The Disruption Aesthetic: Tech's Workplace Paeans to Change

Disrupt yourself. That, increasingly, is what companies, especially in tech, are attempting to signal their employees.

Faced with the prospect of chronic change, many enterprises are attempting to design their workplaces in such a way as to remind their staffs - and themselves - that no lead is secure, no product or service is dominant for long, no institution is permanent.

Some of these reminders are tangible: offices designed to reinforce the impermanence of the organization by eliminating walls, cubicles and personal spaces. Everything is open. The only thing that is yours is you. And maybe your phone or computer. But definitely not the space they are located today. Or tomorrow. Or ever.

Some of the symbolic and actual impetus is intangible: reassignment to new teams frequently and without warning, shifting responsibilities, non-specific organizational structures. As chaotic as it may seem, much of this is done after careful analysis of research conducted more or less constantly on what seems to be working and what isnt. The metrics may be experimental or a combination of the tried and true with the utterly irrational. Let's challenge ourselves to make sense of the madness, the ethos declares, because that is what the market is doing to us on a regular basis.

There is no doubt that the rest of the institutional world is watching: open plan has become a cliche. Foosball tables, food stations, in-house masseurs and concierges are now de rigeur.

Some people need quiet and space to optimize their contributions. The interim rejoinder seems to be: wear headphones. But in the long run, the longitudinal data will be accumulated, evaluated and endlessly reinterpreted.And the question is whether any conclusions will - or can - ever be drawn. Managements like to manage to a conclusion or at least to goal or achievable objective. In the case of this sort of ongoing design experiment, it is not yet apparent what those might be.

The challenge, ultimately, is determining whether this is leading somewhere - to a sort of organizational ideal - or whether it is the journey, the search, that is the only constant - and that that is the point. JL

Quentin Hardy reports in the New York Times:

Nothing is permanent, any product can be dislodged from greatness by something newer. It’s the aesthetic of disruption: We must all change, all the time.

Here's Why Whole Foods Lets Employees Look Up Each Other's Salaries

It was originally called Open Book Management. The theory is that the more employees know about how an enterprise functions, the better they will understand how they contribute and the more motivated they may become to enhance their performance.

The overarching concept is now more generally known as a subset of the philosophy that underpins what is commonly known as transparency.

In Whole Foods case, as the following article explains, the enterprise's founder wanted everyone to gain insights into how the complexity of task,  effort and value everyone made was related to their compensation. This was part of a broader approach to management of people who work at Whole Foods and those who shop there despite its generally higher prices.

The company is perennially ranked as one of the best places to work and its financial results reflect the dedication of its customers to the company's high quality and broad selection despite the access they have to less expensive alternatives. The success of its approach suggests that the information people have, the happier they will be about the decisions they make based on that knowledge. JL

Alison Griswold reports in Business Insider:

If workers understood what types of performance and achievement earned certain people more money, he figured, perhaps they would be more motivated and successful, too.

Welcome to the Global Economy: Chinese IBM Factory Workers Strike to Protest Sale to... Lenovo

They may be running dogs of capitalist imperialism but they pay pretty well.

IBM recently announced the sale of its server business to Lenovo, the Chinese company that purchased IBM's PC division. Lenovo has, by all accounts, done a creditable job of sustaining and even extending the ThinkPad brand, despite concerns at the time of the sale that it was doomed.

The delicious irony here is that the Chinese workers are protesting the transfer of their employment from a US company to a Chinese one. Their concern is that layoffs will ensue for many and that for those who remain, pay and working conditions will deteriorate.

The reality of the global economy is both that tangible assets like factories and their workers are fungible: they can be traded, sold or exchanged - and that those affected by these decisions have the information available to understand the implications. They are also becoming sophisticated enough in the ways of media and messaging that they freely utilize various channels and platforms to effectively leverage their position.

The issue is that enterprises of whatever ostensible nationality are going to have to be cognizant of global norms, especially in fields like tech if they want to establish and sustain their competitive position. JL

PC World reports:

Employees suspect layoffs could come. This happened once before, almost 10 years ago, when Lenovo acquired IBM’s ThinkPad PC business.

The Reason Chipotle's Warning of a Climate Change Threat to Guacamole Is News

For those who are not under the age of 35 or dont have children in that demographic, Chipotle is a wildly popular US restaurant chain that sells large portions of healthful, Mexican-oriented food. It has assumed pride of place over certain fast food alternatives because the food is prepared on site and is at least ostensibly better for the diner, calories aside.

Chipotle has become something of a cultural icon so when, in an annual filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it mentioned the potential impact of climate change on the availability of the avocados that provide the basis for its justifiably famous guacamole, people took notice.

There was some controversy as those opposed to the very concept of climate change attempted to downplay the significance of Chipotle's announcement. As the following article explains, some charged that this was simply one of many routine potential risks the company is required to cite, along with foot-borne illnesses and business competition.

Others, however, noted that this was the first time the company had ever mentioned climate change in any of its required public filings, despite the fact that it is dependent on agricultural products for its core ingredients. What this suggests is that companies like Chipotle are beginning to assess the potential harm to their economic prospects posed by changes in the environment. The implication is that this is no longer a political or moral or ideological or philosophical issue: its an economic threat and, perhaps even more important to many in Chipotle's customer base, its becoming a matter of taste. JL

Emily Atkin comments in ThinkProgress:

The fact that Chipotle openly acknowledges climate change, even as a “routine risk,” is news — as there are likely companies that wouldn’t mention the words “climate change” if their business depended on it.

Big Data's Big Challenge

We have the ability to know almost everything we want to know about almost every one. The commercially viable data is a given, the psycho-social-political profiling may just take a bit more tweaking.

The challenge we face as a society and an economy is how to manage both the information and the power it conveys.

It had appeared that, by and large, we were comfortable with the price we had to pay for convenience. What, after all, was a little data in return for ease of use, often at a discount?

But then revelations about the extent of the knowledge being gleaned began to creep some people out. The uses to which it was being put, however benign from a commercial standpoint, still felt like an uninvited intrusion, a kind of violation. The NSA revelations, concerning government eavesdropping on a variety of media, had an impact far out of proportion to what many perceived to be the novelty of the disclosure. Governments monitoring there citizens' electronic transmissions in the wake of 9/11, the Spanish train and London bus bombings, to say nothing of various disputes, disagreements and flat-out conflicts? How simply astonishing...

The larger point, however, is that people are now going to demand some accountability, some security, some legally protected say - and, probably, some remuneration. The collective 'we' had better start figuring out how to manage this before the lowest common denominator of popular response is forced on us. JL

Gerd Leonhard comments in CNN:

The question will no longer be whether we have the technological skills and horsepower to do something, but why, when and where we should do it (never mind the thorny issue of 'who').

Sponsored Spontaneity: Samsung's Sensational Selfie

Hah! If you watched the Oscar telecast or read about it afterwards, you could be forgiven for thinking that photo arranged by host Ellen DeGeneres with a group of very famous friends was all about Twitter or about the actors hamming it up for a little free publicity down the road.

But you would be very, very wrong.

The star of that seemingly spontaneous self-portrait was the Samsung Galaxy with which the pic was taken. How did it just happen to end up there? Why Samsung, its manufacturer, just happened to be a major sponsor of the telecast, for which it spent $20 million in advertising. As part of the deal, it got a little product placement which, in the spirit of the times, probably garnered it more attention than the paid advertising, assuming that we can tell the difference anymore.

The issue of sponsored content is a derivation of the debate we have been having about privacy. Increasingly, people want to know what's real - whatever that means - and what's not. In the case of journalism or literature or film or tv, it generally means coming clean about whether certain references are a natural result of the author's or auteur's research - or were paid for by an enterprise advancing its commercial interests.

The questions are more ethical or cultural than legal. People seem to be saying that they want the right to decide what they like. And there is a growing body of evidence suggesting they dont like being misled by their natural security apparatus, their soft drink of choice or their smartphone manufacturer.

Which is not to say they dont appreciate the security or the liquid refreshment or the pocket full of digital miracles, they'd just prefer to know who's paying who for what. JL

Suzanne Vranica reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Samsung Electronics Co.  005930.SE in Your Value Your Change Short position spent an estimated $20 million on ads to run during breaks in the Academy Awards broadcast on Sunday night. But Samsung may have got more promotional mileage from Oscars host Ellen DeGeneres during the show itself.

How Our Economic Indicators Fail Us

Cut to the chase. That old movie reference (the audience wants to see the action, not all that other talking heads stuff) is our harried response to anything that takes longer to explain than an elevator speech or a nanosecond. 

So we just love us those numbers that purport to summarize economic activity and financial opportunity in one easy view. Nothing too long or complex. None of those Greek symbols. Just two or three digits. Sure, throw in a percentage sign if it makes you feel better but dont get all hot and bothered about the deeper meaning. We'll either figure that out for ourselves or take the word of our favorite air-brushed news reader.

Which leads us to numbers like GDP, Gross Domestic Product. It serves the purposes of those who hew to it because it enables economists, politicians, government officials and others who may stand to benefit from its implications - or torment others to whom they may ascribe guilt.

It's relatively simple, has a relatively long history of usage so that many people who care may purport to understand what it means - and it is probably utterly misleading in today's economy.

This is part of a larger problem having to do with the way we account for economic activity. Our systems no longer reflect the underlying reality they ostensibly represent because most of the world is creating value through intangibles which are not measured by any of these extent metrics.

Yes, many people and the countries they inhabit still make locomotives and refrigerators and warships and other physical goods, but their significance has declined in economic terms relative to the overall growth of terrestrial or supra-terrestrial value. Ideas and concepts and designs and lawsuits and other ephemera are creating massive tangible benefits but we have not been able to agree on how to report them. Those who have something to lose by changing the reporting conventions are squared off against those who have something to gain. Neither side is willing to concede anything to the other.

So we muddle along with a wink and a nod, allowing whoever holds the digital megaphone to blather on about whatever they want it all to mean. Meanwhile, enterprises frustrated with this institutionalized inaccuracy have taken to releasing the data they want people to see, which is not necessarily the same as the data they need to see or should see. Ultimately, it's all about how much risk we are willing to tolerate. Unfortunately, we have a history of figuring out the meaning of 'too much' or 'too little' or 'oops' only after the fact. JL

TPM excerpts Zachary Karabell's The Leading Indicators:

You can cut taxes or spend on easy projects (Sochi anyone?), and that will make GDP look good. It may not make the country any healthier.