Fellows in Business

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Comment by John Oakley on May 19, 2012 at 10:52

I almost 100% agree - I'd say it IS rather than MAY BE.

Totally agree too. Even with the best qualifications I think the concept of a "career", inasmuch as you practice within a very narrow band of specialization, is on a steep decline. As Graham points out, there is a trend towards self-employment and micro-enterprises, and I see more and more examples of people leveraging their relationships and more general skills to obtain gainful employment. I'm currently on the advisory board for a startup that is providing services for local small businesses to operate collaboratively - "the high street as a department store" - and the team consists of a biochemist, 3 engineers, 2 lecturers as well as more normal entrepreneurial skills but all were hired because of relationships rather than professional skills. 

You only have to scan profiles in LinkedIn to see this happening all over. 

Comment by Andrew Armour on May 19, 2012 at 10:13

Thanks Graham - Love your point. True...

Comment by Dr Graham Wilson on May 19, 2012 at 10:00

@Andrew: "In our CollaborativeEdge programme we say; 'your ability to build and maintain your personal business relationships, in and outisde your organisation, may be the only unique & sustainable career advantage you actually have'."

I almost 100% agree - I'd say it IS rather than MAY BE.

However, I do believe things are changing - and that excites me rather than angering me.  As more and more people are self-employed or working in micro-enterprises, they increasingly have to rely upon their networks.  The 'professionals' are realising this; the trades seem to be a little slower to proactively manage their reputations (plenty of exceptions though - witness the growth in the FSB for example).

In many large institutions, a paranoia about regulation seems to have been used to justify employing more junior staff and severly restricting their power to act out of the box.  However, again, there are beacons of alternative practice - look at Facebook, again.

Best wishes, Graham

Comment by Andrew Armour on May 19, 2012 at 9:35

Thanks John,

Interesing point -

I don't thnk there is a lack of smart people who know lots of stuff and who keep learning lots of new stuff. Its a lack of smart people, who know lots of stuff, who can work together with other people (who may not know that same stuff) - who are very different from them. Really different.

Research sketches the picture.

Broadly, 70% of alliances and collaborative business ventures fail due to poor personal 'soft skills' -  not technical problems or a lack of knowledge. (Gibbs and Humphries, Gary Hamel etc.).

In complex commercial deals that 'derail' approx.10% of failure is due to poor technical knowledge or performance - but a rather alarming 45% fail due to poor personal understanding and lack of empathy between the players (note - NOT the organisation or process but the PEOPLE). (See Journal of Psychology Type).Lynda Gratton, Moss Kanter, Scott Berkun, Tom Kelly - and countless others, all point out that collaboration is about culture and an ability to listen and work with other people - not just technology and capability. As Morten T Hansen points out, Sony has great pool of talented technical people - but over the last 15 years it lacked a collaborative, sharing, co-operative culture which resulted in a rainbow of platforms & systems. The result? First, the iPod - and then more recently, the steady and unstoppable momentum of Samsung.

Most bright people have been educated and rewarded for; researching, arguing, selling their case - and all desperate to show how clever and valuable they are and all wanting to be praised. They've been raised not in a collaboration culture but a competitive one. As a TV producer once told me 'someone told them they were clever once, and they've never forgotten it'. And then, we throw them all together and hope they can share ideas, build cohesive plans and coordinate activities...

Its a lack of empathy and maturity skills (nothing to do with age) and as you say John, an ability to even question the definition of a term is a good example of that -

I take your point that leadership has a key part to play - but increasingly I'm thinking it is individuals who have to take responsibility for their own personal ability (or lack of it) - to collaborate, build their own networks, bridges and contacts. And I think this is a skill and discipline too. In our CollaborativeEdge programme we say; 'your ability to build and maintain your personal business relationships, in and outisde your organisation, may be the only unique & sustainable career advantage you actually have'.

Best,

AA

Comment by Dr Graham Wilson on May 18, 2012 at 21:10

@John - "The key is to encourage collaboration across disciplines, by rewards, by accepting and modifying discipline vernacular so that the same term "means" the same regardless of discipline e.g. "pathway" is used by biologists and network specialists ( amongst others) but the term can be used with an implied context  of "biological pathway" and "network pathway" depending on the speaker/author. Actually this was one of the biggest issues I have found over the years; a refusal to accept an ambiguous word or phrase as meaning anything other than the meaning normal understood by the beholder... and NOONE will ask for clarification in a meeting... it shows weakness. "

I wonder where the virtual teams developing open source software and building Wiki's, especially Wikipedia, fit into this?

Cheers, Graham

Comment by John Oakley on May 18, 2012 at 17:29

Andrew, the responsibility has to start with the leadership. In my experience this is not a grass roots change. This has to be seen to be something that will be accepted by the leadership otherwise few people are prepared to raise their heads above the parapet.

I also believe that the future goes beyond T-shaped to Triangular People i.e. they must grow in skill and experience to a much greater level that bouncing across the cross-bar on a T. I found that the strongest teams I could build came from encouraging depth across the board not just a deep skill in one area and a knowledge and acceptance of complementary disciplines. Indeed I was able to leverage this myself by being able to head a biotech research organization with a vertical skill of computer science. I developed depth in biology, chemistry, materials science and business and encouraged my team to do the same. Not, of course, enough depth to be a researcher but enough to a) understand what the researchers were doing and appreciate their efforts and b) be able to differentiate fact from BS...

The key is to encourage collaboration across disciplines, by rewards, by accepting and modifying discipline vernacular so that the same term "means" the same regardless of discipline e.g. "pathway" is used by biologists and network specialists ( amongst others) but the term can be used with an implied context  of "biological pathway" and "network pathway" depending on the speaker/author. Actually this was one of the biggest issues I have found over the years; a refusal to accept an ambiguous word or phrase as meaning anything other than the meaning normal understood by the beholder... and NOONE will ask for clarification in a meeting... it shows weakness. 

Comment by Andrew Armour on May 18, 2012 at 16:59

How do you Build a Collaborative Business? And who's responsible for it?

And is it individuals or leadership who are responsible for creating the networks that drive innovation? In a new blog piece I look at Morten T Hansen's excellent work on Collaboration - and the three levers that he has identified to help drive an innovation culture; Unifying People and Cultivating the 'T-Shaped People' and Nimble Networks.

But how much responsibility do individuals have to take to sharpen up their own personal collaboration skills and work across the organisation? Or is it all about the leadership - to get the right culture and people in place?

With research from General Electric, Forrester and Cap Gemini - consistently showing that innovation is driven by collaborations and partnerships - the ability to target, build and maintain critical relationships, internal and external to the organisation - is more important than ever.

Best,

AA

Andrew Armour

www.benchstone.co.uk
www.andrewarmour.com

Comment by Dr Graham Wilson on May 16, 2012 at 21:56

@John - Of course!  Brilliant idea.  I'll do a bit of exploring.  My own next is due out via Amazon soon, I shall be amused to see if it ever appears!

Cheers, Graham

Comment by Dr Graham Wilson on May 16, 2012 at 21:54

@Matthew - There seems to be a bit of interest here...  who should I discuss this with at JAS to see if we can pull something together?  I'm happy to do some of the legwork.

Cheers

Graham

Comment by John Oakley on May 16, 2012 at 19:09

Amazon UK has a constantly updated list of new Business, Finance and Law books at http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/new-releases/books/68/ref=zg_bsnr_nav_b_1_b

This would give us a head start in finding speakers.

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