2004 HRPS Annual Global Conference: interviews & insights.

Key Interviews: John Seely Brown, Thomas Sattelberger, & the Global Diversity Panel SOTA/P 2004: Managing for Value(s) in a Commoditized World

The theme of the 2004 HRPS Annual Global Conference was "Anticipate--Lead-Renew." Human Resource Planning asked freelance writers Sarah McArthur and Allison Arneill to interview some key players in this year's conference to understand their views on how HR leaders can anticipate, lead, and renew their organizations in a world full of amazing change and opportunity. We also feature the insights of Patrick Wright and Scott Snell from Cornell University as they delved into the State-of-the-Art & Practice in 2004. Their SOTA/P work continues an almost 10-year-old tradition of the Society of making strategic sense for its members out of the major trends and issues they face in their work and market places.

Key Interviews: John Seely Brown, Thomas Sattelberger, & the Global Diversity Panel

Allison Arneill, Sarah McArthur, Freelance Writers

John Seely Brown: Understanding the Digital Generation

John Seely Brown (JSB) is former chief scientist of Xerox and former director of its Palo Alto Research Center. Responsible for guiding one of the most famous technology think tanks in the world, he led celebrated and far-ranging corporate research efforts. Part scientist, part artist, and part philosopher, his viewpoints are unique and distinguished by a broad view of the human contexts in which technologies operate, as well as a refreshing skepticism about whether change always represents genuine progress. A major focus of Brown's research has been human learning and the creation of knowledge ecologies for creating radical innovation. A co-founder of the Institute for Research on Learning, a non-profit institute for addressing the problems of lifelong learning, Dr. Brown recently served as editor of Seeing Differently: Insights on Innovation. His research interests include digital culture, ubiquitous computing, and organizational and individual learning.

Sarah McArthur (SM): Thank you for doing this interview, Dr. Brown. This is a great topic for HR leaders and managers, because it will give them insight into the generation of young people who are or will soon be entering the workforce. Can you define for me the "digital generation"? What are these kids like?

JSB: The digital generation includes young people who have grown up using the Internet every day. They have, in essence, "grown up digital," and they think, interact, and communicate differently than those of us who didn't. Digital kids can't believe there was a time when the Internet, instant messaging (IM), and cell phones didn't exist. These youngsters follow social and behavioral rules based on digital technology. For instance, it's considered rude to call a friend without first sending a text message to ask if the person wants to take a call.

Another aspect of growing up digital is being a member of one or multiple "buddy groups." These intimate communities are built using IM and cell phones. One member of the group is aware when any other member is online. This gives them a constant sense of connection to their buddy group. Another aspect of the digital generation is that these youngsters have boundless amounts of information at their fingertips instantly. For instance, as soon as a name or an idea is mentioned, they "Google" it and instantly, seamlessly, nearly invisibly, they fill in the background of what's being discussed.

SM: What does it mean to be connected to this world of information?

JSB: For these young people, it's not so much what you know, but how you come to know it, how quickly you can find it, how you navigate the infinite sea of information, and how comfortable you are surfing. And the critical question, why believe what you find? If it's not an easy answer, these kids will either use their social communities to vent the idea or they may engage in "triangulation," a process by which information is investigated from multiple angles.

SM: These are interesting tactics and strategies for coping with immense amounts of information. How do these young people use this information to connect and communicate with each other?

JSB: What we have now in this new generation is a "remix culture." Kids mix text, images, and sounds to communicate and connect with each other. The simplest example is building and sending a music play list, which might communicate a message, such as "how I feel today" or "how I feel about you." So rather than just trafficking content, these youngsters are paying attention to the emotional substrate of the communication. Through gathering, assembling, and remixing photographs, music, they are telling a story. They are tinkering with available content and building something new. For instance, with open-source computer code, we can view, improve, and give back to the community. As a result, these young people are building social capital by borrowing, tinkering with, and then re-contributing information and content back to society. So we have an interesting new mechanism for creating knowledge (intellectual capital) that is interwoven with the social substrate of becoming a member in a buddy group (social capital).

SM: It will be quite a challenge for today's leaders to manage this incoming generation of knowledge workers with the strategies of yesterday, because if these new entrants to the workforce are curtailed, micro-managed, or over controlled, they won't be able to develop and release their knowledge, which is so dependent on their social networks. What are some tactical and strategic issues managers should be aware of?

JSB: First, it's important for managers to know that we have a digital divide between digital natives (the incoming knowledge workers) and the digital immigrants (the managers). There is a schism between the managers who oversee these young workers and the kids themselves, who are inherently prepared to continuously learn, interact, and communicate. How do you tell an immigrant from a native? Immigrants learn about technology by reading a manual, and then in a safe, closed environment, they try it out. A native has never heard of a computer manual. They are hands-on learners; they are out there making mistakes.

In the workplace, some role reversals are happening. Although managers need sonic control over this new generation of employees, they also have a lot to learn from them about improvisation of work practices, especially those considered routine or mundane. I sometimes wonder what would happen if HR built policies that understood the amount of creativity knowledge workers contribute to what appears to be the most routine work. But, how many of our HR policies understand what kind of knowledge work each of us is doing? And, how do you release knowledge as opposed to trying to control it? How do you capture the learning that comes from daily improvisation? If we could implement such strategies, we could create an organic knowledge ecology, an innovation ecology, that would help transform the workspace into a vibrant performance medium where we capture these insights and create learning, higher performance, and a sense of joy at work.

SM: How will micro-managing or over-controlling hinder the digital generation?

JSB: These young people are "inventors of knowledge." They expect to be engaged at all times. They are also multi-tasking all of the time. If you think they are "slacking" when they are connecting to friends, surfing the Internet, building a music play list, or fooling around with digital images, in fact they are apt to be doing just the opposite. They are learning, inventing, and tinkering within their buddy groups. They are testing out ideas within their social groups. The social and work lives of these young people are deeply intermixed, and it's in their social networks that they test out ideas that become innovative practices in the workplace.

SM: What are some of the challenges that HR leaders and managers face in dealing with the digital generation?

JSB: Like most people, we as managers tend to superimpose our points of view on the world. We superimpose our belief that certain work is routine. We superimpose our belief that youngsters are wasting time chatting on the phone and playing on the computer, but these kids are living in a different medium than we are used to understanding. In fact, our beliefs are eschewed from the realities of the Knowledge Age and the upcoming digital generation. As a result we decrease performance and increase anxiety.

One challenge for managers is to think less in terms of mechanistic models and more in terms of ecological models, to think more about the release of the creative genius and less of control. A well-oiled machine may be safe and predictable, but most original ideas aren't fostered in such a controlled environment; they come about through creative abrasion and cross-pollination.

Another challenge for managers and leaders is to evaluate how we look at the world. Are we superimposing a set of beliefs that is at odds with reality? Do we need to change our points of view, our "eyeglasses"? We may be wearing a set of conceptual lenses that is incapable of releasing the inherent genius, creativity, energy, and capabilities of this modern workforce. At the same time, we are under phenomenal pressure to squeeze margins and to clamp down to achieve success for our organizations. There is a legitimate and deep tension between these two points of view, which puts us, as HR leaders and managers, in a tricky and exciting position. This is an exhilarating time for those in the HR field, and I look forward to what the future unfolds.