The Context Machine: Leading CloudWorkers

Knowledge workers can work from anywhere. They just need a laptop and access to the cloud (the Internet). These “CloudWorkers” are very convenient for organizations. They are highly specialized, flexible, location independent and have no overhead. So in theory you can get a fair price. Access to a global pool of flexible talent can create agility in an organization: workforce on demand.

That’s the idea.

Together with the notion of CloudWorkers comes the idea of organizations as nothing more but vehicles to facilitate talent coming together to achieve a certain purpose. An image made famous by Tom Peters. But also John Kao, author of “Innovation Nation”, explains that Google for instance is nothing more than a large bag of projects. According to Kao organizations will find itself “managing a culture of temporariness.”

A pool of flexible talent on one side, facilitating containers with a purpose on the other side.

Photography by Alan Light.

Of course, this is a very extreme picture. But even from a conceptual point of view very interesting. Temporary activities and organizations to achieve a certain goal. Now THAT sounds like a job for Project Managers!

This scenario combines many Project Management problems.

• Resourcing from a global pool.
• Managing remote, multi cultural team members.
• Virtual communication.
• Ensuring alignment.
• Operating in a relatively “public” environment that is the web.
• Team never worked together before.

And I am sure you can think of many more.

A framework for managing CloudWorkers in temporary endeavors would in my opinion be very interesting; because I think it is the future for Project Managers, and even if the future ends up beings some kind of hybrid, it addresses several topics we always face running projects.

If you just stumbled upon this posting, I’ll recommend reading the two previous posts in this series for introduction and background:

The Context Machine: The Need For A Multi Layered Model
The Context Machine: The Essence Is Context

This is definitely a work in progress, and all constructive feedback is appreciated.

Let me start by using a metaphor. An important one.

This is a story about Handsome Rob. He is not only good looking, but he is also a great get-away-car driver. If you are planning a heist and need to get away quick, Rob is your man.

In the 2003 film “The Italian Job” Rob is played by actor Jason Statham. Handsome Rob loves the thrill and especially the life style that the he can afford thanks to the robberies he participates in. But he really wants to buy an outrageous, expensive and rare car. Rob has the reputation and the ambition to be part of a robbery in Venice. Hence the title of the movie.

It is not a movie about Handsome Rob. It is a movie about cracking a safe. That is a job you cannot do alone. You need a team. Left Ear is an explosives expert, Lyle is a computer nerd, Stella is a safe cracking expert and Charlie Croker is the man with the plan. A lot goes wrong. I mean a lot. But they have to fill an entire movie.

But, as any great motion picture, they conquer all the obstacles in their quest because of all the different skills and personalities in the team. Every individual team member has his own reputation and ambition to contribute to the overall story.

This is almost a classical movie script structure. A group of people with all different story lines join forces to go onto some quest.

Like in the Italian Job, a lot can go wrong along the way. So you need a team that is resourceful. You need a resilient team. This resilience is created by diversity, in skill and background.

In the movie it is always “a ragtag crew of misfits”, as mentioned in “Yoube: An Insider’s Guide To Climbing The Charts”, including “… one guy …” who seems like he’s going to get everyone killed. … often Steve Buscemi”. But this diversity, although sometimes leading to conflicts, doesn’t break up the cohesion of the crowd. And, oh yeah, they need a plan. They need to establish some basic rules on how to communicate.

A movie needs actors. Not every actors knows just one role. He has a repertoire. For a specific movie a certain role is played. In the case of Handsome Rob; Jason Statham can play more characters, but for this movie, it’s just Rob.

Remember the earlier image of organizations as vehicles for temporary endeavors? Enter the movie studios, they go from movie to movie. They create a culture and structure in which the creative talent is hired on a movie to movie base. And they put out movie after movie.

So. Movies. Actors. Studios.

Back to projects.

I suggest we focus on three layers. Organization, temporary context (e.g. project) and the individual.

An organization has an ambition and a reputation. A reputation can be considered as publicly available information about the context of a person or organization.

An organization has a Challenge. This can be either a threat or opportunity that is the cause / reason for the temporary endeavor.

An individual has also an ambition and reputation. And he has a role in the temporary context.

The temporary context will satisfy the challenge by the individuals playing their roles. An organizational context can be best viewed as its culture, the quest and history.

Leading the temporary context.

I’ll get more into detail about leading the temporary context in future posts, but for now think about my earlier writings on creating project culture:

• The quest is the goal of the project. I call it “quest” as it also applies to e.g. online communities.
• The small circles are the individual team members. The arrows between them represent their interaction.
• The rules of engagement are the set of rules the group agreed upon for the way they interact.
• The leader (PM) can use a mix of rituals, badges (visual clues), motivation, facilitation, communication and setting the example to ensure interactions and quest are followed as agreed (explicit and implicit) by the group.
• The individual storyline is the combination of the “history” of the person (which determines his reputation) and the profile (a snapshot of who he is at this moment, the current role or expertise). The storyline moves into the direction of a persons ambition.

Next up: Interaction between the levels.

The whole purpose of using a multi scale model like this is the ability to look at the interaction between the levels.

I will cover that in the next posting in this series. But for those who are curious, the mechanisms are discussed in my previous post: context as selection and the creation of reputation.