Thursday 21 March 2013

#E20S Jon Husband on the future of work

Photo 1  We're onto day 2 of the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Paris.  I've already done my session on social talent management and today we're starting off with a slot on the HR perspective on E2.0.
The key speaker here is Jon Husband of wirearchy fame who I met for the first time yesterday.
Jon doesn't think organisations will become democratic - they exist to get things done.  But they would do well to adopt some democratic principles, which makes them more difficult to control.
So we need Social Business 2.0?  This about going deeper.  Most of what we;re trying to do is to reach customers better, not engage our people or respond to the changes in the world of work by focusing more on purpose and capability leading to resilience.
This is supported by effective leadership which is made clearer through an effective structure - hierarchy plus network.  We also need to be able to manage paradoxes - centralisation and decentralisation etc.
The good news is that there are things happening.  Jon disagrees with Gary Hamel that there's been no innovation in management.  There has, but it's been in areas like learning and development, organisation development etc helping people become the owners of work.
Eg participative work design - elbow room for decision making etc.

So, wow.  A lot of content - too much for me to capture, but check out Emanuele Quintarelli's Social Enterprise blog.
I can't say I agree with all of it - I think organisations will become more democratic, not just look more democratic, e.g. see WorldBlu.  But I agree with most - particularly the need to change the language - a point I often make to HR (our desire to talk the language of business i.e. finance is at odds with the shift in the language of business to become more people shaped - there's a big risk of these two ships missing each other in the night).

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1 comment:

  1. >>>
    But I agree with most - particularly the need to change the language - a point I often make to HR (our desire to talk the language of business i.e. finance is at odds with the shift in the language of business to become more people shaped - there's a big risk of these two ships missing each other in the night).
    <<<

    Hi Jon, surely it's possible, or at least desirable for people-shaped language to also be the language of business and finance i.e. outcome/ROI aware?

    Surely this is a case of both ships aiming to see each other, rather than missing each other in the night?

    ReplyDelete

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