tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post2033448848357924855..comments2018-03-19T23:50:31.686+01:00Comments on Business or Pleasure? - why not both: Generations, Social and Enterprise: adopt vs adaptMartijn Linssenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-56729015555382969432011-02-07T04:44:37.339+01:002011-02-07T04:44:37.339+01:00Thanks IT Skeptic!
Experience and wisdom, yes; if...Thanks IT Skeptic!<br /><br />Experience and wisdom, yes; if they're still applicable in all situations, and not just "we've always done it this way so it's the way to go"<br /><br />I agree that we all have a role, but in some enterprises the Boomers think they run the show - which they don't. Holding on too long to old ways is just as unwise as jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon the way the young do - mildly exaggerating here but the point is, east and west should meet in the middleMartijn Linssenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-10548898633398429722011-02-07T01:34:42.601+01:002011-02-07T01:34:42.601+01:00"What will the Boomers do?"
Provide exp..."What will the Boomers do?"<br /><br />Provide experience and wisdom.<br />Provide stability to five-second thinkers who can't concentrate on anything.<br />Look after the shareholders' investment in the face of excessive risk taking and wild enthusiasms for anything shiny and new.<br /><br />Don't under-rate us: we all have a role. <br />The last time youth rejected the old we had the Sixties. The music was good. The styles and STDs less so.The IT Skeptichttp://www.itskeptic.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-60306686335531244322010-09-03T13:24:55.128+02:002010-09-03T13:24:55.128+02:00The resources - that comes down to basic strategy,...The resources - that comes down to basic strategy, no? Who is competing for the same resources?<br /><br />Sometimes the competition is engendered by interconnectivity. Sometimes it is plain competition that can be met by interconnectivity.<br /><br />The military get it. They are telling Congress and parliament in UK that they are moving towards edge organizations. Indeed, they've been doing this for 20 years that I know of. The pace is picking up now.<br /><br />The answer to when the collapse is not in the interconnectivity issues themselves. It is plain old strategy. What is happening in the world and what part do we want to play? <br /><br />We layout out our goals and we play the game. There are no guarantees of winning. We simply play because we want to.<br /><br />"To play is to be" We do what we cannot live without.Jo Jordanhttp://flowingmotion.jojordan.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-22065618767384210682010-09-03T13:16:04.757+02:002010-09-03T13:16:04.757+02:00Thank you so much Jo!I really appreciate your comm...Thank you so much Jo!I really appreciate your comment<br /><br />You are right about the Kaboom absence, it will all go very gradually. I f you don't grow with your environment now, it will simply cost more time, money and energy later on - until the price to pay becomes greater than the one to gain (to be followed by that Kaboom, being an implosion rather than an explosion)<br /><br />There will always be resources, I think, at least for years to come. I still am sometimes baffled beyond belief about how much people will put up with, even if they know their neighbour is outting in half the effort and getting double rewards. A shrug of the shoulder "That's life" and on they go - like the 35 year old in your story<br /><br />I currently see that enterprises are very reactive; people are now simply adapted to the changed demand in work. One would expect Sales people to get the work fit for the employees, but in a crisis this is simply reversed (and the Sales kept on board of course)<br /><br />What will distinguish and determine the success of one enterprise versus another in the near future? The amount of "inconveniences" their employees accept - and i think those resources are slowly drying up...Martijn Linssenhttp://martijnlinssen.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-25053589526428641372010-09-03T11:26:24.144+02:002010-09-03T11:26:24.144+02:00I had a challenge from a professor of organization...I had a challenge from a professor of organizations - what will happpen. Like you I thought - kaboom. Luckily I had an article on edge as praxis in my bag and as I later pondered the challenge, as one does, I thought this. Kaboom if and only if these two conditions prevail.<br />1. Resources dry up abruptly.<br />2. There is insufficient adaptive capacity to change when a resource crisis happens.<br />The moral of this story is that big outfits will be there, however distasteful they are, while they can extract resources from the ecosystem.<br />And if you are in one of them and believe in the organization or give a jot about its survival, then quietly build up edge handling ability so that when the crisis happens, there is sufficient skill in the organization to respond (maybe without the old guard but that is not the point. There pensions will cost the the organization but anyone waiting in the wings can calculate that in advance).<br /><br />To put all this simply, I asked a 35 year old in a community dominated by 60 year olds when he thought things would change. He smiled happily and said one day one of them will decide to play golf all day and the rest will follow. Street smarts!Jo Jordanhttp://flowingmotion.jojordan.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-23869027986574783072010-08-18T09:16:24.429+02:002010-08-18T09:16:24.429+02:00This is good. We adapt we do not adopt, we adapt t...This is good. We adapt we do not adopt, we adapt to changing rules - rules change and we adapt. 300 years ago if a person lived more than 2 or 3 miles from where he found a new place to work he would have to move. Today most of us live more than 10 or 20 or more from our place of work, and we think nothing of it. The rules have changed due to new transportation technology. During the MRP boom in the 1980ies we adapted the new technology, but we did not adopt the new rules. We did not get the benefits the technology promised, as we were unwilling to change and adopt new rules of doing business. The sosial media is in the same situation today - we have to ask "what are the new rules" and how must business change to get the benefit. (I have not yet come to grip with what the new rules are - I have some ideas - but I'm not sure)Finn Bernernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-54010167728163564952010-08-04T14:44:59.489+02:002010-08-04T14:44:59.489+02:00Thank you Spiro! That is a tricky example of adopt...Thank you Spiro! That is a tricky example of adopt versus adapt ;-) as it is impossible to adopt bicycle riding without 100% adapting to it<br /><br />If I look at IT it's adopt what I've seen for the last dozen years: even with the socalled COTS products like Oracle and SAP, there is a lot of cutomisation involved before the tool fits in the enterprise.<br />However, due to the large, timeconsuming and costly upgrades some of those enterprises have chosen to adapt themselves to the "vanilla" product: they simply 'next-next-finish' install the product, adapt their company processes to the vendor's one, and off they go<br /><br />Maybe the same will happen in our case: when enterprises think they can simply adopt Social and will find out that this is somewhat of a Trojan Horse that will open the door to a much larger force<br /><br />Needless to say, much like in The Aeneid the enterprise will then be forced to adapt...<br /><br />Whether that will leave the enterprise in the same state as Troj remains to be seen - but I'm very sure that there will be considerable collateral damage to say the leastMartijn Linssenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-76371541146488745842010-08-04T12:45:08.047+02:002010-08-04T12:45:08.047+02:00I think adopt and adapt may come handy if used to...I think adopt and adapt may come handy if used together, though we can't really show any evidence yet of an adoptive model with what you so delightfully presented in this modern age, but we can surely adapt once we understand what's really going on.<br /><br />Like yourself, many others "get it" and it's not that we can't explain it, but rather you have to show it.<br /><br />Using an analogy of riding a bike, adopt is a method of learning, there's a prcoess to it, but once you adapt your set and ready to go.<br /><br />Adaptation using the analogy of a learning to ride a bike is like saying you have to just keep going once you get the hang of it, and play it by ear once you get going.<br /><br />At this point, adopting a model if one is presented is simply adapting to the process of it, understanding the core value in all the great insights you provide.Spirohttp://twitter.com/spirospiliadisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-41030750438790193222010-08-02T19:49:46.140+02:002010-08-02T19:49:46.140+02:00Hi Martijn, finally, have a chance to follow up wi...Hi Martijn, finally, have a chance to follow up with your additional comments; thanks for those! Yes, I agree with you about how employee to employee relationship may be marginalised, once more, but then again it's not happening in isolation; meaning that most knowledge workers have now got an opportunity to connect, even if things are incredibly tight! I'm seeing that myself inside IBM, where people *still make time* to work on those personal business relationships, because they see the value in them for the near future. <br /><br />I have seen a few other bumpy situations in the past and that urge to connect wasn't there; it's the social networks that are provoking it nowadays, more and more, specially when people need to move around, or find experts quicker or that piece of info that no-one else seems to find. <br /><br />Yes, it's a slow change, but it is happening nevertheless. I'm seeing it as a business transformational effort that would help some businesses transition into knowledge based biz, more than labour-based ones. We shall see how things develop further, but somehow I've got the feeling it'll happen. Time will tell...<br /><br />W.r.t. the comment on the ratio of managers by employees, don't forget that figure was full time employees, you would need to add contractors and the like and that ration is a lot larger ;-) <br /><br />(My team though is 1 to 7 hehe)Luis Suarezhttp://www.elsua.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-83508722174959079052010-07-27T14:58:52.800+02:002010-07-27T14:58:52.800+02:00Thank you very much Luis and Rick!
I agree with y...Thank you very much Luis and Rick!<br /><br />I agree with your points Luis, and some of the Boomers are indeed coming towards the turn. Customers are valued much higher than employees so where they Pull the old ones listen - and not helping forbid Social Tools being used by employees is a start but I don't see any movement in organisational structure and working ways.<br />On the contrary, to save money in this crisis the strings are pulled again and the employer-employee relationship is marginalised once again, together with a greater pressure on making more hours because the rates are down. No, certainly no adaptation there...<br /><br />By the way, if IBM has 1 manager per 9 employees, that's actually a pretty good start for a hiveminded organisation!<br /><br />Rick, there is some disagreement about the years for all the generations but I used 1960 and 1980 as markers for the end of the baby boom and the start of the Millennials: that makes anyone over 50 a boomer, and indeed there are a lot of them. Thanks for the correction to the tweet, the enterprises are employeed ;-) by Millennials and GenX, sometimes my English gets stuck a bit<br />To give you an idea of Capgemini's demographics: 57% is 20-35, 39% is 35-55 and 4% is older than 55. So, not huge really, but definitely they're in the top. And if I look at the Board of Directors, no one's under 55...<br /><br />I hope you'll find time to work and write Rick!Martijn Linssenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00573419401627232560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-18564301396197461542010-07-27T00:50:56.059+02:002010-07-27T00:50:56.059+02:00To repeat what I said in response to Andrew's ...To repeat what I said in response to Andrew's blog post you mention, "Where to begin"? There's just too much here to address in one comment, so I'll focus on a minor issue I think needs a bit of elaboration.<br /><br />I am 63 years old; two years away from what is considered the traditional retirement age in the United States. There are a few Baby Boomers (if you use the normal demographic of those born between the years of 1946 and 1964) who are older than me, but not very many. That means there is still a huge cohort of Boomers out there in the workplace. All of them are not, by any stretch of the imagination, managers and executives. That means the vast majority of them are employees (and I'm assuming that's what you really meant in your second tweet; i.e. not that "Todays enterprises are employed by Millennials and GenX", but that they are employees of today's enterprises).<br /><br />My point is that a huge number of today's employees are also Boomers, and that will remain so for at least another 10 years, after which they will be a smaller number, but still a large minority.<br /><br />As for other issues, I hope they continue being discussed by Luis, Andy, Rawn, and yourself, as well as others. I've been so busy responding to the current posts (and looking for ways to make a living, since I took an early retirement package from my place of employment a couple of months ago) others have been putting up on the subject, I haven't taken the time to author my own blog post on the subject. Besides, others are more widely read than mine, so there's no hurry there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6081361780079434787.post-40212151170813638672010-07-27T00:34:35.039+02:002010-07-27T00:34:35.039+02:00Hi Martijn, what a wonderful write-up! So many goo...Hi Martijn, what a wonderful write-up! So many good points to comment on! Perhaps I may well expand further on a lengthier blog post, but since you were asking what the Boomers have left to do I will just stick to it, since it also fits in quite nicely with the overall theme from your blog post. <br /><br />Boomers, in my opinion, will have two different choices: <br /><br />1. Adapt and adopt a new kind of leadership skills and become the leaders of tomorrow, of the 21st century, helping prepare the next generation of leaders, the ones you have nicely mentioned above, as well as my team colleague Rawn Shah <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/16/enterprise-20-networking-leadership-managing-eminence.html" rel="nofollow">put it so nicely a few weeks back</a> in that Forbes article. <br /><br />2. Or, just simply retire. They will eventually move on, at some point in time, to leave their space to others. Just like with dinosaurs, they will eventually become "extinct" from the corporate world. <br /><br />Now, dinosaurs didn't have a choice not to adopt, nor adapt, new ways of living back then; with boomers it is a different game; they have got a choice and, lucky enough for us all, most of them are taking that opportunity to leave an unforgettable legacy behind them helping prepare those new generations of leaders. <br /><br />Then again, the ones who "are not that interested", would be the ones that no-one would remember 10 to 15 years down the line. Yes, life is all about choices, and they would have to make their own ... ;-)<br /><br />PS. Oh, btw, w.r.t. to me being a bit uncertain; not a all, my friend, it's just that with a number coming closer of nearly 40,000 managers it takes time to help them all adapt, so one has got to learn to be a bit more patient. One at a time, but going after all of them! :-DLuis Suarezhttp://www.elsua.netnoreply@blogger.com