OCTOBER 2010

Adapting to change can be uncomfortable, however change is inevitable. For organisations, survival may depend greatly on adapting to the increasingly chaotic conditions predicted in the Gartner article on work referred to in this issue. Other articles in Agility Update October focus on the use of crowd sourcing to solve problems and the European research on the economic benefits of high-speed rail links. In contrast to change, the last article looks at a constant – political power and its effect on getting you to the top. Do you have political power? Try the link to the quiz at the end of the article.

Crowd Sourcing: One Click Problem Solution
NAB, Westpac, Telstra, Intel, Microsoft and the Royal Flying Doctor Service have all used crowd-sourcing i.e. tapped into the collective intelligence of the crowd to solve problems. Almost anything can be “crowd-sourced” from solutions to complex engineering problems, product development and marketing to T-shirt design and mundane jobs like proof-reading. The crowds tapped can be internal, external or both. Accountancy and consultancy firm Deloitte, for example, uses a Twitter-like off-the-shelf internal social network, Yammer to bring together like-minded people to form groups. Or, you can use US-based, sophisticated crowd sourcing sites, such as InnoCentive, NineSigma and YourEncore that help companies develop a concise technical request, which is then sent out to their networks of "solvers"; researchers, retirees and entrepreneurs with relevant expertise. Closer to home, Australia’s household-name companies access Ideas Cultureto tap into a global network of 400 brainstormers who deliver creative ideas overnight. Another local site is Melbourne-based InnovationXChange (IXC) which runs a network of facilitators matching companies and expertise. Read more at: http://knowledge.asb.unsw.edu.au/article.cfm?articleId=1202

Gartner Predicts New World of Work
Research company Gartner predicts that the nature of work will witness 10 key changes through 2020, forcing organisations to adapt to increasingly chaotic environments. “Work will become less routine, characterised by increased volatility, hyperconnectedness, 'swarming' and more,” said Tom Austin, vice president and Gartner fellow. By 2015, 40% or more of an organisation’s work will be ‘non-routine’ e.g. innovation, leading and selling, up from 25% in 2010. “People will swarm more often and work solo less. They’ll work with others with whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the control of the organisation,” he added. “In addition, simulation, visualisation and unification technologies, working across yottabytes of data per second, will demand an emphasis on new perceptual skills.” In this new world of work, many employees will have neither a company-provided physical office nor a desk, and their work will increasingly happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In this work environment, the lines between personal, professional, social and family matters, along with company and business matters will disappear. Read more at: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1416513

High-Speed Rail does deliver Economic Growth
Research from the London School of Economics and the University of Hamburg has revealed that high-speed rail does deliver economic growth. In the first thorough statistical study of the subject, economists discovered that towns connected to a new high-speed line saw their GDP rise by at least 2.7% over a four-year period compared to neighbours not on the route. Their study also found that increased market access through high-speed rail has a direct correlation with a rise in GDP - for each 1% increase in market access, there is a 0.25% rise in GDP. With the idea of a fast rail link for Australia's eastern coast back on the table, companies may want to keep a close eye on opportunities and challenges that high-speed rail will pose. Read more about the LSE study at: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2010/09/highspeedrail.aspx A pdf of Infrastructure Partnership’s Australia report “East Coast High Capacity Infrastructure Corridors” is available for download here: http://www.infrastructure.org.au/Content/veryfasttrains.aspx

Power: Do You Have It?
Through three decades of teaching and writing about power, Jeffrey Pfeffer has emphasised a pithy but potent concept: Politics often trumps performance in getting to the top. But why should you want power? Power can improve your health and increase your wealth, and it’s necessary to get things done. Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer's new book Power: Why Some People Have It - and Others Don’t describes surviving and succeeding in organisations, and explains how to be more successful, to maintain power, and to understand the games that go on within organisations. Once motivated to pursue power, you must overcome the obstacles to getting it, he advised. Atop the list is the belief that good work is the key to success. Competence is overrated, Pfeffer says, as the titans of the financial industry have shown in recent years. Another obstacle is relying on the ubiquitous leadership literature written by people who tout their own careers as models but “gloss over the power plays they actually used to get to the top.” Finally, people handicap themselves by choosing not to risk failure, but the only way to master the power game is to practice. Read more at: http://gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm1008/feature-pfeffer.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=october 
And test your Political Power / Skill at: http://www.jeffreypfeffer.com/blog/