11/18/2013 BY
Once
in a while, you get inspired by events in your life that seem to be a precursor
to real societal change. A hopeful change. A needed change. An evolutionary
change.
The Drucker Forum
2013 edition that was recently held in Vienna, Austria –14 and 15, November —
was one of those moments for me.
Over the course of
two action packed days and nights, I left feeling not only inspired but
personally validated — we might even suggest vindicated — that there is
sufficient wind in our change sails to affect the desperately needed
improvements in leadership and management practices that engulf our
organizations across the globe.
Think
of the following words as but a snapshot of the intellectual neurons that fired
throughout the glorious Federation of Austrian Industries building that housed
the event in central Vienna.
The conference
theme was entitled “Managing Complexity” yet I don’t think
it did justice to the presentations, banter and discussions that transpired. It
might have been coined “Inspiring a Sense of Purpose”. We can thank Charles
Handy for that. He helped kick off the conference with a cutting observation
that set the tone for almost all interactions thereafter. He remarked early on
in his keynote, “People, profit and passion. They’re all important but so
too is the order.” (And he wasn’t referring to profit being number
one) Needless to say, he had me at hello. He also made a sharp observation
about helicopter parenting suggesting it doesn’t work at home,
so don’t expect it to work in the organization. It inhibits trust and the
center will ultimately fight back. Not only did he accept a copy of Flat
Army from me, he signed a copy of his book Beyond Certainty for
me as well. “Purpose before profit,” as Handy told us,
is akin to my own personal mantra of “we’re not here to see through
each other; we’re here to see each other through.”
What an absolute
thrill for someone like me to be inspired, yet again, by this Thinkers 50 Hall
of Fame member. You shouldn’t be surprised then that the word “purpose” was
recanted over and over again during the conference. It also had personal
relevance to me as the follow-up book to Flat Army (It’s Work Not Jail)
contains considerable weight towards the concept of a ‘career with purpose’. In
the end, I gave Charles a big hug on behalf of civilization. I believe he used
the word “nutter” to describe me.
Another
highlight was finally getting to meet John Hagel and to hear him rip into the
inane way we treat organizational culture and workplace design. I’ve been an
admirer of his groundbreaking work for years — read anything he and/or his
Deloitte Center for the Edge colleagues have written — so to shake his hand was
a bit like my Dad meeting John Lennon. To hear him provocatively cut through
the malaise that is today’s organization in his 15 minute soliloquy, channeling
the audience to remember “organizational complexity isn’t going away, in fact
it’s increasing in a linear world full of non-linear needs and actions” was
sublime. John further argued that our organizations are institutions, made for
the purpose of institutional innovation not modern-day innovation and that they
operate today (as they have done for decades) as models of uber efficiency. He
doesn’t believe there is room for innovation in today’s organizational model —
no room for tinkering he says — thus we need to redesign the work environment
to create what he calls “scalable learning”.
John
summoned inspiration from Bill Joy who once said, “No matter how many smart people in your
organization, there are a lot more outside of it.” If only 11% of employees are
passionate about their work, ‘scalable learning’ can instill this sense of
passion to drive innovation and creativity. It can drive risk taking. He wants
us to shift from scalable institutional efficiency to scalable learning. In
other words, the reprehensible way in which organizations are currently
designed (and I argue leadership is leading) exacerbates this innovation
malaise. The current design of the organization, therefore, is causing an
unnatural complexity in an age that needs stimulation and simplicity. John
stuck around the entire conference as well, taking in all of the sessions
proving he is a genuine lifelong scalable learner and not some hoity toity
American strategist.
Tammy
Erickson offered a sage piece of advice when she said, “So much of what we do today, what we learn,
is based on discovery.”She went on to suggest leaders
should help employees “build networks, providing a paradigm for
questioning” and “to get people out of the classroom” further advocating that leaders should
be providing time and guidance to let everyone connect and to network. It gave
credence to the earlier points brought up by Handy and Hagel. I gave Tammy a
copy of Flat Army letting her know employee engagement at TELUS now sat at 83%,
up considerably from the time we brought her in to speak to TELUS leaders in
2009. Needless to say she was delighted to know of the improvement. I mentioned
to her the talk reminded me of Chapter 7 — The Participative Leader Framework —
where leaders must demonstrate CARE (continuous, authentic, reciprocal and
educating) in an aim to build networks and knowledge. She smiled and said she
looked forward to reviewing the book. A for awesome.
A
couple of other talks stood out for me as well, although that may be as a
result of my Canadian passport. There’s nothing wrong with national nepotism
when one is glowingly referring and referring to Roger Martin and Don Tapscott
(numbers 3 and 4 on the 2013 version of the Thinkers 50 list) while being 8000 kilometers
from home. After all, Canada is the reigning Gold Medal Olympic Champion for
both women’s and men’s ice hockey and we’re slowly getting better at
demonstrating pride in a more public way. Congratulations Roger and Don on your
ranking.
Roger’s take on
complexity was spot on. He doesn’t believe the world is getting more complex,
per se, rather our organizations are simply ill-equipped to handle the
transformation away from deep-rooted silos. He called our somewhat pervasive
organizational system of fiefdoms as“inter-domain complexity.”
It’s this siloed nature of working and operating that is causing the complexity
in the first place. He wants us to push for a meta-domain; the integration of
knowledge across all domains thus removing the inhibitors of what I personally
call ‘organizational stovepipes’. His aspiration is for future leaders to have
the ability to be integrative thinkers and that it actually begins in academic
circles. It reminded me of my TEDxTalk from a few years ago when I had the
audience chanting, “tear down these walls”.
Needless to say I was smitten by his overarching thesis.
Roger’s Toronto
neighbour — the digital futurist and author of what seems like 100 books, Don
Tapscott — took a slightly different approach to complexity. He believes
complexity is reduced when multi-stakeholder networks are increased and
improved upon. Don coins this “Global Solution Networks”. There
are ten different types which include:
- Knowledge Networks
(Wikipedia, TED Talks, Galaxy Zoo)
- Operational Delivery
Networks (Kiva)
- Policy Networks
(International Competition Network)
- Advocacy Networks (Avaaz,
Kony, Invisible Children)
- Watchdog Networks (Sunlight
Foundation)
- Platforms (Ushahidi, Sojo)
- Global Standards Networks
(W3C, Global Footprint Network)
- Governance Networks (ICANN)
- Network Institutions (WEF)
- Diasporas (onevietnam.org)
Concluding with
video footage of starling birds filmed in England — who self form a vast
ever-changing network when in the air to protect themselves from predators and
the elements — Don emphasized that as we have shifted from feudalism to the
printing press to capitalism to the internet to
the age of networked intelligence, we can seek out less complex organizations
through the power of the Don defined “Global Solution Networks”. He concluded
with an absolutely brilliant anecdote, “The future is not something
to be predicted. It is something to be achieved.”
The final session of
the Forum was entitled “What Would Drucker Say Now?”. To be frank, while reviewing the agenda in
detail on the airplane odyssey between Vancouver and Vienna I thought this
might be some strange form of worship with Drucker appearing as a shimmering
larger than life sized hologram as audience members and panelists paid homage
with chants in unison of “let’s increase the productivity
of knowledge work and the knowledge workers”. Thankfully, I was proven wrong. The panel consisted of Rick
Wartzman (of the California-based Drucker Institute) and Steve Denning
(Washington-based author and Forbes columnist extraordinaire), moderated by
Pierre Hessler (the Forum’s chair delegate and senior leader at Cap Gemini).
Rick reminded us that Drucker felt the top-down structures in organizations
would eventually perish in favour of self-forming teams. Drucker suggested this
in … wait for it … 1954. For those paying attention and able to perform rudimentary
math, that’s almost 60 years ago begging the question from yours truly, ‘what
the hell happened?” Rick later amused the audience by regaling us of the answer
Drucker provided a student who asked what it would take to become a better
manager to which Drucker replied, “play violin”. Thank
God my children are already on the right path.
Leave
it to Steve Denning though to bring home the underlying subliminal theme to the
conference. Steve recalled it was Drucker in 1973 who said “if an organization’s mission is to target
profit and not purpose, things will definitively end badly.” The purpose of the organization is to
provide purpose for its employees; to provide value for the very people who
inhabit the walls of its organizational mission. My only regret is I didn’t get
the chance to shake Steve’s hand afterward.
Overall,
the 5th Annual Drucker Forum was a wonderful
gallop through brain candyland for me. My synapses were constantly
firing whether through the affirmation of my way of organizational leadership
thinking or through the growth of new ideas and knowledge. This review only
skims the surface of speakers, discussions and ideas. The combination of
academics, practitioners, authors and rock stars permitted the sessions to be
highly relevant for a cerebral Canadian like me. No one keynote was more than
20 minutes, which further fuelled the amount of content that was at the ready.
Audience participation through Q&A was prevalent across all sessions. The
gala dinner on Thursday night was world-class and I had the fantastic
good fortune of sitting next to Thierry Grange of the Grenoble School of
Management where he and I gabbed about the state of the world for 60 minutes
straight. (Apologies to those sitting next to us).
The
networking time was superb, giving ample chance for conference attendees to mix
and mingle. I had the chance to not only meet and chat with the likes of Lynda
Gratton, Julia Kirby and David Hurst — who I had never met before — it gave me
a chance to meet Twitterati folks like Kenneth Mikkelsen and Stelio
Versera where our previous relationship respectively had solely been through
140 characters at a time.
My
hat is tipped to Drucker Forum chef de mission Richard Straub. He and the
entire organizing team did a remarkable job. In 2013 I participated in over 30
separate conference and learning related events and none can match the vibe,
talent and knowledge gain that transpired in Vienna. I’ll coin it “the TED of all leadership management
conferences”.
See you next year. Promise.
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