This is my first blog post in well over a month. September was a busy, fascinating month of organised conversations:

Changing World, Changing Workplace? for my own business, and three others for the Global Mobility Network, which I co‐facilitate with Dr Marie Puybaraud, Surviving The Global Cultural Mash‐up, Using Place To Breach Cultural Boundaries and Workplace To Zero?

But my big news is that after dithering about it for a year, I decided eventually to submit a book proposal and am chuffed to say that Gower have accepted the proposal without amendments. The book will be about smart working being integrally linked to knowledge and learning.

FIRST WAVE SMART WORKING

The quality movement and lean methods of 25 and more years ago, which constituted the first wave of smart working. As I said exasperatedly in a previous post, where I was commenting on McKinsey stating the bleeping obvious, if there was no ‘soft side’ there would be no lean. Process‐based methods rely on the willing compliance of shopfloor operators to reveal their tacit knowledge, and participate in problem‐solving and cross-functional collaboration throughout the value chain, including across organisational boundaries within supply eco‐systems.

SECOND WAVE SMART WORKING

It is increasingly apparent that a perfect storm of global technological, demographic, economic, structural and environmental trends are driving the necessity and possibility of a second wave of smart working. This was all before the global financial crisis. Regulatory drivers will add to the need to look at how work is organised.

Whereas CI 1.0 in the first wave was continuous improvement, CI 2.0 in the second wave is about collective intelligence.

WHAT ROLE HRM?

What really interests me is – what is the role for Strategic HRM in the second wave of smart working? HR was entirely absent, in my experience, first time around. Lean, JIT, Quality was then driven then by hands‐on and very visible on the shop‐floor production directors, who created the operating, learning and management environments. First line supervisors and team leaders were given prime responsibility for day‐to‐day implementation, including overseeing social interactions within their teams as well as responsibility for technical and health and safety issues.

For the me the key is in the network. Of course understanding and satisfying individual intrinsic motivation and rewards continues to be crucially important. The fact is, though, that individuals work as part of a personal social network that extends beyond organisational and even national boundaries. The tacit knowledge of the first wave is now on steroids, amplified and augmented through culturally diverse personal networks. What’s not to like?

A quick example. I hired the services of a young animator last year. The first thing he did in the morning was to log onto Skype and say his hellos to all his friends. He continued to chat with them throughout the day. How did that benefit me? It kept him engaged. And when he needed to show me work in progress, it had already gone out to his network for comment. So I was getting the benefit of the talent distributed among his personal network.

This post is being written in haste. If anyone is interested in further thoughts on knowledge management and enterprise social networking, here’s a link to a paper I wrote on the subject for Johnson Controls Global Mobility Network. I think a major role for strategic HRM will be in understanding and creating learning environments, and knowing where value is being created and who is creating it.