We are in luck!! Leadership in the Age of Collaboration has been chosen as the winner of the HR Blogosphere Award 2009. I want to thank the jury for their recognition and, of course, all of you who have participated in the conversation with your readings, contributions and comments. This award -the one you can see in the image- is yours.
Congratulations also to the rest of the winners: Yoriento, by Alfonso Alcántara and Optima Infinito, by José Miguel Bolívar. And to those who have obtained a special mention from the jury: El Blog de los RRHH, by Juan Martínez de Salinas, and Concongestion de Personas, by Nacho Muñoz. As you know, this blog was born as a space for conversation in the Spanish blogosphere about the impact of the Age of Collaboration on ourselves as people and on our organizations. It is always a satisfaction to see that the work done is recognized, but what is really important is that together we have been able to create a space to talk, explore, question and learn by playing and interacting with the new reality, exactly as our young people do. In this new world of open, transparent and global communications, there is little room for secrets. There is no place to hide: we will all end up being visible. Thank you for being there. For those of you who join the blog, these have been the 7 conversations selected, throughout the year, by the people of the HR Blogosphere Observatory:
1. From the power of hierarchy to the power of authenticity and added value
Until now, we have been able to build hierarchical organizations that, over time, have ended up becoming authentic organizations of power. The time has come to change. The Open Source model can be a good starting point in this transformation, as it is one of the few experiences in which we have managed to put into practice the values that will characterize the organizations of the future. If we manage to make the added value of people transparent – that is, that everyone knows what each one really contributes – knowledge and information will naturally move towards the “nodes” in which greater added value is generated. To achieve this, the only possible path is that of authenticity. To be ourselves. To work with true passion to build together a new model of organization that is more effective, fairer, fun and balanced.
2. Beware of Black Swans: Nassim Taleb’s Proposal for the New Age
What is a black swan? It is a rarity that lives outside the realm of normal expectations, which we are not able to foresee, and that produces an extreme impact with important consequences for our lives. Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Lebanese-American professor, successful essayist and former stock market trader – proposes a deep reflection on many of the philosophical-mathematical assumptions that we currently apply to economics, to the conception of risk and to the management of uncertainty. Taleb’s reflections will help us to discover the errors we make in our reasoning processes when we are faced with the complexity and randomness of the world in which we live. Continue reading
3. Talent 2.0: Digital Natives with Personal Branding
Building our own brand is the best way to develop ourselves and to achieve our personal and professional goals. This individual process of improvement has a powerful social impact, as it favors relationships with customers and collaborators, and ends up strengthening organizations. Continue reading
4. Organizations 2.0: I Have a Dream
What do we want our organizations – business, social, and political – to be like in the future? A dream can become the most powerful instrument to share with others a certain vision of life. By evoking a dream we can also make the most effective call to action; a call capable of initiating a profound change in reality. In my dream – which you surely share – I see organizations made to measure for people, as in the Renaissance canon, and not the other way around. Flexible and transparent companies, associations, unions, political parties and NGOs, based on open and participatory structures. Humanistic organizations, in which everyone has the opportunity to participate, to contribute the best of themselves to generate economic and social value. Organizations in which we can share knowledge to build, together, Collective Intelligence. Organizations, in short, in which we have fun, we are passionate, and in which we are able to deploy all our talent and all our creativity. Continue reading
5. Lead Your Tribe: Seth Godin’s Proposal for the New Age
Many of the ideas that have guided our professionals are based on the vision of the leader as someone charismatic who is at the top of the hierarchy and is capable of knowing everything, and of having answers for everything. The reality is far from being like that. For this reason, I have found Seth Godin’s proposal very refreshing, which tells us about the possibilities that Web 2.0 offers us today to collaborate, to create and to lead our own “tribe”; that is, to lead a community of like-minded people made up of people who may be geographically dispersed, but who are connected. The tribe is connected to a leader and an idea that manages to inspire passion in all its members. Within this vision, innovation and leadership are no longer a matter of a “chosen one”, but a job shared by all. It is about turning our organizations into authentic nurseries of leaders at each and every level: from the receptionist to the CEO.
6. Schools 2.0. Keys to building the education of the future
What are the steps we must take to move towards School 2. 0? We have always built the educational model taking the needs of society as a reference. Today’s schools were designed as economic engines to supply professionals to an industrial society. And so, with very few variations, is how these values have come down to us. It is true that this model fulfilled its role in another era, but the needs of society have changed radically in recent years, and nothing justifies the maintenance of an obsolete system, which no longer fulfills its function. We are no longer in the Industrial Age, but in the Age of Knowledge and Collaboration. Consequently, society urgently demands profound changes in the educational system. It is the students themselves, the Digital Natives, who are expressing their rejection in a more forceful way. They are not like us. They have other skills and other very different needs. They are no longer willing to put up with the homogeneous and unidirectional learning system that previous generations received. The role of teachers can no longer be to provide the content. Their role, from now on, must be to manage and facilitate the learning process and the intellectual growth of each of the students, stimulating their creativity and critical sense. The ability to continue learning is much more important than what we know. And the Age of Collaboration makes it possible to create new digital schools that are more agile, participatory, open and transparent, based on open knowledge and truly student-centered.
7. Exploring the DNA of 2.0 organizations Change a little to change everything?
Change is essential. Before, you had to innovate to grow; now you have to innovate to survive. Organizations, like us, are living beings capable of growing and evolving. Their DNA is made up of their own company culture, that is, their way of seeing, understanding and doing things. If we manage to innovate in a few significant values within that company culture, we will be able to transform any structure, no matter how complex, into a true 2.0 organization, an organization of the future. To make our organization change, we can apply the pattern that has made the evolution of species possible: variety, selection and retention. We must launch a wide variety of innovation initiatives. Then, we must select those initiatives that work. Finally, we need the necessary retention capacity to consolidate those successful initiatives as core activities of the organization. Don’t miss these 10 innovation proposals that will help you change everything. Continue reading
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