Here's the article, along with a number of web links at the bottom for
those equipped to explore further via Eudora Pro 3.0 or a web browser. If
you don't have Eudora Pro 3.0 for e-mail and dislike the "cut and paste"
method, you can also find a live web links version on the web instead at:
<http://www.pathcom.com/Articles/inrevo.html>
Any thoughts, comments, or feedback would be welcome.
*****[ FIRST UP AGAINST THE WALL? ]*****
by Joe Katzman
(Derived from an open letter to Gemini Consulting's C4 Lab)
Hi! As part of my in-depth research into Gemini Consulting, I recently
came across your mini-site concerning The Internet Revolution.
Congratulations. You have produced an excellent basic primer to the
Internet and its effects on business and society. I was even impressed
enough to embed a couple of links to it into a web site I recently
designed.
As Randall Hancock correctly pointed out, web-based works are perpetually
in development. What follows, therefore, are some quickie thoughts and
suggestions regarding your document and its contents. I hope you will find
them useful and thought-provoking.
THE DISINTERMEDIATION DEBATE
In the section of "The Internet Revolution" covering implications, you
write:
> On an internal basis, the Internet will facilitate knowledge
> management by creating a reduced need for middle managers and
> librarians. In short, disintermediation will allow organizations
> and individuals to reduce both direct costs and the time needed
> to perform activities.
In an age of downsizing, the idea of "disintermediation" fits the way we
look at things. There's even a good deal of truth to it, which is why I've
often used it as a theoretical lens myself. Still, it isn't the whole
story. Or appropriate for all situations. There are other important
perspectives one can adopt to produce equally valuable insights.
For instance, what if you altered your perspective and looked at network
computing through an "increased value enabler" lens instead? Customer
representatives are just as necessary because they use data captured by
electronic forms of support. With these new tools, they target specific
end users and offer uniquely appropriate solutions that the customer may
not even have considered. As Daniel Burrus notes in his book Technotrends:
"Rule #12: Give your customers the ability to do what they can't do, but
would have wanted to do, if only they knew they could have done it."
This advice cuts two ways. It can be applied to give the customers direct
control of transactions, as in cases like on-line banking. In these
scenarios, disintermediation is indeed the order of the day. Jobs between
the customer and the service provider simply vanish. Yet no less an
authority than CIO Bill Raduchel of Sun Microsystems (surely one of the
most networked organizations around) has noted that: "the complementary
technology to the net is the Boeing 747." Translation? The need and
opportunity for effective personal contact may in fact increase in a
networked world. Counter-intuitive? Yes. True? Quite probably.
A TALE OF TWO SALES FORCES
Take the case of service representatives again. Company A uses electronic
channels to reach customers directly, and slashes their sales force.
Company B gives customers this same option, but also uses technology to
add a secure, real-time sales support system accessible via the Internet.
These systems gives Company B's sales force more time to work on
relationship management, and the information they need to use that time
effectively by focusing on the most valuable prospects and accounts.
No-one is fired in sales, though some administrative staff are let go.
Indeed, Company B even hires some of the salespeople leaving its
competitor, based on recommendations received from its sales force via the
company's groupware network. They are trained in the new system, and sent
to work on luring away some of the competition's best accounts.
Which firm do you think will win in this scenario? Which saw
disintermediation as the final solution, and which saw it as a starting
point for creative thinking about competitive advantage?
MIDDLE MANAGEMENT, MIDDLE POWER?
Will middle managers disappear? Maybe in some firms. In others, they might
adopt computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies, share their
intelligence, and become an integrated, fast-acting information filter
that provides their corporations with real advantage in the marketplace.
Absurd? No, the logical extension of Barry Oshry's work on "Converting
Middle Powerlessness to Middle Power: A Systems Approach" in National
Productivity Review. He doesn't address CMC as a key enabler, but when you
combine Oshry's perspective with the power of groupware/intranet tools,
the scenario I describe becomes eminently plausible. Costs and time DO go
down, but in a different way and for different reasons. To paraphrase
Hamlet: "There are more things in boardrooms and shop floors than are
dreamed of by disintermediarists." Indeed, in some cases, a focus
disintermediation as THE lens can even create conclusions that are 180
degrees wrong.
...AND THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE NET
For instance, take the idea that librarians will be less necessary. I
suspect that this may actually be backwards. Those with Information
Science degrees will, I believe, soon acquire a status much like IT
professionals. Libraries aren't disappearing, just moving to intranets and
the Internet. Corporations will need more librarians to help keep
everything organized and find relevant information, and independent
contractors are also arising as the need grows. Disintermediated on a
public level, perhaps, but re-intermediated with a vengeance on a private
level.
Want a concrete example? Guess who manages WebCo., Sandia Labs' service
organization that acts as a consultant for groups putting material on its
famous internal web? Her name: Jenine Nengin. Former position: Corporate
Librarian.
Is disintermediation fundamentally flawed, therefore? No. The problem
isn't that the theory is wrong, but that it is limited in ways many of its
proponent don't see. It fits very conveniently into a number of cultural
assumptions about management these days...perhaps too conveniently for its
own good. As a result, it is being used too often as a theoretical lens
without an understanding of its weaknesses, or awareness of the broader
convergence that could help to lend the necessary perspective.
THE BROADER CONVERGENCE
...is not these specific C4 industries, but the growing convergence
between mechanical and biological models and what it portends for the way
we organize and manage. Kevin Kelly, Meg Wheatley, Gareth Morgan, David
Hurst, et. al. have picked up on this. They are not alone, and will be
less alone as more and more theorists begin to grasp the true nature of
the change that confronts us.
This paradigm shift (a real paradigm shift, not just a fad labelled as
one) is behind many of the new theories of business, from 'self-directed
teams' and 'communities of practice' to 'co-opetition,' time-based
competition,' and 'learning organizations.' What you call C4 convergence
is just one of the factors accelerating that shift. Object-oriented
software will be another, especially when combined with network computing.
These phenomena feed dynamically off of one another to produce a business
environment that is both cause and effect. Globalization, for instance,
acts as both cause (by forcing more rapid innovations in response to its
demands) and effect (being enabled largely by the information technology
revolution that its needs have helped to create). Shades of Ourobouros! Or
an ecosystem. So it's hardly surprising that business theories are
increasingly being based on chaos/complexity models, rather than the
mechanistic model we were so used to.
Disintermediation as the "big idea" of our times is a classic example of
this collision in action. If you engineer a new machine so that
newly-created parts perform old functions, throwing away the parts they
replace is only common sense. The logic of biology and other complex
systems, however, leads observers to look at niches instead of parts. Some
niches are expanding and growing, others contracting. New relationships
create new niches, and sometimes even new possibilities for occupiers of
existing niches. Unlike the logic of machines, the first law of ecology
reminds us that you cannot do just one thing. For every action, there are
multiple and variable reactions.
A mind prepared to appreciate the logic of niches, feedback, and
unintended consequences will be alert to these consequences when they
appear, and better prepared to take advantage of them. If present trends
are any guide, however, there are far more "Company As" around than
"Company Bs." The transition will not be an easy one.
THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY
We are caught betwixt and between. If our society and our businesses seem
to display many of the characteristics of adolescents these days, perhaps
it's because they face a very similar situation: caught between two ways
of thinking and being, with past sources of security falling away and a
future as yet only dimply grasped. For the effects of this grand
convergence are still only seen "through a glass, darkly," even by think
tanks and high-powered consulting organizations.
This is not a fault, but a natural corollary when dealing with a complex
environment that displays sensitive dependence on initial conditions ("the
butterfly effect"). Trying to predict the future of business in even three
years is somewhat like trying to predict the weather in three months:
generalities may have some value, but specifics are a chancy proposition
at best.
No wonder the nature of planning has changed accordingly in many
organizations. Instead of managing for anticipated change, we manage for
changeability and alternative futures. Peter Schwartz's "Art of the Long
View" offers scenario-building as one valuable set of tools for coping in
this environment. So does Gemini's related "vision engineering" approach.
Building on the work of others is also a good approach. In your field, the
best single source I have read thus far is David Ronfeldt's RAND
Corporation work on Cyberocracy. For general predictions of where
convergence and computing in particular might be taking us, I recommend it
very highly. Some of its conclusions are less than pleasant, but then
again so are some of our possible futures.
Facing those futures and working to influence their development remains
our job. Even in a complex world of hyperfirms and electronic ecosystems,
we retain our ability to think, to choose, and to imagine. Those choices
and imaginings will create the future in which we must live. We owe it to
our organizations and to our clients, to ourselves and to our children, to
recognize the new world we are creating and what its implications might
be. Only then can we use our choices and imaginations effectively, to
create a better tomorrow.
I would certainly welcome any thoughts or comments you have regarding any
of the thoughts and ideas above. All the best to you in your work out on
'the edge of chaos.'
Until next,
----------------------------------------------------
Joe Katzman, MBA kat@pathcom.com
Communications And Technology (C.A.T.) Consulting
Business Consulting, Internet Training, & Web Design
"The more you know, the more you can imagine."
http://www.pathcom.com/~kat/
----------------------------------------------------
RELATED WEB RESOURCES
* Cyberocracy (RAND Corporation study)
http://gopher.well.sf.ca.us:70/0/whole_systems/cyberocracy
* Gemini Consulting's C4 Lab
http://www.gemconsult.com/c4lab.html
* Gemini Consulting: The Internet Revolution
http://www.gemconsult.com/internet/
* Groupware and DE-engineering
http://www.collaborate.com/tip0396.html
* David Hurst interview: Crisis & Renewal
http://users.aol.com/teltkgroup/Page16.html
* Kevin Kelly's book "Out of Control," full-text online version.
http://www.absolutvodka.com/5-0.html
* "The Middle Muddle": Oshry's perspective on the middle space.
http://home.interlynx.net/~dimpact/clarity/mid-mud.htm"
* Gareth Morgan Home Page
http://www.imaginiz.com/
* Object-Oriented software and business (from Sunworld Online)
http://www.sun.com/sunworldonline/swol-04-1996/swol-04-oobook.html
* Scenarios: Peter Schwartz's "Art of the Long View"
http://www.gbn.org/Main/ALV.html
* Scenarios: "Vision Statements that Make Sense" (Fortune magazine, Sept.
30/96)
http://pathfinder.com/@@vfDQugUASDtaMt3w/fortune/magazine/1996/960930/lea.html
* Scenarios: Lawrence Wilkinson on building them
http://www.hotwired.com/wired/scenarios/build.html
* Webmaster Managzine: Intranet Case Studies
http://www.cio.com/webmaster/feature_nov95.html
* Meg Wheatley Seminar: Leadership and the New Science
http://www.cape.org/Wheatley.html
--joe@embanet.com (Joe Katzman)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>