Tribal knowledge through peer-to-peer networks
One of the summary notes covering the Sibos conference on cybersecurity this month advised that leaders could navigate through sea change by strengthening discernment, building strong networks and ensuring a more robust toggle between local and global. Peter Hinssen, co-founder of the A-cross Group, says, there is too much to know and individuals can no longer be single point sources. Those who will have the best sense of reality are those who live and foster relationships in robust networks. So many people like to be with individuals that are similar in lifestyle and expression. Yet, navigating complexity requires people to be more interested in what they have to learn from one another than what it is that they have in common. Nice piece of advice and resonates on many levels with what Knowledge Management is all about.
I lean on socials channels like Google +, LinkedIn, and Twitter to stay abreast of trending business topics both between peer circles and outside of them, but I am always more excited by the opportunity to meet with peers in a live setting, and so even though many conferences are now captured through live streaming and on Twitter, I attend/present at a few conferences every year. The best outcomes of being in the live sessions are the questions that I come away with. Questions challenge our assumptions, and in some case when we have an answer, can help validate them as well. The tribal knowledge that is exchanged in such settings is vital to stretching our horizons because conversations touch topics that might still be on the edges (as John Hagel would call them).
The Pivot Conference in New York this month, had an impressive lineup of many big name consultants and thinkers in the space of disruptive business trends, including John Hagel, Brian Solis, and Jim Lecinski. John Hagel, currently the Director and Chairman of the Center for the Edge at Deloitte, is perhaps best known for his works ‘Power of Pull’ and ‘Shifting Edges’. Brian Solis, a Principal at the Altimeter Group is an increasingly popular voice in the world of social marketing and Jim Lecinski, of Google is famous for his Zero Moment of Truth marketing philosophy which flipped the traditional funnel on its head.
Professor Arun Sundarajan, NYU Stern
Professor Arun Sundarajan (@digitalarun) delivered a provocative opening keynote at PivotCon on digital economics and went beyond outlining examples of several companies that have disrupted incumbents in various categories, because of novel ways to coordinate service delivery, or manage the supply chain, or raise funds or recruit employees. He cut through the current ‘ooh aah’ effect of all this disruption, raising the specter of possible regulations that could dampen the tide, something that is already being talked about. Sundarajan highlighted the possibility of possible labor issues, even anti-trust monopolies when a company like Uber grows beyond a certain size. He maintained that overall, these collaborative and peer-to-peer economies bode well for the macro economy, because they added to the diversification of services, created new jobs where none existed and improved productivity and societal contributions.
Several speakers explained the possibilities of peer-to-peer networks increasing the level of awareness, connectivity and fertility of new ideas, but most importantly, in today’s changing business landscape, changing the currency of the commercial transaction. These networks cultivate and operate with the currency of trust, which moves the needle from something being just transactional to being emotional. AirBnB’s entire model is predicated on the currency of trust, but the same currency is also cultivated by larger established organizations. This applies to large and small organizations. The other talks that stood out for me was one from Cavan Canavan, founder of Focus Motion, who took us for an exciting futuristic ride in the world of biometrics and ofcourse, John Hagel (the only one who did a powerpoint-less presentation) on his take of the rapidly changing expectations of consumers and the resulting performance pressure on companies. Hagel spoke of yet another dimension of trust, where companies could be courageous enough to invite customers to work with them on solutions, transcending the typical customer-provider relationship in the interest of a better outcome for everyone.
At the Intranet Global Forum earlier in the month, our panel was asked interesting questions around policies and processes that are still forming in the new world of enterprise social networks – how do you archive conversations and threads that happened on the enterprise social networks? Every country has its own laws around employee privacy, how do you reconcile those with the need and desire to connect all employees on one social network through conversations? This was an audience of CKOs, Intranet Managers and CIOs and made for a good discussion.
Intranet Global Forum Panel (L-R : Shel Holtz (Holtz Communications), Gloria Burke (Unisys), John Santoro (Pfizer), Michael Rudnick (Logical Design Solutions), Vishal Agnihotri (EY))
Similar questions came up at the EY Human Capital Conference in Lisbon yesterday, where I was co-presenting a session on ‘Building communities in the enterprise’ to an audience made up of decision makers in HR, Tax and Global Mobility. Most appreciated the possibilities around employee engagement and breaking down silos in a socially connected organization, but still brought up concerns around privacy, approval chains and control. During the talk, we showcased Cisco's show-and-share initiative, where employees are empowered with a video production capability, which they use to make short videos for tutorials, sharing highlights of projects, engaging their team around new efforts and even giving a voice to their summer interns. Katherine Marrufo, the head of Cisco's Talent Business Services called it a low-effort, high reward video production capability. Companies like Cisco, that are embracing this inviting medium for employee generated content, are sending a strong signal about trust and confidence in their employees by encouraging them to share their tribal knowledge through nano-learning moments that provide just-in-time (rather than just-in-case) knowledge.
Sounds like good old fashioned 'trust' then is the best transactional currency, be it with consumers or employees.
