the left in the past, combined with changes initiated by others. This is what we have to respond to.

Here is a write-up of a telephone conversation I had with a client today. It was surprisingly similar to a conversation I had yesterday with another client in the Not-for-Profit sector. You can skip this if you want to.

We started at the bottom left (which made sense to me because he felt that his hand was being forced, even though he understood that based on the evidence the government was probably making the right decisions). We spoke about the self-isolation of his team, the rapidly worsening statistics, and what it would mean for his organisation if the government (and others he depends on) made the obvious decisions. We explored which data was reliable and valuable enough to track.  Next, we moved to the top-left quadrant. Based on the data and evidence, what decisions should he be making? He immediately realised there were some pretty obvious decisions that he simply had to announce. We also reflected on what he had already done and explored how he knew that he had made the right decisions. 

Then we moved to the bottom right quadrant. We started to consider what changes might be made by others next. And next. He realised that we might move to complete quarantine if the government felt it was necessary. He realised that he would be forced to close large parts of his business, so he could explore with his team what they would need to keep some operations viable. He realised that if his suppliers closed, he would be in trouble, so he had to remain in close contact with them to know what their plans were for the next few days.

In the top-right quadrant, he realised that he had to consider a “dry run” to practice with his team to work together even when they were not together. Some other ideas were also explored. At this point, he could take it further. He had enough ideas to work with. I still wanted to explore the “what next” after the “ what next”, but he said we could talk about that the next day.

These are some notes of a long conversation that I had with a client. At the end of the conversation he could already sense that he could move from being responsive to being pro-active, and how he could involve his team in this exploration.

Please let me know how you are working with your team to build and maintain a shared mental map of your situation and your options. Do not be shy, use the comments block below!

Thanks to Harald Jarche, who is always reminding his readers rather to share half-baked ideas than to try and perfect them. All the errors are my fault, not his.

How to use remote team collaboration

This is a grammar edited and improved version of an earlier post.

I am supporting teams that are using Slack, MS Teams or other remote collaboration applications. Some of my clients also use Viber or WhatsApp.

In our company, Mesopartner, we’ve been using Slack for a few years. It’s not my purpose here to review these different applications, but rather to share some insights on how we and some of our clients have configured channels for conversations.

I like to look at remote collaboration tools not only as communication and coordination tools but as an essential element of strengthening knowledge development and as a learning environment. 

Wherever I am supporting teams to improve their shared sense-making and innovation cultures, I ask them to create the following channels:

#Reading and listening – here people can share what they are reading and listening to.

#Working out loud – here people can check in and explain to the rest of the team what is currently foremost on their mind. The intent is not only to inform others, but also to help the person making the post to increase their own coherence or narrative of what they are devoting their attention to and why.

Now, with the COVID-19 virus, more and more people are working from home. In our own company, we have created a channel called #Coping-with-Corona where we can all share our experiences of being in different stages of self-isolation.

We have also created groups of channels. For instance, we have a group of channels where the names all start with “support” followed by the topic. So in our “#support_mac” channel we help each other with tips, problem solving and advice, while in the “#support_blogging” channel we encourage and assist each other with blogging. 

We have groups of channels for projects and important topics, and to coordinate our internal company functions such as publications, etc.

Sometimes team leaders struggle to understand the value and function of the informal banter that often takes place in the different channels. This informal exchange is important because it makes it possible for teams to weave together explicit knowledge from the misformed or semi-thought-through statements, the half-baked ideas, the intuitions and the sarcasm that give expression to tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is often hard to express. Furthermore, tacit knowledge is often revealed when doubts or confidence are expressed, like when somebody replies “I am just not so sure about your approach”, or “Yes, you should try that, in my experience that always works”. Tacit knowledge often develops iteratively during many conversations.

The real challenge with encouraging people to share their tacit insight is that we all prefer to share our feelings and insight only with people whom we trust, or people whom we believe will be able to use our ideas. That is why reducing the chatter to only factual and precise formulations is not helpful. Often individuals will share their advice when they feel that others have shown in the past that the shared ideas are useful.

A final point. These remote collaboration tools are so useful because we can create channels when we need them, or we can close or archive them when they have served their purpose. Rather make more channels, and tolerate some cross-posting, than to have a few channels that are so busy that people fall behind in a day or two. Encourage your team members to reduce internal emails and to use the remote collaboration tools and you will immediately see an improved culture of sharing, deliberation and joint sense making.

Supporting your team from a distance during self or imposed isolation

This is a grammar edited and improved version of an earlier post.

I have been receiving many messages from clients and friends asking for advice on how to work from home. I have organised the requests into three groups.

The first group has been asking me how I manage my time.

What works for me is to organise my day into half- or quarter-day blocks of time during which I focus intensively on one topic. I try to schedule the more conceptual or tougher mental tasks for the mornings, and phone calls, Skype calls and admin for the afternoons. Also, I found that dressing for work helps me to stay focused. I don’t necessarily dress as formally as I would when attending a meeting, but I generally try not to look like I am going to spend the day on the beach.

The second group has been asking me how they can keep their teams connected while everyone is working from home.

This is a little harder. If your team is doing knowledge work, then I would check with them what kind of information and knowledge exchange they need to do their work. Don’t just have web meetings to stay in touch (although there is a need to remain socially connected), use meetings and platforms such as Slack or MS Teams to exchange views and ideas on what really matters. I have seen some of my clients doing daily check-ins and half-daily updates of what everyone is doing. I don’t really think this helps unless everybody’s tasks are clearly defined. Most people, even when they are at work, are overwhelmed by all the information streams that appear to be important, although this does actually help people to make better decisions or do their jobs better.

During this time when people are working from home it will also become apparent which team members are truly independent and able to build their area of work without your direct supervision. Some of your team members will love this, and will find the “freedom” to work at their own pace exhilarating. However, some people will also feel insecure, and they may even feel distressed and need more direction from you. But please, whatever you do, do not treat everybody the same. Give those who can self-direct their work the space and the freedom, while spending more time with those that need direction. 

Lastly, it is not possible to remotely keep all your people working productively. There are all kinds of distractions at home: kids, pets, snacking and other comforts. It takes a lot of discipline to work from home, I know! Some people will simply not perform as expected. I suggest you focus on the key team members who are critical to keep your organisation going and try to support them as best as you can. Give those doing operational or administrative tasks clear instructions. But don’t expect everybody to perform.

The third group of clients having been asking me how they can use this abnormal situation to re-think areas of their business from a strategy and innovation perspective. 

Most of our thinking is shaped by recency bias. We tend to think of the issues that dominated our conversations and attracted our attention in the last week or two. This bias makes it hard for us to reflect on what we are not paying sufficient attention to, or what else may be happening but which we may be filtering out. 

Right now, everyone is talking about COVID-19. A few weeks ago everyone in South Africa was talking about the pending rating agency downgrade and the state of our economy and the poor state of our state-owned companies. I guess that in your workplace these topics are also taking up mental bandwidth, like the financial year-end and many others.

I suggest that you use this time away from the watercooler and the coffee machine to think beyond the dominant and recent topics that almost magnetically drew your attention. What are those issues that often do not get enough mental bandwidth? Some suggestions are the following:

  • What have you postponed thinking about simply because it feels like a lot of effort to do while there is so much else that requires your attention?
  • How innovative is your culture in your organisation really? Is this culture widespread or dependent on just a few individuals who are willing to try new ideas and make fools of themselves?
  • How strong is your team and organisation at making sense not only of what is happening, but what is emerging?
  • How much time are you spending imagining how things could be in the future and then finding ways to go and fetch those stuck in the present or the past?

Let me know what you are trying, and what seems to be working for you and your team. Your comments and suggestions are useful to all my other clients and friends who are reading this blog.