Smart Work? Making it Happen

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smart work?

making it happen

anne marie mcewan



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This is an executive summary of Smart

Working: Creating the Next Wave, a

research-based book I recently

completed (to be published April 2011).

It condenses the book’s main

arguments and will hopefully encourage

people to read the full version to find

out more about the research and

theories that are briefly referenced,

including how they can be of practical

use in making the transition to new

ways of working.

Smart Working was written out of

frustration at Enterprise 2.0 and Social

Business discussions online, and

irritation at proclamations of ‘smart

working’ as a new paradigm1. Of course

technological, demographic and

economic developments are causing

turmoil and opportunity in global and

local business environments.

Uncertainty and increasing complexity

are the norm.

The lack of reference in blog posts and

online articles to foundation knowledge

and principles, which link the design of

social, technical, organisational and

physical performance environments to

high-performance, innovation and

adaptation, impoverishes the

discussions of how best to adapt work

environments and working practices.

A number of contentions underpin

Smart Working, including:

why smart working?• Knowledge about smart working and

making the transition to new ways of

working, including practical tactics and

theoretical perspectives, is widely

available but overlooked in practice.

• As a result, an abundance of potential

and capability in people is wasted.

• People participate in shaping their

own realities. This is not easy but social

and networking technologies that

connect us to each other, used without

permission and for our own ends, are

transformational. It is more possible

than ever for us to influence and shape

our working environments, ourexperience of work and of each other.

• Although people are not prisoners of

organisational systems and processes,

the pull towards the status quo is

strong. Existing knowledge is useless

until it is experimented with and

applied through ‘chaotic action’.2

We need to act our way dynamically

and continuously into the next wave of doing better or doing differently.

The tools, technologies, methods,

knowledge and systemic approaches

are all there for the discovering and

using.

There are no excuses.



Among a range of drivers for innovation

of working practices in response to

economic, demographic and

technological trends, the growth of the

emerging economies is particularly

important.

Large populations of young consumers

in these economies are demanding low

cost, high quality products3.

An anticipated consequence of this is a

new wave of innovation from the

emerging economies to meet that

demand. Innovations are likely to be

disseminated through expansion and

merger activity as businesses in theemerging economies go global.4

Cross- fertilised dissemination of

process innovations at scale will force

some Western businesses to adapt. As

was the case in the first wave of smart

working, which is discussed in the

following section, many enterprises will

struggle to change.

The second wave of smart workingbuilds on what we know from work

philosophies associated with lean,

quality and agile manufacturing – based

as they are on collaboration, problem-

solving and continuous improvement.

smart workingBack then, these philosophies

recognised and deployed previously

overlooked latent, tacit knowledge on

the shop floor. The same applies now.

All knowledge and capabilities, not just

those of elites, need to be nurtured and

mobilised in today’s hyper-competitive,

globally-connected economy.

A significant difference now is that

continuous improvement has the

potential to expand outside the

boundaries of the organisation and

become networked collective

intelligence.

The opportunity for widespreadknowledge sourcing, creating and

disseminating is phenomenal.

the story continues:

• what others say it is

• the first wave

• and now?

• learning from the first wave

• changing contexts

• the second wave

• making it happen

• informally

• formally

• the smart work framework

• performing, innovating, adapting,

leading, coordinating, collaborating,

monitoring, integrating, connecting,

sharing, learning and thinking.



Lean, quality and agile manufacturing

constituted the first wave of smart

working and resulted in the last big

disruption to management practices.

This first wave was in response to globalcompetitive pressures arising from

manufacturing process innovation

methods that had their origins in

Japanese automotive and electronics

industries. Process-based methods

were adopted to generate cross-

functional process efficiency through:

re-integrating manual and mental

effort, which were separated in

traditional manufacturing;

focusing on quality and process

discipline;

continuous task and process

innovation ;

elimination of waste;

deploying multi-skilled teams8,9,10.

Used together systematically, these

provided manufacturers with critical

competencies that gave them

competitive edge in pursuing a variety

of strategies.

Engaging people in sharing tacit

knowledge of processes and machines

through problem‐solving and

continuous improvement, especially

people previously overlooked on shop

floors, was core to the success of these

new ways of working.

If there was no workforce engagement,

there could be no lean. This was about

committing to a different philosophy of

work and changing attitudes.

exploited workers?Academic critiques of lean and just-in-

time as exploitative and leading to work

intensification were widespread in the

early days11. This is reflected in debatesabout the relative merits of the socio-

technical and lean approaches to work

design. Socio-technical stresses

workforce autonomy and work-in-

progress buffers, while lean’s focus is

integration and the removal of buffers.

Perspectives became less polarised in

time. One vocal critic of lean was later

writing about “the learning factory”12

and a prominent socio-technicaladvocate admitting to people-centred

lean approaches.13

There is renewed interest in lean, now

outside manufacturing and especially in

the public sector14. It would seem

useful to explore what can be learned

from the first wave, linking past with

present and considering different

contexts.

Some use the term smart working to

describe flexible ‘anywhere, anytime’

ways of working. For example a smarter

working initiative by Hampshire County

Council in the South East of England is

based on smart work as:

“meaning all forms of Flexible Working

(flexible hours, job share etc) with a

major focus on ICT enabled occasional

or permanent Home or Mobile based

Teleworking.” 5

Smart working understood in this

specific and limited way has been

around for a long time. More holistic

interpretations than a narrow focus on

flexibility of time, place andemployment contracts are emerging.

enabling environmentsThe Chartered Institute of Personnel

Development, in conjunction with CAP

Gemini, focus on organisational systems

that influence psychosocial attitudes to

work and working relationships6.

Smart working in this view is about

managing and optimising both thephysical and philosophical work

environment to release energy that

drives business performance.

Their four pillar model includes

management values, high performance

work systems, enabling technology and

the physical work place.

what others sayThe authors of the Chartered Institute

of Personnel Development research

reports say:

“we believe that a focus on the core

beliefs and culture of the organisation is

the underpinning factor that makes an

organisation ‘smart’. It is a ‘smart

mindset’ “.

dynamic, connected, distributedThe authors of an IBM research report

frame smart working in terms of

dynamic, distributed business processes

and knowledge flows7.

They identify fifteen smarter working

practices that are key to makingenterprises more:

• dynamic - enabling people, processes

and information to adapt rapidly;

• collaborative - facilitating learning and

problem-solving;

•connected - enabling access to timely

and appropriate information.

Both the performance environment

aspects of smart working and boundary-

spanning, problem-solving and

collaborative behaviours were features

of the first wave of smart working. The

past provides principles and insights

that can help us act and learn our way

into the future.

the first wave



Lean, quality and agile were also

collectively referred to as empowered

work practices. The table shows a range

of enablers.

legacy of learningThis falls broadly into three main areas:

(1) Creating business value by making

the most of people’s skills and

capabilities.

(2) Providing systems, structures and

performance environments that

facilitate collaboration across

distributed business processes.

(3) Making the transition to new ways

of working involved businesses

“failing their way to various levels

of success”.

It is not possible to do justice to the

legacy of learning in this summary. The

points highlighted are only illustrative.

people over processesPeople on shop floors are not slaves to

production processes. While processinnovation and co-ordination are core

to first wave methods, it is people who

enact processes.

Processes are outcomes of what people

do – or do not do. As well as creating

value, people can create havoc.

Coercive management control is met

with subversion and resistance.

the first wavefactories are highly socialTeam members’ allegiance to each

other is strong. The social influence

they can exert is one reason why front-

line supervisors are so crucial to

successful functioning of process

innovation approaches.

people are pragmatic

Despite dissent and the tensions

involved in the transition to new work

methods, people range from being

enthusiastic to pragmatic in accepting

changes.

Initial suspicions are often overcome

through social influence, especially theinfluence of supervisors. Those who

resist strongly tend to leave.

value or crisis-driven?

Businesses often embarked on change

in response to crisis. This is not

conducive to establishing the conditions

that enable people to engage in high-

performance work practices and cross-

functional collaboration.

it takes one person

From my own research and

observations from literature, it is the

passion, determination and vision of

one person that initiates and sets the

conditions for fundamental, value-

driven performance to emerge.enablers of empowered work practices



It was recently suggested that

“substantial, scalable and sustainable”19

gains are achievable by focusing on the

‘soft’ side of lean20, which is being

linked to a “new era in management”. It

is hard to see why this is news and it is

also hard to appreciate how it is

possible to do lean effectively without

integrating a culture of innovation and

collaboration within everyone’s jobs.

How to make innovation everyone’s job

and how to create high-performance

work environments are key lessons

from last time around.

workforce autonomyOne of the Chartered Institute of

Personnel Development management

values that underpins smart working is

“a high degree of individual freedom to

act, discretion and autonomy in work

practice”. The Work Foundation in the

UK agrees. In a comment on a survey he

conducted on knowledge work for the

foundation, Brinkley said that

companies should aim for "more

autonomy for people and less intensivemanagement". 21

Workforce autonomy is a recurring

theme in the management literature.

Chris Argyris said more than a decade

ago that the “battle between autonomy

and control rages on while the potential

for real empowerment is

squandered”.22

Is increased workforce autonomy more

wishful thinking than reality? We know

from previous management fads that

“there were no sweeping workforce

metamorphoses”, despite the hype.

What we do know is that management

obsession with control, futile though

that might be, remains a hard nut to

crack.

autonomy and integration

Hansen talks about the dangers of

undisciplined collaboration.23 In the

same way, the dangers of undisciplined

autonomy, where it does occur, is silo

mentality and autonomous work groups

pursuing their own objectives to the

detriment of the organisation.

Autonomy has to co-exist with cross-

boundary collaboration and integration.

Team leader expectations of autonomy

led a production director I interviewed

to describe the experience of managing

them as being like “herding cats”.

dualities

Pettigrew and Fenton call apparently

conflicting demands ‘dualities’.

Encouraging autonomy and mandating

collaboration is an example. They found

that ability to accommodate dualities

was a key characteristic of innovating

organisations.24

First wave work practices continue to

be a source of competitive advantage

for manufacturers. The office-furniture

manufacturer, Herman Miller, realised

that manufacturing processes needed

to change and introduced lean

methods. The result was a range of

performance improvements and cost

savings:

“Herman Miller have learned that the

best run plants rely on people, not

machines. Only people can solve

problems to make assembly lines go

faster, run cheaper, and deliver higher

quality”. 15

creating valueVineet Nayar, CEO of the Indian IT

services company HCL, is gaining

recognition for transforming the

business through a radical ‘Employees

First, Customers Second’ philosophy. He

talks about the value zone being where

customer value is created. He says:

“In traditional companies, the value

zone is is often buried deep inside the

hierarchy and the people who createvalue work there”.16

He is reported in an article in the

Financial Times as also saying:

“The era of employee empowerment is

on us and businesses need to harness

the skills of their workforce to improve

productivity and meet customer needs.

This is created by giving front line

employees the responsibility to take

action that will benefit the customer

without layers of bureaucratic

approval”.17

My doctoral studies explored how

enterprises design and put in place

systems and performance

environments that help people on shop

floors to engage in collaborative

problem-solving and continuous

innovation.

Is the era of employee empowerment

really upon us? Will demands for a new

reality from work and use of social

technologies drive a new wave of innovation and transformation? How?

innovation everyone’s businessGary Hamel proposes that three of the

most pressing challenges facing

businesses today are:

• adapting to the pace of change

• making innovation everyone’s job

• creating a highly engaging work

environment that inspires employees to

give the best of themselves. 18

Making innovation everyone’s job

through continuous improvement is a

core requirement of lean and quality. A

lot is already known about creating

highly engaging work environments.

and now?



The first wave and the emerging wave

are similar in that they are both

knowledge-based and driven by the

need to recognise, nurture and deploy

workforce value-creating capabilities.

Requirements for boundary-spanning,

problem-solving and collaborative

behaviours remain crucially relevant for

current business conditions.

However, the contexts within which

these practices and behaviours are

playing out have become significantly

more complex and challenging.

breaching boundaries

Multiple boundaries within and acrossorganisations are currently being

breached, resulting in complex and

constantly shifting sets of interacting

organisational parameters that are not

easy to untangle. Like patterns in a

kaleidoscope, emergent organisational

configurations are made up of

fragmented and distributed entities

that operate across multiple

workplaces, time zones and cultures.

Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM, writes

about Globally Integrated Enterprises

locating anywhere in the world to take

advantage of new sources of skills and

knowledge. 25 He talks about the

numbers of Western companies

establishing factories in China and India.

The trend is far from one-way.

changing contextsA further factor is the increasing

prevalence of partnerships and alliances

to share expertise, to share the costs of

innovation, to mitigate shared risks, to

gain access to knowledge and skills, and

to gain access to capital that would

otherwise be unobtainable within the

current financial climate.

This is despite the fact that

“determining whether to invest in

mitigation of events beyond an

organisation’s internal processes”

involves complex negotiations. 26

The management challenges of

partnerships can be offset by superiorperformance outcomes. The 2008 IBM

Global CEO Study reported that

outperformers are “20 per cent more

likely to partner extensively than

underperformers”. 27

Partnering is a particularly strategically

attractive option for small companies.

Communication technologies enable

start-ups and agile small businesses to

collaborate to punch above their weightin global markets.

A consequence of globally distributed

organisational eco-systems is that

dynamic networked knowledge flows

are culturally situated and influenced,

including national cultures, professional

cultures, organisational cultures and

demographic cultures.



social technologies

There is a way to go before people in

organisations invade the field to

participate in how business is managed,

fundamentally changing the discipline.

The potential is there for people to takecharge of their own learning. Social

technologies let people:

• serendipitously discover other people

and information;29

• use their personal networks to search

for people and information;30

• “capture information at the point of

inspiration”31 and share it with personal

and business networks;

• create personal profiles – ‘digital

bodies’ 32;

• identify friends, who then become the

audience for what they say;

• connect;

• interact publically;

• cooperate and collaborate33;

• seek recommendations;

• learn individually and socially.

learning and development

Social technologies present

phenomenal opportunities for formal

and informal learning, as people come

together in networks to think, talk,

reflect and act.

The convergence of social technologies

and learning together is at the heart of

the second wave.

what people want

There is wide support in management

literature and research that people at

work seek: personal control, social

status, social support, good personal

relationships, recognition, rewarding

work, and opportunities to learn and to

use skills34.

These psychological traits of work and

the work environment are inter-related

and mutually reinforcing.

what businesses need

Businesses need to adapt to rapidly

changing operating environments,

which as already noted are increasingly

uncertain and complex.

Continuous learning, innovating and

adapting are essential for business

viability. It turns out that what is good

for the health of both people and

businesses is the same thing.

Still none of this is new. Manufacturers

have for a long time operated within

distributed supply networks. What

justifies the suggestion that a second

wave of smart working is emerging?

The first factor is the shift fromknowledge associated with

manufacturing to knowledge associated

with service, design and the creative

industries.

This means that outputs from applied

knowledge have shifted from being

largely contained within factories,

constrained by geography, tangible and

visible to being invisible and intangible.

The social psychologist Weick says that

as abstract working knowledge moved

deeper inside the operator’s head “with

fewer visible artefacts, more of the

organisation has to be imagined,

visualised and filled in from cryptic

clues”.2

Business processes are not only

increasingly abstract and cognitive, they

are now distributed across time, place

and multiple organisational boundaries.

They are no longer contained and

constrained, and are manifested in

networked tacit knowledge that needs

to be surfaced, connected, visualised

and made transparent.

connected and augmentedAdding social networking and

collaboration technologies into the

picture is the next significant

development. Social technologies

connect us, make our conversations

and relationships visible, and they

create the possibility of augmenting the

body and mind within global networks.

Continuous improvement in the

previous wave of disruptive innovation

now becomes the connected,

collaborative intelligence of the

emerging second wave.

game-changing

The effect of people connecting,conversing , creating and sharing

content online has been the

fundamental re-structuring of entire

industries. Traditional broadcast media

and the music industries are the first to

have felt the consequences. According

to one source:

“The avalanche of high quality videos,

photos and emailed news material from

citizens following the July 7 bombings inLondon marked a turning point for the

BBC ... Richard Sambrook (Director, BBC

Global News Division) likened the

increasing use of user-generated

content to a sports game; the crowd

was not only invading the field but also

seeking to participate in the game,

fundamentally changing the sport”.28

the second wave



There is a huge problem. Pearson et al.

claim that the tools for getting things

done, like business processes, people

and support systems, are too rigid and

static.

There is plenty of evidence to support

this statement. If we take just one

element of the CIPD / CAP Gemini four-

pillar model, High Performance Work

Systems, research from multiple

sources in the long-tail of academic

research indicates a positive

relationship between systems of high-

performance work practices and

business outcomes.

It also shows that take-up of these work

practices has been consistently low. Just

because the need is great to nurture

and mobilise knowledge in response to

competitive pressures does not mean

that change is going to happen.

pull of the status quo

The disparity between what is known

about good practice and what happens

in reality is deep-rooted andlongstanding. Organisational inertia is

strong. Barriers exist at the level of the

individual and the organisation. What

managers say, their espoused theories,

and what they do, their theories-in-use,

is frequently different.35

making it happenIn that case, does inertia thwart smart

working? No not necessarily. Peer

support and opportunities for learning

and development, the things that

people value highly, are no longer

available solely through the enterprise.

chaotic action36

The emphasis of smart working has to

be on action, reflection, collective

discovery and experimentation. My

own view of smart working is that it

leads to customer-focused performance

through:

• doing, innovating, reflecting, sensing,

adapting, coordinating, collaborating,

connecting, integrating, sharing, leadingand learning.

This can happen as the outcome of

deliberate organisational intention or it

can happen informally. Quality content

is freely available online. Peers outside

of organisational boundaries share

similar problems within different

contexts. Learning networks can be

easily created offline and online to

discover, research, act and reflecttogether, sharing resources, insights

and support.

With access to all these resources and

support, determined people can apply

to their work what they have learned

outside, for their own satisfaction and

to the benefit of their colleagues and

the business.



The fear of many managers is that

chatting at work is wasting time, when

in fact incidental, informal conversation

is how people learn serendipitously

from each other and how they build

relationships .

Informal networks are equally effective

outside and within organisational

boundaries.

learning networksCommunities of practice are “groups of

people who share a passion for

something they do and learn how to do

it better as they interact regularly”,

Some operate as managed communities

that abide by rules, while others arevery fluid and informal. 37

Learning networks can share the same

social and relationship focus as

communities of practice but may be

more based based on exploratory

conversations rather than practice.

Meaning lies in the path of action2 but it

also lies in the conversations that

inform action.

An example of a conversation-based

learning network would be the Johnson

Controls Global Mobility Network,

which I co-facilitate with Dr Marie

Puybaraud, Director of Workplace

Innovation at Johnson Controls. 38

global mobility network

This is a learning network primarily for

IT, HR and Facilities Management

practitioners, who meet to explore and

share information, experience and

perspectives on topics around globalworkplace trends.

As well as members from large

corporates and small consultancies,

members from the academic and

business support communities add to

the richness of viewpoints and variety

of expertise available to the network.

Participation in the network is by

invitation and is based on ourknowledge of people and their

interests, so that we target those we

feel might benefit from the discussion.

We also seek to create a mix of people

who might not otherwise talk to each

other professionally. In this way, we

seek to set the stage for diverse, cross-

functional and creative insights to

emerge.

Improving practice is for the Global

Mobility Network members a secondary

consideration to personal development

and members tell us that they value the

time it gives them to think with others,

away from the pressures of day to day

work.

informallyinternal networksOne of the Global Mobility Network

meetings investigated ‘Knowledge

Management and Enterprise Social

Networking’. Participants were asked

their view of enterprise social

networking. 39 Their definitions

included:

‘informal communities reaching across

the formal structure of an

organisation and generating value,

ideas and community spirit.’

‘enablement of loosely coupled,

informal networks in order to promote

the growth, knowledge sharing,

knowledge management, andcollaboration that drives effectiveness

and competitive advantage.’

‘encapsulating your wider networks for

trusted knowledge to add value

and diversity to deliver.’

‘self -managing democratic community

of common interests based on

values and trust’

It was interesting to see how strongly

informal networks inside organisations

were highlighted as principal conduits

for sharing common goals, passions

and interests, and in creating chance

encounters for discovering people and

information.



Example

A senior executive wanted to introduce

customer-focused working practices

and values into a municipality in

Western Siberia. He chose

improvement of land acquisition to

introduce, in his own words, “client-

oriented design” through implementing

a new IT system, which meant

examining fundamental processes.

Although contexts differ greatly across

the services the municipality provides,

the learning in this context laid the

foundation for beginning to introduce

widespread changes to the delivery of

services throughout the municipality. This

was a particularly complex businessproblem, involving sets of dynamic,

interacting factors that included process

architecture, strategic HR, organisational

culture, client expectations and external

stakeholders. 43

The following is a very brief description

of a formal, work-based approach to

learning and making the transition to

new strategic action. It is drawn from

my experience gained nationally and

internationally through employment at

a UK university, working with seniorexecutives across a range of sectors as

they sought to make strategic changes

to their businesses.

problem formulationExecutives are required systematically

to understand and be critically aware of

what it is they are trying to achieve,

examining relationships and inter-

connections.40

theoretical perspectivesWhy and how theory is used to inform

practice is discussed in a later section.

just-In-time contentContent is sourced to reflect the

specific business issue and then applied

at the point where it is needed.

action, analysis and reflection 40

Executives must be able to “deal with

complex issues both systematically and

creatively, making sound judgements in

the absence of complete data, and

communicate conclusions clearly to

specialist and non-specialist audiences”

social and emotional supportThis is crucial. Perceptions of own

abilities influence action and learning. A

person’s belief that she is not able to do

something may become self-fulfilling.62

peer supportThe most effective support the

executives get is from each other,

which corroborates long-established

good practice professional learning.41, 42

formally





A theory , which is a general proposition

for making perspectives explicit and

articulating relationship between

elements or events, can provide an

effective tool for thinking about a

problem. 45

Kurt Lewin proposed that nothing is as

practical as a good theory. 46 Having a

theory allows understanding to emerge,

through evaluating, comparing, testing

and reflecting on what we think we are

seeing in reality, or at least our own

version of it. 47

how used?

A minority of executives in the formallearning programme questioned the

relevance of theory. The majority

appreciate its value, using theoretical

frameworks as aids to their own

thinking and as vehicles for initiating

discussions with colleagues back in the

workplace.

For the executive from the Siberian

municipality, theories exposed him to

new ideas against which he couldcompare his instinctive and experiential

knowledge. Complex Adaptive Systems

and lean approaches were for him

particularly appropriate aids to thinking

and acting. Through using a framework

that conceptualises organisations as

interacting complex adaptive systems,

he saw that everything is inter-related.

This was a crucial learning point for him.

theoryPath dependency was another useful

theoretical perspective. This is the idea

that organisations once set on a

particular course of action continue

down that route, even when the

indications are that the action may no

longer be appropriate.

He concluded that the ‘Personnel’

system in his model would be the most

path-dependent and therefore where

most barriers to implementing the IT

system would be found.

exampleThe Viable Systems Model 48 provides a

way of thinking about the following key

characteristics of smart working:

• its principles enable sensing and

adapting to internal and external

threats and opportunities;

• it illustrates dynamics underpinning

viability;

• it mandates cross-boundary

knowledge sharing;

• it enables distributed performance;

• facilitate integration and coordination;

• it balances centralised control with

localised autonomy.

Why this theory might be useful is

discussed in the following sections.



Chris Anderson, in an article in Wired,

wrote49:

“You can find everything out there on

the Long Tail. There’s the back catalog,

older albums still fondly remembered

by longtime fans or rediscovered by

new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides,

remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are

niches by the thousands, genre within

genre within genre …”

The Long Tail also applies to academic

research. So much of it is not easily

accessible and written in turgid

language. No wonder so much of it is

not often referenced. This is a real

shame because there is abundant

insight from the foot soldiers of

research, not the gurus, waiting to be

discovered and made usable.

how used?

On a Global Mobility Network visit to

YNNO in Utrecht, consultants in

workplace design and new ways of

working, our host Jan-Peter Kastelein

spoke to the group about evidence-based workplace design. 50

His observations apply equally to

exploring practical smart working

issues. Jan-Peter said that the objective

of evidence-based design is to

understand how to use workspace to

support creative collaboration and

learning:

research• define evidence-based goals, find

sources or relevant evidence and

critically interpret the evidence;

• using this as input, create and

innovate evidence-based design

concepts;

• develop a hypothesis, asking

appropriate questions and considering

variables;

• collect baseline measures;

• reflect on implementation.

In this way, research engages people in

dialogue. The purpose of the baselinedata and hypotheses is to encourage

people to think, respond, critically

evaluate, reflect and share. Engaging in

dialogue makes links among knowledge

disciplines, organisational boundaries

and institutions.

These conversations involve different

languages, different rules and cultural

traditions. They need skilful facilitation

to help people to interpret and make

sense of co-generated insights, andthen translate them into something

useful.

This engagement and analytical process

is very similar to the formal learning

programmes described earlier, with my

colleagues and I acting as advisors to

the executives as they attempted

engaged their colleagues in dialogue.



themes arising

Some of the issues arising from the

dynamics among people, which are

addressed in Smart Working include:

•Psychological needs

• Culture• Power

• Emotion at work

• Conflict

• Alliances

• Collaboration

• Control

• Influence

shadow systemsLegitimate, formal systems try to steer

an organisation’s primary task

performance and in doing so they

attempt to impose predictability and

maintain the status quo.

Shadow systems are informal and are

beyond the control of an organisation’s

formal management systems. Shadow

systems can be either destructive or

creative, depending on how people are

treated. Shadow systems can be

influenced but not controlled. 52

fractal

Organisations are fractal. The samemanagement principles apply at each

level, interpreted for unique context.53

creative leadership

“Creative leaders invite disruptive

innovation, encourage others to drop

outdated approaches and take balanced

risks. They are open-minded and

inventive in expanding their

management and communication

styles, particularly to engage with a newgeneration of employees, partners and

customers.”54

Creativity involves challenge to the

status quo, which helps to shape the

performance environments that enable

people to innovate, collaborate and

learn.

These final pages refer to just a sample

of theory, research and sources linked

to smart working.

The value chain is how enterprises

systematically organise resources,

people, business units and partnerships

to deliver customer value. How these

interacting systems are configured

influence performance environments

that vary according to a multitude of

operational, contextual and structural

factors, since they have to support

different types of business processes

and knowledge work. 51

social, complex and networkedThese formal systems interact with

complex, dynamic, interacting networks

of relationships, which together co-

evolve into emergent entities that are

said to “learn their way into the

future”.52

adaptingAlthough organisations are often

depicted as complex adaptive systems

that learn and adapt their way into thefuture, they are all too often not

adaptive to external developments.

Failures are both at the level of

individual mental models and also

systemic at the organisational level.

Recent examples are many, including

the near collapse of the global financial

system, General Motors, BP, Rolls

Royce, and the Toyota recalls.

performing: innovating: adapting: leading

context

Contingent factors influence the design

of formal systems. They include social

complexity and process constraints, like

whether operations are predominantly

time-based flow processes or ad-hoc

project-based processes. Social

complexity can be a function of who is

involved, which institutions or

departments they are from, have they

worked together before, what is known

about existing rivalries, alliances or

political factions, where are the existing

power bases, possible influence of

professional, institutional, national and

generational cultures, who needs to be

influenced and why?



monitoring

I once heard Jim Balsillie, Co-Chief

Executive of RIM, compare business to

white water rafting. He said that

business is about “navigating cascading

circumstances”, and is an exercise in

continuous, multiple optimisations. 56

He said that he and his colleagues know

roughly the direction of the course they

want to take, which he calls “the long-

wave bet”, and they aim rather than

steer towards their desired direction.

Their energies are constantly in the

moment to keep the boat afloat and

heading in the right direction as quickly

and safely as possible, while avoiding

the rock that has just come into view.

This demands high levels of in-the-

moment monitoring, distilling,

adapting, integrating, sensing and

collaborating from the entire

workforce.

minimum critical specification

Is there guidance for designing such

monitoring systems? Socio-technicalsystems theory is about how

relationship dynamics, organisational

structures and the technological

aspects of work design influence each

other. Cherns socio-technical principle

of minimum critical specification

stipulates that only what is essential

should be specified. 57, 58

co-ordinating and integrating

The Viable Systems Model, referenced

earlier, proposes that organisations are

made up of fractal and inter-linked

viable systems. A hospital ward would

be a viable system within a hospital,

which is another viable system within aregional health area, itself a viable

system within the highest level system

of the National Health Service.

Each system is responsible for doing

what it exists to do and is required to

co-ordinate with other operations

through mutual adjustment.

scanning and adapting

Each viable system is responsible for

scanning the internal operating

environment for threats and

opportunities to resource allocation and

performance management. This is

‘inside and now’. Each viable system is

also responsible for assessing ‘outside

and future’, by constantly scanning the

external environment for threats and

opportunities. ‘Inside and now’ and

‘outside and future’ are in practice

highly inter-related.

job design

Allocating joint responsibility for work

outcomes across organisational

boundaries is an effective tactic to

facilitate integration and collaboration.

In case anyone thinks any of this is not

real and pressing, what happened

leading up to 9/11 might change their

minds. John Farmer amply and

tragically explains what happened in the

lead up to, during and after 9/11. He

writes with authority, since he wassenior counsel to the 9/11 Commission,

led the team that reconstructed events

and also contributed to the final report.

Farmer says:

“The boundaries between and within

departments separated knowledge

gained domestically from knowledge

gained overseas; knowledge gained

through human intelligence from

knowledge gained electronically; andknowledge gained through the

investigation of criminal conduct from

knowledge gained for the purposes of

situational awareness as general

intelligence … each boundary amounted

to a fault line, an opportunity for the

system to fail”.55

Efforts to transform the CIA were

hampered because the Director was not

able to “overcome his estrangement

from the rank-and-file career

employees of the Agency”. Farmer

concludes that top-down edicts were

resisted by field officers unwilling tochange from the Cold War paradigm,

who resisted cooperation with the FBI

and who did not recognise the

Director’s authority.

His vision for change was not matched

by changes to how the work of “ground -

level employees” should adapt. The

FBI’s 1998 strategic plan for

fundamental change was equally

ineffective. It made terrorism “a priorityin theory, but never in practice”.

If these engrained behaviours happen in

the defence of a nation, they certainly

happen in the pursuit of profit or

provision of services.

coordinating: collaborating: monitoring: integrating



•displaying and modelling emotionalintelligence;

• understanding how to reflect on own

practice and that of others.

This all demands personal qualities of

resilience, self-confidence,

determination, experience and

intuition.

thinking skills

As well as leaders needing to

understand about performance

environments, they also need to

develop creative habits and integrative,

critical thinking processes in themselves

and others.

Roger Martin explains integrativethinking as the ability to look beyond

the apparently obvious, embrace mess

and “search for creative resolution of

tensions rather than accept unpleasant

trade-offs”.61

As if this was not enough, Ralph Stacey

proposes that a key role for leaders is to

contain anxiety. It is obvious that

managing and leading in current

workplaces is no easy matter.

Making the transition to smarter

working practices demands challenge,

persistence, courage and personal

strength. Fortunately, help is at hand in

the form of widely available quality

content and supportive peers. Learning

through dialogue and engagement has

never been more possible.

Hansen concludes that “collaboration

rarely occurs naturally”. He describes

‘disciplined collaboration’ as requiring

organisations to be “decentralised and

yet co-ordinated”. 59 This is the

simultaneous autonomy and control

dynamics the Viable System Modeladdresses.

He recommends managers learn to be

‘T-shaped’ leaders, connecting across

across different parts of the company to

share expertise. He also recommends

that businesses create reward and

incentive mechanisms that encourage

cross-boundary collaboration.

Businesses, or local leaders responsible

for parts of the business, also need to

give urgent priority to creating whole

systems of leadership and learning, as

far as they can.

A survey of 88,600 people in 18

countries into employee engagement

found that organisation is the key

influencer, “a whole system of

leadership, learning, empowerment and

corporate social responsibility”. 60

The formal and informal learning

approaches described earlier provide

opportunities to connect, discover and

share perspectives, as well as

opportunity to practice and reflect

together.

leadership capabilitiesReviewing case studies and literature,

characteristics of local leaders now

include:

• shaping operating environments that

are consistent with high-performance,creativity, individuality and emotional

well-being;

• ability to challenge dogma and

overcome inertia in making the case for

new ways of working, and in creating

agile, adaptive responses;

• ensuring appropriate tools and

technologies are available for continual

learning, adaptation and developmentof collective intelligence;

• skills, knowledge and at least a

foundation understanding of the

emotional, psychological, cultural,

learning and social needs of people;

• understanding the role of the physical

workspace in generating shared

knowledge;

•understanding social issues arising

from working together in distributed

knowledge environments, including

ability to manage the constructive

conflict in cross-disciplinary, culturally-

influenced collaboration;

•understanding techniques for surfacing

knowledge, connections, mental

models and processes;

connecting: sharing: learning: thinking



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thanksThanks to Roman Markov for agreeing to let me reference his work for Smart Working: Creating the Next Wave, and for letting me use his model. Thanks also to Dr Marie Puybaraud, Director of

Workplace Innovation at Johnson Controls, for continuing to champion the Global Mobility Network. My co-facilitation of the network with Marie since 2005 has been great fun, and has given me insight

into the increasingly crucial role of the workplace in knowledge development, learning and performance that I would otherwise not have gained. Finally grateful thanks for everything to John, my

partner in life. He takes great images of graffiti. The graffiti used in this document is mainly from Berlin, with some also from London.



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