Library clips

"When an organization doles out bonuses, raises, awards and promotions based on individual contributions, what’s the carrot for social participation?

I, for example, am mainly measured by my individual efforts: how many customers I work with who go on to buy my software; what leadership roles I fulfill inside and outside the organization; what assets I create for others to reuse. This is all right and good, for how else can an individual be measured"

- Gia Lyons

Will sourcing my network for help, reduce the measure of assets I produce, if so I will produce something of less value on my own, at least I get all the credit and a bag of carrots?

This is a generalisation, we are all wired to socially connect, some more than others, (in fact we don’t survive unless we build horizontal relationships and help each other out…think about who helped you iron out an issue on your recent spreadsheet, or who helped you find a person or locate information last week) but this natural behaviour is impeded by organisational design constraints (ie. time should ideally be spent on our own tasks).

Gia explains what prompted her post. She was contemplating whether to go the social route on a task or to keep it to herself, as she isn’t measured on how well she uses her network, she says:

"…there is a direct correlation between the number of assets I create in a quarter, and my quarterly bonus…"

This is not about engagament and what’s in it for me.

And it’s not about incentives to participate; what this is about is recognising people for how well they work based on utilising their network (MIT study found that in one organization the employees with the most extensive personal digital networks were 7% more productive than their colleagues).

And something more deeper than ratings, which I covered in my post, The ROI of time spent helping others, and performance reviews

Will how well I use my network to tap into talent to produce that report be recognised, compared to just using my team resources?

Gia explains:

"What’s missing is a measurement of how well I use my network…how do we measure a person’s prowess at making their individual contributions better because they knew who knew what, and had a relationship with them such that they could tap their expertise…whether directly or through their social contributions, at a moment’s notice?"

Now we are talking about being recognised and measured for how well we use our network to deliver our requirements.

Coupled with this is the time spent building your network, and building and maintaining relationships. For more see my post, People who invest in creating a relationship with you are rewarded with your experienced POV

Basically you need time to spend using social tools to get to know people so you can use them properly.

Here’s how Gia puts it:

"To network, one must be social, must participate in online communities as well as offline, must spend time getting to know others and letting others know them.

Aha. Being social requires a stiff price: spending our most precious commodity, Time.

So really, we are asking people to spend precious time to do something for which they are not measured."

And her conclusion:

"Fix this, and you will have removed a major obstacle to the inside-the-firewall business adoption of social networking and productivity behavior."

It’s a fact that we utilise our networks in an offline way to get our work done. Now we can also do this online. 

But does this mean we now need a way to measure this just because we can see it? Or have we always wanted to recognise people for how well their network works for them, only we had no way to do it?

Or is the reason a tactic ie. a way to increase adoption ie. the more we recognise contributions, the more people participate?

I think it’s all of these, and also a way to encourage cross-silo awareness and collaboration. 

Look at the reverse of this. We take the time from our tasks to help others on their tasks, as this is reciprocated or perhaps this is the organisational culture. Our bosses understand that even though they pay us and give us time to deliver our tasks, that sometimes they are actually paying us to help out others…as long as it’s not detrimental to our own tasks, or our health.

Given this do we need to be measured, not just as Gia puts forth on how well we source and utilise our network to deliver our work, but also how frequent and valuable our gifts to others are.

I always use the quote by Bertrand Duperrin:

"…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…businesses don’t understand free across its departments."

Which is similar to Prems notion of Social collaboration:

"Where people collaborate outside of the contractual obligations? Which means outside of the role structures & job descriptions in the organization? Typical of a matrix organization, no? What do you think? What are your views on ‘social collaboration’ and ‘role power’ in a collaborative enterprise (a bit more complex than a matrix organization)?"

I think this is a variation of Google 20% time or non-commissioned work or cognitive surplus. In that model you are free to spend some time to work on your passion, whereas I’m still talking about regular tasks set by your unit…but what I’m getting at is that your boss is ok for you to spend a certain portion of time in gifting others as the organisation at large will absorb that cost from your business unit.

eg. 10% of your work week can be spent on tasks that are not your own, or perhaps volunteer on.

Doesn’t this happen anyway…yep, but if it’s part of official organisational design I think it’s a step forward to growing into a collaborative enterprise; and certainly a win for "sharing" in KM circles. It’s also a win for employee enagagement, as workers can be fulfiled gravitating to tasks that interest them. 

Related

Lose the person, you lose their network that made them valuable

What gets measured determines what gets done

Collaboration built into structures and compensation

Recognise silo bridge walkers in performance evaluations

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

Is knowledge hoarding all about your pay cheque?

Networks, Collaboration, Cooperation and silos

Value is often defined at the divisional level

People who invest in creating a relationship with you are rewarded with your experienced POV

Performance review according to embodying core values

Performance reviews are typically based on pre-determined expectations

Value is often defined at the divisional level

Social business - feel the dissonance; a look into the disruption of Taylorism

VIDEO Andrew McAfee: Can you have your hierarchy and network too? 

2min50sec - In reference to not just team work, but to enterprise-wide

"My provocation is why would you not bake into everyone’s job description and into their performance review some level of enterprise helpfulness or enterprise collegiality"

Oscar Berg nails it: 

A paradox for employees today is that they really need to connect with and collaborate more with more people, and strengthen their personal networks if they are to deliver better results and strengthen our their positions. One problem they are facing when doing this is that most current incentive models do not reward employees helping their colleagues, unless there is a direct and measurable return on their contributions. Another problem is that many organizations fail at making the contributions that employees do outside of their own team visible, and thus if fails to recognize them. These problems put people in a kind of deadlock position. During uncertain times, most people will simply do what becomes visible and recognized by those who evaluate them, their managers. They will most likely also most be asked or commended by their managers to do so, because their managers are in a similar position as they will be judged by their managers on the visible contributions from the team they are managing (and so it goes on, all the way to the top). 

I recently posted about the functional design aspects of Google Plus

"There is no G+ private message feature. Instead just post as regular and @mention one person or even a few…make sure you don’t choose any circles or public.

 

Then go to your profile and type the name of the person you @mentioned in ""View profile as"…voila, you will see your post. Now do the same thing for a person that you follow but you did not @mention…voila you will not see your post

 

Therefore there is no explicit private message feature, instead you just post as usual, but @mention the person and don’t choose public or any circles.

 

Note how this is not a wall posting feature; it’s more leaning to a way to do private messaging.

 

From here both the author of the post and the commenter can @mention to invite people into the conversation.

 

Of course you only get notifications if you authored the post, or have already left a comment…or if someone @mentions you

 

NOTE: The weird thing is that when I view my profile as the person who was @mentioned by the person I initially @mentioned, then the post does not display…something is inconsistent here. But when speaking to this person they are indeed seeing the conversation and commenting.

 

Anyway, this functionality is just like email collaboration but only not as messy, and it’s documented…finally a way to do spontaneous private group collaboration (but the group is not defined up front, it instead evolves). This sort of thing happens in email, but it’s so clunky that we complain all the time

 

This functionality is not like private messaging, as PM is only one to one (not even the sender can invite others into the PM)

 

NOTE: The closest G+ has to a wall posting feature is if you @mention someone but also include Extended Circles (which means all people you follow and some people in the mentioned people’s circles will also see it)

 

"I’ve seen email threads that should have been called spools. Someone asks you to do something. It’s going to involve a number of people. You add their names and respond. They individually respond and add others as they see necessary. If this goes like most, soon you have an email snowball that has engulfed anyone close enough to get pulled into it’s gravitation field. Stop the insanity…go social.

 

You get an email asking you to do something that will involve others or multiple steps, use Connections Activities. This can be as simple as dragging the email into your Notes sidebar onto the Activities widget. This will create a social activity. Once done, you can add tasks and items to the activity. You can assign people and add content. Your actions will generate short email alerts to those involved, linking them to the activity, where the conversation takes place. The emails are merely announcements with links. The real conversation is done outside the inbox. Now if anyone joins late, they aren’t relegated to pouring through an email thread to try to discern relevant information. Instead, they find themselves in a social activity that is structured such that the information is easily found and acted upon."

Related

Spontaneous conversations across levels of hierarchy and departments…email or microblogging 

Enterprise microblogging : you no longer have to report back to base 

Enterprise activity stream - email conversations with externals staying threaded in the stream 

On my tumblr blog I posted about email being sucked into an activity stream (dashboard), and the owner being able to make it public, or replying to the email from within the stream, etc… The idea being that email, is just like flickr, youtube, delicious…it’s just yet another source…but it’s different in that people only see it, if you click a button to make it public.

I suggest you read the tumblr post to get up to speed.

Now…

Imagine an enterprise version of friendfeed as your social network/microblogging/activity stream eg. Socialcast

Firstly, let’s get this out of the way…when having a discussion, and you need to write an extended reply, you don’t need to use email as the enterprise activity stream allows more than 140 characters…which is good as this doesn’t split up the conversation.

Now imagine if an enterprise activity stream allowed you to follow your email client (of course no-one else could do this for privacy reasons).

Wow, bye bye email inbox, as the enterprise activity stream is the new inbox.

From within enterprise activity stream you could reply to this email which would send an Outook email, or if the receiver is on enterprise activity stream you could reply with a comment…look at that a conversation thread where each element may have happened on different products.
At any point you can cherry pick one of your emails that you see in your enterprise activity stream and make it public in your profile stream. People following you will now see the Outlook email title and click it to read it.

You could also do this at the time of sending your email from Outlook ie. when you send your email to someone it will also appear in your enterprise activity stream profile.

Same when replying to an Outlook email from the enterprise activity stream ie. when in the enterprise activity stream you send a reply to Outlook and it can also be made public in the activity stream

Hmm, not sure if you could send an Outlook email (not a reply, but a new email) from within the enterprise activity stream…that would be like sending a tweet from Friendfeed…not a reply tweet, but an initial tweet..or a direct message, etc…

Now imagine this…

You are using your enterprise microblogging/activity stream to do a task with co-workers.

If you need to liase with someone in your company who is not on the task, you can still use the enterprise activity stream
eg. in the comment of the task post you could @reply to this person on the edge of the task, and they can comment back.
This way your co-workers know what is happening on your leg of the task ie. you don’t have to tell them (report back to base), or narrate your work…in this instance, there is no such thing as an “update”, as they “observing” you work in the open.

Now this ain’t gonna work if the person on the edge of the task is an external party eg a vendor, supplier, client.

But what if you were in Outlook and sent the supplier an email and also chose for it to post in the enterprise activity stream as well….or perhaps you are in the enterprise activity stream and choose to create an email which becomes a post as well (or create an email which becomes a comment within a post)…this is sending the Outlook email from within the microblogging app itself so it instantly becomes a post or a comment.

Voila, your co-workers know exactly what stage you are at. They don’t have to ask you how you are going with the supplier, they already know, as you cross-posted the email you sent the supplier as a comment under the task post in the stream…this didn’t have to happen after the fact, this cross-posting can happen at the time you are sending the email (keeping in mind the email can be sent from Outlook or from within the stream).

Now when the supplier replies to your email you will see that in Outlook or your enterprise activity stream, depending where you are at the time…we hope that our head is no longer in Outlook as the enterprise activity stream is the new inbox/dashboard.

If you are in enterprise activity stream at that time, you can click a button to make it (the email reply from the sender) public so it appears as a comment.
If you are in Outlook at the time, you somehow have to also be able to make it send as a comment to your activity stream…I haven’t thought this through technically or how user-centric it is (ie. you don’t have to think). Making an email cross-post to the stream as a post is easy enough, but to cross-post it as a comment within a post means you need to email it to the post email address (or something like that), which sucks as it means you have to hunt around for this emailID, which is not smooth and user-centric…it would be a hassle…drag and drop would be nice

I was interviewed by Cathrin Gill on the Enterprise 2.0 Open blog as part of their E2.0 Expert Profiles.

The Enterprise2Open blog was initiated for the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT.

It’s not easy summarizing over 5 years of my thought blogging and reading…this was something I needed to do. I have learnt about many things by reading bloggers, commenting and blogging myself…nothing better than DIY interactive education…I thank Cathrin for giving me motivation to do that…

Here’s the main bits below. I hope it’s OK that I’m re-posting…I don’t want to lose this summary

What is your understanding of the core concept of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

• A new operating system based on different ideals, designs and structures
• For people to be engaged at work, rather than be seen as assets
• A focus on engagement rather than sharing…through design and facilitation you have better conditions to achieve your goal… sharing and heightened awareness will happen by default
• A somewhat role-based network organisational structure where people connect and are aware, have diverse input, acknowledge and action emergent outcomes, find suitable tasks and people…basically to exploit the collective knowledge to make better decisions and have an innovative edge
• A focus on complexity theory based on experimenting, manipulating for favourable conditions, monitoring and feeding back, rather than an addiction to plans and outcomes, targets and rewards. Being more transparent, adaptive, agile, and resilient

5.) What are the main potentials of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

• As Euan Semple says these new social platforms can finally legitimise informal networks. Closing the gap between the c-level and the frontline (”we” rather than “us” and “them”), a more transparent, two-way communication, feedback and bypassing the levels of hierarchy. Preventing blockage of information and re-interpretations, welcoming and capitalising on feedback.
• This is a new approach and leveling, and can be amplified by the use of social tools. Two things come to my mind: Improve awareness and the seminal lack of communication syndrome, and co-create change so it’s relevant to the frontline.
• It also means working socially productive in silos and bridging silos using visible and open group tools, and connecting silos via enterprise-wide networks.
• E 2.0 provides workers with tools to communicate and share their exceptions to processes…let’s face it procedures are not clairvoyant, every context brings up unique aspects to current processes.
• E 2.0 leads to social productivity and activities like crowdsourcing are now achievable by connecting and conversing in public by default, rather than private by default (like the current email way). This is a move from PC (Personal computing) to SC (Social computing).
  But I’m not too sure how decision making being done in a social way will pan out; if we really want to talk about democracy that is…maybe a committee. It just depends on who owns the firm really.
• And since these interactions happen in the open, everyone learns for free on a daily basis, a pull system where workers pick up signals with their radar.
  Referencing Jim McGee: New social tools reprise the concept of observable work that we lost with the coming of the digital era. We now have the potential to tap into the “know-how” and “know-why”, rather than just the “know-what” we get in deliverables and documents. We are interested in the conversations and brainwork. When reading a deliverable we wonder why things are they way they are, what were the many micro-decisions and now we can go back to those fragments if we worked using social tools - this is the real corporate memory. The beauty of it is these fragments can be assembled together (re-mixed) for different contexts. Then the output of that work can be traced back to the artifacts (the workings out) and re-hashed, and so on. The whole idea is not re-use but re-mix…malleable objects that live in a flux…basically fragments as springboards to continuous knowledge creation.
  Ahhh, just read Oscar Berg’s post on social tools being our coping mechanism

6.) What are the main challenges, threats and issues of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

Control…simple as that!
Bottom-up is not enough, we need a new organisational design, a top-down shift in ideals. At the moment we have worker 2.0 and group 2.0, but we need management 2.0 to make enterprise 2.0 happen.

My top 10

1. We share with people we trust, and share when we are engaged, rather than incentives and rewards, and now we have new social tools that appeal to intrinsic motivations
2. Some managers may feel dis-intermediated, especially those who rely on their status in controlling information flow, whereas managers who slant to the more leadership side of things welcome it. People worked a long time for their authority, and now comes along a way (eg blogs) to be influential by reputation
3. Transparency, two-way communication, and co-creation are key to engaged workers
4. We currently get rewarded for individual action, not collaboration or group output…or how much we help others on tasks we are not on…or how well we source the right people to help you on your task.
5. Different units compete for resources
6. Politics and power
7. This one can be slowly overcome, and that’s changing routines and habits from email to new tools (as long as the new tool is designed for ease of use)
8. A culture that is OK with sharing and learning from failure
9. Psychological safety (it’s OK to be wrong or to speak up)
10. In the past we only shared finished products in the open, and all the working out and know-why happens in closed email. There is now a change to “work-in-progress / status updates” happening in the open. With this we get more awareness, diverse feedback, reputation building, relationship building, learning… We can look back at a record of how things came to be…peripheral information, the conversations behind decisions. A report doesn’t compare as a raw record vs emails, phone, meetings…but all these things are behind closed doors.

Learnings since the interview

Here’s some snippets about the "real enterprise 2.0"…

This is a follow-up to my post Enterprise microblogging needs a facelift to rival email.

In that post I talked about adding an item in the stream to your Watchlist

• This way you can keep in the loop about a conversation without you having to be a poster or a commenter

I also talked about communally grouping items via contributors tagging them with a hashtag

• This way you can keep in the loop about the greater task that is generating all these items

Differences

• You are not being cc:ed, rather you "pull" the content to you (filtering your own information)
  • you can be @mentioned which is like the to: or cc: field
    • but this won’t happen in every post and comment, so it’s up to people to add it to their Watchlist
• The sender has an understanding of who needs to be involved in a conversation, but this is not always apparent at the start of a task, and there are plenty of people on the edges who need to be consulted that emerge
  • Now anyone can find a conversation, add it to their Watchlist, get involved

Deeper than In-the-flow and Above-the-flow

A while back a defining post was made on the difference between working Above-the-Flow (volunteering to share information and experiences based on engagement, trust, audience, reciprocity), and In-the-Flow (communicating and asking questions about tasks using social tools rather than email…doing what you are already doing in new tools).

Well what I want to describe here is going deeper than In-the-Flow…to the artifacts of the activity itself.

Example

We have a web conference about a task that involves people across teams.

We set up a group space.

We use this group space to ask the task team questions.

We use this group space to communicate our individual progress to the task members.

Why do I have to go to a blog to describe to other task members about my progress?

Let me explain…

An action item that came up in the initial meeting was for a member of the task to contact someone in IT to find out where we can host our database.

Once he found this out, he communicated back to the task members by fowarding his email conversation with the IT guy

OR

By blogging about this email conversation he had.

But you kind of feel silly blogging about something when you can just easily fwd it…it’s just easier.

Yes blogging it stores it for all to see, and keeps the conversation centralised…but it needs to feel natural. One positive step is to forward your email to the blogs email address, this way further comments about this is centralised around the blog post.

Deep In-the-Flow (Embedded In-the-Activity)

There is a better way…

Why report your progress by updating task members about it (whether in email or a blog)…

when instead they can see your conversation as it happens.

MICROBLOGGING AND HASHTAGS

Watch what happens when all task members follow the hashtag for this task:

Notice here how Task Member A does not have to write a blog post or forward an email to Task Member B or any of the other task members.

Why? Because all the task members are following the hashtag.

Task Member A is no longer the middleman to report the conversations he/she is having at the edges when doing their part of the task. They don’t have to forward an email or report progress as everyone can already know "as it happens."

ie. when on a task we don’t just converse with task members, we need to speak to random others in the organisation to get information from, authorise, or simply consult with as part of a task member doing their bit of the task

All task members (and anyone else) can now see the conversations each member is having with both task members and with indirect task members they need to consult with.

Indirect task members such as @ITguy can get involved at anytime without having to go through a task member; as long as they use the hashtag all task members will be in the loop.

What I’m getting to is you don’t need to report status or progress, as everyone can already see the conversations you are having.

Traditionally, if I were to report back to the group the progress of my task I would examine all my email conversations and write an email or a blog post on my progress…kind of like a real informal reporting. Or I would upload my emails which no-one will read.

But now people can have access to the artifacts without me having to forward them, or without me having to report about them.

This is a major difference between a closed system like email and an open microblogging system with the use of hashtags.

To reiterate the two main theme’s here:

1. People can now see the raw conversation as it happens, you no-longer have to report back to base…as people at base are privy to your conversation as it unfolds.

2. As a task member I am no longer a middleman in interpreting and communicating the progress of my part of the task, as you can see what I’m doing. Plus other task members can interact with the people on the edges (indirect task members) on the details of my part of the task.

Where it doesn’t apply

I’ve made clear that this works as a replacement to email, but when doing your part of a task you may have phone and face-to-face conversations with 3rd parties…in that case you do have to write a status update reporting your progress

Work products Deep In-the-Flow (Embedded In-the-Activity)

Aside from open conversations with both members of the task and people on the edges that are consulted about various parts of the task; we also have output documents eg. deliverables and supporting materials.

We no longer have to communicate (email or write a blog post) to people that we have just added a document related to our task. We simply do this at the time of adding the document.

The Activity stream of the microblogging app will suck in items added to the Document Management System (DMS) via an API

If we take another look at the hashtag stream we will see that the act of adding this document and a description has resulted in posting a new item into the stream (see the 5th post down)

Summary

This post focuses on a sweet spot in performing tasks.

Why?

It’s as easy as email.

You don’t have to set up a group space.

All you need to do is use microblogging (utlising Watchlists and Hashtags)

But the real focus of this post is about what happens on the edges.

All people on a task go off and do their bit and either report back on progress via email or a blog. They are the middleman between the task members and people on the edges who they are consulting with in doing the task.

Now we don’t have to report back, as task members (and anyone for that matter) can see the the raw conversations with people on the edges as it happens. Both other task members and people on the edges can interact without having to go through a particular task member.

Related

This is taking my ambient awareness post to proper task use, and brings back into fashion Jim McGee’s post on the loss of observable work.

Paula Thornton talks about artifacts of work, and this is exactly what I’m tackling:

This post is not so much the difference between conversations and the end product (deliverable), but more so how the conversations happen, and how we don’t have to report progress on our daily work on achieving our task.

Well let me clear that up, sure if I’m doing my own brainwork I will report my results, but if I’m having conversations with people that I need to consult with to achieve my task, well then I don’t have to report that this took place, as other task members already know, due to me using the task channel (defined by assigning a hashtag) to converse with people on the edges…all without them having to be part of an official group space.