COMT 4/516-001:

Communication and Leadership Seminar

The Changing Environment

Toffler

Multiple bottom lines

• Economic = more for

fewer (greed) • Social = or is it

antisocial?•

Environmental/degradation•

Informational/technological• Political/the “new Rome”• Ethical = “we win”

Kuhn: what is dirty work?

• Physically dirty

• Unethically dirty

What is multiplexity?

How will people keep up with this kind of complexity?

Come gather 'round peopleWherever you roamAnd admit that the watersAround you have grownAnd accept it that soonYou'll be drenched to the bone.If your time to youIs worth savin'Then you better start swimmin'Or you'll sink like a stoneFor the times they are a-changin'.

The times . . . they are a-changin’.

Bergquist: Machine or fire? Understand these metaphors for organization

The characteristic of second order change = irreversible

pollutes

Bennis and Nanus: upcoming issue =

Keeping up with the speed of technological change

Empirical research is slow and inefficient. We need on-the-fly talk among adequate participants. K. Gergen

Organizations are poised at the edge of order and chaos . . . At the point of transition between order and chaos.

What is a liquid organization?

complex quadratic polynomial

Organizations are also poised at the edge of the postmodern . . .

A world where we decide what is important . . .

every day . . .

We exist in a four dimensional vortex of spacetime.

If rapid change is what always happens, what are the implications for organizing?

• don’t sit down; • loose structures; • improvisation; • frenzy; • scanning; • insecurity; • working assumptions dependency;

• liminal spaces; • post-heroic; • the american dream; • the messiah; • wilderness thinking;• social construction;• post-human;• narratives;• relativism . . . and on and on . . .

Scott Millward, et al. (NCA Boston, 2005) shared situation awareness (SSA) is a process involving a person's perception of events, comprehension of their meaning, projection of their status into the future, and predictions about the effects of certain behaviors.

Is the engine that drives your creativity in need of repair?

SSA

Hamlett proposes a redevelopment of current LMX relationship models from a turning point perspective.

Turning points are events that are associated with changes in a relationship.

• turning points are conceptualized as communication events.

• the process of relationship development can be conceived as a series of turning points.

• turning points account for both positive and negative changes throughout the life of a relationship.

Time as local and momentary

Standard time zones were adopted in the US in 1883 but not officially established until 1918. In the act was the initial provision for daylight savings time.

The daylight savings time part was repealed in 1919.

Daylight savings time was re-introduced via WW2.

After the war, day light savings time became a local issue.

The Uniform Time Act of 1966 provided standardization in the dates of beginning and end of daylight time in the U.S. but allowed for local exemptions from its observance.

During the "energy crisis" years, Congress enacted earlier starting dates for daylight time. In 1974, daylight time began on 6 January and in 1975 it began on 23 February.

After those two years the starting date reverted back to the last Sunday in April.

In 1986, a law was passed that shifted the starting date of daylight time to the first Sunday in April, beginning in 1987. The ending date of daylight time was not subject to such changes, and remained the last Sunday in October.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed both the starting and ending dates. Beginning in 2007, daylight time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.

Bean, C. J. (2002) sensemaking in organizational change: nomadic work and new organizational forms. Organizational Communication Preconference, New Orleans

Traditional officing: If workers continue to rely on familiar patterns in choosing their activities, the desired fluidity of organizational form may not be achieved.

Respond . . .

Nomadic workers: expected to work any time/place with portable information technology and communication devices connecting them to resources required to conduct tasks. Nomadic workers understand work as a frame of mind, rather than as a place or activity.

Knowledge workers can locate themselves anywhere at work, at home, at a client or vendor site, or even in a coffee shop, to conduct work. Furthermore, they may choose any hour of the day or night to work.

Old frameworks do not speak to our current students. K. Gergen

Library catalogue

What are shapeshifters?

ultimately flexible workers.

Bean: nomadic work and new organizational forms

work is a placework is a state of mind

time clockI structure my time

work hoursflexible hours

paperpaperless

fixed phonemobile

officeopen solutions

mineours

leaders in officeleaders visible

traditionaltraditionalshape shiftingshape shifting

What is hot-desking?

Technology can function 24/7/365.

Humans cannot.

Table 1.1, p. 7 (Bennis & Nanus)

•lots of leaders, few managers

•Lead by vision (created in the vortex of spacetime)

•distinctive competencies (to understand multiplexity)

•Creative in order to reimagine reality

•design flatter organizations for speed

Table 1.1 continued

•Facilitate teamwork (on-the-fly)

•Leaders and followers as coaches, creating learning organizations

•change agency = where is agency located?

•develop and serve new leaders who will participate in our own obsolescence.

What is the relationship between human agents and non-human agents and how do we move beyond views of "humanness" as central to questions of ethics?

What does a speed bump do?The speed bump “acts” to slow the driver down. The speed bump makes a difference.

The human is transitory and processual.

The non-human lasts, remains, endures. We can use this aspect of the non-human to encourage stability in a chaotic world.

The here-and-now is always already contaminated by the there-and-then.

If the non-human can dislocate human agency, then we need to look at hybridicity.

We tend to attribute agency to objects when things fail.

Carl:

• A macro-actor speaks for others.

• Organizational text (mobilized object) can be a macro-actor

• Who gets to compose these texts?

The translator is a traitor.

This means that texts and objects may be interpreted differently.

Contexts/objects come to both constrain and create space-time "slips" (dislocations) that bring in past times and places.

These slips allow for "movement," "moments," and "effluviums" of past conversations/interactions to impact the moment (i.e., they become a resource and/or a hindrance).

This aesthetic perspective attempts to more fully acknowledge the past interactions of participants to the organizing scene, but doing so requires space-time and energy.

Tapscott and Caston: keys in the new organizational environment

•Increase productivity of knowledge and service workers. Problems with constant improvement?

•Improve quality of product & service

•Be more responsive to change

•globalization

Seven keys, continued

•Outsourcing

•Partnering

•Social and environmental responsibility

The Open Networked Organization, p.33

• structure is not hierarchical, but connected

• the system is not closed, but open

• resources are human and informational

• not stability, but chaos

• direction thru commitment, not reward and punishment

• not managed, but self directed

• not controlled, but empowered to act

• motivate thru achieving team goals, not please bosses

The Open Networked Organization, p.33 continued

• employees learn broad competencies, more than specialties

• compensated by what is accomplished, rather than position in the hierarchy

• be cooperative instead of competitive

• identify with organizational purpose, rather than detachment

• not management, rather leadership

Bleeker: why we are moving towards the virtual organization.

•Pace of change is rapid

•It costs less

•Customers want personalized service and products

•Globalization

How can we be physically absent and virtually present?

How can we be physically present and virtually absent?