Blockchain - When We Are All Responsible

I have to thank Dr. Wayne Visser* for once again inspiring an article. In this case, it was this graphic that he shared and a short post about how this shows the promise of blockchain to potentially change governance structures, organizations and ways of working from centralized to distributed.

It graphically illustrates a model in which we are all be accountable to - and responsible for - each other.

Think about this as “self-policing” actions that are close to you; it becomes easier to see how this can and should work. There are no single "integral" links - scary for traditional managers, I know. But just as a bridge is built with redundant struts, this also means that if one were to fail, through anything from a simple mistake to deliberate malfeasance, there are others to compensate.

Think about the team approach to safety, as an example. If everyone is looking out for the other person, knowing that several others are looking out for them, a safety culture is born. And incentives at the team or group level further reinforce this shared accountability, without turning the culture into one of suspicion or finger pointing.

The same thing can apply to almost any other dimension of environmental, social or governance. And it can transcend organizational structures and boundaries, so that suppliers, customers and those within the community are all engaged. This may be somewhat idealistic, but the promise of blockchain - even as I cannot begin to explain the underlying technology - is that this level of transparency makes it easy for “error checking” and “self correction” in real-time.

Some companies will leverage this for storytelling; others will be able to show purchasers the source and supply chain in order to show and tell a compelling story. But for me, the far greater implications, and importance, rely in facilitating responsible and sustainable business processes.

For example, I have heard of examples where items can be traced back to their source in minutes rather than days or weeks. Think about the implications for a product that is, for the sake of argument, found to be out of specifications and therefore potentially dangerous. This digital “network” of accountability can not only determine the source, but where the products ended up, resulting in removing the questionable items faster while not limiting distribution of those that are good. Faster, more effective and complete and without causing any unnecessary interruptions or distress - or, of course, wasting things that are perfectly good because we cannot be sure.

The "secret sauce" of the technology is the way it fixes and time-stamps blocks of data by consensus and records any changes by adding new blocks in the chain. This promotes transparency and trust.

- Dr. Wayne Visser

"Blockchain is still massively over-hyped (many think it is the solution to everything, which it is not). Yet the potential for disrupting traditional ways of working and organizing is profound. By moving from hierarchical to distributed decision making, it can cut out managerial bottlenecks, and by moving from hierarchical to distributed (and encrypted) information storage, it can make our knowledge more secure. The "secret sauce" of the technology is the way it fixes and time-stamps blocks of data by consensus and records any changes by adding new blocks in the chain. This promotes transparency and trust. Companies like Provenance are already using blockchain to validate sustainable supply chains, linked to supportive micro-finance for producers. In the future, such traceable value chains will become standard practice - and also assist with our move to a circular economy."