fluidminds

Sustainability

A central driver of the new world of work is sustainability. Human enterprise must become sustainable and the million dollar question is – HOW?

There is more and more activity going on, aiming to push us in the direction of suatinability. Research. New products. Tax incentives. Education. Etc. But is it enough? And are we moving fast enough? Probably not.

What happens if we approach sustainability bottom-up instead of top-down? With each individual's work as our perspective? If each and every one of us works and lives sustainably then wouldn't it be fair to conclude that the society as a whole becomes sustainable?

What would be more likely to happen - a global trans-national agreement on new sustainable practices or a widespread grassroots movement transforming work and everyday life to make it sustainable?

I'm betting on the latter.

//jan

The corporate charade?

Over the last weeks I've become more explicit about my sense of subtly and sub-consciously being asked to participate in a charade when interacting with people that work in larger organizations. The interesting reaction is that many, if not most, willingly agree and support my feeling.

What is this charade? Well, one dimension of it is the sense that I have a totally different view on what work consists of and what is important in work. To put it bluntly we have different views on results. And thereby also different views on methods for achieving results. People in large organizations are in general more busy with the organization itself than with creating external results.

My analysis is very preliminary, but I have found two distinct factors that I believe are part of the problem.

One is the mixing up of purpose and means. In many large organizations money has become purpose. When they started there was probably another purpose and money was one of the means.

The other has to do with size. Large organizations get more confused and introvert than small and mid-sized. Power games and politics grow into the culture at the expense of customers, external results and purpose. Add public listing to the equation and the disease gets worse. Without distinct ownership (compare with a family owned business) disciple erodes even more.

Now, put a talented individual (you!?) on the stage and ask yourself:
• who do I want to work with?
• what type of collaborations bring out my best work?
• what kind of results do I want to achieve - in my work and for myself?

Well, any smart person is soon going to discover that large organizations in general don't offer a very rewarding work environment. They do offer status, money and power – if you are part of the elite. And the rest are kept very busy and dependent. Perhaps, (written with a conspiring tone...) to make it more difficult to expose the charade...?

//jan

Is the future tribal?

Hierarchical organizations - big ones in particular - seem to become ever more ineffective. Will they go extinct? Many would say no. I'd say, let us see. There is a movement picking up that challenges the traditional ways of organization. Not just on the surface. More fundamentally.

13,000 years ago (give or take a few hundred) mankind started to produce food and gradually left hunting and gathering. Our tribal way of life that we had lived for millions of years was abandoned. We divided labor, created power structures, formed armies and lived more densly.

Present ideas around tribal organization and tribes as a marketing strategy are gaining momentum. Perhaps we are set to re-discover some of our old ways of life.

My personal view is that tribal organization is the path we need to explore if mankind is to correct itself and once again live sustainably on Earth. Hierarchy gave us a lot in 13,000 years. But hierarchy could be a dead end - which more and more people seem to discover.

Insights of this magnitude create movements. Work is being re-invented. Keep a sharp eye on what is going on.

//jan

PS. Seems Seth Godin also has explored the tribal trend. His next book will be published on Oct 16 and is titled Tribes: We need You to Lead Us. Check here. If you happen to be in NYC on Oct 22 you should try to get in on the event. DS.

The future of Södertälje

Södertälje, 40 km south of Stockholm, has reached international fame for recieving more refugees from Iraq that The US and Canada combined.

The town has 85,000 or so people living there and around 40% have non-Swedish backgrounds. The local government is trying very hard to turn this into an opportunity of grand proportions rather than see the development as social problem "to be taken care of". Good for them.

I've been working with the local government and their group of companies on and off for about ten years. They are one of my most challenging clients. Yesterday I received a call with an invitation to join a group of entrepreneurs and thinkers charged with the task of stimulating the entrepreneurial spirits of this vast diversity of people. A true possibility factory in the making. They want to explore methods, models and actions.

Indeed a challenge! And of course I accepted!

//jan

The Kaospilots vs. Swedish ministers

Swedish ministers of Education, Enterprise and Research - Jan Björklund, Maud Olofsson and Lars Leijonborg presented a strategy for entrepreneurship in the Swedish education system last week. The piece kind of pissed off the students at Kaospilot Stockholm so they rallied for a reply that was published Saturday.

Essentially they challenged the ministers to actively support the Kaospilots as a role model for exactly the goals the ministers say they want to achieve. Still, the Kaospilots after two (!) years of struggle with the central education bureaucracy has not been approved for the goverment student loan program. The paradox becomes total when a Swedish student can enroll in the Kaospilots in Denmark and recieve Swedish student loans - but not get them for the same education in his/her own home country.

You can find the ministers' article here [in Swedish]

And the students' response here [also in Swedish]

fluidminds founded Kaospilot Stockholm with Kaospilot International in 2006. The Kaospilots was ranked as one of the 60 best educations in the World by Business Week in 2007. In april 2008 nobel peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus visited and held a lecture at Kaospilot Stockholm.

What was work like today?

My day:
- take kids to school and day care
- touch base at office/meeting space
- connect two people in the network to solve one of the person's crisis at hand
- meet my therapist. learn more about myself. again :-D
- touch base again
- take car to IKEA to buy furniture for home and office
- get feedback from the two I connected in the morning. match made in heaven. problem solved.
- pick up kids
- return home. Skype with potential business partner in London
- some email
- update this blog
- cook dinner

A typical workday in the new world of work? I don't know, but it certainly isn't what they taught me at business school. And it certainly isn't the work day structure of the average employee in the average organization. (Ask my wife...)

Did I create value? You bet. Did I get paid? Not today.

Have a wonderful weekend.

/jan

A riff from Seth

A cut from Seth Godins blog posted three days ago:

In search of value

The stock market is going to be bonkers today.

And for most people, it won't matter so much. Because most of us aren't focused on flipping assets. We're building value by creating interactions that work, by writing stories that spread or by designing products and services that actually create something worth paying for.

That sounds like a treacly mission statement, but it's easy to get distracted by external noise instead of focusing on what counts. Hint: They started Google in the middle of the dot com melt down.

The short-term consequences of an unstable stock market are real and uncomfortable. More (and better) adult supervision would have gone a long way, imho. But we can't control this, all we can do is focus on what matters.

Hang in.

Seth is one of the clear voices from the new world of work. Check his blog ut on a regular basis.

What is the big deal?

Financial institutions over the world are in a big mess. Media brings out the scare further. Now economies all over are in potential disaster.

Sure, there has been over-lending and over-consuming going on. And an over-liquidity in many economies - further spiralling the urge to make money on money.

The economists are saying things to the tune of "a healthy correction". I say the financial sector is missing out on the shift towards the new world of work. Their old minds are investing in new programs, also set by old minds. Not so surprising that institutions eventually loose lots of money. But only after the economic elite once again has ripped off the average guy.

The big deal should be this: Who is investing in the new minds? In those people that don't run programs. Those who are building the new world of work - based on sustainable practices, doing good, networking, self-organization, etc. That is where the money should be going.

//jan

What's so new...

...in the new world of work? Well, not very much is new new. But if you add up all the factors that have entered into the equation in recent years/decades, we'd humbly argue that work needs to be re-thought - again. Consider among other things:

• sustainability
• climate change
• networks
• communication technology
• globalization
• oil prices
• over-population
• poverty
• consumerism
• individualism

Our experience is that organizations factor these things in one at a time, but seldom as a whole. And that is more or less our whole point - work needs to be re-thought from the perspective of the whole, not from any separate part.

Man has always worked. Work has put us where we are - for good and for worse. If we want to change where we are, we need to change work.

//jan

Thoughts about work

The word work is carefully chosen as an element of our new direction.

Work is something that concerns all humans. An important part of life is work. But it is not always paid for. Sometimes we work for fun. Sometimes out of necessity. Sometimes to earn our living. Sometimes to help others.

Most work is still done in our homes. Raising children, fixing up our homes, cleaning, etc. We tend not to call this work, but it is. Humans work as a way of supporting themselves. Work is an integral part of being human.

The paradox of our times is that we have made work too serious and boxed it in to mean "paid work". We should lighten up and see work as part of life. But not as our life. As someone has said - work today is an highly over-rated activity. We could do a lot of good by letting go of some of our mental models around work.

What is work? A friend in physics says that work is transfering energy from one system to another. Another friend connects the root of the word to the words worth and worship.

Digging into the history and meaning of this very everday (and for granted taken) word is fascinating. Is it time to rediscover work? And to put work into a new societal context? We think so.

Check these resources if you'd like to explore a little more:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/work
http://www.yourdictionary.com/work
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=work&searchmode=none

//jan