Originally published December 10, 2024
This is the 110th article in the Profiles in Knowledge series featuring thought leaders in knowledge management. Jon Husband is a coach, consultant, speaker, and writer who coined and defined the term and concept of wirearchy. He is interested in the deep sociological and psychological changes introduced by the networked era, and how those become interwoven with the ways humans live and work.
Prior to becoming independent, Jon worked for 25 years in the areas of organizational effectiveness, organizational design, and organizational change with a grounding in finance, financial management, and the social sciences: psychology, sociology and economics. He learned and practiced approaches to people co-creating vision, values, objectives, and the ways to see, understand, and touch tangible results — processes like Open Space, Future Search, Improv, Participative Work Design, Appreciative Inquiry, and Scenario Planning. Jon worked at understanding the structure and the social dynamics engendered by the Web. He focuses on the sociology of human social systems and the structures and dynamics of networked organizations.
I met Jon in 2006, and we hit it off immediately. He later sent me a wirearchy t-shirt (similar to the one he is wearing in the photo below).
Background
Education
- Glendon Campus of York University | Campus Glendon de l’Université York — Honors BA, Sociology & Psychology, 1971–1975
Experience
- Wirearchy — Founder and Principal, 1998 — Present
- StoryGarden — Partner, 2008–2010
- Work Design Associates — Principal, 1995–2000
- Hay Management Consultants — Senior Principal, 1986–1994
Profiles
- Wirearchy
- Cultivating Flows
- The hi:project — A new chapter of the internet’s impact on human society
Content
Blogs
- From CoLLection to CoNNection — Yves Noble of Capgemini on CG’s move to KM 2.0
- The FASTForward Blog: Enterprise 2.0
- For All Those Who Have Said Blogging Was Just a Fad
- The AppGap
- LinkedIn Articles
- Wirearchy
- On Process, Technology and Work Design
- Performance Management in an Enterprise 2.0 Context
- Knowledge, Trust, Credibility and a Focus on Results — Are They Factors That Disrupt or Help Society Evolve?
- KM and Friendships — Blogging, Listservs, Forums, Moderation, etc.
- Competency Models — HR & Understanding Work in the Network Era
- Hierarchy and Wirearchy: Hubert St. Onge
- Perspective on Designing and Managing Knowledge Work: Inside Knowledge Masterclass, Part I
- Perspective on Designing and Managing Knowledge Work: Inside Knowledge Masterclass, Part II
- Wirearchy 1: The Intersection of People, Information and New Forms of Technology Changes Everything (Eventually) | P2P Foundation
- Wirearchy 2: Knowledge, Trust, Credibility and a Focus on Results — Are They Factors That Disrupt or Help Society Evolve? | P2P Foundation
- Wirearchy 3: Knowledge, power, and an historic shift in work and organizational design | P2P Foundation
- Wirearchy 4: Co-Creating as Disruption to the Dominant Cultural Framework | P2P Foundation
- Wirearchy 5: Hacking as Purposeful Organizational Change | P2P Foundation
What Is Wirearchy?
There’s one common misconception that I’d like to clear up first, which is that wirearchy is mainly about technology. If anything, wirearchy is about the power and effectiveness of people working together through connection and collaboration — taking responsibility individually and collectively rather than relying on traditional hierarchical status.
Most people today know that the Internet and the Web have had a lot of impact on our daily lives — we’ve seen the rise (and sometimes fall) of initiatives like Napster, Amazon, eBay, Dell, blogging, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, advertising’s ongoing (and increasingly contentious) shift to the Web, and the rise of a vast networked range of political and information-gathering and dissemination activities.
In that context of ubiquitous impact, reams have been written about the erosion of the effectiveness of command-and control as the dominant model for leading and managing purposeful organized activities in business, education, government and governance, politics, culture and the arts — all the areas in which humans act together to create and get things done.
Interconnected information flows generate a new emergent organizing principle
Wirearchy is an emergent organizing principle that informs the ways that purposeful human activities and the structures in which they are contained is evolving from top-down direction and supervision (hierarchy’s command-and-control) to champion-and-channel — championing ideas and innovation, and channeling time, energy, authority and resources to testing those ideas and the possibilities for innovation carried in those ideas.
Organizational design principles are not solutions or methods or best practices. A principle is something that holds true across a system and is defined to address the essence of the system — that which characterizes the way the system is structured and operates, that which gives rise to the ‘rules’ of that system. Principles are used to define and design purpose, context and how things are intended to operate. They address and engender the essence of a system, creating the patterns of activity and the dynamics of power that govern those patterns, the ways of existing in and inhabiting a system.
Wirearchy is an (emerging) primary organizing principle. As such, it can be used to better understand, instantiate and act towards effectiveness in an interconnected networked world.
The working definition of Wirearchy is “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology”.
Knowledge. Trust. Credibility. A focus on results.
Each of these four core attributes or elements of the principle is a domain unto themselves. Many thousands of books have been written about each of them as subjects unto themselves. This is not surprising, given we are talking about humans who are connected, exchanging amongst each other(s) in order to gossip, learn, share useful current information, find out how to do things, explore ideas, build and operate effective organizations, carry out effective government and governance, and so on.
In other words, they are central elements of the whole range of human activities in the more ‘advanced’ world (I’m not forgetting here that there are millions upon millions who work with their hands or for various reasons do not have access to computers or connectedness). I make that statement also knowing that there have been significant developments in what are perceived as under-developed countries, mainly regarding smartphones and the widespread use wireless or satellite connection).
The elements that generate social and economic value
Knowledge, trust, credibility and an aim for some sort of result (a purpose, in other words) are core elements of human social activity and as people are connected peer-to-peer, they are becoming the most potent areas upon which to concentrate to create perceptible tangible value.
The shifts in power and authority are showing up in clear ways all around us, for better and for worse. The shift can be seen in daily events and in the ways people’s working lives and behaviors are changing, in the ways they are becoming more or less well-informed, and in consumption patterns for much of what they are buying and using. Examples are reported on regularly, as the impacts of living in the interconnected digital infrastructure of an electronic age take root. It is clearly implied by the phenomenon of e-everything.
Interconnected access to information, knowledge and instantaneous communications provides the modern equivalent to the dynamics created by the invention of the printing press — information distributed (much) more widely and in many cases today almost instantly — certainly at speeds that allow the rhythm of a conversation back and forth but in ways that leave a pragmatic actionable record of that conversation.
Today’s rapid flows of information are like electronic grains of sand, eroding the pillars of rigid traditional hierarchies. This new set of conditions is having real impact on organizational structures and the dynamics these structures generate, contain and also block. In turn this impact is growing into massive change in the ways we do things and behave.
Some of this is exhilarating, and great. Some of it is not. Some of it is about greater confusion, stress and frantic action. Some of it is about clarity, calm and right action. Polarities are appearing everywhere. Different dimensions and dynamics of influence, power and control are emerging at various nodes of interconnected networks of purpose.
The last thirty years have been about the building of the technical infrastructure that provides an interconnected world. The integrated platform for a transformation to economies and a world driven by the communication and exchange of information is now solidly in place.
The next fifty years will almost certainly be about learning how we will behave in an interconnected world and workplace. The dynamics of wirearchy are similar to, and different than, traditional hierarchy — yet need effective and transparent hierarchical structure and action to work smoothly.
Knowledge Management
Knowledge Management and now Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business are “buzz words” that won’t go away. And for good reason — the floods of information and knowledge unleashed by the confluence of software and the Internet won’t stop. People now increasingly work with flows of information and knowledge. Learning how to work with (and within) these flows is mission-critical — riding the flow will require putting the dynamic of champion-and-channel to effective use.
Collaborative Technology Platforms
An integrated infrastructure is often in place in today’s organization, and there are definite trends (SOA, SaaS, cloud computing, open-source social networking and communications platforms and services) that are creating a pattern for the infrastructure of our activities and what we will use it for and do with it. Collaboration is fundamental to getting things done — and yet, there are still many examples of territoriality and the division of work into functional silos. Silos of expertise and activity have their uses, and it is also the case that the limitations of siloed information and communications have been concerns for at least twenty years — it must be addressed when the threads of connection run throughout the organization and its links with customers, employees and suppliers.
The Fundamental Sociology of Networked Knowledge Work
An adult-to-adult model (rather than parent-child) is emerging and is based on the fundamental of what was known as Transactional Analysis, developed in the 1970s.
…
This is the heart of the matter. Adult people do not want to be slaves, chattel, or treated as if children needing ongoing guidance.
In an interconnected world, we will all need to take responsibility for why and what it is that we do, and we will perforce do this in a context of co-creation with other people.
Wirearchy — “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology.”
Articles by Others
- Wirearchy in Wikipedia
- Posts by Dave Snowden
- Posts by Luis Suarez
- Posts by Harold Jarche
- Posts by Mark Britz
- Wirearchy by Valdis Krebs
- Posts by Jack Vinson
- Wirearchy in the Workplace by Jane McConnell
- Why Bother with Web 2.0? by Mary Abraham
- Trust, Friendship and Maturity in Online Communities by Patrick Lambe
- Do We Need Leaders?: A Conversation by Dave Pollard
- Liminal Thought Leader: Perspectives On Organizational Change by Sean Howard
- In Conversation with Mark Raheja and Jon Husband by Louis-Jacques Darveau
- How we will make the change to a “Wirearchy” by Robert Paterson
- From Hierarchy to Wirearchy — Managing People & Change in the Digital World by Bridge Partners
- Jon Husband: be you. by Monika Hardy
- Wirearchy — a pattern for an adaptive organization? by Keith Swenson
- Socialogy: Interview with Jon Husband by Stowe Boyd
- Montreal’s Three Wise Men by Dan Pontefract
- My Network is indeed my Net Worth: A Personal Story by Dan Pontefract
“Do You Know About Wirearchy” Interview by Traci Fenton
Earlier this year (2007) Traci Fenton (founder of Worldblu.com) had the opportunity to talk with Jon Husband, founder of a blog on “wirearchy” a term he coined and defines as “a dynamic flow of power and authority based on trust, knowledge, credibility and a focus on results enabled by interconnected people and technology.”
Traci: I was intrigued with his thinking and how much his ideas relate to and reinforce the idea of democracy in the workplace, so I decided to interview him for our blog. Here are Jon’s thoughts on the future of work and wirearchy.
Jon, can you tell us a bit about your background and what got you passionate about the idea of “wirearchy?”
Jon: For the majority of my adult life — my career timeline, if you like — I have been a consultant and facilitator, working on strategy, organizational design, organizational effectiveness and organizational change. These days I tend to call myself a techno-anthropologist. I got interested in the sociology and design of organizations as social systems early on, in my second year of university. I’ve been interested in that issue ever since.
I started my career as a junior consultant with a large global HR and organizational effectiveness consulting firm, the Hay Group, headquartered in Philadelphia. Its methodologies for work design and job evaluation, techniques which essentially “create” the skeleton for hierarchical organizations, are widely used by the global Fortune 1000 companies as well as educational institutions, governments and large not-for-profit organizations around the world.
By 1991 I was in London, UK working as a Senior Principal with large multinational organizations on work design, HR and talent management strategy and organizational change issues and I could see the first waves of flattening out organizations, making the management “span of control” wider. People had begun realizing that the days of the Industrial Age were numbered and that the Information Age was beginning to take hold.
I left the Hay Group in early 1994 because I felt that its core methodologies were only reinforcing the assumptions of the Industrial Age and began working as an independent strategy and OD (organizational development) consultant and facilitator, immersing myself in systems thinking and large-scale systems change methodologies.
After the dot-com bubble burst, along came blogs, personal publishing, wikis and a couple of years later widgets and widespread web services and along with it the growing realization that these could and would be used by both customers and employees to pass information around, to check on things and to do more things more quickly and with more flexibility.
Today, after two or three years of Web 2.0 and the growing awareness of what is called Enterprise 2.0, it seems clearer and clearer that in general things will never be the same as they were. The Information Age is now here. With respect to the relationship between information technology and organizations, the last thirty years have been mainly about the technology; the next thirty years will mainly be about the sociology. The game has changed for leadership and management.
Traci: So what do you think about knowledge workers and the need for more democracy in the workplace?
Jon: Basically, I think it’s an inescapable long-term trend. It’s been developing for a long time.
The application of information technology at first encoded deeper into the skeletons of enterprises the structure and dynamics of hierarchy, but also unleashed some additional forces that kept the pressure for democratization growing. The more recent arrival of hyperlinks and the Web have only strengthened and accelerated these forces, pushing and pulling transparency relentlessly into the nooks and crannies of most organizations.
“Knowledge is power” or so the saying goes. It is undeniable that today there are forces pushing for the decentralization and distribution of power. Peter Drucker noted in the 1999 article, “Beyond the Information Revolution” that in an increasingly knowledge-based economy “knowledge workers now own the means of production” and that inexorably this would lead to them wanting to share in the power and rewards that go along with productive economic activity.
Since the appearance of the Web in the lives of hundreds of millions in the more affluent countries on this planet, it has been stated, observed and refuted that the capabilities of an interconnected digital infrastructure of hyperlinks and XML support an ongoing flow of information that tends towards the democratization of activities and institutions. It is enabling peoples’ voices, and doing so through easy push-button publishing and the equally easy-to-use hyperlinks and copy-and-paste work habits.
Traci: Has this view then led you to coin the term “wirearchy?” Can you tell us more about what that means?
Jon: I have for several years now suggested that these capabilities and dynamics are creating an emerging organizing principle I call wirearchy — a dynamic flow of power and authority based on trust, knowledge, credibility and a focus on results enabled by interconnected people and technology.
Traci: How do you think wirearchy relates directly to organizations and their changing structure?
Jon: One of the areas where this issue is gathering impact is with respect to the structure, processes and governance of organizations, those workplaces where adults spend most of their time and much of their creative energy and life purpose.
Enterprise 2.0 (the use of social software for productivity and collaboration inside the organizational firewall, a term coined by Andrew McAfee of the Harvard Business School) is just around the corner, and implies coming to terms with the emerging force and impact of wirearchy.
How does today’s new set of conditions — hyperlinks, XML, integrated enterprise systems, social software, dynamic employee churn and just-in-time talent and so on — come into play? Increasingly, employees seek meaning and/or satisfaction in their work and want to be able to connect their values and aspirations to what they do. Customers want authentic and honest responses to their needs and the purchases they make with their money. Both sets of voices will be heard.
People connect, talk and link. They talk and link about what they buy and about their work — why, what for, how they think it should be, how things could be better. These are all democratizing forces — key elements of engagement organizational leaders can use as levers to enhancing and sustaining performance in service to vision and mission.
Traci: What do you see then as the relationship between wirearchy and democracy in the workplace?
Jon: It is irrefutable, I believe, that the spread of the wired workplace has brought significantly greater degrees of customer and employee voice into the process of leading and governing organizations. To respond effectively to the complex conditions of wirearchy, organizations today will do well to adopt the core principles of democracy in their everyday operating governance.
This means listening more and harder to the ongoing conversations and exchanges about what matters and what does not matter coming from customers and employers. It also means learning to use the tools, services and behaviors of an interconnected wired workplace to maintain a consistent focus on principled and responsive delivery and performance.
Traci: Thanks, Jon for sharing your thoughts!
Conferences
Enterprise 2.0 Summit 2013
Wirearchy
- Stan Davis — Future Perfect, 1987.
- Organizations exist to get things done.
- Social Business: Is it marketing driven or capabilities driven?
- Biggest challenge is culture: a shared set of beliefs.
- Networks make organizational culture and politics explicit: we want to see the leaders walk their talk.
- The change is really quick. There is a need for new paradigms, need for new innovations.
- The world is uncertain. The environment is turbulent, and we really need to adapt, following key principles.
- Nowadays, organizations need to be more responsive.
- Hamel: the work will be distributed out to the periphery.
- Mix management: Retool management for an open world (productivity may not be the only thing; power is not due to authority)
- Humanize the language of business (from pyramid to interconnected interwoven interactive dynamic networks)
- Rebuild management’s philosophical foundations (work must be less as static tasks, more dynamic flows)
- Participative work design: Those who do the work are the most effective to design it.
- Mass customization of work: on a large scale, necessary response to on-going change
- The most important competency is to know yourself well.
Social Now 2019
Wirearchy: Strengthen Your Organization by Creating Stronger Connections — Video
KMWorld
- 2018 Knowledge Café: Mentoring Morning
- 2014 W20: From Traditional Hierarchy to Networked ‘Wirearchy’
- 2010
- B304: Thriving in Hyperlinked & Networked Workspaces
- Enterprise 2.0 & Wirearchy: Managing Wired Workspaces
- A106: Making KM Stick & the Tools to Do So
- B105: Changing/Resetting the Enterprise With PKM & Social Software Tools
- 2008 C202: The Emerging Enterprise 2.0 Workplace: Cultural Markers, Competencies, & Core Change Challenges
- 2007 A302: Effective Organizing in a Wired Environment — Slides
- 2005 C106: Social Networks & KM: The Future
Presentations
SlideShare
Podcasts
- The Value Exchange Episode 16: Jon Husband — Wirearchy, the future of work now, networks and the rise of the need to be seen
- From Scratch #14 Wirearchy — Nigel Paine
- Thriving in the wirearchy: Networks Trailblazers Jon Husband and Harold Jarche with Céline Schillinger
- Dave Snowden Podcast: The Impact of Web 2.0 on Knowledge Work and Knowledge Management
- Web 2.0 Podcast by Dave Snowden
- Recording
- Dave Snowden interviewed by Jon Husband by Jack Vinson
Videos
- Thriving in the Wirearchy: Network Trailblazers Jon Husband & Harold Jarche — Céline Schillinger
Books
- Making Knowledge Work — the arrival of Web 2.0 with Jim Bair, Ark Group, 2007 (a little-read early attempt to synthesize old-school knowledge management philosophy and methods with the early dynamics and patterns emerging from peoples’ interactions in / on the participative Web)
- La Société Émergente du XXIe Siècle (The Emergent Society of the 21st Century) — Piktos, 2010 (tagging along on the coattails of Michel Cartier, the Quebecois version of Marshall McLuhan meets Alvin Toffler)
- Changing the World of Work. One Human at a Time. by Change Agents Worldwide
