Keynote less2012 conference in Tallinn 13.11.2012

1. Esko Kilpi keynote at the LESS2012 conference
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2. is complexity a myth?
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3. let’s look at what we do and how we think
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4. our mainstream management and organizational
approaches are derived from the era of the
production of tangible goods and high-cost/low-
quality communications
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5. physical tasks could be broken up in a reductionist way.
bigger tasks could be divided by assigning people to
different, smaller and fairly independent parts of the
whole
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6. the division of labor reduced organizational effort and
the cost of work in factory production
the division of labor also increased the quality of work
through specialization
this led managers to focus on the efficiency of activities
that were separated from other activities
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7. organizational design was seen as the planning and
execution of a collection of independent, but connected
jobs forming the workflow system
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8. connections were based on top-down command-and-
control and horizontal, sequential processes
in both cases the action of one part was meant to set
off the action of another
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9. interaction was understood as one-way signals, a
system of senders and receivers, a system of causes and
effects
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10. the big move we are in the midst of is towards an
economy that is more centered on information
products than physical products
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11. for intellectual tasks, it is not possible to find
independent parts because intellectual tasks are by
default linked and interdependent, creating a totally
different work environment
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12. the characteristics of the new economy are different
from what we are used to: the production of physical
goods was capital-intensive, leading to centralized
management structures and shareholder capitalism
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13. now it is much more about finding brains than finding
money. the good news is that you are not limited to the
local supply
work on information products does not need to be co-
located because of the Internet
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14. decentralized action plays a much more important role
today than ever before
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15. the architecture of work is the network and the basic
unit of work is not a process or a job role but a task
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16. the opportunity we have is in new relational forms that
don’t mimic the governance models of industrial,
hierarchical firms
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17. mainstream management mind-sets are not only
unhelpful, but wrong in a world of widely distributed
value creation and ubiquitous, high quality connectivity
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18. how we think
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19. mainstream ways of thinking about management are
based on the sciences of certainty
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20. the whole system of strategic choice, goal setting and
choosing actions to reach the given goals in a
controlled way depends on predictability
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21. this familiar causal foundation cannot explain the reality
we face. almost daily, we experience the inability of
people to choose what happens in their organizations –
or in their countries
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22. we live in a linked and complex world
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23. complexity refers to a pattern, a movement in time that
is at the same time predictable and unpredictable,
knowable and unknowable
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26. healthy, ordinary, everyday life is always complex, no
matter what the situation is. there is absolutely no
linearity in the world of human beings
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27. the often-asked question is what causes things to
happen
when we seek for causal explanations, we begin to split
the world into independent entities. there are causes
on the one hand and effects on the other
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29. when we try to understand a person’s actions or try to
understand what is happening, we search for an
independent set of conditions that bring these about
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30. this is why we search for the good managers and blame
the bad ones. the manager is the independent cause –
and deserves to be paid accordingly. the rest of us are
the effects
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31. from a social business standpoint the individualistic
view is fundamentally misleading. one cannot be
inspiring or energizing alone
these qualities are co-created in an active process of
mutual recognition
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32. an inspiring person is only inspiring by virtue of others
who treat her this way
a good decision is only good if there are agreeable
people around
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33. mainstream business thinking sees the self and its
relationships based on cartesian philosophy; I think,
therefore I am
everything in management takes place from the first-
person point of view
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34. cartesian isolation was strengthened in newton’s
physics, where matter and also people, were seen
metaphorically as billiard balls, bumping against one
another every now and then
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35. billiard balls don’t really meet
they don’t get inside each other and alter each other’s
internal qualities. during a collision they may undergo a
change of position or direction, but they remain
essentially the same
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36. this is why psychology and sociology are separate
disciplines. this also explains why human capital and
social capital are seen as separate
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37. in the cause-and-effect model of communication a
thought arising within one individual is translated into
words, which are then transmitted to another individual
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38. at the receiving end, the words translate into the same
thought, if the formulation of the words and the
transmission of those words are good enough
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40. so why are there misunderstandings?
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41. in the model of complex causality, communication takes
the form of a gesture made by an individual that evokes
a response from someone else
the meaning can only be known in the gesture and
response together
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42. if I smile at you and you respond with a smile, the
meaning is friendly, but if you respond with a cold stare,
the meaning may be contempt
gestures and responses cannot be separated but
constitute one act
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43. what if you would think of services as gestures, or
products as gestures...
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44. neither side can independently choose the meanings or
control the conversation. thus you can never control
communication
you cannot predict
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45. complexity and the individual
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46. identity is constructed from being in relationships, being
connected, as contrasted with the mainstream view of
identity through separation
knowledge of self and the other thus becomes viewed
as co-constructed
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47. mutually recognizing and mutually supporting
relationships are the sources of progress
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48. complexity and the organization
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49. organizations are creative, responsive processes of
communication with the capacity to constantly self-
organize and re-organize
solutions are always temporary and contextual
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50. rather than an organization being though of as an
imposed structure of separate, autonomous functions,
today’s organization arises from the interactions of
individuals who need to come together
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51. actions always emerge in a network of relationships – in
co-action instead of cause and effect
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52. an organization is a continuous process of organizing
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53. why this is important now
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54. the really big opportunity of social business is to
reconfigure agency in a way that brings relationships
into the centre
it is about interdependence instead of independence
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55. the new competitive edge comes from openness and
interactive capacity: the ability to participate and
connect, as and when needed
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56. when information is transparent, different people see
different things and new interdependencies are created,
thus changing the organization
the easier the access that people have to information
and one another, the more possibilities there are
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57. there can be no change without changes in the patterns
of communication
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58. organizations of any kind, no matter how large or how
small they are, are continuously reproduced and
transformed in the ongoing interaction
these patterns are highly correlated with performance
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59. every human relationship serves as a model for what
is possible. learning is the fundamental process of
socialization
within any relationship we are in the process of
becoming
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60. leading and following in the traditional corporate
sense have seen the leader making people follow him
through motivation and rewards. the leader also
decided who the followers should be
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61. when seen through the logic of complexity and social
business, leading and following have a very different
dynamic
leading in this new sense is not position-based, but
recognition-based. people, the followers decide
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62. the leader is someone people trust to be at the
forefront in an area which is temporally meaningful
for them
people also recognize as the leader someone who
inspires, energizes and empowers them
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63. because of the diversity of contexts people link to,
there can never be just one “boss”. you might even
claim that from the point of view taken here, it is
highly problematic if a person only has one leader. it
would mean attention blindness as a default state
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64. following is at best a process of active, creative
learning through observing and simulating desired
practices
leading is doing one’s work in an open, inspiring and
transparent way. leading is engaging with people and
being reflective
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65. patterns of recognition and patterns of
communication are the most predictive activities
there are in forecasting viability, agility and also
human well-being
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66. the conclusion
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67. there is a need for rethinking what management is and
refreshing the theories it is built on
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68. the story continues
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69. please follow
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70. @EskoKilpi
http://eskokilpi.blogging.fi
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