The Don Tapscott Interview – Part II

The workplace is slowly changing. A multi-generational workforce needs different skill sets to manage. Author, thinker, guru and NetGen evangelist Don Tapscott continues our conversation. (If you want to read Part 1 of the interview, please click here). His research suggests that we are dealing with a smarter but “different” generation today and that requires decison makers to re-look at the way we have run organizations. After all, “IQ scores are up. SAT scores show an increase. There are more people graduating from college today than ever before. So they work hard and they are smart. They just work differently. This gen works in spurts. Taking a social media break is the equivalent of taking a smoke-break or a coffee break for the other generations. For this generation, working, learning, collaborating and entertainment are not separate activities. Working and learning is the same. There’s no reason why work should not be equally enjoyable.” You can read the NY Times review of Don’s book Grown Up Digital here

He identifies eight norms of many members of the Net Generation: they prize freedom; they want to customize things; they enjoy collaboration; they scrutinize everything; they insist on integrity in institutions and corporations; they want to have fun even at school or work; they believe that speed in technology and all else is normal; and they regard constant innovation as a fact of life.

Some interesting stats that come from Pew Research Center only confirm what Don has been saying now for many years. This generation is DIFFERENT in a very fundamental way. How will the workplace view them when they come in as employees complete with their iPods plugged in and desire to achieve work-life balance. Won’t they be viewed as irresponsible or just plain lazy in an economy that is still grappling with the after-shocks of recession?

Abhijit: “This is not just a life stage difference, this is a generational difference because cognition and information process different because of way they have grown up” – what are the implications of this for Executive Education?

Don Tapscott: Work and learning are becoming the same activity in a knowledge economy. Rather than sending executives off to a learning institution, it makes more sense to increase the learning component of their work. In the company I work for, nGenera Insight, our education program is quite simple: Everyone must blog. By blogging, they need to think about what’s going on the world. They need to become knowledgeable and develop their craft of writing. They need to put forward their thoughts and defend them. This is Executive Education fully integrated into work.

Abhijit: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally are the four pillars of the collaborating economy, according to you. What are lessons here for Managers on how they will need to change?

Don Tapscott: We need to rebuild all our institutions around the principles. But most companies don’t understand what they should be doing. Today there is a generational firewall in the organizations. Leaders must understand that the internet is not about having a page on Facebook or using Twitter. It is actually the new mode of production. It is part of the new operating system of businesses. The Net is to be used to create products and services and collaborate in the workplace. It is about learning to collaborate with stakeholders even outside the corporation.

The young people are coming into the workforce and are bringing with them all the new culture of innovation, collaboration, speed, freedom and customization. This is a very exciting time to adopt new tools. Yet companies do just the opposite. They put the NetGen in a cubicle and ban their tools. This is self-defeating. Organizations need to use wikis, blogs, collaboration tools and document management tools to create a new workplace that can leverage the strengths of the new generation.

Don Tapscott in conversation with Allen Greg

Abhijit: What is the new model of the leader and are there examples we can see of the new Leadership version 2.0?

Don Tapscott: The leader at the top as a great visionary is becoming outdated. The person at the top cannot learn for the whole organization. Learning is everyone’s personal opportunity. Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy says his job is not to make decisions. He says, his role is to actually unleash the power of the human capital. The believes the most important people are the young people in the store. He created an internal social networking site called Blueshirtnation.com (Read more about it here) Best Buy employee site is a model for big firms. They are creating an electronic watercooler that is an integral part of the business. In the new world, the leader is not the centre of attention. It is everyone – every employee.

Brad Anderson, CEO Best Buy

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Read the brilliant 8 part series about the Net Generation by Don Tapscott in Businessweek

Part 1: Net Geners Come of Age

Part 2: How Digital Technology Has Changed the Brain

Part 3: Net Gen Transforms Marketing

Part 4: How to Hire the Net Generation

Part 5: How to Teach and Manage ‘Generation Net’

Part 6: Supervising Net Gen

Part 7: Focus On the Net Gen Family

Part 8: The Net Generation Takes the Lead

The Don Tapscott Interview – Part I

The Washington Technology Report called him one of the most influential media authorities since Marshall McLuhan. Don Tapscott is the author of thirteen widely read books about information technology in business and society, most recently Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World (October 2008). The book is the sequel to Growing Up Digital (1998), which established him as one of the leading thinkers about the Net Generation. Immediately prior to this, Don wrote, with co-author Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (2006). Wikinomics was an international bestseller, #1 on the 2007 management book charts, and on The New York Times and BusinessWeek bestseller lists. Translated into 20 languages, Wikinomics was a finalist for the prestigious Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Best Business Book Award and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by a number of publications, including The Economist. Don one of the world’s leading authorities on business strategy, is Chairman of nGenera Insight. He was founder and chairman of the international think tank New Paradigm before its acquisition by nGenera. You can preorder his next book MacroWikinomics on Amazon by clicking here Read more

What Makes Us Happy

The TED motto is “Ideas Worth Spreading”. At the TED.com site you’ll find speakers who in all of 18 minutes to thrill, inspire, intrigue and leave you mesmerized with their views and arguments. The talks are all sans any commercial, religious or political agenda.

I could list many – but one that I have gone back to watch more than a few times is the talk by JK Rowling on The Fringe Benefits of Failure. There is hardly anyone who has not been amazed by Pranav Mistry’s demo of the Sixth Sense Technology . Closer home when TED was hosted in Mysore, I regretted not being able to hear Shashi Tharoor (among others) explain the value of Soft Power and be there to hear so many thinkers and achievers explain their opinion in all of 18 minutes. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. The TEDxGurgaon gave me a chance to articulate my view on What Makes Us Happy? The mysterious state of being that we all seek to experience as often as possible. This post is based on the ideas shared in the talk.

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Trend Spotting and CI

Estelle Métayer is an expert in Competitive and Strategic Intelligence. Her research focuses on how managers, CEOs, and board members build and improve their strategic planning and/or competitive intelligence function to avoid strategic blindspots.  An adjunct professor for McGill University, she teaches with Henry Mintzberg in the International and national Advanced Leadership Programs and the International Master for Health Leadership.

Prior to selling the company in 2004, Estelle was the president and founder of Competia (in 1988), the leading training organization for executives and analysts in Strategic Intelligence. Competia.com became the world’s largest community, portal and magazine for strategy professionals. She speaks French, English, German, Dutch, Italian and Arabic. She is also a mother, a commercial pilot and flight instructor. Read more

Nurturing the Golden Few

When you think of Manchester United, you think of high voltage soccer, but do you think of “Man U” as the people who do great Talent Management? When you think of Storm Model Agency, you think haute couture and glamorous fashion models. Do you think of them as an organization that should be benchmarked for studying Talent Management practices? When you think of the BBC, Royal College of Music or Wimbledon, the top of the mind recall is not about their ability to coach high potential talent. That is exactly what the London based specialist consulting and executive search firm Jackson Samuel did. They delved into the Talent Management Practices of eight such firms (referred to as “Enterprise Organizations” here) and tried to glean out some insights on identifying and nurturing talent.  The result was The Golden Few: Lessons in talent management from the worlds of entertainment, sport, arts and academia. Read more