Even though some efforts have been made in Europe with the recent launch of the (in)famous GDPR, digital privacy is a dream of the past. Companies collect, exchange, sell, re-sell and re-use our data all the time. Our behaviors are not only tracked, they are also predicted with such accuracy that yes, some databases might actually know us better then we know ourselves!

Few of us are fully data literate, whatever that means, and most are sloppy when it comes to checking the use of data — where they come from, why they were collected in the first place, how they will be used, etc. Each time we give consent for using our data, do we think about the implications of that consent? When we accept cookies, general conditions, single sign-on via our Facebook account? Do we? Most probably not, and of course we don’t. Some patterns in the data have yet to be discovered by the most brilliant data scientists. How on Earth could we imagine our data being used in a way that hasn’t been even invented yet, or that technology doesn’t yet allow?

Whether we are willing to admit it or not, most of us are data-illiterates in a world that is more and more data-hungry. And we should start to worry…

Let’s think about it. There are high chances that your organization would not want to work with illiterates: in most administrations, businesses, industries, we expect people to be able to read and write, don’t we? We even expect them to master more than the basics… we implicitly expect deeper skills including semantics, grammar, but also accuracy and coherence, critical analysis and thinking, being able to synthesize, make decisions based on available input, etc.

All the above seems normal. Literacy is key in our education. It starts early on at school, and we’ve come to consider it as a given and a fundamental right.

But if we move from language to data, who can confidently state they are literate? We may think that we are data literate because we understand a belly curve or we can discuss an infographic. But do we really, deeply understand the data representation? How do we know if the data themselves, or the way they have been retrieved and analyzed, or even the presentation itself are not biased? Do we (and can we) check if we can trust the data sources? If it was up to us, could we find the data, could we retrieve it, analyze, present, synthetize, explain the consequences and outcomes?

Many are convinced this has to remain a data scientist’s job. Fair enough, not everybody has to be as data-savvy as a data specialist, the same way not everyone becomes an acclaimed author. Still, the same way that we have to understand the symbols, rules, and theories of language, we have to understand the specific rules and theories of data. Otherwise, we will have NO capability for critical analysis, we will NOT be able to summarize and synthesize, and we will therefore NOT be able to make decisions based on the data available to us.

Is this lack of data literacy real? Certainly! Data scientists often complain about their clients’ lack of data literacy. They usually spend more time educating the organizations they work with than actually working the data. This is a burning problem in modern organizations that too often comes underestimated if not unrecognized.

Both at personal and professional levels, it has become not only a duty, but also a right to get the basic data education we all need to understand the implications of data at scale. You can’t have an impact on a world you can’t read, the same way a company cannot thrive in a data-environment their own employees don’t understand!

Please feel free to comment below or via Twitter – @cdn and @MarieLaenen

I want you to picture your wardrobe in your mind. Now open it. What do you see? Clothes is my best guess. But can you picture every single piece of clothing neatly? In what order are they more or less organized?

Some of you will say: “Yeah, totally. If you start from the left you have blue jackets, then white shirts, then the blue ones, and finally some black ones. I hide the Hawaiian shirt my stepmother got me from her trip to Malaga in the upper right drawer.” Well if that’s your case, congratulations! You can already provide a much more accurate description of your wardrobe content than many of us.

Let’s take this to the next level. How many white shirts do you have? Maybe 7? Are they all the same? If not, how would you describe them? You don’t give names to your shirts, do you? Chances are you will say something like: “Well, there is the one I got from that store around the corner, then the one with black dots on the collar…” and so on.

Now imagine I’m walking into your house. I must get you a specific white shirt. How are you going to make sure I choose the right one? Surely, there is no way I could find “the one you bought from the store around the corner”. I wasn’t there. I could make more sense of “the one with black dots on the collar”, but is it specific enough?

Ok, let’s say I find it. We made it, yeah! You can pat yourself on the shoulder.

Let’s get this even more exciting now. Imagine I give you a Mary Poppins bag and tell you to put all your clothes in it. Bye bye wardrobe! But here is the challenge: somebody — anybody — should be able to retrieve from the bag any piece of clothing at any given time.

Test it with your partner, kid, grandmother, dog, all of them. Ask them to find the dark blue jacket inside the Mary Poppins bag. You soon realize your partner chose the black jacket, your kid ignored the rules and picked the Hawaiian shirt, your grandmother got the actual dark blue jacket for some reason, and your dog is still staring at you in awe.

It means that yes, you should start giving names to your shirts at this point. Names that should both be clear and self-explanatory. Ouch. Good luck with that.

Relax, it is just a game. We won’t ask you to place all your clothes in a Mary Poppins bag. She wouldn’t let us play with it anyway. But let’s get to your information organization: is it a wardrobe or a Mary Poppins bag? Are you able to retrieve whichever information, wherever and whenever you need it? And when you do, how can you be sure that you got your hand on the right document, contract, video or webpage?

The wardrobe contains your files. All sorts of files. The Mary Poppins bag is your file management system. You know that names and structure should be clear and self-explanatory. And yet, before you know it, your director brought the wrong file to the board, John from HR accidentally spit your employees personal data all over the intranet, Margaret from finance followed your instructions clearly for some reason, and Bobby the IT guy is staring at you with tears in his eyes because he is convinced your new system is ruining five years of hard labor.

Ouch.

Don’t worry, it’s not your fault (well, not entirely). It boils down to this very simple fact: files are handled by human beings. So are information, organization, and knowledge. And that very simple fact can make your life a nightmare if you fail to take it into account. But you won’t.

By now, you know better. You know that you need bullet-proof architecture for your information, just like you need a house with doors and walls that won’t fall upon your face every time you sneeze. Like you need a map to travel around a new city. A calendar to organize meeting slots, random haircuts, me-time, and fortunately remember your mother’s birthday.

Could your organization answer this very basic question: who has access to what until when and from where? If you can name and count all the human beings and files it applies too, well, you are basically a superhero. By “human beings”, we mean employees, suppliers, remote workers, contractors, alumni… everyone. By “files”, we mean paper and electronic documents, data, user manuals, agendas, books, restaurant menus… everything.

You can share a file quite easily these days, choose your poison: email, SharePoint, WhatsApp, social media, etc. Unfortunately, you can’t access information that people don’t share. They might be lazy, sick, grumpy, or worse. Still, it is your job to build an ongoing system where knowledgeable people are encouraged to develop, share and record what they know.

Remember it all started with your wardrobe? It is up to you and your teams to make a Mary Poppins dream come true!

Please feel free to comment below or via Twitter – @MarieLaenen

If you are there, you are likely fond of fast cars and F1 racing. Certainly, you know how to drive… more than certainly, you are in a seat, but not on the track.

I love to drive. I love to watch Lewis Hamilton drive. I love cars. But I will never be an F1 pilot… Most of us have learned to drive and by adulthood have developed a high level of competency in driving, we can say we have mastered ‘car-driving’. But we will not become F1 pilots. That is reserved to the experts, to the drivers who have gone beyond mastery by practice, practice, practice. Practice makes perfect. Because practice is the ultimate learning.

On a sunny afternoon, in conversation with Christian De Neef, we shared his “learning beyond learning” concept: going beyond the basics to a level of expertise that can only be reached with practice, outside of formal classroom learning, through experiential learning, through sharing of knowledge, …

Take the example of driving where initially you have to pay attention to every single thing you do, an adult is sitting with you guiding you through the motions of shifting gears, changing lanes, braking, looking both sides and in the rear-view mirror, using your signals, … breathing and merging into incoming traffic on a busy intersection. Sweaty palms! You get the picture, you are learning to drive.

You move from awareness (and the anxiety of it all) to understanding and slowly applying it all together as in a sort of ‘dance’, it all flows together and you drive the car. Soon, you don’t even have to think about the simultaneously push of the clutch, looking in rear-view mirror, shifting gear, merging left to pass a slow truck. Soon, you master driving, and you even have your kids screaming in the back seat. You are a driver.

OK, you are no Lewis Hamilton. Perhaps you don’t wanna be. But, just out of curiosity, do you ever wonder how can a driver become a pilot? How does a master become an expert? Practice, practice, practice. Practice makes perfect. Your learning continues after you get your driver’s license, every time you drive.

This is what we mean by learning beyond learning. This is what goes on in the second part of the learning curve. The first part of the learning curve being formal education, in classroom or e-learning, currently the focus of most education/learning efforts.

The Learning Curve, in broad strokes can be described as an horizontal axe of Time and a vertical axe of Competency, the first half of the learning progression takes place in a formal setting (classroom, e-learning); the second half takes place in informal settings through Communities of Practice (other drivers, conversation tables) Knowledge Management (and sharing), Workshops. Learning in the second part of the curve is experiential, operational, it takes place by doing. It is in that section of the curve that mastery can be achieved, and potentially the expertise of F1 pilots…

Unfortunately, the vast majority of investment is focused on the formal section of learning, what can be readily measured with evaluations that test competency when knowledge, the result of learning, is applied… this only takes us from Awareness to Understanding to Application, it doesn’t reach Mastery (excellent drivers after many years) or Expertise (Lewis Hamilton, F1 pilot) levels.

What can be done to improve the evolution towards Mastery? Why are companies reluctant to invest in this second, “informal”, section of the Learning Curve? Are we ready to promote Learning beyond Learning?

This and other questions on learning in the 21st century will be at the heart of the next ideablender – Please also check out @ideablndr for the latest updates

Please feel free to comment below or via Twitter – @analuisabxl

We have come to expect our tools to be sufficiently intuitive and user-friendly, that we don’t need any formal help or learning in using them. But is that really true? In her talk at The Modern Workplace conference, Microsoft’s Carole Dohan acknowledged recent training on Skype for Business was an eye-opener! It’s not that the tools we use are not user-friendly… quite the contrary, but our learning experience with most tools remains superficial… and we may be tempted to reject wat doesn’t work as expected right away!

One of our clients is implementing a Digital Workplace (DWP) and the collaborative, inclusive, social nature of the new environment is quite a change from the old ways… And whilst that organization may not be planning on training its people in using Office, SharePoint, Skype, or any of the other tools integrated in the DWP, we are actually developing a learning path on “expected usages” and “right behaviors” in line with the DWP vision. It’s in changing those behaviors, for every person in the organization, that we will eventually change the work culture! Because culture cannot be imposed…

You can’t impose (prescribe) #culture. At best, you can create/nurture an environment that favors the right behavior https://t.co/GSad8TmzVF

— Christian DE NEEF (@cdn) September 15, 2015

And then, one day, when people take a distance and look back, they may say: “well, things have changed here… This would not have been possible just a few years ago!” – and that’s when one realizes that the organization’s culture has actually evolved!

So, how can technology be supportive of the culture change? The modern workplace is evolving towards an integrated set of enabling technologies that can, and will, influence our behaviors:

• When sharing with a mouse-click becomes easier than sending an attachment, it will reduce our email overload and enable true collaboration
• When running a meeting remotely becomes more comfortable than commuting all to the same place, it will impact our mobility and we will truly work from anywhere
• When working in continuity with the same apps across laptops, phones, or tablets becomes natural, it will enable true device independence and will allow BYOD

Then, what role is left for organizational change management? As a CIO said during a recent interview: “we make the very best technologies available to our employees, but they don’t pick it up, don’t use them well… adoption is very slow and productivity is deceiving!”

Recognizing that it’s not because “we build it, users will come”, Microsoft FastTrack was introduced. Fasttrack is a service facilitating the move to Office 365, which includes a process, scenarios and templates, etc. But, as everyone certainly understands, communication and training alone won’t cut it…

For adoption to be successful, people need to understand the rationale behind the change, how this contributes to organizational objectives, what exactly is being asked of them… Then, organizations need to demonstrate that they are taking this change seriously, putting the right processes, resources and systems in place, supporting every person in the path of change, driving new behavior… Most importantly, people need to see that the rest of the organization, especially the leadership team, is engaged, using the new technologies, behaving accordingly!

Our change approach, which is inspired by the Influence Model of Keller & Price, covers the full organizational change path and relies on Art of Hosting, Collective Intelligence, and Storytelling techniques to drive lasting behavior change in the organization.

So, bringing it all together – Microsoft Office 365 technologies, the Microsoft FastTrack customer success service, and proven organizational change management approaches – the Digital Workplace is primed for success! Not with manuals, but thanks to a balanced, integrated approach to change…

Some key takeaways:

We will see a blended work environment evolving over the coming years… I certainly agree with Jennifer that we are not facing a black & white situation: one model is not better than the other, but according to context, some model might be more appropriate. Also, future workers (employees or self-employed) may switch between different work environments according to circumstances: spending some time in the (traditional) office, other times working from home or from client sites, and yet other moments from coworking spaces.

We see companies opening up to coworkers, but not investing in the required community management to make it a true collaborating/sharing experience. Other companies don’t (yet) see the difference between the shared office space and the coworking space. The New World of Work is not so much about physical environment and technology; it is essentially about culture and values (community management, socializing in the workplace, sharing knowledge and experience).

As is clear from Baptiste’s study of French companies and their employees, not all coworkers have the same needs, and not all organizations have the same motivations! For some, it’s about increasing mobility and/or reducing environmental footprint, or it may be cost reduction, whilst for others it’s entrepreneurial spirit and innovation opportunities, to name just a few potential motivations…

At the Open Campus in Cagliari, presented by Alice, Tiscali has no explicit expectations to benefit from coworker & entrepreneurial output, but over time the number of collaboration and learning opportunities is growing: the self-employed coworkers also have something to learn from the corporate employees! And vice-versa of course…

One may be tempted to think that it’s the traditional organizations that have to bridge the culture gap to the coworking world, but in practice, it appears that there are just as many questions on either side of the fence… Also for coworking spaces, opening up to corporate users is not obvious! Both business leaders and space managers alike may be worried about diluting (corporate) identity, increased turnover, leaking intellectual property, etc. All in all, it’s a learning curve for all parties involved!

We see that more and more often, large organizations are rethinking their workplaces. Key drivers are mobility and space management, and the related financial and productivity benefits, but also a willingness to evolve towards a more collaborative, open, sharing, and transparent work culture.

On the other hand, coworking is a new way of working whereby the workplace is shared by mostly self-employed people, not only sharing space and equipment, but also ideas and knowledge. In the coworking culture, sharing and collaboration are natural…

Although strongly associated with startups and the entrepreneurial way of working, we now see some organizations encouraging coworking for reasons of economy and flexibility, and also to increase their employee’s creativity through a better work experience…

So what is the future of the workspace: Will larger organizations open their own coworking spaces and, in doing so, compete against the coworking movement? Or will corporate employees become coworking spaces’ best clients??

Recently, some larger corporations have opened their own coworking spaces. For example, State Farm Insurance has opened Next Door in Chicago. It’s a cafe concept where you can meet financial coaches, take classes or work on your projects. The service is free, except for the coffee. Their philosophy is: “We help you. You help us innovate. We’re all smarter for it. We think it’s a win-win”

Google Inc. and Pearson PLC are founding sponsors of TechHub, a coworking space for technology startups in London. They make workplaces available, enabling people to meet, collaborate, work and network. They say that “by getting the right people together in a physical space, good things happen”

PepsiCo is partnering with WeWork Labs to tap the startup culture. In the past, PepsiCo was relying on creative agencies to bring in new ideas. Now, they count on startups. PepsiCo thinks that part of its future innovation will be initiated by startups. Employees have the possibility to use the coworking space, where they can support entrepreneurs and have them meet specialists when needed. It’s a way for PepsiCo employees to get new inspiration from the entrepreneurial world…

Of course, these examples raise a lot of questions, such as:

• Will larger organizations invest in/create partnerships with coworking spaces? And if they do so, how will coworking (culture) survive, given the balance of power??
• Will these organizations offer part of their workplace to freelancers? And if employees and freelance workers mingle, how about the protection of intellectual property??
• The benefits for the corporates – easy access to entrepreneurial talent – are quite clear! But how about the benefits for the entrepreneur? And for the coworking space??
• Etc.

We are pursuing our research in this area, whilst working with our clients on their transformation to the New World of Work (NWoW). We will also be exploring these and related questions at the Coworking Europe Conference in Milano this week, where we participate in a panel on this subject… And of course, we would love to hear about your own experience and/or opinion on corporate vs. coworking culture! Please feel free to comment below or via twitter – @SylvieDbg

Digital isn’t new in society either: personal computing has become a natural part of our daily lives since the late 90’s, smartphones are omnipresent today, and many of us live in an always-on world…

FastTrack’s work with organizations is mostly focused on the internal perspective: How do we share and collaborate more efficiently between teams across the organization? How do we innovate work processes in order to facilitate new forms of collaboration, new services, etc? At best, our work extends beyond the traditional organizational boundaries to embrace clients, partners and suppliers, and maybe the larger ecosystem…

Admittedly, we’re not often pushed to ask ourselves questions on the impact of digital beyond our clients’ organizational structures. That is, the impact of digital on society at large. But the boundaries — between business and society, between professional and personal IT, between work and private life — are blurring: we bring our digital life to work as naturally as we brought work home in recent past, and the fact that we can access work anyplace, anytime, and with any device challenges the traditional notions of work organization, largely inherited from the 2nd industrial revolution (think control & command, hierarchies, specialization, etc).

Whilst the impact of digital on work is generally perceived as positive inside the organizational context (was it only because it increases work comfort and flexibility, allows working from home, solves mobility issues, etc), we should be aware that it is rather disrupting in society — and not always in good ways! This is partly because many a job doesn’t allow for a decent revenue on its own, and digital is being used to extend the 9-to-5 job with a 5-to-9 add-on, a phenomenon labeled ‘slashing’ (the term was apparently coined by Marci Alboher, author of One Person/Multiple Careers, to describe the ‘slash’ in the job title of someone who is a designer/webmaster/taxi driver, for example). Of course, not every add-on job is motivated financially, but when there is no main job, only add-on jobs, we’re clearly facing increased precariousness!

Unfortunately, some of our hailed digital technologies are really working in favor of precarious work. Think Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for example, where unknown workers get paid as low as $0.01/transaction for low value-added tasks such as translating snippets of text, transcribing short audio tracks, or tagging images… In times when even beggars have smartphones, how easy is it to distribute meaningless work to the poorest?

Or, closer to our western comfort, think of the many people checking their smartphone every morning for interim work, maybe a few hours, a full day at best, without any obligation on behalf of the employer! In the UK, the infamous zero-hour contracts have become commonplace in the hotel and catering sectors… This may be technology-driven work, but it is disrespectful, stressful, and uncertain!

Really, in times of happiness-at-work, is this how we want technology to ‘enable’ new ways of working? @cdn

In a tweet earlier this week, Isabel De Clercq from Wolters Kluwer challenged me to write (for their Yammer NWoW community) something about the most important takeaways of TEDxBrussels

The question got my interest, was it only because it forced me into thinking about a perspective that was NOT the traditional TEDxBrussels focus… (this year’s theme was The Territory & The Map). But, admittedly, many of the topics of the day could relate in some ways to our new ways of working. My key takeaways:

Part of the morning sessions was devoted to Silicon Valley, the heart (and guts) of entrepreneurship. Of course, there is no requirement for everyone at work to be an (intra/entre)preneur, but entrepreneurial skills will take us further! Further down the road of (un)certainity, by placing your bets more intelligently, achieving greatness by “tilting the board” as @talbot would put it…

Further down the road of autonomy and responsibility, by deliberately, hardheadedly pursuing your own way, the way @fredd did when dropping out of school, then developing a great digital career before the term was even fashionable…

Whilst TED always brings a panorama of exciting and promising technologies, a few speakers including @gleonhard and @mikko were there to remind us of technology’s dangers… Maybe there is no big brother watching us, maybe it’s worse, maybe there’s always ‘some’ brother watching us!

And maybe there is no such thing as ethics in our (brave) new world. Maybe Google is Evil, after all (or redefining the very meaning of the word) despite their slogan. Maybe artificial intelligence and deep learning will render most of our work meaningless (because we will be surpassed by technology), as data strategist @jeremyphoward explained convincingly (demo included).

In science or at work, the status quo is not acceptable, the traditional (corporate/government-funded) approach is not acceptable, the single-minded view of traditional research is not acceptable anymore! From health care (dancer-scientist @lina_colucci) to space travel (astronaut-to-be Cameron Smith), the future is emerging across industries and disciplines, from crowdsourced solutions, low cost, through hacking and open innovation…

Are we present? Are we too superficial? Are we designing for the right audience, the right purpose? Very valid questions by designthinker @tristanharris — reminescent of Simon Sinek’s Start With Why — with a strong focus on Quality of Life…