Two interesting posts sent around this week.
- The basic “kernel” of work is changing. Companies coordinate workers on lots of small, variable tasks. “Uberization”. The piece. A quote:
What if the kernel of on-demand work is not short-term associations and spot market exchanges, but in allowing us to create a new understanding of work: contextual interaction based on collaborative creativity and human capital? The relations between workers become the central, and in many ways, defining feature of the firm.
A firm, then, is not a bundle of assets belonging to owners, but a bundle of dynamic commitments between people. The organization becomes a process of ongoing organizing.
- Big huge valuable companies are being built this way. Quote from the piece:
Today’s fastest growing, most profoundly impactful companies are using a completely different operating model. These companies are lean, mean, learning machines. They have an intense bias to action and a tolerance for risk, expressed through frequent experimentation and relentless product iteration. They hack together products and services, test them, and improve them, while their legacy competition edits PowerPoint. They are obsessed with company culture and top tier talent, with an emphasis on employees that can imagine, build, and test their own ideas. They are maniacally focused on customers. They are hypersensitive to friction – in their daily operations and their user experience. They are open, connected, and build with and for their community of users and co-conspirators. They are comfortable with the unknown – business models and customer value are revealed over time. They are driven by a purpose greater than profit; each has its own aspirational “dent in the universe.” We may simply refer to them as the first generation of truly responsive organizations. (Link.)
3. At Knotable we use CARDS as the basic unit for our work. A card is a thing to do, a task. And if you assemble them together and recruit int he right way, you can Ship While You Sleep.