More Questions Than Answers: A Leader's Plight

I sat through a meeting earlier this week where an executive in one of my new client groups revealed the department’s new research indicating that having good engagement between leaders and their direct reports was extremely critical.  I can imagine what you’re thinking … “this is not news!”  At least that was what I was thinking.  But the executive went on earnestly and others nodded with conviction.  They committed to do something about this crucial discovery.  Driving back to my office I was thinking about how disappointing it was that the group found the engagement data surprising.  Then I paused and began to consider that maybe I had better take a new look at my own assumptions about engagement.    We have repeatedly seen, during this class, how so many of our assumptions about how to achieve work and personal success are changing.  How will I ensure that engagement continues to be front and center if my attention is constantly alternating between the demands of technological and humanential?  I think, moving forward, motivation and engagement may prove more and more difficult as a leader.    We certainly tend toward distraction.  I wonder how many people in the “engagement” meeting were actively engaged …

Debra Edwards-Onoro reports that 64% of employees visit non-work websites every day adding that 75% of these employees spend upwards of an hour a day on Facebook.  Although companies try to limit this in various ways, I feel I’ve learned in this class, that connecting is necessary.  As a leader I need to figure out how to build on this tendency toward distraction and re-channel or integrate this energy.  It seems people are very engaged with their connection and maybe less and less with their work and/or their leaders.  I think on some levels humans tend toward laziness and inaction when it comes to change and in many ways the internet and technology enable this.  Which means, we committed leaders may be working against inertia.

 Yet it is critical that we do!  Consider Gerd Leonhard’s message in his Change2  animated video.  He implores us to embrace technology not become it – to transcend it.  To achieve this I believe as leaders we will need to emphasize helping people become more flexible, curious and to deal with ongoing change more confidently.  We will need to develop environments which allow people to make mistakes and experiment.   As leaders a main goal will be to help those around us get to a point described by Weinberger where“… our hyperlinked infrastructure will give us a self-understanding that makes it easier for our curiosity and compassion to overcome our self-centered fears.” (p. 193) Weinberger also emphasized the importance   of guiding people toward learning to love difference.  As I previously noted, noted, in many ways we prefer sameness and routine; to be re-affirmed in our opinions. We, as leaders, must learn to deal with this discomfort and push ourselves and others past this barrier.  On a personal level, Weinberger recommended we could do this by putting ourselves in very different situations, and exposing ourselves to multiple works of literature, art and people.  Why not do this at work?  Certainly encouraging diverse collaboration and stretching people for project work is possible.  Why not literature and art?  People are probably checking out Instagram and Pinterest at work so I will look for opportunities to see how I might build on that impulse and channel that interest/energy into work related goals.

Michele Martin’s essay is very inspiring and I really appreciated her discussion of Meg Wheatley’s differentiation of hero as leader and hero as host.  She describes the hero leader as one who encourages us to be passive.  The host leader, on the other hand, encourages everyone to find their inner leader.  The Hero leader feels she is responsible for finding and executing solutions.  The Host Leader creates space for conversations to happen allowing new connections and relationships to form.  The host leader would focus more on the overall process of leading rather than being a leader.  This is somewhat analogous to the old form of wisdom where knowledge and wisdom sat on the pile of data and information where only one interpretation won out.  Now everyone has access and multiple interpretations abound and as Weinberger reminds us we need to rethink knowledge.  In the same way we need to rethink leadership more along the lines of being the host.     

Michelle’s essay also draws on the work of Etienne Wenger discussing social artists, which align nicely with the host leader.  Throughout the essay the need for leaders to establish space for dialogue to take place is discussed.  The first three items listed for social artists reinforce establishing a conversational space: they invite participation, relinquish control, and create environments of high trust and aspirations.  This is aligned with my discussion of conversational space from week 3’s blog.  As Baker, Jensen, and Kolb (2005) explain conversational space is both a physical and psychological space created with the purpose of enabling diverse opinions to be expressed, reflected upon and transformed into new knowledge by the group.  With this being such a constant theme throughout our readings I feel it is an imperative for me to provide thought leadership to establish this level of conversational space at every opportunity.

I continued to find guidance in all the social artist guidelines: helping people to access their full potential is the primary reason I became a learning professional.  I’ve done that successfully in the analog world.  Now my challenge is to figure out how to utilize technological connectivity and AI to enable this discovery.  I am fully aligned with having a vision but also being aware of obstacles and limitations to achieving the vision.  I see this as strength, particularly when significant change is required.  I imagine I will need to refine and demonstrate this skill even more in order to lead effectively in coming years.  At the moment I am having some challenge reconciling the two. In order to be strategic and more inspirational I need to be more in the vision space yet the furious pace of my current situation (and the world in general) has me mired in tactics to navigate obstacles. And finally social artists get things done by collaborating.  This is enabled by our enhanced connectivity, yet I also see areas of opportunity for me to grow here as well.  I value collaboration, but again am influenced by the pace of my life and find that the most efficient method wins out.  And often just getting it done myself or delegating parts is more efficient than collaboration.   

Michelle outlines what she considers 4 Patterns for Guiding Career Moves which I think are also pertinent for leading into the future because they help build resilience which given the pace of change, may prove to be a top need for us to help our employees develop.  These patterns include:  Clarifying, Connecting, Creating, and Coping.  Clarity involves being aware of what is going on in the world and setting your goals based on your self-awareness as well as reference to the anticipated changes.  Connecting refers to  much of what we have been discussing – and reinforces the need to find the right connections who will help us grow and get work done as well as affirm who we are. Creating involves making a framework for our time management, priorities, taking risks, and making plans which uniquely enable us to thrive. Coping requires us to nurture ourselves in ways to help us manage the vicissitudes of life.  All of this wraps up with helping people find their sparks that which helps individuals light their inner fire.  Which brings us full circle back to engagement.  How do I hope to foster engagement moving forward?  By encouraging  employees to be  curious, empowered, resilient, to form opinions and express them in a safe conversational space and guiding them (as I guide myself) to find the proper balance between technological and humanential. 

References

Baker, A. C., Jensen, P. J., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Conversation as experiential learning. Management learning, 36(4), 411-427.

Weinberger, D. (2011). Too big to know: Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren’t the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room. New York: Basic Books.

Vigilantly Curious and Relentlessly Bold: Position Yourself forTomorrow

Prior to this course I viewed technology as a tactic - something that could help us get our work done more efficiently.  I now look at it far differently.  Yes technology is very tactical.  It is also the driver of overall strategy.  It is changing how we think, relate to one another, and know our world.  It is changing what we value, power structures, our concepts of privacy and individual rights and simply how we get work done.  The lovely A Day Made of Glass makes this new world look so seamless.  But humans are not seamless and although the video was soothing on one level, it was also disturbing in that it so startlingly highlighted the chasm between the world technology makes possible for those with and without money a concern echoed by Stephen Hawking as well.  I am concerned as I consider the degree to which technology will contribute to social and economic justice and the degree it will magnify the gap.

And given the continuing acceleration of people’s access to the internet, more and more people will be aware of existing disparities.  This may cause some to show concern, others to become angry, and others to simply ignore.  So in terms of thinking about networked knowledge making us smarter or stupider … I think it can magnify either one.  It will make those who choose to operate in echo chambers, fail to connect or not take the time to discern the accuracy of information stupider.  It can help those who connect widely, stay curious and continue to maintain their compassion and sense of the humanential become smarter – even wise.  Weinberger suggests that knowledge has become a,  "web of connections to us depending on our starting point, viewpoint and inescapably human sense of what matters to us. We had hoped that knowledge is independent of us. Now we know for sure it is not." (p.180)

Kevin Kelley enthusiastically believes we are getting smarter, but points out that we are not necessarily getting smarter in the traditional view of intelligence. Instead of seeing intelligence as linear and disconnected, he views intelligence as multi-faceted, along the lines of Howard Gardner’s long held position of multiple intelligences.  However, Kelley adds AI to the mix and emphasizes that our partnership with AI will be critical.  AI will be smarter in some aspects of intelligence and we will be smarter in others. The world will become cognified, meaning everything around us will be smart.   And although it doesn’t sound very complimentary, Kelley sees the primary human contribution to this cognified world as being inefficient. He says innovation and exploration is inefficient; that you have to prototype and fail in order to learn.     

Leading through this landscape is really tricky.  I see two streams of focus: tech and human.  We need to stay on top of the rapid change in technology highlighted annually in the Gartner Hype Cycle.    The cycle points out that more and more items are heading for the peak of inflated expectations (in which we will likely invest a great deal of time and money).  Shortly thereafter many of them will fall rapidly into the trough of disillusionment (where we realize we may have wasted time and money).  I feel we leaders really can’t do much in the early phases of the cycle.  Hype happens with or without our intervention. We need to be ready to do the hard work of selecting and managing those items which will help our business back up the slope of enlightenment to the plateau of productivity.  We also need to stay aware of the impact of the internet on business and social trends as outlined in the Kleiner Perkins internet trends report.  Tomorrow’s economic and political powerhouses are not today’s.  Even 5 years ago China was not considered innovative.  Just last week FastCompany listed Chinese companies Tencent, Alibaba, Xiomi and others in their Most Innovative Companies Issue.   And with all our emphasis on millennials, the Kleiner Perkins report pointed out how different Gen Z, which is just about to enter the workplace, will be: omni channel, visual, and hyper-connected. In order to begin to stay on top of this we need to remain vigilantly curious and relentlessly bold.  Curious to keep wondering and asking about “what’s next?” and “how does that work?” and bold enough to be comfortable admitting we don’t have all the answers or knowledge but that we are simply wiring into the web and sharing with those around us.   

Weinberger offers 5 guidelines to help us navigate the human aspects.

1)  Maintain an open stance to research so everyone can learn from the process that scholars and researchers take to test their ideas.  This will help everyone learn to filter forward more effectively and become better at testing their own ideas.
2)  Provide the hooks for intelligence by creating more meta-data that helps people link, filter, and evaluate information.  This ensures data become more usable.
3) Constantly link information so people can understand the knowledge in context and learn more based on their own interests.
4) Encourage everyone to contribute to the body of metadata; novices to subject matter experts.  In the past only credentialed people shared knowledge. But this method isolates thought and becomes an echo chamber. With both traditional institutional contributors sharing along with those who are simply curious, some novel alternatives can emerge and motivation to learn and question can remain high.
5)  We need to teach everyone how to use the net, how to evaluate knowledge (the new "literacy”), be more open to new ideas, and to love difference (reject homophily).

Overall in the discipline of leadership development, technology has presented us with many opportunities in terms of delivering content.  Learning about and testing new methods of delivery is very solvable.  More difficult is knowing what to teach.  As we have seen in this course, the landscape is very unpredictable and our past knowledge can even prevent us from fully comprehending the depth of change.   Potentially wicked challenges are: continuing to be relevant, helping learners apply their learning immediately and being able to fit time for leadership development into our learner’s lives/work.

Reference

Weinberger, D. (2011). Too big to know: Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren’t the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room. New York: Basic Books.

Internet Privacy: Who Exactly Has the Key?

Futurist Gerd Leonhard took the perspective of what he termed a “nowist” in his TedX discussion of Digital Ethics.  Why?  Because he is concerned that if we do not fully consider the ethics of technology now, “We may be facing threat of extinction by our own inventions.”  Technology, unlike humans, can move at warp speed.  It does not have ethics.  Gerd notes that we are allowing technology to track us, measure us, advise us, and connect us.  If we do not impart some clear ethical considerations now we could end up in a future driven by the exponential rather than the humanential; one that values speed, power and the network over depth, meaning and self-realization. We are at a critical juncture where much of what we have taken for granted, for example, our right to a degree of privacy is becoming less and less a guarantee.

Internet privacy has become enough of an area of ethical concern that those in the know just celebrated Data Privacy Day on January 18.  Although Deborah Johnson, as quoted in Terrell Bynum’s discussion of Information Ethics sees the privacy concerns as simply “new species of old moral issues” and not some, “wholly new ethics problems requiring additions to traditional ethical theories,” the situation definitely requires our attention – new theories or not. Throughout the world governments and organizations seem pitted against civil rights and privacy groups in determining the proper balance between privacy and security. Is privacy an absolute human right?  Can security and privacy dwell together?  What about freedom of information?

Had I written this piece 5 years ago I would have focused solely on our rights to online privacy such as protecting our data, our identities, and our employers’ rights (or not) to our social media presence.  However, in 2017, internet privacy expands to the Internet of Things (IoT); our wearables, cars, thermostats, entertainment systems … all of which are sending non-stop streams of our personal data into the network.  Since all of us engaging with IoT are now integrated into the internet, this blog will take an overview of privacy concerns with the internet per se as well as with the IoT.

 

INTERNET PRIVACY

A January 2017 internet privacy update from  VPN service provider Express VPN notes that the U.S. and the European Union have agreed that stealing, which includes violating someone’s privacy is wrong and illegal.  However, in assessing some of the recent cases where Facebook users felt their privacy had been invaded, the determination was that although the information had been used in ways the users were not expecting, no privacy laws had been broken.   This type of “surprise usage” of our private data is considered a “creep factor”.  So although what a company may be doing with our data is legal, in order to be truly ethical, a company should be clear about how they’re using it. Otherwise they risk losing our trust.  And talk about the creep factor.  Consider our right “to be forgotten”.  Our on line communication and postings do not go away.  They are our legacy – wanted or not – except in the European Union who in May 2014, ruled that its citizens had a “right to be forgotten” and directed Google to delete “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” pages from its search results. 

And although there are restrictions on how information may be used, the majority of world governments tap internet traffic as part of national security programs.  However, it is just this level of surveillance—whether by governments or corporations – that concerns citizen advocate groups like the ACLU who fear the extent to which such scrutiny can hamper  the expression of free speech and association, the free exercise of religion and undermine a free media.  In a related article the example of Boston residents seeking to stop the police from continuing a digital surveillance plan after finding out that the surveillance companies with which the police were contracting advertised themselves as helping law enforcement officials avoid the warrant process in investigations” and “providing a means of spying on dissidents.” 

Late last year the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by a 3-2 party line vote  passed some new rules, which requires Internet providers to obtain a customers’ explicit consent before the provider can share personal information, such as app and browsing histories, mobile location data and other information generated while using the Internet.  The mandate requires that service providers inform consumers about data they collect and notify them of data breaches.  Covered in these restrictions are trading in health data, financial information, Social Security numbers and the content of emails and other digital messages.  Echoing Gerd Leonhard’s warning that ethical considerations need to be addressed as early as possible,  Jay Stanley  with the ACLU said “If this was not done, it could have really hard-wired a surveillance infrastructure into the Internet itself”.

Not covered by the ruling are individual web companies – such as Google or Facebook who already make a great deal of money monetizing user information.  The internet service providers view this information as a source of revenue thus a legal challenge from affected companies can be anticipated.  

THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IoT)

A December 2016 article by Andrew Meola in Business Insider suggests that there will be 24 billion IoT devices by 2020.  And along with the benefits comes risk as these connected devices give hackers and cyber criminals more entry points.  The IoT also generates a great deal of very personal data which is now also part of the internet.  Meola mentions several key concerns including:

·         The sheer volume of data:  It’s estimated that 10,000 households can generate 150 million discrete data points every day.

·         Public Profile:  An insurance company can potentially collect data from your fitness tracker or smart car and use it to determine eligibility.

·         Access to your home:  German researchers were found to have collected unencrypted data from a smart meter device to determine what television shows people were watching.

Lauren Zanolli writing for Fast Company feels we are generally underplaying the threat to our privacy that IoT’s present.  She quotes Josh  Corman, a security expert and cofounder of I Am The Cavalry,  suggesting,  "What we've done is blindly assume that [adding software and connectivity] is always good. And we're making really horrible, horrible choices."  Continuing to echo these concerns, Lee Tien, Senior Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation points to the faded lines between private and public data stores in the post-9/11 era stating,  "We’re long past the days when we can really think of private sector collection of data and government collection of data as two separate silos."

In 2013, which seems like a generation ago when considering the IoT, the FTC met to discuss the Fair Information Practice Principles (“FIPPs”).  The FIPP have formed the basis of regulations for government and private sector initiatives on privacy for a variety of principles including notice, data minimization, choice, and security.  Their goal was to determine how FIPP should apply to IoT.  They determined four priorities. 

·         Build strong security in from the beginning and keep it strong.

·         Minimize data by collecting as little as possible and getting rid of it as soon as possible.

·         Ensure consumers know what data is being collected and,

·         Allowing them to opt out.

An example of poor security cited in the report included TRENDnet who marketed its Internet-connected cameras for varied home security purposes including baby monitoring.  They claimed their cameras were “secure.”   However, there were numerous security breaches covered in the report which indicated that hackers were able to access live feeds from consumers’ security cameras and conduct “unauthorized surveillance of infants sleeping in their cribs, young children playing, and adults engaging in typical daily activities.”

Kelsey Clubb, Lisa Kirch, and Nital Patwa from Berkeley in 2015 considered the ethical implications of IoT and their research suggested that IoT actually becomes the internet of behavior.  We are allowing access to all kinds of personal data from our heart rate to conversations, journals to driving habits, reading to traveling.  More and more of our behavior is there to be viewed and assessed and ultimately it could be used against us in court.  It could influence our applying for insurance, housing or a job.  And the protections in place are only partially protective.  In terms of the ethics of the data, who exactly owns this dataset and who has access to this dataset?  Not determined. What are the business practices of the companies that have access to the dataset?  Hopefully ethical.  How is the dataset is being used and being shared? There are limited parameters.  Oh yes and what happens when the system is hacked?  Oops!!

As consumers we really need to be aware and vigilant.  Although we would like to imagine everyone as being ethical our privacy is largely our responsibility.  Laws can help but they can’t keep up with the pace of change.  Consumer organizations like I Am The Cavalry and Electronic Frontier Foundation  can help keep us apprised.  Research projects like Ubiquitous Commons seek to design legal and technological toolkits that will help us to better control use of our data.   But ultimately it is up to you and I to be aware and know that we are making choices to share (or not) multiple times a day.   And honestly – the whole concept of privacy may be a mirage.

For Better or Worse, In Sickness or Health ... We're In This Together

Data from Internet World Stats indicates that as of June 2016, 50.1% of the world’s population had access to the internet.  In 2011 that figure was roughly 33%.  In the US this penetration is 89%.  Every second approximately 10 people gain new access to the internet.  This pervasive worker connection brings both opportunities and challenges to the workplace.

Jarche highlights the economic benefit networked workers bring to an organization noting that because of their connections a small handful of workers can now accomplish what it took entire departments to accomplish in the past.  They have fast access to knowledge across multiple sources of information and the transaction costs of accessing this information are minimal.  Networked workers may also require fewer direct supervisors due to their reliance on the network for information and support and this introduces additional cost savings.  And although not everyone would see it as a benefit, in a VUCA world, being able to tolerate ambiguity is crucial, and the Pew piece notes how networked workers and AI are changing how we define exactly what makes a job a job and how ultimately this can result in the restructuring of the social contract.  Staying cognizant of this will help organizations stay flexible.

According to the details of the Workplace 2020 info-graphic, there are six primary drivers of change under way.  They are:

■ Extreme Longevity ■ The rise of smart machines and systems ■ Computational world ■ New media ecology ■ Super-structured organizations ■ Globally connected world

Only extreme longevity (i.e. estimating that by 2025 the number of Americans over 60 will increase by 70%) does not clearly benefit from networked workers.  The other five depend on competently connected workers.   These workers bring each of the ten necessary skills for success in 2020 to the job. They include:

■ Sense making ■ Social intelligence ■ Novel and adaptive thinking ■ Cross cultural competency ■ Computational thinking ■ New Media Literacy ■ Transdisciplinary ■ Design Mindset ■ Cognitive load management ■ Virtual collaboration

Weinberger (2011) discusses a 1963 letter written by Bernard Forscher titled Chaos in the Brickyard which discussed all the random pieces of data that were being developed but not linked together.  There are many more random bricks strewn about today.   And, although computers are able to categorize “bricks” quite well, it will take connected workers with the skills listed above to provide a holistic and deeper understanding of these varied data points.  And stringing these data points together will not be an easy task.  Weinberger explains that our new medium of knowledge, can't keep information, communication, and sociality apart.  This combination can lead to a plethora of knowledge about which we will most likely tend to disagree.  He has little optimism that we will ever again find something we all agree on.

Networked connections enable greater work flexibility and we’ll likely see an increase in the number of workers working remotely.  Depending on the research one cites, remote workers present various opportunities and challenges.   Ann Bednarz in a piece in Networkworld describes the key aspects.  Weinberger (2011) states that, "the mechanisms of belief have become detached from the means of knowledge” (p.150). This leaves us in a time where you can remain ignorant yet seem like you are knowledgeable.  With this in mind, I felt it particularly interesting to note that research by Zimbler and Feldman (2011) mentioned in Bednarz’s article points to an increase in lying in virtual environments.  If no one is truly seen as an expert and we disperse with many of our former tests of validation, it seems this trend could continue to grow. This would present a critical challenge for networked collaboration.  Another, consistent challenge presented by remote workers is the desire to have a trusting, close relationship with their leader.  They want a leader who not only keeps them organized but who cares about their development both personally and professionally.  Millenials in particular are clear about their need for feedback from their leaders.  An article in the Harvard Business Review    discusses Millenials’ desire to receive purposeful feedback from their manager on a monthly basis – more than any other generation in the workplace.  They want an authentic and approachable leader who can inspire and connect them to a higher purpose. These very human needs must occur in tandem with the technological savvy required to function effectively in the role.  This challenges leaders to fully integrate seemingly opposing elements and to help their workers do the same.  

I found some solid guidance on this integration from Tiffany Shlain, who among other things co-founded the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, and the Webby Awards.  In an OnBeing interview she discusses the relationship with technology and points out that technology is not something other than us – we are its creators and by mentally reframing our relationship and seeing it as an extension of our abilities and an amplification of our desire to connect we can come to see ourselves and technology in a more interconnected and holistic way.  She encourages us to view the network as a nervous system for the world.  Her work gives me hope that as leaders and workers we can continue to evolve our relationship with technology and ourselves for a dynamic and positive outcome.

References

Weinberger, D. (2011). Too big to know: Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren’t the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room. New York: Basic Books.

Zimbler, M., & Feldman, R. S. (2011). Liar, liar, hard drive on fire: How media context affects lying behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 41(10), 2492-2507. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00827.x

Can We Untangle This Mess?

Weinberger’s (2011) states, “Knowledge now is the unshaped web of connections within which expressions of ideas live.” (118) He goes on to explain that, “the world itself is more like a shapeless, intertwingled, unmasterable web than like a well-reasoned argument.” (119) He contemplates the shape of this networked thinking and concludes it has no shape, but is instead uncontrollably divergent.  It has become, as Jon Husband defines it, a wirearchy,  “a dynamic two-way flow of  power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology” (para 8).  The power of the wirearchy lies in a flattened organizational structure where people depend on one another …working together through connection and collaboration … taking responsibility individually and collectively rather than relying on traditional hierarchical status.  In this uber connected world a leader’s role becomes one of championing ideas and ensuring resources are focused on identifying the possibility for innovation in those ideas.  To do this Husband explains that leaders need to stay on top of how and why people are connecting and sharing information and facilitate this connection whenever possible.  To foster the collaborative spirit Husband also focuses on a leader’s ability to listen deeply and be transparent. Being able to let go of power and control is critical for the wirearchical leader.

Weinberger in his video looks to the future and suggests we need to constantly anticipate how to stay relevant.  And since it is very difficult it is to anticipate what will be meaningful he suggests that we need to keep the possibilities open ended. Thus instead of leaders filtering information out, based on their own priorities, it would be wiser to let the user determine their own priorities after filtering through on their own.  And, according  to Gartner, acting or thinking  independently will become the anomaly.  Instead we are likely to experience swarming where groups of people gather instantaneously to solve a problem, solve it then dissipate as quickly.  (The work evolution of flash mobs?)  Work Sketch Ups, discussed by Gartner, also highlight the impermanent team. This presents some unique leadership challenges in that the team or project may be ephemeral and unpredictable.   And a cornerstone to successful leadership in this connected world will also be establishing powerful connections and high levels of trust with others.  Exploiting the Weak Links (forming necessary relationships) and Working with the Collective (interacting with groups outside of the organization’s purview) are two such areas necessitating the building of trust.   Another component of successful leadership proposed by Gartner is the ability to recognize patterns.  Although both Weinberger and Husband seem to warn against the leader doing much filtering, the ability to recognize patterns could prove to be eminently helpful for a leader in influencing vision and direction for her followers.

And how will leaders and their followers be able to obtain these skills?  Gartner recommends businesses help make everyone more digitally savvy by launching learning boot camps.  I love the boot camp concept because of its “all in” approach so necessary in this network tsunami.  And taking a different track on preparing the workforce and leadership for these new skills, Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor’s chief economist, lists HR transforming itself as Job Trend #1 in FastCompany’s  top 5 workplace trends forecast for 2017.  Since employee engagement is a top focus in my organization I was fascinated by the HR  workforce analytics that can track every stage of an employee’s progression through a company and Sentiment trackers such as Glint and Small Improvements  which enable employees to monitor their attitudes, engagement, performance and more  at various times throughout the day.  As I took a tour through the websites of this Sentiment tracking software I felt it was a bit intrusive. Yet it also struck me as like a natural networked evolution to Teresa Amabile’s research (Progress Principle, 2011) on the positive impact of meeting even very small goals during the work day.  Her subjects used daily diaries and recorded thousands of pages.  Wow!  How much easier her research would have been with using Glint.   

Two other predicted changes caught my attention in some additional Gartner studies.  In their Top Strategic Predictions they suggest that by 2020, the average person will be engaging in conversation with AI more than humans.  The study references current day conversational user interfaces, such as Amazon's Alexa, or Apple’s Siri.  I wonder to what extent such conversational interfaces might replace leaders. They are omnipresent and are certainly informed.  Another element in the study suggests that the meaning of literacy is changing. We used to associate literacy with being able to read information. Now, simply reading is not enough.  The literate individual also knows how and where to search.  From an HR and leadership perspective this suggests that changes are coming in what we value in our employees and how we prepare them for success.

Chamberlin  points out that tomorrow’s workforce needs to be creative, flexible, have strong soft skills, and good judgment.  Weinberger sees employees who are who are well connected and can continue to build connections with both humans and the network.  Gartner’s research predicts swarming and temporary relationships which need to form and perform very quickly.  Husband sees a flattened, integrated work world of interdependence. Success in the future seems to rely on us being able to tap our deepest human elements of trust and connection with a savvy awareness and integration with the network.  We will need to form solid relationships with both humans and AI.  It is difficult for me to nail down specifics that leaders will need moving forward but I can say with confidence that we need to help ourselves and those around us learn to live in complete unpredictability.  And humor is one great tool for making at least a tiny bit of sense of the ambiguous world.  Thanks to Dr. Watwood sharing one of his favorite cartoonists, I was led to https://www.gapingvoid.com/  a site offering to help organizations “address the gaps between your culture and your purpose, so your employees can help your business succeed.”   They offer to do this through a combination of art and Culture Science™.  The company name and mission made me smile.  We surely are experience a gaping void of understanding right now and I think it’s worth considering that maybe part of our solution as leaders is to keep smiling J

Amabile, T. & Kramer, S. (2011). The Progress principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

Weinberger, D. (2011). Too big to know: Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren’t the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room. New York: Basic Books.