The Power of Pull- Introduction

This is a cross-post from my blog on the Military Social Networking system milBook.

My previous post on The Power of Pull dealt mainly with the conditions around the concept of Pull in an overview of a specific report on the material. What follows is based on the Introduction in the book The Power of Pull by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davidson (Copyright 2010 by Deloitte Development LLC, published by Basic Books). 

The authors have created a map (Pull Framework) showing the three levels of pull (access, attract, and achieve); the three domains in which they apply (individual, institutional, and societal); and the three elements of the journey that follow toward pull (trajectory, leverage, and pace):

This diagram is located in a document on John's website that provides an excellent overview of the material. (John Seely Brownʼs Stanford Entrepreneur's Corner Talk of April 14 2010 and Thoughts on The Power of Pull by John Hagel, JSB and Lang Davison- © 2010 Cook Network Consultants)

This post will cover briefly the nine concepts in the Pull Framework.

The First Level of Pull: Access-The first level of pull is all about being able to flexibly find and get to people and resources as we need them. Another aspect of Access is the idea that knowledge flows, not knowledge stocks, are necessary to get better faster than the competition. This change from valuing knowledge flows over knowledge stocks is presenting severe challenges to our existing institutions (such as the education system) which were designed to protect valuable stocks of knowledge. Technology-enabled pull platforms (especially search engines) allow everyone to access these knowledge flows to enhance their understanding of any subject area wherever and whenever desired.

The Second Level of Pull: Attract- The central tenet of this level of pull is Serendipity. Success in finding new information and sources of inspiration depends on serendipity- the chance encounter with someone or something we didn't even know existed that proves to be incredibly relevant and helpful once we find it. The authors maintain that these serendipitous events are not totally chance, and that they can be shaped in various ways such as living in a certain area with a concentration of  particular people (spikes) or by being in online communities, such as those on Social Media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and many others. By being on the "edges" of our usual group of people we know and interact with, we can have these serendipitous encounters that add value to all parties concerned.

The Third Level of Pull: Achieve- While individuals can use access to find what they need and attraction to draw new people, ideas, and information to themselves (institutions can aid all of this) there is more to pull that just these ideas. In order to leverage pull to drive high performance, continuous improvement, and achievement "creation spaces" must be formed. These creation spaces involve large numbers of people across institutions that become ecosystems focused on testing and refining the practices required to master this level of pull. Knowledge flows are enabled and encouraged in creation spaces, as passionate individuals work in concert to enhance the achievement of all in the space.

Individual: Make Your Passion Your Profession- As change becomes more rapid (and stressful) it is important for individuals to be passionate about their profession. Passion in this context refers to a sustained, deep commitment to realizing our potential and increasing self-expression in a domain that engages us at a personal level. Being passionate allows us to handle change better and can also lead us to master all three levels of pull.

Institutional: Harness Your Ecosystems- Pursuing your passion naturally draws us toward situations and places where other passionate people are located. It will also lend itself to creating online social networks in order to increase serendipity. This enhances the edge of our social networks that allows us to generate the leverage that amplifies our own impact and the impact of others.

Societal/ Arena: Maximize Return on Attention- As the people and resources we can access through spikes and social networks proliferate, we need to adopt tools and services that can improve our return on attention- the value we get for the time and effort we invest in focusing on someone or something. Search tools can help increase the return on attention, but serendipity is actually more effective. These tools also work in both directions (like the reciprocity concept that is so important to pull) in that they help us maximize our return on attention and also bring us to the attention of others that can help us increase the value of our creations we generate.

Defining a Trajectory for Change- Institutions designed for push cannot easily accommodate pull. Instead of focusing on attracting and retaining talent, institutions must focus on accessing and developing talent. This may seem like a small change, but it re-frames the issue that changes the direction of the organization and creates a new trajectory. This new trajectory aligns the institution with the increased power that pull provides individuals, both as employees and customers. Unleashing the creative potential of individuals will become the basis of corporate profits, so it is incumbent on all organizations to make talent development their first priority.

Creating Leverage- Institutional leaders will not be able to successfully transform their organizations to this new environment with the help of passionate individuals both inside and outside the institution. It is important to connect these motivated individuals with the resources and encouragement in order to foster an environment where pull can happen. This will sometimes take the form of "reverse mentoring" where the leaders actually learn from more junior members of the organization, sometimes known as champions. The transformation that occurs is a result of these champions being able to overcome obstacles to change. 

Accelerating Pace- Passionate people supported by a committed institutional leader can have a lot of success, until the entrenched forces of push begin to resist the transformation. The technology platforms of pull, primarily collaboration or Social Media tools can create a pace of change that is harder to resist. Also, these platforms enable the connections with other passionate people outside the institution that can enhance pull. There are also other forms of accelerating pace that deal more with the people involved in the process, such as encouraging and rewarding individuals that display the desired characteristics of transformation and pull.   

The cumulative effect of these 9 concepts of the Pull Framework could transform the larger community in many fundamental ways. In some respects it seems like it is just too much to expect that big of a change to happen given some of the circumstances in the world today, but it also bears pointing out that a lot of the changes mentioned in the framework are already underway. The Big Shift seems to be happening. The text gives much better examples of this and points out how pull could change the world- in a positive way.

On a totally unrelated topic, there is an online community for Federal Wave (FedWave) located here. You must apply for membership first at APAN.org. I will approve all reasonable requests for group access.Thanks to those of you who have already joined. FedWave and Apache Wave may be another transformational technology that could enable knowledge flows and creation spaces.

The opinions expressed above are strictly mine. Thanks for reading, and please comment in the space below if you are so moved.

The Power of Pull

This is a cross-post from my blog on the Military Social Networking system milBook.

I had heard of the book The Power of Pull back in October at the Army Operational KM Conference. Prior to that, there was a post on milBook about a video of a lecture by one of the book's authors John Seely Brown. I finally got around to watching the video earlier this week and was very impressed by the concept and Brown's presentation.

I will base much of this post on a document on John's website that provides an excellent overview of the material. (John Seely Brownʼs Stanford Entrepreneur's Corner Talk of April 14 2010 and Thoughts on The Power of Pull by John Hagel, JSB and Lang Davison- © 2010 Cook Network Consultants)

Even with all these great online resources, I plan to purchase the book in order to learn more on the topic.

Here is a collection of the high points from the Cook Report:

The world is broken. Business doesn’t work anymore. Across the S&P 500, return on assets is headed toward zero. Wall Street goes on an unregulated tear and tanks the economy. Washington steps in and bails everyone out pushing the deficit to unthinkable heights. A monetarily fueled recovery is knocking at the edge but once more it will be jobless. These events render pretty well impossible any future resurrection of the mass production, centralized, top down, economy-of-scale version of the petroleum fueled, assembly line based, push economy that powered the world up to the point of the popping of the internet and housing bubbles. Everyone would like to understand:‘why did all these things break?” The Power of Pull explains the seeming inexplicable.

The book’s thesis is that a ‘big shift’ from push based, mass production, top down, economy of scale kinds of organizations is taking place. The digital micro-processor, internet based economy that has matured over the past 30 years has insinuated itself into the old style companies and enabled them to make changes that squeeze more efficiency out of the old models but that is in pursuit of a diminishing returns strategy as The Power of Pull explains. It shows how the productivity enhancements of our new digital infrastructure enable what he calls creative edge that can pull the no longer productive aspects of the core to innovative projects at the edge. Edge based skunk-works transform the core in this new world.

The Shift Index consists of three indices that quantify the three waves of the Big Shift - Foundation Index, Flow Index and Impact Index - each measured by a set of indicators:

The authors presume a very fluid economy rather than static one. If new knowledge gained through productive friction is the new fuel the new raw material and therefore the new currency then, in tracking it, you have a lot more to consider than you would if you were only tracking bags of cement from the quarries to the warehouse to the construction site. Knowledge “flows.” Amplifiers of these flows are found in indices of worker passion and social media activity.

Problem solving and strategy building is a central foundation for all business. With the very complex changes brought about by the Internet and the continuing exponential advance of computing (often involving new architectures) that the authors describe throughout their entire book, the old top-down ways, “push” based ways of doing this, are no longer very productive.

The authors say that the on going practice of business depends both on accessing resources and attracting new people and their passions. Doing this is of little value unless coupled with a third set of actions "that focus on driving performance rapidly to new levels. These practices involve participation in, and sometimes orchestration of, something we call “creation spaces” -- environments that effectively integrate teams within a broader learning ecology so that performance improvement accelerates as more participants join." [p.18]

To quote the authors: “we need to marry our passions with our professions in order to reach our potential... Passion in this context refers to a sustained deep commitment to achieving our full potential and greater capacity for self-expression in a domain that engages us on a personal level. As we make our passions of our professions, we may find our dispositions shifting ... Rather than dealing change as a threat and something to be feared we will find ourselves embracing change, recognizing its potential to drive us to even higher levels of performance.” [p. 21-22]

The new world that is emerging is one made almost inevitable by the technology but it is also a world where information is used very differently than in the pre-internet world. It is shared but the sharing is done with reciprocity. If the recipient doesn't get something in return eventually the sharing ceases.

The scalable efficiency of the 20th century (pre-digital) corporation is fundamentally at odds with the way that knowledge flows in an internet connected world. It creates a world where rewards, on the one hand, are gained by capturing, hoarding and controlling stocks of knowledge. This conflicts with the digitally enabled ability to use the new Internet based tools to capture, duplicate, distribute and create new information. In the 20th century economy rewards are based on hoarding and hierarchy rather than on problem solving. The closed proprietary model needed to protect the old style corporation helps to ensure that benefits of new tools and technologies are tied up in keeping people bound to old closed proprietary systems where lawyers are used to protect fortresses and kingdoms and to bar the creation of new wealth, this return on assets goes down because emphasis on billing systems and maximum extraction from “customers” goes up.

The digital internet creates alternative models and delivery mechanisms that permit disintermediation of corporations that spend money fighting change. The economy of scale in a pre-digital age becomes diseconomy of scale leading to the declining return on assets noted above.

All of this has a tremendous implications to the theory and practice of Knowledge Management. With knowledge flows being a key ingredient in a pull economy, the people that can put efficient processes in place to leverage the technology to outperform other organizations are the ones that are going to be successful. Another key part of KM that the concept of Pull affects is the idea of KM practitioners are going to be important agents of change. The transition from Push to Pull and the attendant Big Shift are going to require the ability to effectively manage change, and that is going to fall to the KM personnel in many cases. 

While most of the examples given throughout the Power of Pull material center around the Corporate world, these concepts are just as applicable to the Government and the Military. Fostering the "creation spaces" mentioned above is important for all types of organizations. Collections of passionate, talented individuals are going to form into the teams that will ensure organizational success.

This is just a general, brief overview of a very important concept. I anticipate posting more on this topic as I continue to study it. Once again, the Cook report cited above is an excellent source for more information.

On a totally unrelated topic, there is an online community for Federal Wave (FedWave) located here. You must apply for membership first at APAN.org. I will approve all reasonable requests for group access.Thanks to those of you who have already joined. FedWave and Apache Wave may be another transformational technology that could enable the Big Shift.

This has been a good year for me blog-wise as this is my 33rd post- a personal best. I know this isn't one of the most popular blogs on the Internet, and I do appreciate everyone that takes the time to read my online musings.

I wish you a wonderful 2011.

Mark