Perry Timms writes on social HR and asks the questions we should all we asking about the workplace. He has over 20 years experience in business change including project management, organisational development, talent strategy and L&D. He is well-known on the blogger and event circuit and is regularly asked to chair conferences, roundtables and webinars, both in the UK and around Europe. Perry is a CIPD adviser on social media and engagement.
I’ve been reading some fabulous blog posts, articles and research pieces that question two things about the modern and changing world of work.
Firstly the pace and rate of change. “We are in a VUCA world,” we all proclaim.
We have never seen change like this. It’s pace is like nothing we’ve ever experienced before. And now there are lots of people shouting this one down.
The Economist magazine wielded its particular journalistic and thought leadership might into this one.
If it seems to more pacy to you, then clearly you’re not alone despite what others may think or say. I feel the pace of change is more rapid in the way I’m experiencing the world.
The speed of business change may be refuted in that article but how it feels to me is most important to me and I see pivots, shifts and the dreaded word ‘disruptions’ happening that I’ve not experienced before.
So for me it’s a quicker world than in my previous 20+ years of being conscious of this stuff.
3D printing, 4D printing, UAVs, artificial intelligence, bio and nanotech, Moore’s Law, the Law of Accelerating Returns, Digital whatever. All threatening orthodox industries, social norms and access to information.
It’s overwhelming for many people and I’ve not heard many people say that about the changes in the world before.
So I wouldn’t say I’m a VUCA believer more a recogniser of a world that feels different from week to week. I don’t need an acronym to tell me how it feels.
Secondly, there’s the issue of the organisation.
The construct of companies, charities, governmental entities, whatever – bands of people working for a thing that pays their wages/fees in exchange for people’s labour, creativity and energy.
Tom Nixon posted a provocative and sweet challenge to the belief that organisations are headed into a higher state of consciousness and that to say an organisation has a soul is deceiving people and isn’t at all helpful.
I countered it by referencing the soul that’s felt in tribes, in volunteer organisations and in orthodox business models that provide safe air travel and medical interventions.
I had some responses that continued the challenge by saying the soul is the people and they just happen to collaborate under a brand of a company.
These posts happened inside a community I created and have been part of since February 2014. It’s called the iPractice and consists of 114 people from across the globe – St Louis in Missouri, down to Johannesburg, SA, across the UK and Europe and down to New Zealand and Australia.
It’s a strong, diverse and faithful community that exists to talk about better working propositions, learning, and the world of people at work.
There’s HR Directors in there, psychologists, web designers, coaches, artists and entrepreneurs. It’s private – hosted on Google+ – and to some would be considered an echo chamber.
It’s people like us. It’s also safe, collaborative and really a “virtual organisation”. NO formalised construct; no rules; no sense of a mission except to be there for each other.
Now I’ve tried several times as founder of the community to galvanise it a bit. Take it down the legal entity route, create a ‘company but uncompany’ feel; talk about membership and ejection even and I have suggested people have a belonging conversation as a chance to get to know others in the community and describe why they felt they belonged there.
Some did it some didn’t. There’s some apathy, lots of repeat activists and some people who love it. Me included. I adore what it is – as open as it should be and as human as its members.
It’s powerful. Without ANYONE holding the power. I don’t dictate what goes on there. I’ve tried sometimes to give it a sense of a mission – largely as others have described it as needing one. I’ve tried to co-construct and have people self-organise over a set of values or a mission.
And it’s worked well in some areas and not in others.
It’s tough leading a community – or in my case not trying to be an orthodox leader and let it be whatever it will be.
I’ve tried to lead it – often against my own belief that it shouldn’t need one. And it’s not really worked. It doesn’t NEED leading. It’s just an established environment where people derive the value they need and want from it and give to it whatever they feel they NEED and WANT.
So there are people sharing, collaborating, encouraging, forming research teams, sharing working opportunities, getting ideas.
That’s pretty much why it exists we don’t need a strategy or a mission to have that happen.
My point in all this is there is power there as much as is needed. It has such good sharing; such useful support and such openness to it that I am proud of being part of it every time I connect with a member of it and every time I see a great post on Google+.
Social communities are a growing thing it would seem. There are blog posts going back to 2009 about social communities; there are ever more groups and platforms and social communities are the best way to describe them.
And with the iPractice, if we got the sniff of a massive piece of work where we needed global reach and a series of experts the iPractice members would make a formidable unit to tackle some massive change, leadership or consulting assignment.
I’m also lending some chunks of time to help the fabulous New Zealand community NZLead (www.nzlead.com) continue to thrive without the amazing leadership of Amanda Sterling.
I guess proving it ISN’T just because there’s a strong leader but that a leader creates others who want to lead and will share the effort of leading a community – rotational leadership is perhaps the model that suits communities well.
So if organisations with soul are a falsehood what about social communities? Can they be as powerful as an organisation without needing the overarching construct of a board; shareholders; and fiscal reserve? Can they have a soul?
Yes is my answer.
Maybe the future organisation is a social business that has a loose but reliable feel to it and a “for good” purpose which others create, participate in and bring their soul to it.
Maybe if the full or partial dismantling of the behemoths of corporate construct is going to happen, social communities will spring up in their place.
Maybe social communities are already taking over and we just don’t realise it.
Maybe social communities are the way people can be themselves and be soulful workers without an allegiance to the brand in a “contract in blood” type of way.
Maybe employee-owned or highly-inclusive freedom-centred workplaces are the way of the future (like those on the WorldBlu.com list of companies).
Perhaps social communities can exist within the walls of the behemoth and are more like circles of entrepreneurs and start-up enterprises.
So you might like to think what social communities can do for you and for others and what you might be able to give to that community?
Whatever the future holds for the dismantling of giant corporates?
Maybe the replacing of toxic companies with those socialised businesses that have a more humane feel. Or indeed there may be a co-existence between size/scale/brand and human/flexibility with some hybrid of organisations and social communities.
I feel that social communities are going to continue to grow and adapt to the changes in that pacy world we are in.
Eventually we could see something very productive about a community approach and this would seriously help more people work in a more free, democratic and participative way – something Traci Fenton CEO of WorldBlu has set out – 1bn people working in freedom-centred workplaces across the world.
Maybe this VUCA world combined with the now old adage of a global village provides the perfect melting pot for the world becoming a `massive social community.`
Never underestimate the power of a well-formed alliance.
A social community strong in the force of good.
Sounds like a movie plot with a Farmboy, a Princess and a Smuggler…