Hey there – here’s the lucky 13th instalment of interesting progressive business bits and bobs that caught my eye recently.

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Companies that Mimic Life: The New Profit Leaders

Fascinating but fairly densely written report and outcomes, looking at this idea of ‘Companies that Mimic Life’, which on its own is a really interesting premise.

We’ve seen other codes emerge in traditional business as the source to everlasting brilliance – In Search of Excellence, Good to Great and so on.

What is interesting to me is the investigation of biomimicry as a source of possible business advantage or helpful patterns.

Have a proper dig around it, but for now here’s the study’s key takeouts:

In general, we see five distinct attributes of firms that mimic living systems. Not every company in the global LAMP index ® is a perfect exemplar of these, but each fits the model in important ways and displays best living asset stewardship (LAS) practices in their respective industry/sectors.

1. They are highly networked to facilitate feedback and information exchanges within the firm and without. Many of these networks are informal, self-organizing consortia of employees, suppliers, and customers. When you layer these networks over one another and the firm’s chain of command, you get a structure that looks much like a double helix. 7
2. They manage by means (MBM), understanding that people and relationships are the primary means by which they build network capacity and create value. 8 they strengthen and empower employees by practicing servant leadership. 9 they also give employees decision-making authority in their areas of competence and hold them accountable for results.
3. They optimize their use of physical resources by “closing the loop” so the waste of one process becomes food for another. 10 in doing so, they aim for factor efficiencies by producing more value for customers with less input of energy and materials.
4. They are exceptionally open in the ways they share information with employees and in their desire for stakeholder feedback. They know such openness builds trust, learning capacity and adaptability.
5. They nurture the larger living systems of which they are a part (nature, society, markets) because they understand the inherent connection of all life.

If those aren’t 5 enormously exciting characteristics they you can call me Esmerelda and dress me up as a show pony. LOVE IT.

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New clues to Wikipedia’s shared super mind

I have been using Wikipedia as an example of what we can achieve for quite a while now, and even in the past few weeks, working with groups of reasonably sophisticated digital people (whatever that means).

I feel that many of us use Wikipedia as this hardly noticeable resource every week, maybe every day, and quite naturally spend little or no time thinking to ourselves what an incredible edifice it is. To me, Wikipedia is just the earliest prototype of what is possible now that we are living in human networks with tools that allow us to pool and direct small amounts of effort and large amounts of collective intelligence. Wikipedia FTW!

But the word I used was edifice – like a monolithic structure of old, more Stonehenge than bee hive.

So I love that academics, like the author of this paper, are examining the dynamics and patterns of Wikipedia to find new answers. Answers that reveal the super-organism-ness of Wikipedia, the vibrant social system that seems to power it.

The actual academic paper is gobbleydegook to me but this short article about it got me excited, particularly this quote:

“The big result is that the Wikipedia behavior is what we call non-finite state,” DeDeo says. “It’s constantly generating new patterns of behavior that haven’t been seen before.”

One possibility, he says, is that the unbounded source for these behavior patterns in Wikipedia is shared between people – it’s the product of everyone’s mind. “That’s what’s really exciting,” he says.

I really believe historians will look back and chart Wikipedia as an early pioneering example of a new way of collaborating that went on to change our world.

 

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IT Departments Have Become Completely Useless

If you’ve read Culture Shock, you know that I put one of 8 chapters towards the role of Technology in progressive organisations, a quality I call ‘Tech DNA’ with the basic idea that in the best 21st orgs technology absolutely isn’t a department, and is instead an interwoven part of everything the organisation does.

Fundamental to achieving this interwoven tech in organisations requires nothing short of a revolution in traditional IT departments and IT thinking on behalf of everyone outside the IT dept.

What is interesting about this short piece is that the author sees an emergence of Chief Digital Officers and Digital functions in organisations, running in parallel to CIO and IT functions which I recognise and you probably will too. He questions how this will play out. Will they merge? How?

It’s straightforward stuff, but you may find it useful.

The big question for me is ‘what will it be like when the sexy Digital gang have to take care of or distribute responsibility for the big, ugly, mustn’t-go-wrong technology stuff?’ How do we upgrade the infrastructure of large complex orgs to a 21st century state of fitness? (Remember the RBS-Natwest bank technical issues, rumoured to have been due to outsourcing of IT for a vast legacy system?).

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Crown of Win

Related to the above, a great guy I know called Toby has been implementing Culture Shock-type ideas with his IT helpdesk team.

Here’s his team’s blog, with photos of their weekly ‘Crown of Win’ to reward achievement in a funny, silly, non-financial yet somehow meaningful way. And in a way that might not completely fit with their org’s wider culture.

This crown of win is part of a wider family of simple ideas like Zappos Reply-All hat and NixonMcInnes’ Sword of Win.

Nice to see people actually doing stuff, though 🙂 I remember a takeout from our Organisational Change course last year as being ‘you change an organisation’s culture one meeting at a time’. Easy to deride the ‘small’ stuff, but it matters. See also: aggregation of marginal gains.

Nice one Toby and team!

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To finish, a really nice review of Culture Shock by Marc Abraham – thank you Mark!

So yeah, please keep sharing links and spreading the good word,

– Will

Hello there reader – here’s a freshly packed lunchbox of linky goodness that caught my eye.

This week the items are presented to you in ascending order of complexity – a nice magaziney start on working shorter weeks to get you going, winding up to a densely packed write up from Davos finale.

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Should people be off on Fridays?

Sweetly tempting and interesting BBC article about The Gambia introducing a four-day work week for public sector workers. OK, so the bad bit is ‘President Jammeh wants the extra rest day to “allow Gambians to devote more time to prayers, social activities and agriculture”.’ (two outta three ain’t bad!) but the piece goes on to talk about other firms and other international examples.

If you’re interested in this, a must-read is the work done by the New Economics Foundation, ’21 Hours’ which has a compelling rationale for a shifting balance of time. Get a precis and the full thing here.

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Employee ownership: a possible model for independent community pharmacy?

I really enjoyed this personal tale of turning a community pharmacy in Sheffield into an employee-owned business. Another quietly inspiring glimpse of more mutually beneficial ways to operate a business.

Oh, and I just tweeted this link, and a guy on Twitter had this to say: “for a good reason too – very well known in sheffield – great community service”. That just sums it up really doesn’t it?

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Netflix Culture deck on Slideshare, uploaded by founder and CEO Reed Hastings

Lots and lots to like in here – particularly like the values, the emphasis on high performance (which is often quite jarring but I can really respect it), the vacation policy (there isn’t one…).

LOVE the ‘Highly aligned, loosely coupled’ strategy. This is an increasingly sought-after organisational structure (think Gore in Culture Shock but also other interesting organisations like Occupy) but here is snappily expressed by Netflix.

Really quite detailed and thorough, for something external, which makes it extra interesting. Much of the rationale is explained.

And lastly, I think one of the attractive things about this from Netflix is the confidence. The reader may agree or disagree with bits, but ultimately this is a well-thought through and confidently asserted expression of how Netflix wants to operate, and what it values. Interesting!

Thank you to @ade for sharing this.

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Davos Debrief: In Resilience We Trust

Enjoyable and densely packed debrief, writing up what feels like a ton of this writers’ notes from Davos.

Plenty of familiar topics here, especially resilience, but this was shared with me for the final section, which is on Meaning: “Emerging as a major theme at Davos, it was mentioned by CEOs, NGO and religious leaders, and academia throughout the five-day program” and “It is perhaps no surprise that meaning and spirituality enjoyed such prominence this year in Davos, against the backdrop of a fragmented connected age so volatile that it seems to even lack the one historic watershed moment, the one crisis to agree on (as was the case in previous Davos meetings).”

Check the piece out yourself here. Better still, come to Meaning 2013 once we announce it! 🙂

Thank you to James Allen for sharing this.

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And to finish, a quick update on the book itself.

Culture Shock had probably its best week since launch, with a satisfyingly high Amazon Sales Rank (which means everything and nothing, but is an author’s only real yardstick) and a new favourite tweet:

“It was challenging, thought provoking, inspiring, frightening. Quite a bit to take in, in a good way. It made me think. Alot.”

Onwards!

Hello revolutionaries 🙂 Here’s the first update of 2013 – been a bit busy at NixonMcInnes getting the year kicked off, but in that time I’ve been collecting some nice links to share.

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Pivoting a City: Can Startups Help More Than Themselves?

Interesting piece from The Atlantic about the possibility that start up ecosystems can substantially lift up or even turnaround a city, looking in particular at Pittsburgh, USA, where the steel mills collapsed and precipitated an unusually long-term restructuring.

Although the piece lacks real breadth or rigorous quantifiable evidence, it’s interesting to me with my Brighton / Wired Sussex hat on, thinking about the role of clusters and ecosystems on their cities, and I know that people like Indy Johar are working on some VERY interesting schemes in this area.

From a Culture Shock perspective, ‘can this stuff scale to cities?’ I guess is the question. I like that question!

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Zaarly Employee Handbook

Another inspiring handbook from another progressive, smart company. And deliciously presented too – have a little scroll through.

So much to love here.

If I had to pick my favourite bits, it would be the hierarchy of communication modes, with face-to-face first and email last (and only to recap), but also this bit on structure which is so Culture Shock:

• We try to keep our organization as flat as possible.
• We love to quickly form small teams to attack big problems.
• We believe that even small teams need leaders and that anyone can lead.

That third bullet is what Gore call followership, as I describe in the book. YES.

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For Employee Wellbeing, Engagement Trumps Time Off

Gallup researching showing that engagement is the thing that powers wellbeing more than lots of other nice-to-haves:

Employee engagement is a much stronger predictor of overall wellbeing than factors such as hours worked, weeks of vacation time taken, and flextime allowed, according to new research by Harter and Sangeeta Agrawal, a Gallup research manager. The study, which used a sample of 4,894 U.S. Gallup Panel members who work full time, explored the relationships among employee engagement, hours worked, flextime, vacation time, and wellbeing.

So it’s about engagement. How do you create that? You gotta watch Alexander Kjerulf’s funny and ENGAGING (see what I did there?) Meaning Conference talk.

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US developer outsources his job to China so he can watch cat videos at work

I know many of you will have seen this. But we need to think about it. If you haven’t seen it, a US developer outsourced his programming job to a Chinese developer, and did really well in performance reviews, but the work was being done by a dude in China. When his employer found out, they sacked him!

Very Timothy Ferris, four hour work week-esque…

The thing is, what is actually wrong with this, if the company wants outcomes? I’m not saying I would like it as an employer, but we’ve got to question why not, surely? Is it only OK for companies to make decisions like these?

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Some bonus links:

Somewhere – a startup who say ‘We help people find their place and companies find their people’. Really like their ethos, looks intriguing.

Social learning accelerates innovation faster than innovation processes – really interesting piece started by NixonMcInnes’ own Anna Carlson and taken on by Stowe Boyd on his influential Giga Om blog.

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Culture Shock update

Publishing a book is weird – it goes off and then you hear snippets back – but from the snippets I get the book really seems to be gaining momentum which is VERY exciting. I now have heard of three examples where the book is being passed around teams in organisations – a big bank, a social housing trust, and an information/tech business. That is hugely exciting to me! The sales, especially post-Chrimbo, are ticking along nicely. And the reviews, which are no longer from people I actually know, continue to be unexpectedly positive. So I’m excited again about this book writing thing. Thanks for your part in that, dear reader 🙂

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And a hat-tip to Giles Palmer, founder and CEO at Brandwatch for at least 3 of the above links 🙂

So here’s to 2013. My motto for this year is win everything – Will

Here the latest Culture Shock-inspired links, plucked carefully from my LET’S CHANGE THE WORLD radar:

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Nesta’s Failure Fest

This is a LOVELY lil’ piece on failure, mainly in the context of education but of huge relevance to business.

Here’s a tasty outtake, but definitely find a few minutes to read the whole post:

But perhaps the over-riding lesson was in the event itself.  Jim Wynn put his finger on it first.  After the event he said “I think the reason for the success of the Fail Fest is around trust.  Sharing success often precipitates feelings of jealousy, fear and worry, rather than the expected admiration.  Sharing failure relaxes people, increases empathy and builds trust.  This is something special.  We should build on it”.

I’m including this because I, like these guys and many others, am convinced that a greater acceptance of failure is key to unlocking greater innovation and creativity in life and at work, which is why there’s a little bit on NixonMcInnes’ Church of Fail in Culture Shock.

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Reality versus belief about corporate success

A short piece by the notable British economist Diane Coyle on a book called Spark. What I enjoyed most about this was discovering another brilliant company that does things the right way, and thrives in tough times: Lincoln Electric.

As Diane says:

Frank’s book is about businesses with no-layoff employment policies, and particularly about a company called Lincoln Electric – I’d never heard of it but it’s the global number one in arc welding. Lincoln has a formal guaranteed employment programme as well as rewarding employees with bonuses and incentives. The company history sets out its longstanding (since 1895) commitment to employees and customers as well as shareholders. According to its latest results, published last week, employees got an average bonus of $33,915, the 79th annual bonus in a row, a bonus pool of $99.3m (the pool normally represents 32% of pre-tax profits).

I love these long-standing businesses who 1) seem to be performing brilliantly in recent times against any and all competition (see also: John Lewis record sales) and 2) yet have put their employees first for decades (and in this case, over a century!), and yet are still seen as somehow ‘radical’ or ‘progressive’.

How idiotic is traditional business? Pah!

Thanks to Aden Davies for the link.

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Culture Shock further reading list

Talking of books, I’ve put a further reading list for people who enjoyed Culture Shock.

These are the books that inspired or taught me: Culture Shock reading list – and there are some crackers in there.

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Do you have a passion to start something?

The best event I’ve been to was the Do Lectures – if you want to, you can read more about why in my ‘Notes from the Do Lectures 2011’ (though in them I forget to mention my favourite moment, Tom Fishburne’s talk, because I was so emotional I didn’t bring home any notes).

This year, the Do is different: it’s about getting a start up off the ground:

DO ‘START-UP’, APRIL 25–28, 2013

Is your idea going to change the world? How do you fund it? How do you protect it? How do you build it? How do you market it? How do you brand it? How do you tell the world about it? How do you scale it? How do you hire the right people? How do you do all this and more? 20 amazing entrepreneurs are going to give you the answers, because they have been there and done it. Oh, and in the workshops after the talks, we are all going start a business in the 3 days of the event. Because the best way to learn is by doing. And then at night, we can just eat super fresh local food and listen to great music. Sleep will have to wait.

And they sent me an invite which I need to give to someone that’s gonna make something happen.

So please do get in touch if you’ve had a look at what Do Lectures is about and are committed to starting something that matters – will dot mcinnes at nixonmcinnes dot co dot uk eh.

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Challenge a friend or colleague

The New Year is approaching and our friends and colleagues will be thinking about resolutions, goals, the future. If it feels rights, send or loan them a copy of Culture Shock – a handbook for 21st Century business.

It might be the spark or push that they need… And if it is, they’ll never forget it or you!

Onwards! Will.