Tag Archives: Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World
Where Good Ideas Come From By Johnson; Doing Both By Sidhu – Two Great Choices for the December 3 First Friday Book Synopsis
This morning, with nearly 90 people present, we presented our synopses of Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership by Tim Irwin and Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. It was a terrific morning! (Handouts, with audio, will be available on our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com, in about two weeks).
And special thanks to Kelly Lane and The Association for Women in Communications and the Dallas Freelance Alliance for their sponsorship this morning. Because of their sponsorship, we had five copies of each of the books to give away (we normally give away only one copy of each book). So, a big thank you to Kelly and both of these organizations.
Next month, December 3, we will present synopsis of these two books:
Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today’s Profit and Drives Tomorrow’s Growth by Inder Sidhu, with guest presenter Cathy Groos (Karl Krayer will be out of town).
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson, which I will present. I have already done a quick take of this book – it is profound!
I hope you will mark your calendar, and plan to join us on December 3.
The Coming Wave of “Knowledge Worker Day-laborers” (“Where will the jobs be?”, continued)
Day-laborer:
One who works by the day…
Tomorrow morning at the First Friday Book Synopsis, I present my synopsis of Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. It is a terrific book. But as I read about the “dark side” of the wikinomics economy, a phrase came to mind that I have not been able to escape. So – here’s my prediction:
We are becoming a nation, and world, filled with “knowledge worker day-laborers.”
You know what a day-laborer is. It is a person who shows up at a site where others gather, hoping to be hired for the day. Traditionally, this is a phrase describing physical laborers, expecially farm laborers. They show up, early in the morning, on the right street corner, hoping to be hired for the day.
Well, the book Macrowikinomics describes all sorts of ways that companies are using more than just “their employees,” and all sorts of ways that individuals are collaborating on short term projects. This is all well and good. But…where will the actual jobs be? Or, to put it differently, how will people feel secure, confident that they will have work to do for the next day, week, month, decade…?
Conisder these thoughts, from the book:
(re. the “joblessness” of the younger adults, throughout the developed world) – This is a problem of epic proportions… There is a real danger that the largest, most highly educated cohort of young people in history could become “the lost generation.”
and
The trend for many companies is clear: if we can do more with fewer, we will… talent can be inside and outside of firms… Aren’t wikinomics business models the death knell for jobs?
and
The Big Scares (my observations)
• are we becoming a world of (internet connected and enabled, computer terminal) “day-laborers” – always looking for the next job/assignment/project… with little or no security and continuity? (in other words – how will people make a living in this brave, new, scary world?)
• Think about this: IBM – from 399,000 to 100,000 by 2017 (projected cuts in actual employees – their planned “HR transformation program”).
Think about that last item – IBM intends to cut nearly 75% of its jobs, and maybe “hire” many of the same people back on an “as needed basis” for specific tasks/jobs. “The trend for many companies is clear: if we can do more with fewer, we will….”
Yes, the wikinomics world is an exciting world of collaboration and multiple breakthroughs. And the book tries to paint an optimistic picture. The book says: “We think that there is a stronger case to be made that wikinomics principles help bolster fledgling enterprises by supercharging their innovative capabilities and that small enterprises in turn are the most reliable job creators.”
But I can’t help but think that what we really face is a not-so-brave, not-so-secure world of “Knowledge worker day-laborers,” hanging around their virtual street corners each morning looking for work for the day, facing a very uncertain future.
“This is a problem of epic proportions.”
Keep Learning – It’s Your Only Job Security (Macrowikinomics reinforces this ever-more-true truth)
Yesterday you graduated and you were set for life – only needing to “keep up” a bit with ongoing developments in your chosen field. Today when you graduate you’re set for, say, fifteen minutes. If you took a technical course in the first year of your studies, half of what you learned may be obsolete by your fourth year… What counts more is your capacity to learn lifelong, to think, research, find information, analyze, synthesize, contextualize, and critically evaluate; to apply research to solving problems, to collaborate and communicate. This is particularly important for students and employees who compete in a global economy… given networked business models, knowledge workers face competition in real time. Workers and managers must learn, adapt, and perform like never before.
Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World
{Peter Drucker said it first:
“The only job security is found in your own ability to keep learning!”}
{And Peter Senge:
“Through learning, we re-create ourselves.”}
Coming for the November First Friday Book Synopsis – Tapscott’s Macrowikinomics, and Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership
We had a wonderful morning at the October First Friday Book Synopsis. Karl presented a synopsis of the terrific new Tony Schwartz (et. al) book, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance.
I presented my synopsis of The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World’s Toughest Problems by Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin, which described how the worst problems can be solved — in fact, in many cases have already been solved – by the successful “positive deviants” found in almost any and every group.
Both books were really good, useful, challenging, books. We will have our synopses, with handouts + audio, up on our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com, available in a couple of weeks.
For next month, (the first Friday of November, November 3), we have chosen these two books. Karl will present Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership by Tim Irwin, Patrick Lencioni (Foreword).
And I will present a synopsis of the brand new book by Don Tapscott (et. al) Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. (I can’t wait to read this!) His earlier book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (which I presented at the May, 2007 First Friday Book Synopsis), is a genuinely significant book in this/for this connected age.
If you are in/will be in the DFW area, come join us on November 3. As one enthusiastic participant said this morning – “great content, really good food, great networking – the best event I attend each month.”
We agree!
Context, and Confusion – Reflections on Gladwell’s Latest
Malcolm Gladwell
(Wiki/Twitter activism) is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.
(Malcolm Gladwell, from his latest…)
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I am a big fan of the whole social media, Twitter revolution, Wikinomics era thing going on.
I am a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell. (I’ve presented his first three books at the First Friday Book Synopsis).
Help!
In Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (I can’t wait to read Tapscott’s new book!), we learn that there is a whole new world out there from the connections, put everything up there and out there on the web, approach to innovation.
So – Twitter, wiki, everybody gets access, everybody gets connected, is the answer to all of our problems. Right?
Not so fast.
Malcolm Gladwell’s latest is: Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted. He acknowledges that Twitter, and the whole new world, has its place. Its place is just limited. When you want a real revolution, it won’t provide what we need.
In the article, Gladwell contrasts the massive work behind the scenes in the Civil Rights era 50 years ago to the environment of today. Consider these excerpts:
These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter.
Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is.
The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life
But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.
Gladwell reminds us that the people who sat at lunch counters in the 60’s were literally tempting some goons to bash their heads in – and some of the heads were bashed in. It took a lot of preparation, a lot of serious organization, a lot of courage – not “weak ties,” but very, very strong ties. Twitter wasn’t needed, and would not have been enough to pull this off.
In the world of politics, there is a new observation developing, which Gladwell alludes to. People who read blogs and even write in blogs are under the impression that they are involved, they are activists, changing the world. But the evidence is not yet backing this up.
Here’s what I think. Gladwell is a master at raising the right question – a master of tapping into the Zeitgeist, saying just the right things at the right time. I’ve read this new article carefully – even as I have just thrown Tapscott’s new book, Macrowikinomcs, into my “I should present this book” mix. Let’s just say that I am trying to figure out just what Twitter and the new world can – and cannot – accomplish.
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Read Gladwell’s article here. It’s worth the time.
