Library clips

NOTE: I’m not a futurist or organisational anthropologist, but it seems that my interest in knowledge and networks has led me into thinking about such matters as fundamental as the future of organisational structure.

A while ago I posted on how organisations can become more agile. People can connect horizontally…the silos blinders can be removed. What this means is talent is revealed and self-organisation (which we already do regardless) can really shine. Work groups can form that attract the right people in a decentralised way, and then disbanden. My past post I’m refering to is called, We are more than our job title describes, so let’s get social!…get into it, as this is a big aspect of the state of enterprise 2.0 that we will eventually reach.

As I mentioned in a few previous posts, it’s fine that we can use bottom-up tools to connect the enterprise in a network fashion, but this has to be accepted from top-down.

Jack Vinson says it pithy in a response to my post:

“…business doesn’t reward collaboration. It rewards individual action.”

And then Bertrand Duperrin equally said it simply and effective in another way in a tweet to me:

“Tell me how you’re measured & I’ll tell you how you work”

My posts in question I’m talking about are:

I don’t want to share, that’s counter to meeting my objectives…and reward!!

Sensemaking KM and CoPs (Just-in-time vs Just-in-case), engaging and embedded KM, and a competitive vs collaborative culture

This seems to be the meme of late, as I just read Venessa Miemis say:

“It’s becoming more accepted that collaboration, not competition, is a more effective avenue towards producing emergent, innovative results. Now that millions of people participate in online social networks, it seems high time to develop a system of matching people’s skill sets with common values and goals in order to bring about positive change.

Social networks have the advantage of being able to connect globally distributed individuals, who can then operate with flexibility within a bottom-up, non-hierarchical framework. But, just having access to each other is not always enough to make things serendipitously happen.”

She echos this in another post (which I just couldn’t help putting in bold):

“It’s becoming clear that to constrict a person’s capabilities into rigid, set roles that limit creativity and innovation just doesn’t make sense. Diving talent into silos is an outdated paradigm. Rather, we should be encouraging the facilitation of diverse groups of people working together on common problems.”

Here’s a link to that quote if you want to point someone directly to it, as I think it encapsulates enterprise 2.0 without having to talk about social computing.

And to re-quote from an earlier post, Margaret Schweer says:

“Many of us are transitioning away from job to roles based on work for some portion of our organization. This is an important paradigm shift for leaders – ownership for talent is shared. Talent needs to be flexibly deployed against the areas of highest value for the organization.”

Venessa says above that access is not enough, and when I re-read Bertrand’s post he had something else to say which is an obstacle:

“Unlike the general public web, businesses don’t know how not to pass a local cost along to the the whole organization since everyone has to justify the way the allowed funds are used. In brief, businesses don’t understand free across its departments. Rather, their internal policies don’t make that possible.”

This got me to reflect on my own organisation

We do not yet have a social network, but we have CoPs as a start which is good, because already we see people discovering others, connecting and collaborating…this is a distributed way to optimise talent and work.

Even without CoPs of course people are networked, but it’s harder…usually management are good at this as they know more people than the regular worker.

Anyway my point is that I agree with the points Bertrand and Venessa allude to in that; access, networking and connecting is only the first step.

At my work, our culture is OK with workers being borrowed by others to work in tasks where their talent is needed.

But we reach two obstacles.

I can only stretch so much of my time

I have my regular job, but then I’m in a handful of extra activities like voluntary work groups. And most of these are from my own doing as I’ve shown an interest and want to have some input (I really like how our organisation is open to this).

But like I said I don’t have enough hours in the day, and in the end I’m measured on my main job by the manager I work for. I don’t get measured on these other activities that I work on…in school you would get extra points for participating in extra activities

…anyway

The other thing is that I can’t charge my time to these extra activities, my boss is paying for my time spent elsewhere…but since this is our cultural attitude, in that it’s for the greater good, my boss is OK with it.

OK, so I’m not getting kudo’s for extra work, or it’s not part of performance measurement, which doesn’t personally worry me too much because I have passion for these work groups…but it would be good if it was measured, as it is work tasks, in contrast to sharing and learning in CoPs.

NOTE: CoPs are about sense-making and being better at your tasks, but they are not the task itself, which is more an attribute of a team (but I do understand that the world is not so black and white).

And as I said, I don’t have enough time to devote to these work groups.

Even if I could charge my time to these work groups and had to contribute to deliverables I still wouldn’t have time…actually this would make me very stressed.

So the question is…

How can I roam around the enterprise as a free agent, like a freelancer, getting my own tasks?

NOTE: a by product is that I become multi-skilled, exposed to diverse sides of the business, work with different people and operations.

I compare this to a cinematographer who gets their own gigs, jumping from one film to the next.

Only thing is I would still want security from the organisation, in that they will slot me somewhere if I don’t network well enough…or when there are down times they will find me something to do.

The enterprise would still have managers setting tasks, but the workers would gravitate to these tasks, or be invited…basically you have to find your own projects to work on.

Would this be hard? In a networked enterprise jobs would come to you, via your interest feeds, and those who you are connected to…and people who know about you would give you leads and offers.

So even though managers are setting tasks, they are not so much managing you, but more responsible for the coordination of the project.

You manage yourself, it’s in your own interest to do a good job otherwise people won’t want you on other tasks. This point kind of reminds me of the self regulated nature of eBay. Since buyers rate sellers, it’s in the sellers interest to be honest, which keeps eBay from falling over in a distributed way.

But an enterprise would not only rely on workers managing themselves as operational reliability…coupled with this managers would be 50% managing and 50% leading. Managers need to spend more time on mentoring human performance, bringing out the best in people, so workers can better manage themselves.

This kind of means you don’t have a boss? You only work for the manager of the task you are on, and when you disbanden your on your own again, looking for another task which will be managed by someone else.

I said there were two obstacles, the other one is…

Backing money vs level of effort

As I mentioned earlier it’s great my work has an open culture where people’s time can be lent out by a manager to work on extra activities.

When I say extra activities, I mean cross-functional work groups, or even improvement tasks within the one team.

Some examples of these are:

- I’m not on the Intranet team, but there is an Intranet redesign project that I’m happy and glad to participate in
- Within my own team I’m part of a focus group on “internal communication”.
etc…

So what’s the problem?

Because these work groups don’t have deliverables or timelines, they wane.

But even if they did have deliverables, and I could charge my time, us borrowed participants would not be able to spread our time, as we have our main jobs.

Again the solution to this seems to be a freelanced networked type of organisation I was pondering earlier…but what is the seriousness or repercussions of this…come on organisational theorists, cultural critics, futurists…let me know what you think!!

I don’t think this aspect of enterprise 2.0 is talked about enough, where do we see a networked enterprise heading to…

From what I remember in complexity theory, what manifests from the interactions can change the system itself, the very system that has been the platform for these interactions to happen.

So when we talk about enterprise 2.0 it’s been about how we do work and sensemake, and also transparency, crowdsourcing before making a decision…and we have tools and an approach to do this. This is where we are at now, but what’s the inevitable transformative result of this?

Will it be a blended enterprise of hierarchy and networks where talent roams around slotting into tasks?

I digressed a little, back to it…

I said if we could charge our time to the work group, but this isn’t so at the moment…why?

Because most of these special work groups are nice to have ideas, actually they have gone beyond ideas, they actually get started, but fizzle.

At our work if you can get sponsorship, and a level of effort from borrowed resources, which I have explained is the culture at my work, then we see these work groups take off.

But they get to a stage where they manifest into something but then need proper backing to keep going…ie they need funds.

It’s good in a way as we don’t need to show ROI, as it’s based on level of effort, but we do reach a wall.

It’s a real good approach, that enables us to experiment and fill needs, allowing self organising groups to form to serve the greater effectiveness of the organisation. So the ability to allow for this emergence is great, it’s an aspect of an agile organisation, but…once we can prove this momentum is worthwhile, then we need the funding for these work groups…and that’s the wall that causes them to wane over the long term.

If these work groups, or as Dave Snowden calls the “crews” were offered funding for their work, where would you find the people who have time…do you hire more people, that you only need for a short time…or does the organisation fully transform into a new enterprise where we move from CoPs and matrix organisations to social network stimulation and crews.

For more information on crews check out these posts

The Empire’s shadow

Are you on the Bully watch?

Aggregative or emergent identity? Rethinking Communities

Please don’t get workgroups and communities of practice confused. Workgroups are more like teams where deliverables need to be achieved.

Bertrand has more:

“Communities are places where practices, knowledge, informaiton are exchanged and has not to be confused with workgroups which are operational entities…Groups know that they have to do, to deliver, and that’s why they exist. Groups exist because they have operational purposes. Communities exchange to learn, groups exchange to execute (even if there a learning dimension in the background routine). The group is a manager’s reponsability, the manager being responsible for objective’s achievement. Communties can be handled by external people who is an expert, a skilled communicator while groups only react to hierarchical hierarchy (even if expertise matters in the background).”

At the end of my last post I mentioned that KM (even Talent Management) or social computing need a top-down approach, shift, or message when it comes to collaboration, sharing, and organisational effectiveness…or better put a balanced approach.

Why?

Sure you will get lots of success in sense-making and sharing by facilitating the use of grassroots tools that are bottom-up just like email (but better than email).

BUT, is the use of new tools enough to catapult into a new way of working…it will take a long time to hit that tipping point.

Even if we do all the right things like facilitate, understand human behaviour, create and nurture conditions for participation, have an enterprise-wide concept…I don’t think it’s enough.

We need a complementary top-down shift to a new culture of working, as I said in my last post, a move from a competitive to collaborative organisation.

NOTE: I’m referring to within the walls of an organisation. I’m yet to think about this concept industry-wide ie. companies collaborating, rather than competing…a new type of capitalism I guess…got many links on the natural enterprise, but no time to read them

What do I mean by top-down?

I mean how are we measured and rewarded for what we do…

If I’m rewarded just for my achieving my personal output, I don’t have an incentive to share as what I know gives me the edge, it’s not about the organisation, it’s all about me.

Workers are instilled to be efficient robots, which leads to…I don’t have time to help you out, or an interest, as that is less time that I spend on achieving my objectives, and helping you out doesn’t get me a reward anyway; my objectives are important as that’s what gets me a reward.

We are told to share, but how can we when the senior management strategy doesn’t walk the walk…yes they talk that it’s good to share, but then strategy goes against that ideal.

Can you believe a lot of organisations run this way…this is a strategy to amass an aggregate of personal efficiency ie an incentive to stack a pile of efficient people, at the expense of an effective organisation where the people share what they know with each other so the organisation can adapt, be resilient, innovate, etc…

Why would an organisation do this to itself?

ie. concentrate on cost reduction and efficiency alone by neglecting the big picture, and instead just focus on each worker by rewarding good outcomes. How are you gonna adapt to changes in the industry if you don’t have a connected organisation…sure, you can have lots of intelligent people, but if they are not connected, you will hear lots of “why didn’t we know about you, I didn’t know you were an expert in that, we could of used you to help with this issue”

Workers self organise their behaviour to sometimes ignore this strategy, as it’s being connected that helps you out. You don’t know everything, if you did, what’s the use of an organisation. We get by at work by give and take, you interrupt me today, I’ll interrupt you tomorrow…I’ll forgo some of my time to help you out, as I trust that this will be reciprocated. An organisation is a web of relationships, we all need contacts, to help us achieve our targets.

So yes it’s natural to share, as it’s a need, actually it’s survival…but this needs to be seriously recognised and harnessed as a strategy, and a smart strategy where it cooperates and is cohesive with other strategies. ie you can’t have a strategy about sharing is important, if you have another strategy that essentially says hoarding is important (this conflicting strategy I’m referring to is the essence of this post ie the strategy of what you know gets you ahead of others, it gives you the edge so sharing would be the wrong thing to do…and my objectives get me rewards, so why would I spend time with you).

Anyway, looking back at an old post of Rex Lee’s outstanding blog, I found something very relevant to this meme.

It’s on the negative impact that “well defined measurable objectives and tying them directly to compensation” has on knowledge sharing, and ultimately organisational effectiveness.

“It seems logical that if you do a good job, and it’s linked to your objectives then you should be compensated for this.

The difficulty lies in the individual nature. The first concern is around the competitive aspects of this kind of model. If your knowledge or expertise could really assist someone else but helping them had no relation to your objectives, would you help them? What if we took it one step further. What if your helping of someone else actually hurt your ability to meet your objectives? Perhaps it would take you away from completing your objectives or actually go counter to your objectives? What if the more important thing for the company was helping that other person?

Often a cascading objectives model (one in which, you get your objectives from your boss, and she gets them from her boss, etc..), leads to solio’d thinking. Opportunities that arise that cut across silo’s (and requiring collaboration) are simply never seen. It’s not that people want to be malicious, they simply don’t see the opportunity.

Is it possible to structure objectives, that allow for collaboration that still are well defined, measurable and linked to compensation? The answer depends in what “well defined” means. In theory, an objective about collaborating could resolve this. It’s worked for other organizations. If you go this route though, keep in mind the implications it has on organizational structure as well. Proceed with caution, you’re changing institutional models that may be as old as the organization itself.”

In the next post I want to look at the ROI of spending time helping others.

[ADDED 16/11/09 : Bertrand Duperrin]

“Unlike the general public web, businesses don’t know how not to pass a local cost along to the the whole organization since everyone has to justify the way the allowed funds are used. In brief, businesses don’t understand free across its departments. Rather, their internal policies don’t make that possible.”

[ADDED 16/11/09 : Jack Vinson]

“the business doesn’t reward collaboration. It rewards individual action.”

Thought I’d share a few slides from a presentation I’m giving at work on Communities of Practice (CoP) from a knowledge management perspective.

My aim was to contrast traditional KM of conscripting best practices, with a new approach based on sensemaking pkm and networks…more appropriate tools, design for emergence and ambient awareness, and amplifying how we get things done offline…basically a more cognitive science approach over management science.

A great deal of my visual concept is based on the work of Dave Snowden, who looks at KM from a more anthropological, human behaviour perspective…a lot of his work deals with the notion of “context”, and I guess this is coupled with “intrinsic” motivation or engagement.

I also borrowed from a model by Shell on the concept of a Global Network (CoP), shown to me by Mark Bennett from Learning Collaboration.

Basically, from another perspective, I’m trying to do in 2 slides what T Systems did in 26 out of the 51 slides of their brilliant slidedeck, The revolution of knowledge part1

KM as blood bank

I also really like Mark Bennett’s symbolic way of thinking about it like a blood bank (taking and giving blood)

• Sense-making and asking questions (taking blood)
• Blogging/Sharing/Peer Assist and reflective KM like AAR, Lessons (giving blood)

Sense-making KM and CoPs - Just-in-time vs Just-in-case

The following slides are a contrast to supply-side KM, or just-in-case KM.

Also note this is KM from a Community of Practice perspective, as that’s what’s relevant to my day job. I guess one day I can alter them to include other KM activities and a more network perspective.

Sensekmaking KM and CoPs - Just-in-time vs Just-in-case

Different ways of engaging knowledge

Related to this sense-making concept of people and context in the just-in-time KM model is Nancy Dixon’s model on the different types of knowledge needs or interactions, in relation to: the level of cognitive diversity required, the degree of relationship (tie/trust) with others to source that information, facilitation/support, and the social computing tools that can create conditions for sense-making.

Embedded KM

Another related post is on Embedded KM by Andrew Gent.

I think knowledge sharing can be done as it happens (blogs, wikis, etc..) but also as a reflection (anecdote circles, AAR, etc..), and it’s the latter that Andrew is thinking about…how best to share lessons and good practices from one project to the next. Since the project is over, people don’t put great emphasis or care on reviewing it, as they are busy moving on to the next project, so Andrew talks about embedding this so it doesn’t seem a chore.

But he also makes a very relevant point to the heart of KM and motivation. When capturing information it has to become usable, and this takes effort on the contributor to make it findable, otherwise it’s up to the user to find the content and make it relevant to them. To make it usable and relevant takes too much effort for return, it has low intrinsic motivation for the contributors.

The challenge is a sweetspot where it’s usable enough, and contributing is simple enough…and what do you know, this works best as conversation, as we get sharing and context. And Andrew has an embedded way to trigger this reflective conversation as a part of an organisational process.

Andrew says:

“Rather than trying to make all project knowledge available to anyone, what if we simply try to expand the current knowledge base incrementally over time? Rather than collecting the review documents, why not include at least one reviewer from an unrelated project to each review? This could be an architect, implementer, or project manager as long as that person can provide an objective, outside view of the project progress.”

“…the outside reviewer helps to keep the project team “honest”. It is easy for internal reviews to become formulaic rubber stamp events if those involved are all working on the project.They do not have enough distance to see hidden pitfalls and will resist calling foul on people they have to work with on a daily basis.”

“…including outsiders gives at least one person a much more indepth and personal knowledge than could ever be gained by reading a set of historical documents with no one to explain them. Another value from a KM perspective is the opportunity the reviewer and the project team have to exchange knowledge, hints, and tips on the fly and in context of the discussion.”

“…the program then becomes essentially self-managing from a KM perspective. The project management teams are responsible for ensuring outside reviewers are included and with each review, little by little, knowledge is shared across the organization.”

Competitive vs Collaborative culture

The micro intentions or local behaviour involved in the the Just-in-time vs Just-in-case concept actually emerge a macro picture…and that’s a change in the internal dynamics of an organisation from a competitive to collaborative organisation…perhaps from teams to crews.

Why?

We create the conditions for engagement, transparency, agility, trust and awareness…where knowledge sharing becomes a magical by-product….not creating a knowledge sharing culture, rather creating conditions for one to emerge.

I know it’s about the people, not the tools, but it’s important to understand the design thinking involved…these new tools are designed for the people, where we can now achieve the original aims of KM. The use of these tools can be a catalyst for change. For more on this see my posts, Has KM died, and resurrected as social computing?, Knowledge and its facilitators.

You could say social computing is a bottom-up strategy (and is has total effect when enterprise-wide), but I think we can also have a top-down strategy, because no matter how enabled workers can be to express and converse in the open, they will be hesitant, feel unsafe, uncomfortable and not confident if this new type of enterprise interaction is not promoted or pushed from the top.

NOTE: social computing is not just bottom-up, managers can seed crowdsourcing/opinion/reviews

A while back I posted, Is knowledge sharing all about your pay cheque? (which was amplified by Stewart Mader).

In this post I contrasted a picture where people are influenced to share or hoard depending on how their performance is viewed from senior management.
If you are appraised on your personal output, then you will hoard and not collaborate as much as you have an incentive to own all the output, forgoing a more quality or optimum deliverable, than if you were to leverage the talent of the organisation.
On the other hand if you are appraised on a group output (how much you collaborate, your effectiveness in networking with the optimum people for your tasks) then this will instill a less competitive culture due to more knowledge sharing and collaboration. This is a cleverly designed strategy as the the workers themselves will be pushing quality from others as they all hold each other accountable…a culture of interdependency.

I really like how Stewart put it:

“People are used to thinking of their workday activities as indirectly affecting the bottom-line because the competition model essentially keeps the average employee in the dark about how things really work, or how healthy the organization is. The sharing model makes it much clearer, so the average employee can see the impact of her or his work.”

Betrand Duperrin also parallels these thoughts:

“They would be more efficient if they helped each other? But in order to get a good evaluation and the related rewards and bonuses they have, in the best case, to ignore each other, in the worse case to play the one against another.”

Learned behaviour

Beyond performance appraisals, what about a top-down message about the importance of connection and collaboration, just like the way organisations drill the message of quality and safety.

When I attended Mark Bennett’s masterclass on CoPs, he mentioned that safety is a learned behaviour (people are irrational and do unsafe things like drink driving, etc), and quality is a learned behaviour (people take shortcuts and ignore procedures and processes like emailing a document to a client for review, rather than sending through a formal transmittal via document control), and so to, collaboration can be a learned behaviour.

But I don’t think the result of this would be as effective in a fundamental way.

• If you are unsafe, you risk getting sued, bad accidents cause a bad reputation with clients, contractors and workers.
• If you are of low quality, you cut corners for short term gain, long term loss, and perhaps risk litigation.
• If you have low collaboration, you risk a less optimum job, low awareness and transparency and communication leads to low cooperation and cohesiveness, and you are less agile to adapt to change.

All three have bad consequences if ignored

• The first two is a risk in reputation, but also a benchmark risk, and more importantly the consequences are very meaty-litigation, death.
• The last one also is a risk in reputation (losing or not winning deals because of bad information flow does effect reputation/attractiveness), the industry benchmark is still a young thing in relation to collaboration, BUT unlike the others the consequences are not as meaty, no-one dies, we don’t get sued.

So I think because the consequences of not being collaborative don’t show explicitly like someone being hurt, and losing face (as this is seen as a quality process issue rather than collaboration/information flow), then we tend to be more reactive, or it takes a back seat in our attention. You still get work done not being collaborative (you do suffer later in frustration as you can’t find stuff or you aren’t aware of something you should be aware of), it’s just all these micro interactions, lead to a big picture of not being agile, and attractive to a client…if they can’t get their s*!t together, how are they gonna service us.

Related
I don’t want to share, that’s counter to meeting my objectives…and reward!!

Not long ago I posted about how our Communities of Practice (CoP) are hitting a sweetspot…bottom-up and grass roots tools that provide more of a sense of place and better coordination over email, and are more enabling than the Intranet.

Great cross-functional CoPs are emerging like Bulk Materials Handling, Sustainable Development, Software Architecture and Approaches, 3D Visualisation and Animation, Bauxite and Alumina, etc..

But there is something else that’s emerging that we didn’t quite expect.

And we know why?

It’s because our CoPs are just online spaces with a bunch of tools (blogs, forums, wikis, docs, and a homepage).

This package doesn’t make them a CoP, it’s just what we called them, as that’s what the vendor calls them…nothing wrong with this…

Basically, these online tools don’t define the group or how it operates…their just tools. This also hooks into how the Socialtext staff differentiate them from past tools (transactional vs Interactive)

Anyway…

So the unexpected emergence is that CoPs are being used for lots of different things that are cutting into products we already use…why again…because people want to be empowered and engaged which distributed power (less control) enables.

What has emerged?

Let’s start with the answer and it’s effect: blogs, forums, wikis need to be features of existing products, and when they are how’s that gonna effect what has currently happened.

We don’t just have cross-functional CoPs ie. people distributed in the organisation in different teams, projects, business units, and levels of authority who come together in a space to support and learn about a common topic…which makes for a more agile organisation…it’s looking in your own backyard and connecting the talent dots.

Here are the main online groups that have surfaced.

Ad-hoc tasks

I’ve blogged about this before.

People want to do temporary tasks in an online space rather than hidden in email.

Our CoPs are more portal like with permissions and the rest, they are not one click set-up, they need a bit of upfront design.
- your CoP or mine for this task, but your not a member of my CoP…these task spaces end up buried in a CoP somewhere, they have no homepage of their own, the hosting CoP members may not like that their CoP has a unrelated parasite group

They are not the best spaces or timely and simple enough for an ad-hoc task.

For this we would need something like the new OpenText Social Media product, or Jive SBS (both of these also include a social network).

Or perhaps something more on-the-fly like Activities on Lotus Connections, or a future version of Google Wave…see more.

And Traction seems like the most flexible product around, I hear BlueKiwi is in this space as well…see more.

Initatives/Pilots/Crowdsourcing/Events

We are finding these a sweetspot, just like cross-functional CoPs.

We are starting a review of our project lifecycle process, which is to be coordinated in the CoP, basically where the organisation comes together in a communal space.

Support

I’ve blogged about this before.

It’s one thing to have a CoP to troubleshoot within a team, but it’s another thing when internal customers start asking questions for support through a CoP.

Personally I think it’s great, as people have an open place to search for past answers or even offer answers, and if you subscribe you can learn along the way.

BUT, this is cutting into the organisations official Support database. We still need this official and sophisticated tool for support management, but CoPs as a support tool are definitely cutting into their lunch.

Teams/Business Units/Office unit

These groups have a section in our corporate Document Management System (DMS)…it’s basically a set of folders.

Why are they using CoPs?

Because in the process of creating documents we have conversations about review.
Because we like to discuss issues.
Because we like to broadcast news.
Because we like to share experiences.
And email just doesn’t cut it.
And the DMS just doesn’t have these conversational tools, or a homepage that represents the group (well, they do, it’s the Intranet, but see the next point)

Intranet

I’ve blogged about this before.

Someone came up to me the other day and said, they love that CoPs are two-way, and that they can update their homepage (that acts like a portal) whenever they like.

As a result of this empowerment they mentioned that their intention is to no longer have any of their pages hosted on the Intranet, but instead, when people click on their business practice link on the Intranet, it will just take them straight to the CoP.

What’s the next natural step, that the global CoP hompage becomes the Intranet itself.

Client Projects

We have a DMS on another server with a different look and feel and processes that suit the context of projects.

But again, just like Teams/Business Units they lack a homepage and conversation tools.

Project teams want a homepage as a jump off point (a bunch of folders doesn’t cut it).

They also want this homepage to display conversations that are currently happening at the moment in email silos, this way the mechanical guys can eaves drop on piping conversations and vice versa, so we are more aware. A blog for project updates and broadcast news gets people on the same page.

Organisations are not (well maybe) Complex Adaptive Systems, so we need to make them open and transparent as much as we can, so people can be ambiently aware, and therefore better cooperate amongst the parts, and ultimately adapt to changes or even be preventative.

I have not created online CoP spaces for these projects as this is the turf of DMS, and having two spaces for the one thing seems odd, but people will self-organise their way around any design.

Let’s sum this up

CoPs are a sweetspot for great emerging unofficial groups, but they are also cutting into the following existing products:

• Email (this was the intention)
• Offical support database
• Corporate DMS
• Project DMS
• Intranet

And it seems we need a product to handle ad-hoc tasks.

Summary, future ponderings, and a suggestion

The original idea for CoPs was cross-functional practices eg Bulk Materials Handling

But as we can see because email, the DMS, and the Intranet are not as enabling, people are using CoPs as an alternative for everything.

In a way this CoP experiment has surfaced all sorts of needs, which is a good low cost experiment (naturally emerging needs analysis).

Who needs a survey, needs analysis, or just implement and hope it works as it was a good top-down idea…when the emergence that has surfaced from the existence from CoPs has given you the answer to all this pondering for free.

What it has surfaced is a need for our DMS and the Intranet to become socialised…and also a way to do ad-hoc tasks.

I’m seeing all this happening, and perhaps need to suggest a taskforce so us people running all these products can converge.

This convergence will be interesting. If these tools do get socialised, what will then happen?

Will teams decide to export their CoPs to their revamped DMS?

And if the Intranet offers the same tools as our CoPs, but with an Intranet backdrop, will some groups then export their CoPs to the revamped Intranet?

So maybe one day we will come full-circle, and CoPs will be just for cross-functional groups…as wiki, blogs, forums will be features of all products.

What’s the food for thought for people wanting to socialise their organisation online!

Perhaps firstly revamp your existing systems with social tools. ie. Work on your in-the-flow before, or perhaps in parallel with your above-the-flow.

• Intranet and business units/teams (Confluence or Thoughfarmer)
• Client Projects (Basecamp)
• Communities and Social network (Jive SBS)
• Ad-hoc tasks (OpenText Social Media)
• And what about micro-blogging (Socialtext signals)

See what’s happening here, a lot of the tools above do the same things eg. Socialtext has a social network and workspaces, OpenText has a social network, etc…

Also our projects need sophisticated document cycle functionality which Basecamp will not do, so in this case our existing DMS needs to be revamped.

I’m thinking perhaps an Intranet tool like Thoughtfarmer or Confluence could handle them all…except for client projects (requires document lifecycle processes)

Here’s a snapshot of different CoPs that are emerging:

More Than Cops

More than CoPs

By examining the CoPs, or better put, “online groups” at my work, they seem to be:

1. Teams/BU (execute work)
- which shouldn’t be called a CoP even though it is…who cares in the end, I’m happy people are using the tools

2. Teams/BU (learning/support spaces)
- this type of CoP is usually combined with the CoP above (point 1)

3. Cross-functional (traditional learning CoPs)
- a classic example is our Software Architecture and Approaches CoP where people from various units/teams come together to share, learn, help…and to bring that intelligence back to their tasks
- when we need help at work we often look to Google, Twitter, etc…why not create an environment where we can look to each other within the organisation

4. Internal user support spaces (customer service CoP)
- I run a Facilitators CoP where I communicate and troubleshoot with people that run their own CoPs
- These types of CoPs can be at the general user level, or for the support people themselves

5. Teams communicating to the business (customer CoP)
- using a CoP, rather/complementary to an email newsletter
- sometimes this type of CoP is combined with the CoP above (point 4)

6. Role-based
- people on different projects and teams, but share the same role…eg Project Managers, Project Systems Managers

7. We also have others like: interest groups, crowdsourcing, events, new initiatives, office happenings, specific tasks (although this last one suits a more simple application like ad-hoc groups…ie a bunch of people from different teams/units coming together temporarily to execute a task)

We don’t yet have any Client/Customer-based (support/crowdsource CoP, or a CoP with suppliers)

“…before you leap into reinventing your processes for transformative value, step back. You can’t collaborate with your customers before you learn to collaborate with your employees. In the spectrum of risk taking, its best to deploy from the inside-out.”

Just realised I posted something similar a while back, Internal community types that get you viral exposure.

Looks like I was prophetic when I posted What’s the difference between Intranet 2.0 and a social network with groups.

Why do I say this?

At work we have many active online Communities of Practice (CoPs), some are learning and sharing, and others are customer based information and support CoPs, or even both.

In my post Online Communities of Practice are a sweet spot! I highlighted how CoPs cut into email conversations and Intranet information.

That is, rather than using email for questions, communications, support, we use CoP tools.

Some CoPs also like the fact that the CoP can be responsive and agile compared to the Intranet. Some of our CoPs are going beyond conversations and using the CoP as a portal to profile all the information about the group and services the group offers, as you would do on an Intranet.

What they like about the CoP is that you can update it yourself daily, and you can get feedback and questions from internal customers, as well as communicate to them.

What happened the other day is a CoP facilitator mentioned that the CoP was quickly replacing their need for an Intranet page. They said soon, they wish to not host information on the Intranet, but instead just have a hyperlink for their practice that launches to the CoP.

Whoa…CoPs are cutting into the Intranet…it’s not gonna be pretty if people start ditching the Intranet.

See what’s happening, social tools are becoming a catalyst for change, but it’s not explicit, it’s just a by-product…you are not having a revolution, it’s just you start using the new thing, and the old thing becomes ignored.

What will happen if the Intranet loses control to CoPs…their worst case scenario to authoritativeness and all things official and vetted.

As global CoP facilitator I’m not being a traffic stealer, rather a few of my customers are choosing to do this themselves, and when they ditch the Intranet, people interested in their information will also be visiting the CoP, not the Intranet.

So not only are CoPs enablers for emerging groups that are not official or even mature enough to be on the Intranet, but they are starting to attract existing groups that live on the Intranet as perhaps a new place of residence.

What does this tell us? People want to be agile, they want to be more transparent and connect, they want to be close to real-time, they want to be empowered to sense-make and do it themselves…a distributed organisation…worker engagement.

The Intranet better notice this and do something about it?

If they do, where does that leave CoPs?

If the Intranet becomes a social network with group pages, will our CoPs then be absorbed into the Intranet?

This was my whole point of my past post.

You can have a “social network with groups” standalone internal website (which is promoted on the Intranet), or you can have the same thing designed as the Intranet itself.