Just been catching up on the wave of promotional emails sent during the festive break, from Microsoft right through to small start-ups, all advertising their new enhancements to AI technologies that enable deal with everything during my full day or back-to-back meetings, full email box or endless Team chats.
It seems to me that much of the technology that has been introduced over the years has led to this situation where little or no time is spent actually thinking and doing. My mind paints a picture of being thrown a lifebelt from the ship that caused my vessel to capsize in the first place.
I’ll be interested to see when and how AI starts to deal with guiding me on behaviours to actually stop being in back-to-back meetings and having endless Team chats and emails. I guess I already know the answer. It’s a ‘cultural’ or behavioural trait that causes the problem. The technology is only trying to help lighten a heavy load.
What we need to move away from is continually adapting to the situations are own behaviours create and start adopting new mindsets on the way we work.
Yesterday I witnessed the first behavioural example of the power of how AI is transforming new ways of working.
In a conversation to fact check some information a colleague told me they would “co-pilot that” rather than physical browse or use the corporate search.
I have been involved in various virtual agent projects where users are directed to engage with chatbots and similar functionality but here was an example of someone’s natural behaviour now using Co-Pilot (other chatbots are available) rather than, what was traditional methods.
It got me thinking that an internal communications or people director’s new best friend needs to be those that are beginning to write the internal code and programming for these language models.
I’ve always been amazed at the lack of interest senior leaders show in the entire process of searching for and sourcing information. The old hierarchy seemed to suffice for trickling down information, but I wonder if this will hold true in the future.
With so much information and data available it’s getting harder to nail down the truth. Our defence against misinformation is steadily weakening. A generation of social media we have emerged with less resilience against deceit and untrustworthy information.
Way back in the early days of Yammer (and other internal social media platforms) organisations were caught on the hop by the power and influence of social media, both internally and externally. Big technology leaps have a massive effect on the information supply and the development of AI within organisations is no different. Those responsible for determining the algorithm for the organisation holds great power.
Who decides to write and validate this. Who holds the pen controls the access to information to an organisation’s corporate voice and memory.
For me it is fascinating not only how we deal with this from a technology perspective, from strategy, governance and implementation, but also how we deal with the new behaviours this develops.
By its nature the programming behind these features will try to understand your goals, needs, beliefs etc (dependent upon various regulations). All the current Chatbots mainly use the language of the calm oracle, being patient and understanding. Cast forward to the future are we going to see these virtual agents develop personalities based on your temperament! Will they understand your resilience or trusting nature. And how do our behaviours then change to deal with the personality types of the chatbots we are developing. It presents a fundamental difference to the ways we approach behaviours in an organisation.
“Our business-led roadmap isn’t about building a tool; it’s about transforming how we manage and access knowledge and expertise, which is the foundation of our organization and competitive advantage.”
The companies that are truly avoiding the hype and getting benefits from these new ways of working look to be focusing on business value use case, good knowledge management principles and good adoption techniques.
It is sometimes confusing keeping up with all the job titles. This seems similar to a debate I was following on a KM forum discussing ‘transformational change’ v ‘transactional change’ One of the conclusions was below.
Transactional Change – Incremental change within existing systems, processes and structures but does not fundamentality alter the organisations culture of path of travel.
Transformational Change – radical shifts in the way people work with process, technology, and culture
Catching up on some articles missed during an autumn break. This is an interesting look into the future.
HBR published a synthesis of what 570 experts think will happen with work and AI.
2026 – Job tasks are partially automated 2029 – New technologies are creating new jobs/industries 2035 – Economic inequality increases dramatically 2037 – Humans work alongside robot colleagues 2042 – Third World War breaks out. No mention of whether Belgium are involved 2046 – Automation leads to shorter work weeks. Yes you’re merely 22 years from a four-day week 2051 – Governments around the world introduce universal basic income 2053 – Breakthroughs in longevity drastically extend the lifespan of the technocratic elite. (I think this means Zuckerberg and Musk are living forever) 2065 – Computers surpass humans on everything 2074 – Human civilisation changed irreversibly by uncontrollable superintelligence beyond our comprehension
The first item that stands out for me is the 2035 prediction if economic inequality. I sense we are there already in many roles and communities.
Totally by accident, something popped up on LinkedIn this morning which turns out was a glorified advert for an IoT/PowerBI dashboard solution which tracks employee performance in relationship to their environment.
Personally (and professionally) these types of ‘behaviour’ tracking tools fascinate me. Tech companies spend millions developing capabilities to help us work better and organisations spend millions deploying them but the expected benefits never materialise. There is a big discussion on the whole change / adoption approaches taken by organisations in nurturing the workforce but these types of ‘employee performance’ tools begin to move us to the next steps by exploring the way we as individuals / organisations work and eventually providing solutions, not just around technology but also on behaviours and environment.
Tools like those mentioned in the article above, and others such as Microsoft My Analytics, can eventually tell us how much time we spend on email, in meetings, creating documents, extent of network etc. It could also look at enterprise wise behaviours – i.e. if you project team are spending most of their days in meetings you may have a cultural issue around decision making; if managers are spending too much time in hastily arranged meetings and email there may be a fire-fighting, hero and devolution issue in the culture; if a leader’s network doesn’t extend far enough across the organisation there may be an engagement issue and so on.
So, technology that tracks the way you work and can present remedies from both an individual and an organisation context can be a very valuable capability for companies undergoing digital transformation. You sense its part of the reasoning that companies such as Microsoft are buying training and learning components and LinkedIn so they can begin to link ways of working to job families, skill sets, organisation culture and beyond. It will begin to dramatically change the way organisations look at design, recruitment, technology and the physical environment.
Interesting article about digital workplace trends. Interesting for me is that 5 years ago these type of trend articles were almost entirely focused around technology. Now the shift is towards the people, cultural and behavioural aspects. That’s reflected in the disciplines within the consultancies that produce these type of reports. They are no longer published by the technology streams but from Human Capital Management and Org Design areas of the consultancies. Technology is becoming a people business.
At a session today with a company to talk about the tasks around Enterprise Community Management (ECM) – the initial stewardship required to develop a Yammer network.
The tasks can vary dependent upon your Yammer strategy (every company should ideally have a Yammer strategy closely linked to the overall business strategy (and related KM, New Business, People, L&D, Engagement strategies etc.) which will help define the priorities around the ECM tasks.
Other companies Yammer strategies have included:
Help change a ‘command / control’ company culture
Remove middle management roadblocks
Develop untapped future talent
Remove remote team’s reliance on reporting into the centre
Support development of a social learning programme
And the ECM tasks can vary greatly to help meet the strategic requirements.
Here is an outline of some of the tasks we will run through.
Help sections – maintain and update ‘Getting Started’ and Help areas on the network
Use Cases – assisting to develop use cases to show case the possibilities of Yammer
Stewardship – making sure everybody plays nice and all voices are heard
Formal Governance? – some companies need this so generally you’ll be involved in coordinating
Promotions – active in promoting Yammer through numerous channels
New Joiners – getting Yammer on various New Joiners radar
Coaching – determine how this is dealt with. Some formal ‘how to’ or focus on behavioural change and community management (my preferences are the last 2)
Events – running events around Yammer (Yamjams, 30 days of Yammer etc)
Advocates – nurturing advocates of the network
Strategic Initiatives – involved in any planning around big initiatives
VIP’s – Not everyone gets the same treatment so if someone ‘special’ joins Yammer give them the ‘silver service’ treatment
Community Management – developing good community management practices. Linked to coaching
Case Studies – Pulling together case studies to show the value it delivers. Good storytelling works wonders
ROI / Metrics – Pulling these together. Linkage to overall governance
Following on from the ‘Adoption by Chance’ approach an alternative if the ‘Formal Approach’ or adoption through hierarchy (and highly recommended if you were even thinking of taking the ‘Adoption by Chance’ approach).
The formal approach is based on:
Engagement through leadership / key stakeholders
Implement a formal approach (defining and delivering) to educate on the collaboration technologies.
Refine approach and collateral as the programme develops
Adoption through hierarchy
MERITS
Understanding of the ‘What, Why, How’ of the technology from a leadership perspective and ensuring they are fully aligned
Colleagues ‘on the same page’ and at the same stage of the journey
Knowledge of all available materials
Formal support process
Increased ability to maximize the applications available – larger number of use cases surfaced
Ability to get access and collaborate across all areas of the business
Comprehensive approach
DRAWBACKS
Slow and time consuming – early motivators may lose interest
Pace set by leadership or project team – not the users
Too much detail – information presented won’t necessarily be applicable to all
Too rigid
Loss of interest increases and users drop interest of the ‘journey’
Rational approach but doesn’t appeal to emotional interest
Having looked at 3 very different approaches to adoption of collaborative technologies here is my take on the drawbacks and merits of each.
Today we start with the ‘throw it over the fence’ approach. I would suggest this is generally favoured by IT folk who need to ‘get it out there’ and their focus is not on sustained usage or business value.
Success is generally low and adoption is by chance
MERITS
• Self-contained, no need to engage with other areas of the business prior to deployment
• Low cost – little resource required
• Enables rapid deployment
• Creates an enterprise-wide awareness (if communication channels are effective)
• Enables a swift campaign to be executed
• Meets immediate technology enablement requirements
DRAWBACKS
• Awareness does not guarantee engagement with tools
• Little understanding of how they can be utilised
• Little control over how the business will use it
• Little adoption once early motivated adopters have been engaged
• Little adoption or engagement once campaign has finished
• Little sustaining or legacy behaviours in place
• All behavioural change is by chance or self-understanding
Mark Tilbury - digital workplace specialist 