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Gary Hamel from the wall street Journey has written an excellent post on the shape of management in the future. His approach is to recognise that people joing companies now, are those that have never known a time where there was no Internet or Email. they have always lived life online. The result is different expectations of a working environment.
I half live in that world. I often find myself frustrated with “the process”, I am VERY lucky to have a boss who understands that i get frustrated adn need to thrash it out. He is also great at NOT giving me answers! Any way Gary has compiled a list of 12 observations about web life, and not all of them are relevant to assessing future management, but all are true, and could help shape the way we think and act, and how we develop our working environments and how we recruit .. and how we hold meetings … the list is pretty endless … My favourite bits
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials. When you post a video to YouTube, no one asks you if you went to film school. When you write a blog, no one cares whether you have a journalism degree. Position, title, and academic degrees—none of the usual status differentiators carry much weight online. On the Web, what counts is not your resume, but what you can contribute.
How do we perceive people and how do we make the decisions about their inclusion in meetings/decision making. Is it their credentials or is it simply because they have something they can contribute? Dare i say i work for quite an academic organisation, i am forever finding myself frustrated about the message we give our. “you can do programme X if you have a 2.1 degree” . I understand some programmes are not suitable to everyone, but what are we doing about finding a valid contribution for everyone? YouTube has done an amazing thing for armature videography, yes there is some BAD stuff up there, but it has also reduced our expectations of corporate productions. it doesn’t have to be the perfect edit, or the perfect soundtrack, as long as the content is good, people will watch it! how can we transfer that theory to other areas?
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it. The Web is also a gift economy. To gain influence and status, you have to give away your expertise and content. And you must do it quickly; if you don’t, someone else will beat you to the punch—and garner the credit that might have been yours. Online, there are a lot of incentives to share, and few incentives to hoard.
I think many of us still live in the “Information is power so we must control it” age. The Internet chucks that theory out the window. We are naive to think we can control information any more. Open source software has experienced a massive explosion, you probably use some without even knowing it, all because people are prepared to share information.
Enough of me, See full post here. HT to Steph Angus .. who doesn’t even have a blog … but i think she should!
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