Library clips

About 18 months ago I posted on how the way I communicate and am aware of the lives of people I know is much different to my parents-in-law…to me it’s the new normal.

I’m not referring to explicit communication (sure this happens), but I’m referring more to just being aware without necessarily having to directly communicate or push a message to one or multiple people…directly communicating can often happen once you become "aware" of something.

In that post I mentioned that my inlaws swap long Christmas letters with their friends (once a year), so basically at the end of the year in one big gulp they become aware of what a family has been up to.

Sure they could be aware of many points shared in a friends Christmas letter if they had phone contact throughout the year, but you are not going to ring, SMS or email every person on your Christmas list each time something happens in your life…and ringing them to tell them about minor events like "I just landed in Hong Kong" seems ludicrous.

The difference here is that online platforms like my Facebook network operate on a different paradigm, we become ambiently aware of each other. Sure we can have directed conversations like phone calls, SMS and email, and in the Facebook context we can send direct messages, leave comments on updates and photos, but the big shift is that we talk about ourselves or something that has happened to us out loud, we broadcast this to a spot, and whoever subscribes to that spot, ie. our network, will see that in their stream. This is a shift in how we communicate, and an off-line version of doing this would make you seem a bit crazy, but in the online realm it works.

In fact, we are so ambiently aware of our friends lives via Facebook that when we meet up offline, we don’t have much to say to each other in the way of "how you been?"…this kind of becomes a non-question.

The other day I was on the phone to my mum and she told me my cousin landed in London. And I said I know. And she said, oh, have you talked to her. And I said no. She said well who told you. And I said she did. She was a bit confused. I then told her she broadcasted this on her Facebook profile, and people in her network like me get to pay attention to these updates, if we choose not to pay attention it just streams by. I said I can also choose to leave a comment on her update, or a gesture that I like it. If my mum were to ask, I wonder how long the plane trip took, I would say well the flight was split in two, earlier on she updated that she landed in Hong Kong. My mum was so amazed that I knew this stuff without having to be personally contacted. And from my cousins point of view, broadcasting it is much more doable than sending an SMS to a hundred people each time she wants to say something, and then one-to-one comments splintering the conversation.

In fact without these new online networks you wouldn’t have this type of awareness, it’s as simple as that…technology and it’s use affects and changes culture.

As you can imagine this happens all the time. My mum telling me on the phone about photos or a family friend having a baby. And I already know all this by being ambiently aware, unlike my mum I know this without having to have one-on-one contact (direct communication), or waiting to hear it from someone else.

I told her I even know what others say about my cousins update, even from people I don’t know…all without having to be in a tele-conference or email chain conversation. I told her when someone leaves a comment on an update it will appear in my stream that this happened. I told even when my cousin adds a new friend to her network I will also be updated about this, in this case my cousin doesn’t even need to broadcast this, she wouldn’t have any motivation to do this anyway, but instead the system automatically posts this update. Further to this I can leave comments on this update ie. we can have a chat around the fact my cousin has added a new friend.

I mentioned that whenever someone in my network uploads a new photo to the system they appear in my stream and float on by, but if I’m in one of the photos I am more explicitly notified of this.

Anyway, my point is why do I have close to total awareness of people in my personal life that requires low effort, but yet in the workplace I don’t have this ambient awareness!

In my personal life the “how you been?”, translates to what we hear in work meetings or weekly tele-cons eg “let’s go round the world, starting with Perth, John update us on what you have been up to in the past week”

In fact it may be more crucial to have micro-blogging/activity stream networks in the workplace as we share and work on the same/similar/related goals and tasks within our teams, across teams, workgroups, and enterprise wide…so the more we are aware, the more we can be on the same page, and have better coordination, cooperation and collaboration…surface opportunities (emergence), have the best people on the right tasks, and generally have the ability to be more responsive and adaptive.

This is impossible to do with email, phone, face-to-face…these all have their place, but now we can really do something new, or enhance what we do or what we have always wanted to do, that doesn’t require centralised coordination. Now our classic organisational problems of communication and awareness can for once realistically be addressed. Further to this it cascades into self-organising social productivity, much better than email which is our current self-organising tool.

I said once before we are moving from PC to SC ie. from Personal Computing to Social Computing.

And we are moving conversations from private by default to public by default.

Hopefully this comparison by story in describing this concept is useful in explaining online networking to people in the workplace as an alternative or a pre-cursor to: what it is, the benefits, how it works.

An email was sent to a bunch of leads the other day about the progress of our new document management server.

At the end of the email it said to pass this information on to our teams.

Need to Know - Scattered and Slow - Private by default

The way I see it each lead will send a version of this email to their teams, and then they will all have silo’d conversations.

Then certain leads will want clarification or have a question to ask, but will not include all the other leads on that email.

Then back to their teams again….

Back and forth, back and forth…the same topic being conversed in different groups…the scattered and slow approach.

On some occasions some of the leads will not pass on the message, or maybe the lead didn’t get one of the emails, and maybe the lead will slip passing on your feedback…and if they do you may not be attributed.

Then one day the change comes and people say why wasn’t I communicated about this…this initiative doesn’t even factor in how we work…if they consulted us the change could at least reflect to make the way we work easier and more productive. They don’t have a clue about ground zero. This is the enterprise gap!

Worker: Resist…ignore new process, use my backdoor workaround.

Manager: How come this change is being resisted…email the change management guy we need to "push" this.

Yuck, the word "push"…anyway this shows how a lack of visibility, co-creation, and bottlenecks that managers have the potential to be, lead to ineffectiveness…need a KM Flow Doctor!

Actually this takes me back to my corporate plot post.

Good to Know - Contained and Quick - Public by default

Here’s how I would have done it.

Believe it or not we actually have a Community of Practice (CoP) for this initiative.

I would have written a blog post instead of an email

• Our blogs have an email address, so we can publish a post by emailing the blog
• Since not all these people may subscribe to the blog I would have emailed these people the link to the blog post
• In the email I would mention to them to leave a comment on the blog if they had any queries
• I would also mention in the email for them to subscribe to the blog to get further comments (unfortunately our platform doesn’t have post level subscriptions like a "Watchlist")
• When you are subscribed you get emailed new posts and comments, and can use the email reply button to have comments conversations
• Basically you don’t even have to visit the blog itself to read and interact

Now each of these people can just pass on the link to the people in their teams.

Subscribers and browsers to the blog will also be informed.

And everyone can have ONE conversation in the ONE spot.

Inbox 2.0

Basically email becomes the vehicle for having the conversation, but yet no-one is personally sent an email; instead every email is sent to the blog object (social object), which people subscribe to ("pull" approach).

And at the end the blog object also stores the information.

Naturally we begin to think that the whole idea of the email client needs to be evolved…something like Tweetdeck, but more of an email client look, hello Lotus Notes, the "business inbox". Fuser and others have being doing this on the consumer web for years.

What results from using social tools

1. Transparency (communicating progress in the open…"public" by default)
2. Less distorted message (no interpretations, straight from the source, less gossip/rumors, access to raw facts allows you to re-mix and re-frame content)
3. Workers can offer feedback in discussions they normally would not be a part of (co-creation helps make the initiative more relevant to people who will actually use it…therefore less need for change management)
4. Diverse input (people not involved in either end of the change initiative may come across the conversation and add valuable input)
5. Workers feel engaged that they are included in discussions (happy workplace, build an influence by reputation)
6. Everyone is informed of the "know-why" (rather than just reading a report, they now know of, and can take part in the raw conversations…all the decisions that led to the final product)

This will help solve the fundamental issue that all organisations seem to face…the silo syndrome, communication and awareness breakdown, scattered and slow dialogue.

NOTE: Silos are natural and strong, and we need them. It’s just that each silo is not the enterprise, so to be effective we need to be aware and collaborate across silos…so we bridge silos, not smash them.

A support tool, a new literacy

Social computing (or KM) is not a strategy, it’s a support tool, a sense-making tool, a way of being…just like the phone, email, IM…

We can use these tools to improve sales, improve brand awareness, improve customer service, fix a problem, fix a process, etc…are these strategies/tactics, or simply using tools to achieve (support) your job tasks…difference to the past is that these tools (there use) can have a cultural impact in a deeper way…they challenge the dynamics of relationships, openness, power, routines, habits.

You could say we could use new social tools for everything, that’s why we see HR 2.0, Sales 2.0, Marketing 2.0, etc…that’s why existing products are starting to get features like blogs, social networks. So really it’s a way of being or a literacy, rather than a strategy. But yes, to get buy-in you may go the strategy route; but that’s just to get your foot in the door, and it’s also to help the blank faces when they are given tools that aren’t designed to do a specific thing…and what it takes to get adoption (the difference between transactional and interactional).

Obstacles

Visibility, connectedness (not just a horizontal slice of the org, but a network), and conversations are key.

What’s stopping this at the actioning or "doing" level (in relation to the anecdote I shared at the start of this post):

1. Design (have to visit the blog, rather than quickly shoot an email…but the blog does have it’s own email address, just need to remember to put it in your email contacts, and if you subscribe you can get new posts emailed and replying will publish a comment)

2. Habit and routine (this needs to be facilitated…rinse and repeat)

3. The message may want to be filtered for the masses (in this case the message was quite general)

4. Us and them syndrome (I have worked up my way in the hierarchy to be privy to these types of conversations…part of my status is to pass messages up and down the chain)

Going even more deeper the mass use of these tools could lead to a transformation that companies don’t see appropriate, not ready for, feel as a threat…the list goes on.

Subject Matter Networks

Another way of looking at the sense-making perspective is saying that we are moving from Subject Matter Experts to Subject Matter Networks. In the sense that it’s not about in-house gurus, it’s about people connecting in the network to do their work…much more normal, practical and resilient.

Mark Oehlert on this:

Eric Davidove shares the details:

And I like Simon Bostock’s touch:

Rex Lee talks about removing barriers:

Tune processes of engagement

Just to quickly go off on a small tangent (which relates to my previous post on ad-hoc processes). Rex suggests that the tools are not enough, in that we need to tune processes and attitudes. He gave the example of sales people using a wiki rather than Marketing, as the Sales people were more agile on this type of information. But existing processes are not going to bring fruit to this good idea; why would sales people contribute when hoarding gets them ahead, when it means less time spent selling.

I asked similar questions in my post, I don’t want to share, that’s counter to meeting my objectives…and reward!! (hehehehe, just noticed I quoted Rex in that post)

Rex says:

Resulting in:

Let’s finish off

Simon Bostock gets to the reality of it (just substitute KM for social computing/networks):

[ADDED 10/06/10 - Policy memo’s are not leadership

“Pentagon leadership today craft new strategies and implement them via policy memo. These memos can often be summarized as “All programs must now do X”. To the thousands of program managers out there who read them, they think: “SIGH….Great, add that to the pile”. Once that policy memo is emailed out, what’s the follow-up implementation? Staffs spend months and years interpreting meanings and sorting out implementation strategies while leadership often don’t hear of issues until a few programs fail.

If leadership maintained a blog, they could share their vision and thoughts as part of an ongoing dialogue with the community. The community early on can understand where leadership is going on an issue, long before a policy memo is staffed, approved, and distributed. Feedback can be provided to Pentagon leadership on issues that may arise and lessons learned“]

[ADDED 10/06/10 - How to Break the Tyranny of E-mail]