A Flat World is Noisy

Much (negative and positive) has been written about Thomas Friedman's 2005 discussion of globalization ("The World Is Flat"). A key enabler of globalization has been transportation, communications, and information technologies.

The current issue of the Sloan Management Review has an article discussing leadership in this context ("Flat World, Hard Boundaries - How To Lead Across Them", Ernst & Chrobot-Mason).

A few snap reactions (which are equally applicable to the use of social media inside an organization):

1. A flat world is noisy. Although the opportunity for amazing new "signal" emerges in a flat world, the risk of increased noise drowning it out is real. Brokers of various types used to manage this risk in the physical world. Increasingly connected and transparent individuals and organizations are almost bereft of tools to manage this risk in the virtual world.

2. Focus becomes much more important in a noisy world. At the same time, leaders are much more constrained in their ability to control & command focus. They are left with a largely complex task; in Dave Snowden's memorable phrase "managing the emergence of beneficial coherence within attractors within boundaries." At the same time, they are largely unprepared to either recognize or effectively engage complex contexts.

3. As a result, leaders must simultaneously address at two difficult and novel issues: increased noise, and managing complexity.

The six boundary-spanning practices the authors discuss are not inherently bad. I'd feel better, however, if they emphasized the need for these practices to be introduced in the context of very specific customer-driven tasks and goals. Without that focus and discipline I'm afraid the authors' advice could easily be warped into some sort of "happy-clappy" initiative where generic "do-good" activities do more to breed cynicism than success.