Today's image is an Anthony Gormley figure, taken outside the Royal Festival Hall in London on the day of the 2007 Tour de France speed trials.

Back to the article, which I co-authored with Dr Marie Puybaraud for the Knowedge Management Review and which I threatened to summarise in a post a couple of days ago.

Marie and I facilitate the Johnson Controls' Global Mobility Network, which is a learning network for senior IT, HR and Facilities Management executives. We started out nearly three years ago to explore workplace mobility. As we considered the wider link between the business environment and mobile working, we realised that mobile working encompasses a more pressing set of global issues. We identified the following:

Global mobility of talent (people)

Global competition for scarce, well-educated and skilled knowledge workers is creating physical migration of people to places where their talents are in demand. Highly skilled migrants are likely to be young and their entry into the workforce helps to make up for the deficit of home grown talent. Growing diversity on multiple fronts, including culture, age, communication styles, and differing attitudes and approaches to using communication technologies are creating a significant challenge for managers, ways of working and workplace design.

Global mobility of economic sectors

This change is related to the global mobility of talent. Thomas Friedman's contention that the
globalised world is flat is a view Richard Florida challenges as partly correct. Florida sees the world as spiky. What he means is that despite electronically-enabled, distributed, remote and virtual working, the prominence of place remains. He speaks of a “new geography of creativity” and links increased physical concentrations of people to the shift from industrial sectors to the rise of geographically co-located high-tech, knowledge-based and creative industries.

Global mobility of work (roles and activities)

As well as talent and specific sectors being on the move, work and roles are more generally relocating as businesses use the world as their supply base for talent and materials. Sharif Khan, VP HR at Microsoft Canada, speaking at the Workplace 2017 conference about the urgent need for Canadian businesses to attract and nurture talent, claimed that as workforces become increasingly distributed, talent will be sourced from a global talent pool into which a domestically-based company can cast its net. Roles and activities will locate where the talent is.

Global mobility of economic opportunity

IBM’s Chief Executive, Sam Palmisano claims that the very nature of corporates is changing as activities locate where they are best done. Western corporates are, as the Economist puts it, shifting their centre of gravity to the emerging economies. In the process, they are experiencing highly competitive local labour markets, the need to contain rising labour costs and the need to innovate to head off threats from local corporates. These businesses learn quickly and present stiff competition. As these local corporates grow, a two-way acquisition and relocation of businesses from the growing economies westwards is likely. (Ref: Economist Briefing: IBM and globalization, The Economist, April 7th – 13th 2007)

Global mobility of collaborative relationships

As Sharif Khan indicated, business structures are fragmenting into dense, highly-connected networks. The boundary-less office is here with the formation of partnerships, alliances and fragmentation of supply networks. This article from Microsoft says that "the once popular perception of the corporation as a standalone, self-sufficient entity is as out of date as prohibition ans snake oil ... large corporations are beginning to look like social networks", consisting of collaborative relationships that might be entirely virtual, or a mixture of virtual and face-to-face – within and across organisational and national boundaries.

Underpinning all these trends, of course, is the digital infrastructure that is enabling and energising these global trends.I will pick up on each of these trends in future posts, and explore their strategic implications for businesses seeking to adapt to these far-reaching and simultaneous global workplace trends.

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Lurking In The Shadows

I think that Stacey's concept of the legitimate and shadow systems, which I mentioned in my previous post, gives us a clue as to why adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies by individuals might differ from their readiness to adopt Web 2.0 technologies.

We need to deal first with terminology. Web 2.0 technologies are characterised by their role in harnessing collective intelligence. Enterprise 2.0 technologies are the same technologies except that they exist behind the enterprise firewall.

Web 2.0 technologies are democratising. Nobody has to seek anyone's permission about which technologies to choose, and when and how they are to be used. People are using them to contribute spontaneously and with alacrity to the creation of user generated content. This is happening to such an extent that corporates and brands are having to change how they engage with customers. Traditional media companies can no longer broadcast to silent, compliant audiences. Richard Sambrooke, Director of BBC's Global news Division is reported as saying that:

"We don't own the news anymore. This is a fundamental realignment of the relationship between large media companies and the public"

Given that people connect and communicate as they see fit to satify their own needs and to suit their own purpose, then the corollary is true. They can withhold their contributions and participation in formal systems that companies invest in to meet strategic business objectives.

Enterprise 2.0 technologies deployed with the intention of harnessing collective intelligence are obviously components of companies' information systems design, part of Stacey's legitimate system. It's no surprise to me then that people might not leap to embrace formal Enterprise 2.0 technologies if imposed or at odds with their values or personal objectives. It also depends on whether or not the culture and reward systems make it worth their while.

Respondents in a recent McKinsey Global Survey said they regard Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 technologies as strategic, and they plan to increase investment in these technologies. A key theme to emerge from the McKinsey research is that adoption and dissemination starts at grassroots, driven by 'inspiration and passion'.

What shadow system dynamics tell us is that people will connect anyway. It is in companies' own interest to create conditions as favourable as possible to encourage user generated collective intelligence for the company's benefit. Treat people well and trust them; without that returns on investment are likely to be jeoparised and potentially destructive conversations will take place outside the firewall.

Standing On The Corner, Watching All The Trends Go By

Episode Two - The Barricades are Breached!

Yesterday's post mentioned how some businesses are blocking access to social networking sites. Well, the indicators are that this strategy might not work. Here's why I think resistance is futile:

(a) Ralph Stacey says that shadow systems in organisations are where those who have not been given formally sanctioned authority take control for themselves. Shadow systems can be destructive or creative - it depends on prevailing organisational cultures and how people are treated. Politics, jockeying for position, cliques, cabals, skulduggery, the exercise of subversive power, resistance, creativity, collaboration - it's all there in the dynamic shadow system. And management cannot control it.

People will connect and communicate at will and as they see fit, with or without technology. If it is with technology, and access to social networking sites is prohibited, people can easily engage outside the organisational firewall using their mobiles.

(b) If we accept that it is probably (though not exclusively) young people who use social networking sites, then another reason why businesses may be forced to live with social networking sites is that skilled young people are scarce. They therefore have bargaining power. Block access to social working sites? What sort of signal does that give off about a potential employer? Ah, we'll just go and work somewhere else.

This article quotes someone as saying that “the Facebook generation will wipe out the command control infrastructure in business today". That is exactly the sort of unsubstantiated hype that sets my cautious academic teeth on edge. Still, I think the indicators are that contingent factors will be persuasive in increasing the take-up of Web 2.0 technologies (bearing in mind what Andrew McAfee was saying about the division between those businesss who 'get it' and those who do not).

The article says that 'the youth market' is 100% of the future market for sales of communications services and products". Young people are also 100% of future managers, which makes it more likely than not the the barricades will be breached.