Technology & Leadership
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Participant
The dialogue (multilogue?) in this conference is relevant and interesting, but I find myself wondering if it wouldn't benefit from (a) a more global (or at least, a less "domestic-US") orientation; and (b) focusing more on the wider impacts and implications of "the informatization of society."

What I mean by (b) is that there are already a lot of top executives who have a rough idea how to "do e-mail," but who may not have given much thought to what the spread of knowledge, enormously enhanced by modern information technologies, is doing to the prospects for:

> more fairness for many more people;

> "flatter" and more participative organizations (the "twilight of hierarchy"

and all that);

> the erosion of "trade secrecy" as a basis for business strategy;

> the recognition that "intellectual property" is an oxymoron;

> the dwindling of geography (e.g., regionalism) as a viable principle of

organization--in business, and prospectively in politics too;

> and so forth.

Having just collected a good deal of thinking on all this--in a book that won't be published until next year--I would be glad to discuss these and other "impacts and implications of information technology." But are such wider ramifications as these "within the pale" of this conference? --Harlan.

Participant
Harlan, it's good to be with you again! I hope these wider ramifications are "within the pale" of this conference and look forward to hearing more about them.

What bothers me the most about leadership participation in networking is the extent to which the most elementary barriers are effective in keeping people out. Off and on for some twenty years now, I've been trying to introduce people to this sort of conferencing as a tool to efficient operations of almost any sort--and with a truly notable lack of success.

There is one situation in local government that makes a good illustration. The leader of the governing board laments the narrowness and shallowness of public interest and participation. I provided a conference site, like this one, and distributed instructions widely. That leader has yet to appear on the site, after two years--and she has a graduate degree in computer systems!

Clues are welcome!

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Reading the latest issue of "Fast Company" (a magazine whose breathless, arch "let us help you keep from feeling guilty about your incredible success" has been deflated some in the last year—one of the few good things to come from the dot-come collapse) I came upon the following (available online at http://www.fastcompany.com/online/47/futurist.html):

"We live in a society where nobody is completely in charge of anything. Leaders are managers of complexity, but in a high-tech age, if all information comes from the top, it's probably ineffective and too late.... Increased complexity requires that people from all levels of the organization have the freedom to think for themselves--not just obey orders. More than ever, executive leadership means that you have to consult the group and then point the way.

"If nobody is in charge, we have to update some fundamental thinking about leadership. Increasingly, the executive's task is to minimize and clearly define what everyone needs to agree on and to maximize individual choice and ingenuity. The best executives lead by constantly asking questions and then genuinely listening to the answers. In really lively organizations, executives not only delegate work but also control the incentive to imagine....

"A move toward more-decentralized networks is good news for individual creativity and productivity, but to maximize employee morale, executive leaders will have to enjoy complexity and constant change. For some, it will seem a burden. But for those who really have what it takes to be CEO, the momentum will carry its own excitement."

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Harlan's call for us to pay more attention to "the wider impacts and implications of 'the informatization of society'" (in 1:58) and Walter says (in 1:50) that "what's necessary is not only the right technologies but also the right kind of facilitation by people and organizations (such as WBSI) to make it easy for leaders to use the hardware in ways that are easy and productive for them," I think they're pointing at something significant: that thinking of technologies as JUST hardware and software misses what's really interesting about technologies. You have to pay attention to how they're used; what larger systems (technical, financial, organizational, political) they're part of; how users think about them (and how those uses might differ from what creators intended); and the language--the metaphors, exemplars, etc.--that structure attitudes towards them. In this scheme, you can think of just about

anything as a technology: an accounting method can be a technology (especially if it's encoded in a spreadsheet), as can an organization.

I think everyone here agrees that the traditional model of management, developed for the kinds of large enterprises (e.g. GM, GE, IBM) that dominated the American economy through the 1960s or 1970s, is either hurtling towards obsolescence or has already gone over the edge into irrelevance. As Thomas P. Hughes, the elder statesman of the history of technology would put it, we've moved from a world of modern systems (which emphasized hierarchy, control, and used mechanical metaphors) to a world of postmodern systems (which are decentralized, work through trade and influence, and can be described with organic metaphors). (This from his latest book, Rescuing Prometheus. The

first chapter is available online at: ttp://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hughes-prometheus.html. A good review can be found at

http://www. nytimes.com/books/98/09/20/reviews/v 980920.20gartent.html.)

This older model of management--this set of practices, this way that managers understood their tasks and themselves--was built and supported through a specific set of institutions, in particular the corporation. It was ALSO supported by a set of communications technologies, which served to regulate flows of information, define what was worth paying attention to and what wasn't, and

generally help determine who had power and what was considered important. The memorandum, the monthly report, the annual report, modern accounting practices, even the file cabinet and business meeting--all these date from the late 1800s and early 1900s. (It's amazing to think that meetings have a history--it's like discovering that pajamas were invented in Paris on January 9, 1541.) The memorandum was constructed to provide a formal structure for documents, to provide a uniform standard for cross-divisional communication, and to help managers sort out what was important to communicate from what wasn't (if you couldn't express it in a memo, it was unimportant).

Accounting practices offered a quantitative tool for understanding the health of an enterprise. Meetings were designed to communicate information from the top down, and to a lesser degree from the bottom up. Monthly reports were designed mainly for communicating upward. These tools were taught in business schools--whether evening schools or Harvard--and came to structure communication within large enterprises, for better or worse.

Now: What role is information technology (broadly defined) playing, and what role SHOULD it play, in supporting the evolving model of management, the kind that Richard, Harlan, and everyone else sees dominating the business world today? (The "should" is maybe where the substantive policy recommendations may come--as Larry reminded me a little while ago, there IS a destination here, no matter how engaging the journey!) Obviously technologies that are useful for collaboration are valuable, inasmuch as they provide a platform for working across long spaces, asynchronously, and in an environment whose (at least initial) egalitarianism can provide an "important advantage in management, community building, human relationships in general" (as Richard put it in 1:55). But what else does the well-equipped, forward-looking company need to keep an eye on? In particular, what are some of the less-visible but important technologies that can serve such an organization--i.e., what should replace the memo and monthly report? I have my own ideas, but I'm not going to play my whole hand yet.

Participant
What a lesson in contextualizing your last paragraphs have given us, Alex. It's so obvious when you point it out, and so embarrassing to think how often we have treated technology as somehow separable from its context.

If we were to establish some criteria, or basic orientation, for designing policies in this area, I would suggest we go beyond an Aristotelian, rational model to one that embraces the coexistence of opposites. For example, the introduction of participative approaches to management does not end hierarchy, it may even strengthen it. Another example, top leaders tend to deal less with problems and more with predicaments. So management, as one goes up the ladder, is less problem solving (in a rational sense) and more coping with paradoxical dilemmas. Indeed, it can be argued that leadership is largely the management of dilemma. IT, however, is based on fairly rational models, I would think. Perhaps fuzzy logic will be more useful to us as we tackle this area.

Conveying Wisdom vs. Exchanging Information

Participant
I hark back to a conviction that developed the longer I worked at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and later as a founder of The Fielding Institute: the more I learned about how the institution worked, the less I seemed to know. Of course my organizations were small, while this discussion seems to be mainly about large scale organizations with layers of personnel. At Fielding I was convinced that if the organization ever let the staff grow beyond 30 it would be impossible to continue to be what we were. (Since I retired, it has grown much larger and has 800 students instead of 460, and seems to be succeeding well.) What I was lacking was any sense that IT could make the central staff work, despite the fact that Fielding was an early invention of the on-line university; almost all our business with our students was conducted on line.

I still do not understand how wisdom can be truly exchanged without personal contact, although I know that information can be distributed very effectively without it.

I guess that obliges me to define wisdom: I only mean the combination of information with the depth of intellectual and emotional commitment that happens when people have complete personal exchanges.

Well, excuse the rambling. I'm reading your wise statements with intense interest.

Participant
Your sly joke at the end of your last comment demonstrates that you really don't need convincing. But how about the Committees of Correspondence, The Federalist Papers, the letters of Robert and Elisabeth Barrett Browning? Much is exchanged in personal, face-to-face conversation, but not much wisdom, I fear. Except for the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. That surely stands out as a place where wisdom was exchanged--every day, by design. Hallock, what do we have to learn from your experience in those magnificent dialogues there? Robert Hutchins' leadership? Group composition? Guest presenters? Ground rules? Martinis before lunch?

Participant
Thanks, Alex, for noticing that one-pager in FastCompany. I'm glad that you found it worth quoting. The interview on which it was based was long, but the resulting copy was so short it summed up only a fraction of what I tried to tell the interviewer. Nevertheless it seems to have twanged some chord that resonates: it has already produced a surprising number of e-mail messages in my "in-box," taxing my capacity to answer each comment personally which I think I ought to do. ---Harlan

Participant
re: your #64: I wonder whether your comment about "distance learning" doesn't draw too sharp a line between "face-to-face" and computerized "distance" contacts.

One of the big lessons I took away from Dick Farson's (WBSI's) 1980s experiment in computer teleconferencing was that "distance learning" is best combined with "face-to-face learning"--that they are not alternatives, that neither is an effective substitute for the other.

In a 1980s writing I tried to sum up what I was learning this way:

"With the dwindling of distance, 'distance learning' has now become a major business in many parts of the world. Like all new fashions, it has its limits; computer-assisted communication is not a substitute for face-to-face contact. But the converse is equally true. Once I get to know you pretty well, up close and personal, I really don't need to see your face every time we talk on the phone of exchange messages by e-mail. What's clear by now is that *combining* up-close and distance learning enhances the educational experience, beyond what is possible with either mode alone."

I have just put together a book of essays using some of my earlier writings, and I thought about whether the intervening years had changed the basis for the judgment in the quoted paragraph. I decided to go with the text as written. If there is a postmodern wisdom that should now be substituted for it, I'm all ears. ...Harlan.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
I share Richard's skepticism, expressed in 1:65, that wisdom "happens when people have complete personal exchanges." Books have proved a great way to connect people who otherwise would never be able to communicate, in a way that has at least sometimes encouraged the emergence of wisdom. Classical Chinese scholars saw themselves as engaged in a dialogue with--even competing with--writers from previous centuries (or so I'm told; I don't know enough about Chinese scholarly practices to really know for myself. I'm probably a rich mine of glittering misinformation.)

Likewise, Machiavelli wrote eloquently about this imaginary exchange: "When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them."

And of course, the scene of ancient saints--Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine--and ordinary people having visitations or visions while reading is a stock part of Christian iconography. (It reaches its apex with the Annunciation: just try to find a representation of it in which Mary ISN'T reading, even though the Bible says nothing about what she's doing when Gabriel appears.)

Of course, the wisdom that comes from such reflection, and from the kinds of imaginary conversation that Machiavelli describes, may be somewhat different than what Participant had in mind. Still, I find it worth recalling that a medium that we often dismiss as passive, linear, and other Bad Things could be so powerful a tool--an augmenting technology, as Doug Engelbart would put it--for the making of at least this kind of wisdom.

Participant
Leaders at the CEO level are exceptionally busy people. I have read studies indicating that they change tasks every 11 minutes, that they spend upwards of 90% (I think it was 99%) of their time in some form of conversation, in meetings, interviews, in the hallway, on the telephone, dictating, etc. Clearly they are dependent in their workday on getting whatever wisdom they might get from conversation. It remains a challenge as to how we might enhance the acquisition of wisdom through information technology. Obviously, one way is to improve access to the words of others. Or better access to the wisdom that they already have, but don't know they have. Or can their previous exercise of wisdom be banked, and then consulted, or automatically interjected? Curiously, as busy as they are, jumping from one task to another, if they are asked how many really important decisions they need to make every year, they will say "only two or three".

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
I haven't heard of an attempt to construct such a commodities market for individuals; I think there's enough challenge in developing them for industries at this point! But such a market *would* do for individuals what they do for industries: being into sharper relief the currently-hidden costs of our choices.

Indeed, the parallel that Richard draws between these kinds of systems and what I was talking about with IT and organizations is the following. These markets represent efforts to replace top-down, and often inflexible, managerial regimes with a system in which Participants are given information and allowed to work out their own policies: the rules and aims are defined, but that's about all.

One of the other attractions of such a system is that--in broad principle, anyway--it allows for local addressing of large problems, as it leaves it to Participants to choose their own courses of action.

Participant
From Dick: >> There is a connection between Alex's tentative suggestion that perhaps IT can somehow capture, reflect, quantify, regulate, automate, underscore, support or enhance the emerging organizational or group wisdom about many dimensions of life that we ordinarily assign to leadership . . . <<

Let's keep in mind the point that Harland mentions frequently: The trend toward distributed leadership, or the "leaderless organization". I think this is the connection Dick is looking for (in his last sentence).

>> Do we really want to be governed by we, the people?

People individually are mostly stupid about most things, and my answer would be "NO!". But "people" collectively seem to have an extraordinary wisdom, and even anticipating much frustration, my answer would be "Yes". (Note absence of exclamation point.)

This would, of course, be dependent upon some mechanism (better than now in vogue) to express that collective wisdom. This may, I think, be what Don is talking about.

Participant
Ray: Yes, that is what I have been talking about only you expressed it better. I think (cautiously without exclamation points!) that matching the "soft" skills of facilitated discussion to the hardware of the next generation of this medium may be one of the most important innovations that lie ahead. WBSI led the development of e-mail education. Wouldn't it be exciting if it played the same role for the development of "collective wisdom"?

Participant
"Collective Wisdom", or the process of group synergy, can be demonstrated with ease in laboratory settings. Pooled thinking can and does generate wise, high quality, output from group deliberations. Yet, it is, in some ways, a fragile process which can be obliterated by poor leadership, domination and the errors of "groupthink". Online collective wisdom demands honest, open and in-depth exploration of the issue at hand. The dangers of slipping into concurrence-seeking behavior lurk behind the good intentions of many a group discussion. What we need is a monitoring process (WBSI-provided?) which can intervene into the ongoing dialogue and point out the symptoms and pitfalls of "groupthink" and, as Don says, provide the soft facilitation that can lead to synergistic output.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Is it necessary to have facilitated discussion to generate and preserve that collective wisdom? One of the most interesting things that's happened on the

Web has been the proliferation of rating and review systems, and their evolution from tools for recommending goods (i.e., Amazon's "if you bought that, you'll like this"), to tools for assessing the value of contributions by community members. Slashdot, for example, has a system in which members rate one another's contributions; the highest-rated contributors then are given additional privileges--as, essentially, group leaders or moderators. It's a system that's evolved over the last couple years, and it serves a couple purposes: it rewards those who do interesting things in the Slashdot space; it serves as a filter for readers (who can say, "Show me only comments that have a 5 rating"); and it creates a kind of moral economy for the community.

Steven Johnson (founding editor of the now-defunct Web magazine Feed) argues that this system and others like it, show promise of saving the notion of virtual communities from the dangers of scale and commercialization. The old WELL had a relatively small number of people, little commercial interruption, and plenty of home-grown leaders; as great as it was, however, the model didn't scale well. Spam and conspiracy theorists easily overwhelm public discussion groups (indeed, Usenet apparently has gone into serious decline in the last couple years, as people retreat into members-only discussions), and it's easy to imagine how online political deliberations or corporate policymaking could fall prey to disruptors without such review and filtering mechanisms. What this suggests to me is that it may one day be possible to create systems that do what Don and Ray want, but which don't need formal leader (though doubtless informal leaders will still remain). It puts a whole new spin on the notion of "having faith in the system."

Of course, these systems don't always work very well right now (see the recent Slate article on Amazon's <a href="http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-06-19_110588.asp">new rating system</a>), and the rules they operate under can be tweaked to reward different sorts of contributions: Slashdot's rewards popular voices more readily than interesting dissenters, for example, but that's not fixed in stone. And they need to be transparent to be trusted: Amazon and Yahoo, to name but two sites that provide automated recommendations, have been caught trying to weight the systems to favor certain parties--specifically those parties that paid extra money for extra visibility in these systems. (Both later reinstated their old weighting mechanisms.)

On an entirely different note, I must--with considerable regret--announce that I am stepping down as moderator this conference. I will continue to check in, and add what comments I can; but Richard will be soliciting a volunteer leader, or if you're all lucky, will step in himself.

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