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September 13, 2011

Measuring employee’s on the quality of their work and gifting; based on how well they utilise their online network

"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). 

Luis Suarez nails it answering a question in a video (22mins) where he says he often works on tasks on other teams but does not get financially compensated, and maybe this is something that HR needs to look at in order to keep up with the way we work now. But he said there are potential intangible benefits ie. if in the future he is looking for some work he will have goodwill with those he has helped out in the past, and you will have demonstrated your competence and character…and they more often than not will help you out. But it may even be that your job security is ok, all you need is some expertise outside the skills of your team…ah yes reciprocity.

 

July 8, 2011

Google Plus : Closed group email collaboration done online

I recently posted about the functional design aspects of Google Plus
 
A section I covered was wall-to-wall posting and private messaging. Google Plus has none of these; instead in Rawn Shah’s words it’s more "esoteric"…meaning that we have used the features a certain way to come up with what seems private conversations ie. there is no explicit feature called "wall posting" or "private messaging" as of yet. But perhaps a more fit word is online email-style collaboration; where the conversation is seen by a select few who get invited in as the conversation progresses…but only threaded and not messy like email.
 
First let’s visit Facebook…
 
 
 
 
Private messaging
 
When you private message in Facebook you use the designed private/direct message feature where it’s a conversation between you and a selected few.
 
@mention from your stream
 
When you @mention someone in Facebook from your own profile, that person will get a notification, and all your friends will see it.
 
Wall post
 
When you have a wall-to-wall conversation in Facebook you don’t initiate it from your profile, instead you visit that person’s profile to make your post.
 
Then the way it works is that only your mutual friends will be able to see your posts (but I think you can change this in the settings to make it more open).
 
NOTE: In IBM Connections your post on the person’s wall will be seen by their friends…this is perfect for the enterprise context where you can tap into someone else’s network…perhaps this is the idea behind G+ Extended Circles.
 
Now let’s look at G+
 
When you @mention someone in G+ and also select Public or a Circle, that person will get a notification, and your followers will see it.
 
When you use "@mention" without using any other selections like "Circles" or "Public", this is more similar to Facebook private messaging than wall posting; as only the two people in the conversation can see the post.
 
But then you’d want a G+ feature where you can collect these types of conversations eg. where’s that individual to individual conversation I had with Gerry last month
 
At any time the author or commenter can @mention people to join the private conversation.
So it’s not strict private messaging as the author cannot control a one-to-one conversation, and it’s not wall posting as other followers aren’t part of it by default….indeed esoteric.
But what it does remind me of is email collaboration, but only more neat.
 
We have always advocated for people to go online to a group space to start their conversation. But no-one is motivated to shift context. They already hang out where they do doing other types of communication, they don’t want to go elsewhere. And more importantly we cannot always clairvoyantly have a pre-defined group space for the type of thing someone wants to communicate. And no-one is about to create a forum and send invites and wait for people to subscribe so finally they can say something…that’s ludicrous.
 
Spontaneous and adhoc conversations is basically what we do in email most of the day ie. something happens or I have to do something, I kick off an email to someone. Soon enough that gets kicked around and some more people are in on the conversation (yes of course there are parallel conversations happening…this is indeed the weakness of email). As you can see the group of people evolve as the conversation grows, previously we simply didn’t know who’d be involved. And the email conversation itself ends up being the group space. This is very organic and intune with our we behave and action stuff.
 
This is why group spaces have been good for interest groups, or pre-defined tasks, but not those many informal tasks or things we do everyday at work…which later on can even become the precursor to more defined task.
 
Anyway nowadays we can use enterprise microblogging, which is an open version of this email type collaboration…only neater ie. threaded with a history of the conversation. Just like people can be forwarded or included as the email conversation progresses, the same can happen with @mentioning online. Using G+ as public posts and @mentions is a perfect example of this…using it this way is exactly like Twitter, only now you get threaded conversations and notifications if you have previously left a comment.
 
People may be happy to do this sort of thing online, but might not like the visibility of it. They may ask if we can do this online in a private way. In addition to being shy, they may also not want others to see this type of conversation online as it’s of very low use for anyone else…ambient awareness does have its limits in being noise.
 
So there you have it G+ can be used for neat and open multi-people conversations, both in a public way, and a private invite type way (that resembles email) 
 
What I like about this is that people can still resume their private email type behaviours, but only online…and they will like the neatness of it and that it’s documented…that’s level 1. Once they get used to this, hopefully they may then open up the conversations in a "public" way…and all of a sudden you have Twitter-type ambient awareness in the enterprise…that’s level 2.
 
Here’s my findings…I did a little test in Google Plus with this result (this is a modified excerpt):
 
"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)
 
Louis Richardson calls these types of email conversations "spools":
 
"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 

February 16, 2011

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 :)

December 15, 2010

The science of social relationships for organisational wellness and performance

Filed under: conversation, network

Last post I reflected on why I share and a couple of the items on the list refer to a type of altruistic nature

Help Others

This is unconditional for me…but it does depend on time availability

I co-facilitate the vendor CoP we use at work…I spend some of my time helping others…I do this for free…I’ve experienced many things with the product so for me helping people on the forums is the right thing to do…the by-product of this behaviour is you become known as a subject matter expert whether you like it or not

Messenger

Noise comes across my radar…the glass half-full is that what was once noise is a new topic I now like to read… a little noise is good…but it also means that when I come across posts about iPad I send them to my friend Gerry…I unconditionally send people links cause I know it’s what they like…I guess this is gifting

This sort of thing happens all the time…

For example the other day I saw a YouTube interview with Stowe Boyd at the Defrag Conference. Stowe talked about "Social Cognition" which is something he is currently researching, I happened to read a blog post later that morning on this topic and tweeted it to Stowe. Why not, it felt the normal thing to do.

Stowe and I don’t know each other, but I respect his thinking as a thought leader. He provides so much insight for me that the respectful thing to do is send a link his way if something comes across my radar. But it wasn’t even about respect, it’s the simple fact that I came across something that I know is helpful for someone else, so I shared it. Not all people practice this, but technology like Twitter emerges new behaviours where this type of interaction and gifting is normal…it brings out this random act of kindness, so much so that the only thing random about it might be the person, but the act becomes the norm.

Organisations talk a lot about needing to collaborate more, but I think networking sharing is overlooked.

The example above is illustrative of this. Another example is someone asking you for help. This is a bit more deep than the example above as it’s more time intensive. The example above is simply sending a link, a quick gesture…whereas someone asking for help takes more time, and there are also trust and reciprocation factors.

Both these examples have always happened offline…we tell people about stuff we know they like or that helps them…we also do this in email…when it comes to online networks we even do this with people we don’t even know that well…the medium is the message…twitter’s design creates the conditions for us to behave this way…you aren’t told, it’s something you innately do…the phone or email would seem too awkward or weird for this type of communication, but on Twitter it’s the norm.

And the second example of asking for help is what makes organisations tick…this is how real work gets done. I take my time to help others, and they do the same for me. My current place of work is really good at this as our culture is to help whoever comes our way…so sometimes it’s not based on reciprocation or trust, it’s just about being helpful. Of course time is a factor, but the intention is intact. In the online world we mimic this behaviour and it’s amplified.

Service economy

Bertrand Duperrin calls this a "service" economy. Yes collaboration is a good place to be, but this often refers to working together; an equal, if not more transformative goal is a connected organisation where people are servicing each others needs, a truly people-centric organisation that doesn’t necessarily revolve around a joint activity. As I mentioned we already behave this way offline…it’s the informal organisation.

Because service is a person-to-person commitment rather than a goal-to-people one, it engages employees more, make the whole organization more responsive and make them less reluctant about caring about issues that are not directly theirs.

Collaboration is something one do with someone else to achieve something. Service is quite different.

Service is not something one does WITH another but something one does FOR another. The final purpose is, of course, to achieve something, but the immediate purpose is to help someone. And that changes everything.

Fostering stronger relationships within the organization has few impact on collaboration because collaboration often commits people to a goal and not to other people. In a collaboration context, people don’t feel they help one another but rather that they’re on the same boat rowing to reach an island they don’t care about.

In a service context, one is directly committed to help the other solve his problem and, then, relationships are more easily leveraged.

NOTE: This is subject to organisational design aspects such as the burden of being an expert, time spare to help others, recognised/appraised in helping others in their tasks, and how resourceful you are at sourcing people and information for your task.

The more you have a history of interaction with people, the more you are happy to help or share with them in the future. Most people would keep on driving if they saw a car broken down on the side of the road, but they are more likely to stop and help if that’s the person they spoke to at the bus stop the other day where they talked about their children. Once you have history and rapport, and made a connection and identified on a personal level, you will more likely help and look out for each other.

two_men_in_a_boat_by_thermodynamix_

You may know someone who has the powerpoint skill set to help you with a tip, but you don’t ask as you don’t know them ie. you don’t feel comfortable asking someone for help who you don’t know. You happen to mention it to your friend and they say "yeah I know her…we spoke in the elevator…she rides 20km into work everyday…I’ll introduce you"

If you create conditions for people to build rapport, have dialogue, then this positively affects performance and collaboration. In other words rather than trying to get people to share and collaborate, focus on making a fertile soil for relationships to grow. A natural one is the smokers hang out, another is the coffee room, the work gym, lunch time sports activities, weekend work activities. The more we purposely design for this both online and offline, the more collaboration and sharing will happen by itself, and this cascades into improved performance.

I’m not talking about an agenda based activity like team building, rather I’m talking about creating conditions for people to build social relationships and get to know each other, because when you do this you form a deeper connection of care and respect. When this happens people are more prone to look out for each other and work better together as they now have a history and may have identified with each other at some level.

This is what friendships are about, but I’m not saying for everyone to be friends, but to generate some of these qualities. Relationship may be a strong word, but when we at least share experiences we build a bond akin to a relationship. The theme of this post is knowing each other as "people" not just co-workers…when we are connected on a personal level we have more care, empathy and respect, and become more engaged and perform better.

Gil Yehuda shares his insights on conditions for informal social relationship building:

Smokers developed an informal employee social network. They spent nearly an hour a day chatting with other smokers in other groups about all sorts of shared interests. Eric was pretty junior, but he hung out with some of the more senior managers too - those who smoked, that is. Eric knew about people and initiatives that we never heard of. He was our eyes and ears, and was invaluable to the team.

…a colleague of mine in the health-care industry found that the most important element to preventing a particular type of accidental death in a hospital setting is tied directly to how effectively the floor-staff has gelled. The better they are as a team, the higher the likelihood that someone will notice and correct a common procedural mistake that one of their co-nurses made. The hospitals who commissioned this study are now trying to figure out how to get their floor staff to feel like a team. Who would have thought that a weekly pizza lunch and a bulletin board with family pictures could save lives?

In Gil’s example not only is it about a "service" workplace of sharing and asking, but it’s also about awareness…knowing who knows what. And the hospital example is priceless, the more chance for social interaction and rapport building, the more people look out for each other like the organisation is one big team or family.

Social relationships are the building blocks for organisational health

Larry Irons also posts about the importance of social relationships..he points to a quote about poor team performance:

Michael Schell, CEO for RW3, noted in Chief Learning Officer magazine that, of the teams studied, “Half of these teams never meet in person…They don’t get time to create any kind of rapport, which is very important when you’re working across cultures.”

Larry mentions that it’s not enough to talk about the importance of collaboration and performance…even if management are onto the positive impact of building social relationships, it’s still not enough having manager led meetings and training, instead we need to design for social encounters in a more natural and informal way, a way that doesn’t have an agenda.

Members of distributed teams perform more effectively when they understand one another as people as well as employees.

Larry’s other post hones in on the benefit of people who identity with one another, and how they are more sensitive to other perspectives and situations other than their own, and proactively do things for each other, which as it turns out is a positive trait for well performing teams (more about this further down):

Collaboration means getting to know that other employees possess expertise on this or that topic, but also developing comfort with one another by sharing significant symbols relating to self, family, friends, and social activities, thereby understanding one another as people.

People who identify with one another are more likely to share information proactively, without waiting for others to ask for it, because they understand how their own work relates to that of other people and see the flow of work from multiple points of view, spanning silos. Too many social computing experts view collaboration from within a command and control prism, assuming people collaborate because coordination and communication are part of their job description.

Effective collaboration really requires proactively sharing information with those it affects, not simply reacting to information requests. It means anticipating the future impact of actions you take on the responsibilities of other employees or business partners, or the needs of customers. People really don’t do this well unless they see other employees, and customers, as people too. Indeed, this is one of the main reasons that social networks increase in importance as collaboration decreases as a face to face activity.

Now we are getting even deeper, not only does building social relationships lead to better collaboration, altruistic sharing, expertise finding…but it makes for better cooperation. Being more aware via new online social tools helps immensely with ambient awareness; but the social caring dimension relates to whether you will take action with what you have become aware of. The more we care about each other the more we will watch out for each other…this type of care and networking is what bridges silos, and ultimately organisational effectiveness.

In other words (from an MIT lab report):

…social support in the form of cohesion (how much time do the people you talk to spend with each other) was strongly positively associated with productivity.”

Larry points to another example at the Bank of America

Informally talking out problems and solutions, it seemed, produced better results than following the employee handbook or obeying managers’ e-mailed instructions.”

One simple intervention is to give workers more opportunities to socialize in groups. Currently we are implementing a strategy at a call center for a national bank chain where we are changing the break structure of the employees. Previously each employee on a team of around 20 people had a separate 15 minute break in order to reduce the need to shift call loads to other teams, although in practice this issue is not terribly important. This makes it very difficult for cohesive relationships to develop, since groups of friends will by design have limited opportunities for shared interactions.

To create more of these opportunities we changed the break structure of two of the four teams that we had studied previously so that all of the employees on a team are given a break at the exact same time.

The patterns of social interaction changed dramatically after the intervention, and Bank of America reported productivity gains worth about $15 million a year.

Lastly Larry informs us of how Zappos value the importance of social experience by designing random questions about people in the workplace:

…we’ve begun tracking employee relationships. When employees log in to their computers, we ask them to look at a picture of a random employee and then ask them how well they know that person - the options include “say hi in the halls,” “hang out outside of work,” and “we’re going to be longtime friends.” We’re starting to keep track of the number and strength of cross-departmental relationships - and we’re planning a class on the topic. My hope is that we can have more employees who plan to be close friends.

The key fact behind the Zappos example is that using social networking as part of business design is a way of cultivating shared experience among employees rather than a mere means to an end, or goal, alone.

This post has been about the importance of social experience and relationships in business performance and the ways we can design conditions for social interactions ie how do we capitalise on the idea of the water cooler. Natural ones are the coffee room, smokers section, self organised lunch sports activities, and others are more designed like communal break times, and random online network questions.

But what seems important is that rather than just formal team building exercises we simply need more opportunities for people to get to know each other in places and times where there is no agenda…harnessing those natural and informal social settings. This is when we get to know each other, we talk about our families, etc. and identify with each other, and look out for each other…this is what makes a team and workplace effective.

Coming full circle on this post Larry provides a good conclusion:

……shared experience, not just shared information, is fundamental to the social networks underlying collaboration and community…comfort with one another is needed to develop a shared experience where trust increases the likelihood that needed information is shared, or that the need itself is anticipated.

Phatic communication

Just when you (and I) thought this post was finished…a correlation sparked with the notion of phatic conversation:

…data that pass between friends on Facebook and Twitter…as when someone tells me they’re doing their nails, or I tell them I’m entertaining my cat.

Who on earth cares? What kind of communication is this? Can it be that we are using the internet to issue trivial facts about ourselves? Facts? The "fact" that I am entertaining the cat is so staggeringly unimportant it fails to interest even the cat.

But there is another, anthropological, point of view. Exhaust data is, I think, a clear case of "phatic communication." This is communication with little hard, informational content, but lots of emotional and social content. Phatic communications doesn’t get much said, but it has social effects so powerful, it gets lots done.

The author talks about phatic communication as a reminder that they exist:

This is not nothing. Facebook sustains social knowledge and networks that begin in conferences and then fade almost immediately until a couple of months later we have a hard time attaching a face to that business card still banging around in our briefcase. A "newsflash" about my cat helps keep the network node called Grant McCracken from blinking out.

Danah Boyd also chimes in:

Conversation is also more than the explicit back and forth between individuals asking questions and directly referencing one another. It’s about the more subtle back and forth that allow us to keep our connections going. It’s about the phatic communication and the gestures, the little updates and the awareness of what’s happening in space. We take the implicit nature of this for granted in physical environments yet, online, we have to perform each and every aspect of our interactions. What comes out may look valueless, but, often, it’s embedded in this broader ecology of social connectivity. What’s so wrong about that?

Tweeting about what you cooked for dinner may seem useless from an outside snapshot. But how often does this start some chatter, and before you know it you are talking about research topics. Offline we small talk all the time, it’s what we do, we chat in the coffee room about the weekend or what our cat did and all of a sudden we are talking about our work budget.

Why don’t we jump into talking about the budget? It’s just the way we are…we first cultivate a comfortable space…we don’t like being ordered like a command on a computer…it doesn’t feel good, instead we co-create a little scaffolding before we dive in. Have you not experienced a scenario when two people see each other for the first time in the day and one of them straight off the bat asks a work related question, which conjures a sarcastic response like, "…and good morning to you to, yes I did have a good weekend…"

When a client comes to your work you don’t just start digging into work, you talk about their travel over, and hope that rolls into other small talk that builds a good connection and some rhythm…the small talk helps the quality of the agenda.

But the small talk is not intentional or a secret agenda, it’s just how we naturally are…we do it to build rapport…it’s "social grooming".

Kevin Jones talks about small talk leading to serendipity:

Welcome to microblogging at your business. It is the conversation starter that leads to greater things. If you only jump into the heavy topics you miss the serendipitous interactions that pay big dividends. Encourage the small talk - For by small and simple things are great things brought to pass.

Looks like this post is gonna go on for a little longer…

Touch, conversation and happiness

In the end social interaction (not necessarily related to an end goal like collaborating on a task, but in general) is simply a human need…the Romanian orphans are indicative of that…without attachment and touch they wither away.

Rob Paterson has more:

At the heart of all primate development and social health is the act of grooming or touch. Harlow’s experiments on monkeys show that given the choice between food or touch, baby primates will choose touch. Babies that have not been touched develop poorly

Stowe Boyd posted on some research on "touch" and how it may relate to better performance in basketball teams:

“We used to think that touch only served to intensify communicated emotions,” Dr. Hertenstein said. Now it turns out to be “a much more differentiated signaling system than we had imagined.”

Players who made contact with teammates most consistently and longest tended to rate highest on measures of performance, and the teams with those players seemed to get the most out of their talent.

…good teams tended to be touchier than bad ones. The most touch-bonded teams were the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, currently two of the league’s top teams

Patrick Lambe has also posted about the importance of touch in maintaining relationships of trust and relates it to KM:

Coelho opened his keynote by saying “we only do business with people we like” and this is why any serious agreement needs eye contact - that interesting precursor and reinforcer of touch…“This human contact, regardless of whether you sell 100 million copies, where you don’t have eye contact, so it becomes an abstraction, this [human contact] is basic, and this is the blessing of the internet.”

So I’m convinced that touch - and regular touch - is an essential element in growing and expressing trust and assurance. In the multi-initiative field of KM, where we are messing with the way people have organized their work and their information and knowledge flows, with their relationships and sharing patterns, in this field trust and assurance - it seems to me - are critical.

So why don’t we talk about touch, when we talk about change management and KM communications? And why do organisations insist on believing they can completely remove face to face meetings - basic human contact - from their virtual teams and communities of practice once they have put collaboration infrastructure in place?

Back to Rob Paterson’s post; he reviews an article about how screen based baby learning video’s like "Baby Einstein" are not a replacement for real social interaction, in fact relying on them may delay language development:

"Babies require face-to-face interaction to learn," says Dr. Vic Strasburger, professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. "They don’t get that interaction from watching TV or videos. In fact, the watching probably interferes with the crucial wiring being laid down in their brains during early development." Previous studies have shown, for example, that babies learn faster and better from a native speaker of a language when they are interacting with that speaker instead of watching the same speaker talk on a video screen. "Even watching a live person speak to you via television is not the same thing as having that person in front of you," says Christakis.

Conversation like touch has said to have a similar effect in boosting performance as we are sensitive to other people’s perspectives…the theory of mind (which is something Larry Irons pointed out earlier in this post):

They found that engaging in brief (10 minute) conversations in which participants were simply instructed to get to know another person resulted in boosts to their subsequent performance on an array of common cognitive tasks. But when participants engaged in conversations that had a competitive edge, their performance on cognitive tasks showed no improvement.

“We believe that performance boosts come about because some social interactions induce people to try to read others’ minds and take their perspectives on things,” Ybarra said. “And we also find that when we structure even competitive interactions to have an element of taking the other person’s perspective, or trying to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, there is a boost in executive functioning as a result.”

This also cascades into happiness. The more we connect and share meaning and experience the happier we are…perhaps happiness is a by-product:

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, showed that when two people enter into a deep discussion, they create shared meaning of the world, strengthening their connections and bonds and interdependence, making them happy.

“It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, said Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who published a study on the subject.

But, he proposed, substantive conversation seemed to hold the key to happiness for two main reasons: both because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people.

By engaging in meaningful conversations, we manage to impose meaning on an otherwise pretty chaotic world,” Dr. Mehl said. “And interpersonally, as you find this meaning, you bond with your interactive partner, and we know that interpersonal connection and integration is a core fundamental foundation of happiness.”

When we are connected and happy we are more engaged in what we do:

There is plenty of research out there supporting the value of having close friends at work. Higher satisfaction, stronger engagement. Intuitively it makes sense: if you like the people you work with everyday, you’ll be happier and more involved.

If friendships can drive engagement, then visualizing a companies social network should tell you a thing or two about the health of an organization.

Happiness in networks breeds more happiness

Groups, Proximity and Grooming

Rob Paterson has blogged about this area of cognition and behaviour especially in relation to infant development:

At our deepest level, we are primates. We are intensely social. We feel best in groups. We love to be touched. In fact, when given the choice primate babies will take touch over food.

One of the huge breakthroughs for humans is that by developing speech we learned to groom at a distance and hence could expand the size of the social group

The ideal human groupings are seen in all military organizations.

•8 the core group
•15 the ideal team
•30-50 the normal tribe or platoon size
•150 - the maximum that can self organize
These are called Magic Numbers and they are the social scaling that is hardwired into humans

If you ignore these natural laws for human organization, then you have to impose a structure. Hence the modern bureaucratic workplace and hence helplessness and dysfunction

This reminds me of the cultural engineers post on the social organism outgrowing the social network, and how proximity reduces group altruism ie. a manager is so distant and out of touch with the frontline they are unaware how a change will have bad affect on a group of people. This lack of grooming is what is failing organisations as people are not connected or sensitive to others due to distance and the number of people they can pay attention to.

In the post linked above Rob concurs with this:

Primate individual and group health depends on the giving and the receipt of “Attention”. Much of this attention has to be physical. Especially for the young. This is a very “expensive” activity as it means that neither the groomer or the groomed could do anything else while grooming. Our breakthrough that has driven our own explosive development as a species has to have found a more efficient way of grooming. Instead of using our hands, we used our vocalization ability. Noises became language. Humans could work at some distance from each other and pay attention by how and what they said to each other.

Further to grooming at a distance using language; organisations can now connect with online social networks…hopefully this is a start to fill in the grooming gap, and supplement the hierarchy dysfunction. If we are not grooming to the extent small groups do, the alternative is that we can at least be ambiently aware, which is a more fitting approach when you are connected to more people than you can pay attention to.

Oxytocin, Cortisol and wired to share the load

Robert then posts about the brain science of neglecting relationships in relation to the Cortisol hormone:

…if you have a workplace where you neglect the needs for real relationship you will get an unhealthy and acting out workforce

The connection between neglect and abuse and a primate’s ability to thrive or cope is the hormone called Cortisol. Neglect and abuse, drive the production of Cortisol.

High Cortisol levels are at the foundation of the behavioral and health problems of the modern age. What drives them is that we have dropped the ball on the reality that for humans, legitimate relationships are the holy grail for a good life and a healthy society.

Back to Stowe Boyd’s post on touch he points to off-setting Cortisol with Oxytocin production via touch:

If a high five or an equivalent can in fact enhance performance, on the field or in the office, that may be because it reduces stress. A warm touch seems to set off the release of oxytocin, a hormone that helps create a sensation of trust, and to reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

In the brain, prefrontal areas, which help regulate emotion, can relax, freeing them for another of their primary purposes: problem solving. In effect, the body interprets a supportive touch as “I’ll share the load.”

The Stowe relates this back to the organisation in that humans build relationships as a coping mechanism to share the load in solving problems:

Touching leads to trust, which leads to a sense of shared commitment. We have evolved these social bonding tools because it leads to better group performance: we operate better collectively when trust and shared commitment exists.

We think that humans build relationships precisely for this reason, to distribute problem solving across brains,” said James A. Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. “We are wired to literally share the processing load, and this is the signal we’re getting when we receive support through touch.”

Fast Company have an article on trust and digital oxytocin:

…nations with a high level of trust (Norway, Sweden, the United States) have higher income levels and more stable governments than those that don’t. Their citizenry possess higher levels of “social capital,” which depends on positive interactions between people, on a level of trust created by low crime, better education, and greater economic development. He concluded that trust was the variable that showed whether a society was working well, and when it did, the economy would take off on its own.

One day, a company might be better off asking not what its margins are, but what its trust factor is,” says Brian Singh, founder of Zinc Research, a social media and marketing research firm in Calgary, Alberta. Singh has begun framing the formation of connections via social networking as a form of “digital oxytocin.” The idea is that if businesses wish to thrive in our interconnected world, where consumers’ opinions spread at the speed of light, they must act as a trusted friend: create quality products, market them honestly, emphasize customer care.

This post has been about how creating conditions for sharing social experience where people can understand and learn about each other as regular people, improves the happiness of workers, and trust and engagement lead to better performance. The big question is does this cross over into the online world where we also connect and have relationships…here trust and engagement is also linked to better performance for the individual and organsiation. The Fast Company article goes on to point out that the brain may not sense the difference between offline or online connection in parts of the experience:

…the release of oxytocin I experienced while tweeting reduced my stress hormones. If that’s the case, says Zak, social networking might reduce cardiovascular risks, like heart attack and stroke, associated with lack of social support. But there’s even more to our findings. “Your brain interpreted tweeting as if you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy for,” Zak says. “E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection.”

…our findings are potentially “huge” - despite the fact that they depend entirely on an unscientific control group of exactly one. If I’m representative (a big if, as we both readily acknowledge), then social networking may increase a person’s oxytocin levels, thereby heightening feelings of trust, empathy, and generosity. Why does this matter to businesses? Well, consider that Facebook has more than 400 million users. And consider that a healthy number of those folks are basically addicted to social media. A recent study asked 200 University of Maryland students to give up media for a day, including laptops, MP3 players, smartphones, and TVs. Many of the students suffered withdrawal symptoms, as if they had gone cold turkey giving up drugs. The most painful part, they said, was “losing their personal connections. In their world, going without media meant going without their friends and family.”

The Limbic brain

Getting deeper into brain science Rob reviews a book on love which examines the main operating systems of the brain which explains how the mammalian section of the brain is what helps us get through life as relationships are core to our existence, and that we pay too much attention to the rational brain:

Why are we collectively so unhappy? Unhappy at home and at work? Have we put our rational brain too high on the pedestal? If we understand our Mammalian or Limbic Brain better might we have a better time? Why are relationships so important to us?…How important is having the right relationships to our happiness and to our health?

Their thesis is that we have 3 brains. The reptilian brain which controls the core life functions like the heart beating and our breathing. The limbic brain which is a mammalian construct not found in lower animals which controls our emotional life. Its main job is to keep us connected to those who matter the most too us which is essential for mammals. And then the neo cortex which humans have the most of which deals with things like speech and reason.

Today we give no credence to the limbic brain. We have put the rational or neo cortex brain up on a pedestal. We value IQ, our education system is rationally based. But really we get things done and we get through life as mammals on how well we connect or not with others. Our EQ is as important as our IQ. Maybe more so. Their insight is to look at the power of the mammalian brain to inform us about what is going on, to govern our health and to enable us to work effectively with others.

So what is this limbic mammal brain all about anyway? The big idea is that the limbic brain is our relationship brain designed to enable mammals which have live birth and which need the tribe to protect the mother to form the attachments that are essential for the success of these large investments in the other - the other baby, the mate and the tribe.

Reptiles do need need relationships because on the whole they do not raise helpless young. Most but not all reptiles abandon their offspring and most do not have mates or packs/tribes. Having no need of relationships, they are more than cold blooded they are cold emotionally.

It seems that the limbic brain needs to be in active relationship with others to be happy. Mammals are "open" systems. We cannot exist without referencing with others…The boss who imposes his will is not dancing. The result failure to grow and learn, stress, depression and illness. I wonder if we have been entirely captured by the Rational Brain as represented by the corporate world of relationships which are not be definition interactive but power driven down?

Our corporate world is a machine world with machine relationships. No amount of wellness or flex programming will change this unless the core work is to change the machine relationships to human/mammalian/tribal relationships.

Putting this another way is to say that we are not existential cowboys; instead social connection is part of the human operating system:

Looking more deeply at the invisible forces that link one human being to another helps us see something even more profound: our brains and bodies are designed to function in aggregates, not in isolation. That is the essence of an obligatory gregarious species. The attempt to function in denial of our need for others…violates our design specifications. The effects on health are warning signs, similar to the “Check Engine” light that comes on in today’s cars with their comptuerised sensors. But social connection is not just a lubricant that like motor oil, prevents overheating and wear. Social connection is a fundamental part of the human operating and organising system itself.

October 4, 2010

Interview : My thoughts on enterprise 2.0

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"…

Real enterprise 2.0 is about “service”

"Because service is a person-to-person commitment rather than a goal-to-people one, it engages employees more, make the whole organization more responsive and make them less reluctant about caring about issues that are not directly theirs.

Collaboration is something one do with someone else to achieve something. Service is quite different.

Service is not something one do with another but something one do for another. The final purpose is, of course, to achieve something, but the immediate purpose is to help someone. And that changes everything.

Fostering stronger relationships within the organization has few impact on collaboration because collaboration often commits people to a goal and not to other people. In a collaboration context, people don’t feel they help one another but rather that they’re on the same boat rowing to reach an island they don’t care about.

In a service context, one is directly commited to help the other solve his problem and, then, relationships are more easily leveraged."

- Bertrand Duperrin

Social Media goals are derived goals

"I repeat. Your company does not need a social media strategy. What your company does need to do however, is to incorporate social media into almost every other strategy or plan that it has. This means that social media needs to be a part of your marketing strategy, public relations strategy, HR strategy, customer service strategy and maybe even your finance strategy. Maybe you do need someone to coordinate your company wide social media efforts, but that is not the same creating a social media strategy."

- Asia Digital Map.com

Is this an aspect of capitalism 2.0?

"Management in the 20th Century was about achieving a finite goal: delivering goods and services, to make money.

Management in the 21st Century is about the infinite goal of delighting customers; the firm makes money, yes, but as a consequence of the delight that it creates for customers, not as the goal."

- Steve Denning

Now this is the real enterprise 2.0

"The finite goal of delivering goods and services, in order to make money, was utterly boring and dispiriting…Because that goal dispirits those doing the work and often frustrates those for whom the work is done, it is inherently unsustainable.

The infinite goal of delighting customers is inherently inspiring: helping other people is the essence of moral thinking. It is inherently uplifting for those doing the work, and invigorating to those for whom the work is done. Hence the goal is inherently sustainable.

The new goal of delighting customers is a radical shift in the difficulty of what a firm is undertaking. The goal of a firm is no longer simple and linear and finite. Now the goal of the firm is difficult and complex and infinite. Now continuous innovation becomes a requirement, rather than a distraction and a de-stabilizer. Now we are in a world of continuous experimentation, to find out what works and what doesn’t, in terms of adding new value for clients. Now mistakes, instead of being elements that can be eliminated, are an essential element of the learning process. Now mistakes become crucial and welcome elements of the learning process. Instead of mistakes being punished, now mistakes are welcomed as essential opportunities for learning. Now everyone in the firm is focused on what can be done to add additional value to customers and clients.

The firm is no longer an end in itself. The firm is now “other directed”: it is focused on meeting the needs of the clients and stakeholders whom it is purporting to serve."

- Steve Denning

Real enterprise 2.0 is about letting go of “control”

"Companies have to come to terms with the fact that the traditional model of managerial resource allocation and coordination (mainly coerced through extrinsic motivation in the form of rewards and punishments, such as payments, promotions, demotions, etc.) has become outdated and no longer reflects the social fabric of today’s workforce

Commitment is fickle, reputation volatile, and loyalty scarce. In short: Companies have lost control – over their workforce, their customers, and as a result, their brands. Or, more precisely, as Charlene Li points out in her book Open Leadership, they have never really been in control – what they are actually forced to give up now is their need for control."

- Tim Leberecht

Influence is replacing authority

"If designers embrace the insight that influence is replacing authority as the new currency in the “pull economy” and that the best way to gain influence is to give up control…businesses can use “shaping strategies” to amplify and accelerate the inevitable loss of control in order to avoid employees and customers abandon them….levers of “access, attraction, and achievement” that provide the “creation spaces” and tools for employees and customers alike to design their own destiny, create their own meaning, and thus convert their very own skills and passions into productivity and loyalty"

- Tim Leberecht

The need for both process and people-centric systems

“A customer account manager receives a phone call from a client asking why an issue with their service has not been resolved and when it will be. The account manager can query a workflow-supported issue management system and learn that the issue has been assigned to a specific employee and that it has been assigned an “in-progress” status. However, that system does not tell the account manager what she really needs to know! She must turn to a communication system to ask the other employee what is the hold up and the current estimate of time to issue resolution. She emails, IM’s, phones, or maybe even tweets the employee to whom the issue has been assigned to get an answer she can give the customer.

The employee to whom the issue was assigned most likely cannot use the issue management system to actually resolve the problem either. He uses a collaboration system to find documented information and individuals possessing knowledge that can help him deal with the issue. Once the problem is solved, the employee submits the solution to the issue management system, which feeds it to a someone who can make the necessary changes for the customer and inform the customer account manager that the issue is resolved. Case closed”.

ad hoc communication and collaboration systems were the tools that drove actual results

Without the cludgy, structured issue management system, the customer account manager would not have known to whom the issue had been assigned and, thus, been unable to contact a specific individual to get better information about its status

- Larry Hawes

The mutation of capitalism

"Every century or so, fundamental changes in the nature of consumption create new demand patterns that existing enterprises can’t meet. When a majority of people want things that remain priced at a premium under the old institutional regime—a condition I call the “premium puzzle”—the ground becomes extremely fertile for wholly new classes of competitors that can fulfill the new demands at an affordable price. A premium puzzle existed in the auto industry before Henry Ford and the Model T and in the music industry before Steve Jobs and the iPod.

The consumption shift in Ford’s time was from the elite to the masses; today, we are moving from an era of mass consumption to one focused on the individual.

The leading edge of consumption is now moving from products and services to tools and relationships enabled by interactive technologies.

Innovations improve the framework in which enterprises produce and deliver goods and services. Mutations create new frameworks; they are not simply new technologies, though they do leverage technologies to do new things. Historically, mutations have superseded innovations when fundamental shifts in what people want require a new approach to enterprise: new purposes, new methods, new outcomes.

The Model T embodied a mutation we now call mass production. It solved the premium puzzle of its time, reducing the price of an automobile by 60 percent or more, and thrived in the emerging environment of mass consumption.

That potential for wealth creation remained invisible to those who clung to the 19th-century framework of small-factory, proprietary capitalism.

In the same way that mass production moved the locus of industry from small shops to huge factories, today’s mutations have the potential to shift us away from business models based on economies of scale, asset intensification, concentration, and central control"

- Shoshana Zuboff

The first wave of “distributed capitalism

"The true source of value, which had been invisible to the music industry, resided in Apple’s ability to reinvent the consumption experience from the viewpoint of the individual, at a fraction of the old cost
The iPod—and its successors, the iPhone and the iPad—are part of the first wave of what I call “distributed capitalism,”

Winning mutations—those that create value by offering consumers individualized goods and services at a radically reduced cost—express a convergence of technological capabilities and the values associated with individual self-determination.

Inversion
The old logic of wealth creation worked from the perspective of the organization and its requirements—for efficiency, cost reductions, revenues, growth, earnings per share (EPS), and returns on investment (ROI)—and pointed inward. The new logic starts with the individual end user. Instead of “What do we have and how can we sell it to you?” good business practices start by asking “Who are you?” “What do you need?” and “How can we help?” This inverted thinking makes it possible to identify the assets that represent real value for each individual. Cash flow and profitability are derived from those assets.

Reconfiguration
Once individuals have the assets they want, they must be able to reconfigure those assets according to their own values, interests, convenience, and pleasure. A teenager, for instance, may use her iPod Touch and an application called Pandora to assemble an entire personalized “radio station” while at the same time learning Mandarin Chinese at the kitchen table on Sunday afternoon through an online classroom based thousands of miles from her home.

Support
The emerging logic of distributed capitalism rewards enterprises that realign their practices with the interests of the end consumer and punishes enterprises that try to impose their own internal requirements or, worse yet, maximize their own benefit at the expense of the individual end user"

- Shoshana Zuboff

Next Generation Collaborative Enterprise (NGCE)

"Collaboration encourages clusters of experts with diverse skills to make decisions quickly. The Next Generation Collaborative Enterprise allows experts at any level to propose, create and execute without hierarchical or geographical constraints.

Priorities are set by clusters of experts that make decisions. Decisions are communicated real-time through social media applications…Individuals are able to apply themselves to the work based on their skills and availability, regardless of their geographic location…Funding is directed based on milestones. Direct accountability is embedded into the social network. Finally, organizational functions become less relevant and ‘Re-orgs’ become obsolete. Leadership is defined as the ability to influence, envision and execute ― rather than the authority to command and control."

- Padmasree Warrior

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