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By Dan Pontefract, 07/21/2010 3:06 PM

Whether or not it was a rhetorical challenge, I’m taking Henry Mintzberg up on his ask, somewhat, in his book Managing and recommending an adaption or perhaps an enhancement to his “Model of Managing”.

Perhaps he will utilize it in an updated book release. Perhaps.

First to Mintzberg and the “Model of Managing”. In principle, I agree with the archetype and the following definition:

“managing takes place on three planes, from the conceptual to the concrete: with information, through people, and to action directly”.

I do however believe that it’s the separation of information, people and action into the three planes that causes some issues.

Mintzberg goes on to state that:

“It is this dynamic balance that renders futile the teaching of management in a classroom, especially one role or competency at a time. Even mastering all the competencies do not a competent manager make, because the key to this work is the blending of all of its aspects into this dynamic balance.”

What’s missing, however, is the relatively new managing behaviour that I will refer to simply as collaboration. I’ll probably have to write a book about this soon, but for purposes of this blog posting I’ll juxtapose Mintzberg’s model with my own adaptation of his work.

Mintzberg’s model segregates 3 key planes: information, people and action. I believe there are two key planes (collaboration and action) and that these are bound by information and people. That is, managers must collaborate and take action with information and people.

Collaboration is the practice of linking, leading, communicating, connecting, scheduling and framing people and information each and every day through action.

Action is taking those same people and pieces of information and deciding whether to do, delegate, demonstrate or deal.

Collaboration occurs in formal, informal and social ways utilizing face-to-face interactions as well as virtual/asynchronous means to act, be it with people or information.

Action also can occur in formal, informal and/or social ways; the key tenet being it happens with people and information.

Do you agree? Disagree?

Bloggers Note: I normally try to blog weekly, but in the months of July and August, you’ll have to bear with me as I’ll be posting only once per month.

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By Dan Pontefract, 06/27/2010 10:15 PM

Dream dreams

Then write them

Aye, but live them first

                                            Samuel Eliot Morison

While in Boston recently I took the opportunity to walk through the Commonwealth Avenue Mall; a sublime 32 acre park designed with French boulevards in mind.

Throughout the Mall lay several statues. Although I hadn’t a clue as to who Samuel Eliot Morison was, the quote above stuck with me as I strolled onward and eventually meandering enough to take in a Red Sox game.

The relative success of Learning 2.0 & Enterprise 2.0 in your organization can be mapped back to this quotation. We all can dream the dream of a successful Learning 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 environment, and we all should be writing down what it looks like with appropriate benchmarking, metrics, cost/benefit analyses, etc. 

The aforementioned ensures you are following the tried and tested hierarchical processes that dominate organizations of today. In summary, you most likely will be tied to existing ways in which your organization operates when rolling out any Learning 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 initiative across your entire organization.

But, in the spirit of Mr. Morison, you could and perhaps should live those written dreams first by way of pilots, test audiences, trial runs, alpha/beta instances and the like in order to prove your dreams, get them into circulation earlier, and demonstrate that both Learning 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are not only for real, but can benefit the organization quickly and effectively.

Prove your dreams by way of any of the following:

• Start a micro-blogging service using any of the free tools out there today
• Append wikis & blogs to some of your ILT classroom courses
• Prove that coaching or mentoring sessions can be equally as good in Second Life as face-to-face
• When at a conference (attending and/or speaking) utilize the Twitter back channel and report back how it enhanced your experience
• Use private features of YouTube or Google Video to boost the learning experience with video blogging

Of course there are many other examples we could illustrate but in the end, you easily can demonstrate small wins or beta examples of Learning 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 prior to rolling out the final and perhaps perfect panacea of your dream.

Comments (6)

By Dan Pontefract, 06/16/2010 1:32 PM

As day 3 of the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston comes to a close, I’m left with an empty feeling.

I don’t belong.

Not so much at the conference, per se, but in the spectrum of organizational ideologies.

When I attend conferences, meetings, etc. that are Human Resources, Learning or Organizational Behaviour in nature … I stick out as the individual pushing the ‘culture of collaboration’ tenet through a need for more connected, collaborative and continuously federated technologies.

I end up clashing with the ‘old way’ … in this case, the tried and true practices of how organizations were (or are) run.

When I attend conferences, meetings, etc. that are more technology-focused (Enterprise 2.0 being one of a few) … I stick out as the individual pushing the ‘culture of collaboration’ tenet through the lens of engagement, culture, business performance improvement, etc.

Bottom line is that I see a niche world developing; a bridge between the IT and HR worlds.

There are several bridge builders out there, including but not limited to recent conversations at the conference with Andrew McAfee, John Ambrose, Jon Ingham, Marcia Conner, Nick Howe, amongst others.

Like I’ve written about before, we need to keep an open mind about how technology can aid culture, and how the culture can help shape the utilization and benefit of the technology.

I wonder if that niche world deserves a brand, a title, a definition?

What would it be?