Exhibit 1. A twitter fragment reflects the opinion that Organizational Theory ‘dictates mostly top-down’ while ‘Social Media is Chaos Theory.’

Conclusion. Organizational Theory is now obsolete.

Exhibit 2. A gentleman writes a blog, which quickly goes viral, regarding what he sees as a ‘generational war’ between Knowledge Management and Social Media.

Conclusion. Knowledge Management is now (thankfully) obsolete.

Exhibit 3. I knew there was water on Mars before you did. Chances are. Why? Because the Mars Phoenix whispered it to me back in June.

Conclusion. Typical approaches to Government are now obsolete.

All done in by Social Media. Huzzah.

There is something to be said for assertions in the presence of minimal context. I forget the precise saying, but everyone has one and they can stink. Permit me a few slightly contrarian viewpoints:

1. What if, instead of ’social media’ replacing approaches to How We Organize, it simply represents a new tool-set that reflects approaches to organizations that date back almost 60 years?
2. What if Knowledge Management leaders actually embrace notions of complexity, natural science, and the distributed nature of organizational thought?
3. And what if approaches to Government actually… actually, I’ll get to that one last. Because there is a pony in that pile.

I’ll offer some ideas on these over the next few undefined units of time.

First up:

Has social media slain organizational theory?

Organizational Theory Cliff Notes – A Selection of Thoughts

The study of organizational theory is the examination of how humans organize for a common objective. The forum is the firm, the organizational units devoted to business activities, and the common objective of greater wealth accumulation within a capitalist economy. The assumptions include freedom of mobility for labor, access to capital, and a market within which to trade products and services for remuneration. The central question for organizational theory: Why do people organize, and how can organizational objectives be effectively and efficiently attained, given the determinants of human behavior?

There has been a tension between a mechanical approach to organizational management – dating back to Taylor’s (1911) scientific management theory and Ford’s embracing of it – and an organic one, which emerged in the 1950s. The former presents humans as driven primarily by economic incentives. The employee is compensated, and this is considered sufficient to provide for his maximum prosperity – this characterization of the employee is referred to as the “economic man,” driven only by wages. Taylor’s framework for organization included a clear delineation of hierarchical authority, management by exception, and task specialization. The firm was seen as a machine, and by setting the right incentives and optimized processes in place, management would only have to maintain anomalies within the structure.

Henry Ford developed the principle of mass production by applying Taylor’s theory to an industry that had previously been one of craft production. By establishing task specialization and the innovation of the assembly line, Ford created the first miracle of U.S. production in the 20th century. His reaction to the resulting labor-friendly market, where workers could move between automakers easily due to a shortage of skilled labor, was to double the going wage to $5 per day. This was an effort to exploit the “efficiency wage”, which aimed to provide an incentive for the employee to stay with Ford – even if non-compensation issues were preferable elsewhere.

It’s important to stop here and note two truths.

1. This is but one approach in the field of organizational theory.
2. This particular approach has been relatively unpopular (outside of factory work) for a very long time.
3. Bonus truth: Scientific management theory is one reason why “Six Sigma” makes sense to some managers, despite the evidence of great harm to natural work processes, innovation, creativity, etc.

A Few Challenges to Taylor and Scientific Management

The organic approach appeared soon after WWII, with explorations into systems science (sometimes called ’soft systems methodologies’) and decision theory that together began to explore a more radical description of the nature of the firm. Yes, our friend chaos theory entered the scene way back in 1927, later popularized in 1963 when Edward Lorenz first noticed the possibility that minor changes to initial conditions could lead to enormous changes in weather prediction models. (Further popularized by Jeff Goldblum in 1993, but I digress.) It didn’t take long before chaos (and the parent field of complexity) found its way into organizational thinking – cementing the observation that human organizations also demonstrated non-linearity, co-evolution, emergent behaviors, etc. Chaos theory has actually been a part of organizational theory for longer than most social media evangelists have been alive.

In 1947’s Administrative Behavior, Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon criticized the Taylor scientific management approach, by revisiting how we make decisions and exploring the limits of rationality. The economic man theory assumed the ‘man’ had access to perfect information and could therefore behave according to rational choice theory. Simon renamed the employee as “administrative man,” arguing that decisions are made with incomplete and imperfect information. How can you manage a workforce as if they had all the information they needed within the firm, and made decisions based on an economically rational assessment of their choices?

In 1960 Douglas McGregor developed alternative notions of employee motivation – beyond the efficiency wage – in his work on Theory X and Y (The Human Side of the Enterprise). Theory X, perhaps a direct reference to Taylor, relied on an authoritarian approach to management, while Theory Y he termed a participative management style. “The capacity to use a high degree of imagination, ingenuity and creativity in solving organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population.”

And so on. Recent work in value networks and organizational network analysis reveals that the organization obviously is more than the employees, and is best understood, examined, and managed as an ecosystem.

So-Social Media?

So if organizational theory has contained inside its hallowed halls the ideas that 1) people’s imperfect decision processes matter more than management edicts or high wages for success; and that 2) organizations are more ecologies than machines, so you’re better off gardening than engineering… what does this say about the effect of social media on organizational theory?

How about: social media represents an affirmation of the organization as ecosystem? It introduces diverse voices into the value network. Yes, it challenges the hierarchical delivery of information we use to manage our work lives – but that is a challenge to hierarchy, not to organizational theory. And before you declare the death of hierarchy, consider that this is an artifact of our sociology. It will take more than twitter to reverse the anthropological and sociological imperatives of hierarchy.

Conclusion

Social media is another in a series of challenges to hierarchy, not organizational theory. It also provides a remarkable tool for the detection of weak signals in a decision environment, while challenging our cognitive ability to pay attention – but I’ve run out of pixels for today.

Colin Powell, U.S. Army General (Ret), former Secretary of State, the man behind the eponymous Powell Doctrine…

…is black.

And today, that’s all that matters to Rush Limbaugh and some backers of McCain.  According to Politico, Limbaugh said: “‘Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race,’” Limbaugh wrote in an e-mail. “‘OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I’ll let you know what I come up with.’”

For the record, using this logic, Senator Obama is also the first “inexperienced, very liberal” candidate I have endorsed.  I have no political footprint, of course, so this did not make Politico or any other news source.  But then, I imagine white guilt explains my support.

Citizen Powell spent considerable time Sunday morning explaining to the media why he was backing Obama over his old friend.  He was even asked the delicate question, and gave a sensible reply.  No matter, although Powell measured up the two teams and chose the one he felt was best suited to the times – Limbaugh tells us his vote was a given because of the color of his skin.  The content of his character no longer matters to Rush Limbaugh.

I had occasion last night to conduct a small experiment with a friendly waiter at my local ristorante.  He was ending his shift, but the friendly bartender was still on duty.  I showed her the news item regarding Powell, and her eyes lit up.  The waiter asked what I was showing and when I told him he replied:  “90% of the black vote is going to Obama, we know that.”  I called the bartender over and asked him to repeat that to her face, a few shades darker than his.  To his credit, he did, and the moment was delicious.  He is not a racist, and to her credit she was not offended.  He doesn’t believe his conclusions diminish all people of color, and she knew he wasn’t racist.  She dismissed his assumption airily – “That’s not why I’m voting for him.”

Disclaimers: I do not know Colin Powell, but I have been privileged to hear him speak in a small setting while he was in uniform; I almost knocked him down one day as I rounded a Pentagon corridor too quickly; and I used to know the owner of the auto parts store that he frequents to work on his beloved car.  I know this young waiter, and as I say, I have no reason to believe he discriminates against people on the basis of their color.  I do not know Mr. Limbaugh, and have no idea if he does.

This is what President Bush used to call, in a different context, the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Yes, it may be correct that some people of color will vote for Obama on the basis of his heritage, and it may be true others will not for the same reason.  However, it reduces both sides to assume those votes are based entirely on race.  If it is wrong to call McCain supporters merely racist – and it is – then how can it be correct to call black Obama supporters electoral sheep?

When you reduce Mr. Powell’s endorsement as based on pigment alone, you deny his humanity and call him a liar.  The man has provided his rationale, and he deserves – like anyone, and more than most – to be trusted as a man of his word.

Enjoyed a rather remarkable conversation yesterday.  A gentleman associated with an enterprise social software firm put a question out into the ether regarding adoption of such products.  To be specific, he used Twitter to pose the question.  The “tweet” was then visible to anyone who had already signed up to follow his musings, and anyone who searched for key terms contained in his message.  (To be more interesting, you can establish an RSS feed so that when anyone tweets and uses keywords you care about – you can get an alert.)

This gentleman is in the list of people I follow, and I saw the question.  Paraphrasing:  if we deploy enterprise social software, are we establishing another stovepipe?

I could not resist, and charged in with my response.

“EXACTLY why I’ve been vapor-locked over the adoption of enterprise social software.”

He responded.

“Still major benefits from siloed E2.0, but how to connect it more broadly?”

And then something curious happened.  Another person, who follows my messages, chimed in.

“My issue is that enterprises think, in regards to social software, that their problems are somehow different or distinct.”

At one point, specific questions were posed and direct, thoughtful answers provided.

“web 2.0 silos. Thinking along 2 lines: (1) They’re not connected to anything internally. (2) Many employees not on the sites”

Response:

“(1) They CAN be connected to sites internally (most of them have public APIs & services)” and “(2)The emergent and open nature of Web 2.0 software allows for employees who need the information to join the site as needed.”

From there, the three of us had a conversation that touched on the need for corporate information preservation in the face of litigation, the complex nature of enterprises, and finally the notion that enterprises need to comprehend their role in their own value networks. While connecting people and information within the enterprise is essential, connecting to information generated by your suppliers, customers, partners, competition, etc., is also vital for keeping aware of trends/changes/risks/opportunities.

All of this reminded me of a recent NYT article that discussed commensal bacteria:

“Since humans depend on their microbiome for various essential services, including digestion, a person should really be considered a superorganism, microbiologists assert, consisting of his or her own cells and those of all the commensal bacteria. The bacterial cells also outnumber human cells by 10 to 1, meaning that if cells could vote, people would be a minority in their own body.”

There is no question where my body ends and these bacteria begin, but is it useful and enforce the distinction?  Similarly, is it useful to establish information systems that exclude the people who help us do our job – but who are not employed by our firm?  Understanding how to connect to and collaborate with these colleagues and potential colleagues may be as important as coordinating internally with fellow employees.

All in all, this was a very successful meeting.  Three professionals, from a total of two firms, came together to check assumptions and learn from one another.  We used a Web 2.0 tool outside our firewalls, and there is even a record of our conversation – searchable from any browser.  It took up very little time, as we focused on common questions and ideas.  (There was no status report or financial impact statement on the agenda.)  One of our number had never before interacted with the other two – yet the meeting only contained people interested in the topic.

Oh, and I believe there were others in the meeting, having sidebar conversations as well.  As they could see “our” conversation, they likely offered their own perspectives privately.

If only there were a catchy name for the infrastructure and culture that allowed us to come together like this.

As part of this reform legislation, I’ve been asked to provide a definition for KM.  I’ve managed to avoid this for, oh, 11 years.  But no longer.  There are at least 47 definitions of KM, as compiled by one blogger.  Many good, many not.  I can’t choose one, I need to craft one that I can live with, even if my name will not be associated directly with it.

So here it is.

Knowledge Management refers to the management of the components and enabling of relationships from which knowledge emerges: used to enhance decision making, spark innovation, and comprehend weak signals in the information environment.  Knowledge management does not focus on managing knowledge itself; rather, it seeks the positive interaction of the component elements that can be managed to lay the foundation for better decision making, innovation, and adaptation.

Ok, not pithy, but then again – not everything can be reduced to an elevator speech.  Let’s see if this one makes sense to the lawyers.