Library clips

Salesforce’s acquisition of Rypple will be the beginning of a new explosion in these peer performance apps (social performance software); it’s not hard to predict that existing enterprise social software suites will either create their own, or acquire small start-ups (now’s a good time for software entrepeneurs to make some potential money). Whether the large enterprise social software suites agree with the effectiveness of these tools or not doesn’t really matter, as they need to keep competitive by not allowing the competition to offer something they don’t have. Hence often something becomes the norm not because it’s a must have purpose-based innovation or fills a pre-existing need; but instead just because everyone’s doing it…or cashing in.

But this post isn’t about this high level view, instead it’s on one particular feature that these peer performance vendors offer; and that’s "recognition/thanks/kudos/recommendation".

For organisations already using social networking tools, I wonder whether it’s going to be effective introducing yet another more specific-based social network. I wonder if instead these functions will be incorporated as new features in existing tools.

But first let’s establish what they are about, lets examine their feature set. Most of them are about changing the performance review process to an ongoing thing, rather than annually…and for it to happen socially online.

The players in the market that I know of are Rypple, Worksimple, Coworkers, Achievers, Saba and now an IBM partner application…get ready for more (eg. Atlassian), especially from Talent Management vendors.

The first time I recall something to this effect was LinkedIn Recommendations Some mildy related tools are Happiily and Niko by Socialcast (which are actually more mood based apps) and Evaluat3.me (this is more a survey about you)

The main feature set of social performance suites are:

• Social Goals (setting objectives, and viewing the status of them on our profile) eg. 20% market growth…what a great way for others to know your progess and achievement
• Coaching
• Feedback
• Performance Summary
• Recognition (Kudos/Thanks/Praise)

View the Rypple features page for an explanation on “social performance”, and how they have created a more meaningful and engaging system that is more than performance appraisal/review, in the way that it’s not so much a review, but coaching goal achievement as it happens (by both leads and peers)…much more transparent, and purposeful.

Recognition (Kudos/Thanks/Praise)

For the focus of this post the feature I’m most interested in is peer/lead recognition (thanks, praise, kudos, recommendations…) For example Rypple Thanks (read and watch the video).

Then there are existing social network vendors have have incorporated thanks/praise/kudos as a feature eg. Yammer and a few others. Note that thanks/praise/kudos is only one feature of Rypple and the like. Yammer is different than Rypple, but they do have a few overlapping features. Read and watch the video on Yammer Praise.

ADDED: Socialcast also have a “thanks” feature.

Recognise how well I use my social network to generate quality productivity

In a past post, Measuring employee’s on the quality of their work and gifting; based on how well they utilise their online network, I focused on the need of an observation technique where we can acknowledge the productivity employees generate from being socially active online within their organisation. Firstly, for the direct reason of acknowledging their good work-and how it came to being-which needs to be recognised, and secondly that feedback, acknowledgement and recognition are positive conditions for people to continue participating and adopt new ways of working (in this case online social tools).

Please read my post as it quotes from some intelligent and experienced people in this industry, and gets to the heart of the matter of where current organisational design clashes with the cultural shift that begins to take place with the addition of working with social tools (ie. like we shape tools, tools shape society). Especially in relation to being measured on your individual contributions; rather than how well you used your network as sources, or even collaborators on your deliverable…and also the time required to participate, build and nuture relationships in order to have a valuable network in the first place.

Just quickly, I should get kudos for knowing the right people to give me advice in order to churn out a quality deliverable. Why? Because this sends a signal to people that connecting to the talent of others is what we are about, we didn’t just hire you for your individual intelligence. One step further is me actually getting people I’ve sourced to contribute to the deliverable; this should have no impact on how I’m measured for individual contributions, in fact I should get more kudos for the same reason above. If we need to hire a team to do a job in the organisation we scout around in an attempt to source the best available internal experts. Well I’m just doing the same thing for my tasks.

I’ll re-quote Oscar Berg which will give you the gist of the post:

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).

Wow, that’s a great piece!

A resume that’s alive

So how do we change this syndrome?

• not recognising the help and work you do beyond your team, or even within your team (if you are not allowed to spend time in your internal social network, and help others in the first place, then you have a bigger problem…which is what the post linked above is all about…in addition to the adoption obstacle of not being acknowledged for knowing who the best people are to source and help to create a more quality deliverable)
• people only doing what’s going to be visible; rather than what’s best for the business

I once tweeted:

Before we visited the Rolodex, now we live in the Rolodex

…this is my reference to Twitter, Facebook, Yammer and the like. I think the same can be for social work performance

Before we had a static Resume, now we we live in our Resume

…this is a reference to our profile page and how it lists the work we are doing as it happens, comments, likes, recognition, bio links (all this shows off our expertise, respect, dedication, competency, character, passion, etc…what more do you want raw anecdotes of a person in action…and that are continuously updated).

Moonlighting

For those who don’t know I’m the global lead for collaboration, and part of this is facilitating our online communities. Recently I helped facilitate a new community about career development. My role is more about train the trainer, perpetual guidance; doing my best to enable them and coach them in being acute at their new craft in facilitating…and of course I manage the product in general. Anyway on this occassion I went beyond my call of duty by spending time helping them design their community (I did this as a regional CEO was involved, so it was in my interest). Now this is not my job, I would have no time to do my job if I always provided this service (If I had a team of people then it would be different). But it wasn’t just about the design, it was about actually doing the design. Now my HTML skills are basic, but here I am learning about imagemaps, javascript overlay boxes, and then attempting to code them. I also spent time talking to those in the company that I know have HTML skills, and sometimes got them to do some of the work. Ideally these people could have been internally contracted to do the work, but it turned out my product knowledge was required, and they don’t have that much time to spare. (SIDE NOTE: This is natural human behaviour; you make less time to help someone not in your network, than someone in your network).

Now this took me away from other work; but I thought it was valuable to work on this. From the perspective of my HTML contact; well his role is not a webdesigner, although he does utilise these skills in his role. In this case because I knew he has these skills I asked if he could utilise them on a task that has nothing to do with him, but is entirely based on the respect and history he has for me (and on top of this he was busy with his own stuff)

So here I am going beyond the call of duty within my team task, and here my colleague is performing work for free, on top of his already busy workload.

If we did this work observably online on a social network like Yammer, I’m sure people would of noticed our hard work, dedication and beyond the call of duty attitude…indirectly we become known for our skills and qualities. The double-edged sword is this could become a burden…I say this because this same colleague was helping out another trusted colleague of ours on a task also not within his portfolio…we are starting to call this "moonlighting"…and he’s I must say, a professional "moonlighter". Anyway, it turns out we did this work in email, so no-one really knows we did this unless we told them, or they saw the finished product (which they still won’t know who was behind it). I told my boss about this work, and he was OK with it, and said good work. But there’s a better way that could have more impact or impression on my peers and boss, and also fulfill my natural human need for a job well done (and everything that cascades from that being displayed in my profile page as part of my capabilities and service as you would see on a resume…only I’m not telling you about it, you are seeing it in action). The task owner also continually thanked me in email as we did the job, and then at the end of the job he couldn’t thank me enough…he mentioned that he owes me a beer or 5

We have the first part down ie. we can now work observably online where people can see the work we do as it happens. ie. not only the work, but the quality of our participation and how we are dedicated to the organisation at large. But what if you weren’t looking, these conversations roll into the archives quite quickly.
Now a more formal way for peers and leads to recognise your work is to issue you kudos/thanks/praise, etc…this is not just done as a comment, but it’s an actual feature eg a type of status update. Your profile page would also be the place that shows off your kudos/thanks/praise. Surely this is DIY career development, and gives you drive to keep doing what you’re doing ie participating…which is a bonus for social tool product managers as it helps with adoption.

Now take a breather…as the next part is important.

Beware gamification!

Let’s not start gamifying this and create a leaderboard and badges based on levels for all the kudos/thanks/praise you accumulate, and then have this as the basis for decision-making like resource allocation, expertise or which employees to retain based on their badge level. NOTE: Some vendors use descriptive badges, whereas I’m talking about badges that represent an earned expertise level (which could be based on false praise, and invaluable participation…better known as "gaming the system"). Let’s make sure we don’t let the numbers make decisions for us. Why? Because some people that deserve more kudos than others may not have them as the people they helped out haven’t adopted the online social tools in which to issue kudos/praise/thanks…maybe someone with lots of kudos/praise/thanks is less valuable than the next person; but the numbers don’t tell it that way, and what they also don’t tell is that person is gaming the system with others to accumulate kudos/praise/thanks. Also there is valuable, generous and altruistic work being done offline, on the phone, in email, in IM that will miss out on being recognised, due to not being visible…I have posted an anecdote on this before, here it is again:

Someone mentioned today that they hope our organisation doesn’t measure value based on just online communities. That there is so much community activity done on the phone and in meetings that brings value to the business that may not be known about. The concern is that people that are visible are going to get recognition over others that are more offline workers, who may even contribute more value.

When we start basing decisions on badges we are forgoing badgless, but equally capable people. I don’t want to get into gamification in this post, but what once had immediate purpose and respect (recognition and praise), when quantified or turned into a fetish (accumulated into a total and turned into an entity "the badge"), can lead to competition and gaming the system (doing it simply to gain points, and "it" may be not really valuable stuff we need to pay attention to); it may become more of a tail wagging a dog scenario. The system just becomes a whore, or sold out just like film and music has become (SIDENOTE - luckily web 2.0 allows us to enjoy the honest and more true to artform music/film generated from the long tail)

So the thing here is that as long as there is no prize, people are less likely to game the system. Instead the accumulation of praises and kudos are just another aspect to consider when making decisions about recognition, finding experts, bonuses, promotions; rather than the sole aspect. This is contrary to what some in the Dachis group say (like Larry Irons, I was surprised to hear these words from that crowd):

…wouldn’t the decision to promote one of two equally skilled employees would be just a little simpler if one had five more “badges” than the other?

The new 3rd party IBM Connections app called "kudos" just doesn’t sit well with me (mind you I say this hastily without reading too deep or playing with it). In addition to what has been talked about above, they go one step further and award points for participating (need I mention Dan Pink’s book or psychological research on self-determination.

Kudos Badges works by tracking metrics around what users do within IBM Connections. For example when a user posts a Status Update, they get a Kudos Point. When they create a blog, they might get 5 Kudos Points. When someone recommends a file that someone else created, they get 1 Kudos Point and the receiver of the recommendation gets 3 Kudos Points. There are hundreds of potential actions within IBM Connections and Kudos Metrics enables us to track them and reward users for their behaviour. Kudos Metrics are used to award both Kudos Leaderboard points as well as award Kudos Badges. All of the metrics can be customised and you can even create your own metrics and badges. Kudos Badges comes with a heap of predefined metrics and badges to make it easy to get started. They have been designed to not only reward behaviour but also to encourage users to take further action and educate them on the broader capabilities of IBM Connections. In addition to metrics within IBM Connections, Kudos Badges enables you to create metrics for actions and behaviour in external systems. These external metrics can then be used to award custom badges as well as contribute to a users leaderboard score and rank. For example you may have a sales force system that you want to encourage specific behaviour. Or maybe HR Performance Objectives that you want to reward users for achieving. The options are endless!

It’s all good intended, but I fear it may lead to gaming the system, participation just for the sake of it…it’s old skool km, and not sustainable. Sorry I didn’t want this to be a post about gamification, but obviously gamification starts to bleed or take centre stage in some vendor offerings. What I can see happening is that organisations will get lazy on intrinsic motivations, and just rely on game mechanics.

Speaking of IBM this type of participation-based "pointsification" is one of the factor that did harm to one of their internal social networking sites "beehive" (socialblue)…so indeed we have to becareful of something poisoning the system.

This presentation by Rypple tells me they are very different than this and understand the balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and that intrinsic motivation needs to be the lead singer.

See my posts by Sebastian Deterding and Jane McGonigal on gamification is nothing without gamefulness. I also did an extensive post on the difference between gamers and employee engagement.

I may do a follow up post on gamification since this post has led us that way…I could keep going on this post about point systems and knowledge markets for sharing knowledge and collaboration, but I’ll elaborate on how gamification is not the answer for that particular context

Always good to finish with some philosophy by Dave Snowden:

Reward systems, linking social obligations to targets and promotion criteria are the single most stupid thing that anyone can do in KM or any other system reliant on social interaction. People will always share with people in the context of proven need, but to share in anticipation of that need will not happen. All that happens if you create a reward mechanism is that people game the system. Its another excuse (like the culture was wrong) for an ill conceived approach

So my friend Jase has a problem. His little baby’s cradle swing is draining batteries…he seems to constantly be replacing them. In addition to this the motor seems to be dodgy; sometimes it doesn’t kick in…he has to swing it to get the motor to kick into action…but then sometimes it will stop again. It’s something he has put up with for a long time, and finally he decided to do something about it.

After tinkering a bit he decides to look online to buy a second hand one…but it’s nagging him he has to dish out more money…and besides the one he really wants doesn’t ship to Australia.

He decides to do the natural thing, Google his problem.

Searching, scanning, reading, searching scanning, reading…BINGO!

He comes across a forum post where someone has posted about the same issue…he anticipates what the comments have in store.

And then he strikes gold! He reads that his FisherPrice cradle swing has the same motor as an Airwick Freshmatic air freshener.

Bingo Bango…the cradle swing works better than ever!!

OK I bent the truth a little…it wasn’t posted as a question and someone didn’t deliver the solution as a comment; instead someone decided to share their experience in a forum thread. And then the Instructables site did a typical thing you would see in a Community of Practice; they gardened the gems from the stream (otherwise all this value just rolls off into the archives); and put it in a perhaps more official and findable place as a Wiki Help Guide entry…this behaviour is generally referred to as the "practice" part of a Community of Practice.

People in your organisation encounter problems like Jase had everyday; and I bet the first thing they do is turn to people for answers (face to face or email). The problem is the people you know, may not have the answers…enter online networks.

So we have, Jase (the seeker, the guy with the problem), the expert (the person on the forums who has the answer), and the curator (the site that made this scenario into a help guide). Now ask any of these people what they think about KM; and they’ll say "ha, what??"

That’s right, we label this behaviour (seeking, searching, connecting, curating) a KM approach to problem solving. These people would say "if that’s what we are doing so be it, but we didn’t intentionally try to behave that way, or know we approach things in a KM way"…and they don’t really do they, they are just doing what’s natural; connecting to people. 

Organisations attempt to do this KM thing and spend lots of money and frustrate people, and so on. Whereas my friend Jase just did what was natural. The people who posted the solution also did something natural in an online group space where you have a feeling of belonging, ownership, and social connection.

Dave Snowden’s principles of KM just keep popping in my mind again and again, why, because they are naturalistic, they are based on how we cognitively and socially behave. If economics thinks people are rational, then organisations think people are robotic/servants.

Here’s a few of Dave’s principles that in relation to what I have posted about so far:

We only know what we know when we need to know it. Human knowledge is deeply contextual and requires stimulus for recall. Unlike computers we do not have a list-all function. Small verbal or nonverbal clues can provide those ah-ha moments when a memory or series of memories are suddenly recalled, in context to enable us to act. When we sleep on things we are engaged in a complex organic form of knowledge recall and creation; in contrast a computer would need to be rebooted.

In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge. A genuine request for help is not often refused unless there is literally no time or a previous history of distrust. On the other hand ask people to codify all that they know in advance of a contextual enquiry and it will be refused (in practice its impossible anyway). Linking and connecting people is more important than storing their artifacts. 

Organisations try to push a thing or behaviour on people, whereas from our example, what they should be doing is creating conditions for natural behaviours to flourish. Set up technology where people can search for stuff that employee’s have shared. Make sure this system is engaging and serves the essential human need of social connection; for none of Maslow’s needs can be met without social connection (a prerequisite for survival). And by engaging I mean appeals to intrinsic motivations (challenge, autonomy, purpose), and stimulates happiness (the oxytocin/dopamine induced grooming, respect, exploring, sharing, belonging, helping, connecting). And by the way the by-product is that your KM goal has been served, and personal goals are also being served. By that I mean people are practicing KM without even knowing it as you are simply facilitating them to service their needs and pain points. That’s right, focus on the behavioural goal, rather than the business goal. And as for personal goals, this part is the "What’s in it for me factor?"; which I have talked about in my post, An observation of employee engagement. Here’s an excerpt:

 

Sense-making (re-use, find, ask) 

- people helping each other to get through their tasks and issues 

Build your reputation/recognition 

- have influence by reputation, rather than having to wait years till you are rightly positioned in the hierarchy 

Having the right audience and context motivates us 

Sense of belonging, ownership, and having impact 

- people feel good when they know their thinking and contributions are welcomed and have impact 

We are social creatures

- learning and connecting with others and finding like people to collaborate with is an innate driver 

DIY Career, personal development, exploring your passion

- participating online, as a by product, displays a person’s expertise…this creates an attractor mechanism, where you are noticed by the right people and are offered meaningful work  

I guess a theme here is that you cannot create a knowledge sharing culture; it’s impossible to create culture, culture is emergent (you can only attack the interplay that surface’s that emergence). Same goes for developing initiatives and then pushing them on people…you don’t need to go to management school to do this, it’s dead basic to create something and then push it on people, but it ain’t gonna be effective; infact this type of leadership is a cop-out; it involves not much talent at all. Management school needs to train the managers of tomorrow to understand complexity, design thinking, user experience…and most importantly respect people and understand how they behave. It’s much harder and challenging to co-create, to understand frontline pain points…why don’t people leading initiatives co-create, why don’t they observe people using their prototype, services, process before releasing it…focus groups and surveys are not enough, people don’t precisely know themselves what they need or want till it emerges from them interacting with it (all the while you are taking this in via observation and conversation).

But then again Management school needs more fundamental subjects on transparency, trust, openness, co-creation, coaching…social business is the new lean; don’t you know;) 

The whats and hows 

Now I always refer to tacit knowledge as know-how ie. a skill in doing something eg. how to win a bid on chinese mining projects.

Then we have explicit knowledge which is know-what…this really isn’t knowledge it’s information. Some of it is common information that lots of people know of, and a lot of it is informal information based on experience eg. tips and tricks, how things are done around here. This informal stuff is often referred to as tacit knowledge, and I guess that’s OK. All this informal information paints a picture of the organisational culture; the more you know the more you can navigate and understand, this kind of heightened awareness leads you to be more productive and effective.

Formal information (processes, procedures) are not enough. When people practice work many contexts bring up different colors, all these interactions (informal information) can supplement and complement the formal information. I explained this in a past post:

A manual can only know so much up front, it’s not clairvoyant. The more we experience using these tools in various contexts, situations, purposes and by various people, the more we discover good practices, workarounds, lessons, etc…

Blogs and forums allow us to do this. Perhaps some of this content can be fed back into the manual, but a lot of it will exist complementary to the manual…a wiki is a good way to point to all the gems.

In essence community tools are our coping mechanism. Without it I could not sense-make. 

So back to our story.

The answer wasn’t high-level tacit knowledge (know-how) ie. Jase did not need to do an apprenticeship and overtime face many contexts and situations where he has developed expanse fundamental understanding and is highly skilled to apply himself to any scenario…this is real knowledge ie. you face a situation you may have never faced before and the nuggets in your head assemble into a new formation where you solve the problem; and now this solution is filed in your head (you never have to work it out again). If we can get people in organisations to connect as often as they can with each other (eg. CoPs, etc…) then overtime we become more competent people…we become chefs as much as we can, rather than recipe followers.

In our story Jase came across some knowledge in someone’s head in the form of a forum post where they shared some informal information (a tip or trick). Again, the more organisations have these types of ecosystem’s the better; life is 24 hour learning, and online networks amplify this. 

This is knowledge flow; people connecting to each other in the context of need, conversing, and from what we learn (and then action), becomes personal knowledge (when we action, we experience, and it imprints in our mind). When we do this online we leave behind the whole history of our interactions (observable work), this history thread becomes new information. One day someone will come across that information, and have a conversation, and so on. Information perpetually being remixed for new contexts, and people acquiring personal knowledge. It’s not just the nugget you find that’s gold, it’s that the nugget continuously transforms, it’s in a flux. Information is both a wave and a particle.

Anyway, the story of Jase and the cradle swing is in my mind what KM is; it’s what ideal sense-making is, it’s what engagement is, and what agile organisations are. 

The key point is don’t try and do KM, because you can’t, as KM is emergent…stimulate the conditions for behaviours, motivations, desires…enable an environment where people can sense-make (do their work by connecting with others), and the competencies that people develop as a result and what they leave behind for everyone else is KM.

Walking on the email platform and traditionally run organisations is not the emergence that you want; it’s poor man’s KM, it’s poor man’s sense-making; it’s not engaging, it’s not agile…online networks and social business is the type of emergence that employee’s and the business want…I hope.

Maybe I should have titled this post "KM is emergent" or "You can’t do knowledge management without knowledge flow".

Come to think of it my post "Don’t control, curate" has foreshadowed this post.

What’s important for an organistion is creating conditions for employee wellness and engagement, solving problems and decision-making, and innovation.

We achieve this by allowing people to connect; knowledge flow.

Once we have this then we can do knowledge management. By that I mean we can do the "manage" part by gardening, curating. ie. using links in documentation (processes, procedures, guides, etc.) that point to the threads from the knowledge flow. Our documentation is perpetually evolving; which is what KM is.

That makes KM seem like not a deep exercise; well it’s not really (but it’s not shallow at all, it’s very effective as it’s about awareness). It’s more a curators job of managing what’s spilt out of people’s heads in the knowledge flow and taking that dripping wet information out of the stream and linking it in places that matter like our documentation. And also creating new documentation like topic pages. Yep, part of KM is making playlists. It’s taking information and organising it and combining it so it drives further value.

I know information management is about organising information; so I’ll say knowledge management is about curating information.

But remember the KM practitioner is not only doing knowledge management; they are also facilitating knowledge flow, this is where the deep talent and skills come into action.

I don’t have a name that encompasses both facilitating knowledge flow and doing knowledge management. I think the term KM is meant to encompass both these activities, but I’m afraid KM managers often skip the knowledge flow part; which means traditional organisational design, doing things to people, all that top-down stuff, and failed KM.

When you think about a Community of Practice; the Community Manager/Facilitator does both the flow and the managing content aspect…so perhaps we need to look at these professionals for what KM really is (when I say KM I mean the combination of knowledge flow and knowledge management…let me know if you have a better word)

At work they having been talking for years about lessons learned

…there have been attempts at plans, strategies and whitepapers. You have to get everyone involved and to agree, and then you have to release it, and then you have to enforce it, etc…The whole deal is it’s starting with a top-down approach…it’s artificial and it’s slow.

I mentioned that projects can just start using a blog right now. For there is no knowledge management without knowledge flow. Start blogging the captains log (ala Star Trek)…narrate your work, work observably. All people on the project can use the, or a, blog to share daily experiences and tag their entries. And if you have read this far in this post we don’t need to go over again the benefits to knowledge flow in relation to meaning, connection, purpose, sense-making, engagement and agility.

Then the knowledge management can start - where we view tag clouds from the experience blogs; all these raw anecdotes, stories, observations will form high-level patterns. And from this we may detect weak signals and opportunties, we may see strengths and weaknesses.

And then we can write our lessons learned documents and give talks based on what we have learned, plan new strategies based on our new insights.

Knowledge Management needs stuff to manage, as you can’t manage what’s in people’s heads. Instead if we first facilitate knowledge flow, a lot of what people know (ie. stuff) naturally spills out in conversation (mostly based in the context of need, or even proactively via totally engaged people who narrate their work)…and if this is done online, well then we have stuff to manage.

Knowledge management starts after there is knowledge flow. What if you try to do knowledge management based on a lack of knowledge flow? Well that perfectly describes the top-down way organisations usually approach programs like lessons learned. What happens is that there is a compliance to do lessons learned in project close out, and everyone reluctantly gets together (if they are available as most don’t have time as they have started on other projects). Then they go through the motions, it’s something we have to do I suppose, ok so what did you learn on the project, what worked, what didn’t…

The other thing is that without knowledge flow we forgo learning as it happens; rather than just learning at the end of a project.

I’m not saying to not do lessons learned sessions; but I’m saying without knowledge flow we leave it up to people to try and remember stuff; and the problem with this is that your memory fades, you don’t care as much as the time has past, things seem more linear in hindsight, you need context to trigger what you know. This last one is exactly why a blog is great at capturing experience as it happens. You are in a particular context in a project or someone asks you something, and you may answer it based on your expertise. Done, captured! At the lessons learned review the facilitator can now use these blog fragments to start conversations.

Let’s revisit some of Snowden’s KM principles; the first one I already shared earlier in this post

Human knowledge is deeply contextual and requires stimulus for recall. Unlike computers we do not have a list-all function

The way we know things is not the way we report we know things. There is an increasing body of research data which indicates that in the practice of knowledge people use heuristics, past pattern matching and extrapolation to make decisions, coupled with complex blending of ideas and experiences that takes place in nanoseconds. Asked to describe how they made a decision after the event they will tend to provide a more structured process oriented approach which does not match reality. This has major consequences for knowledge management practice

NOTE: I have spoken a lot about online connection as knowledge flow. But the same type of connection and valuable conversation of course happens face to face. Chris Collison shares the value of Peer Assist, Anecdote circles, open space, knowledge cafe’s, etc…). More accurately he shares the value of conversation (which is what we are all about):

As Knowledge Professionals, I believe that one of our most important tasks is to discover, surface, and give voice to experience.

People tell stories about their experience. If they presented or wrote them down, they inevitably filter, over-summarize, and post-rationalise with opinion and analysis – and it’s in that process when the waters get muddied, the purity of experience is lost – along with messages embedded in the tone of voice and body language. 

So what’s the purpose of all this? Improving decision-making and innovation.

Stephen Bounds add to this:

Knowledge Management is practised through activities that support better decision-making. IM is practised by improving the systems that store, capture, transmit etc information.

In this sense, a librarian neatly captures both sides of the coin. The act of building and making a library catalogue available is covered by IM. But the transaction by which a person can approach a librarian and leave with a relevant set of data to make a better decision is covered by KM. 

KM re-visited

I imagine that’s all I have to say about KM.

Actually, this post was inspired by James Dellow and Steven Oesterreich. It was my intention for this post to add to this discussion.

Here’s what Steven is suggesting: 

An idea for a debate: Making tacit knowledge explicit with collaborative technologies? 

Hi All- I want to open this up to the group. We want to have a debate for next years KM Australia and we were looking at the above topic - any other idea’s or suggestions on the topic? 

Here’s what James said in Steven’s post:  

I think that would be an excellent idea. Some suggestions around some similar themes:

* Is the Data, Information, Knowledge pyramid a failed concept?

* Does KM need technology or is it the other way around?

* With the rise of social software, is KM finally dead?

* Was KM only really just a fad? or Is KM just nonsense, created by consulting firms and software companies?

* If we can’t measure, touch or see ‘knowledge’, what exactly are we managing?

* Has KM been held back because of short sighted and reductionist management thinking or does KM just need to pay its way like the rest of the organisation?

* Are some people holding back the progress of KM, but making it sound harder and more complex than it is?

What ever you pick, it needs to be provocative! 

OK, signing off  

 

G+ discussion 

Linked In discussion

My previous post is about the future of work; in relation to workers being able to work on tasks that they like and swarm type teams that assemble and dissolve ie. teams that only exist to achieve something, rather than the team perpetually existing. Across the post was smatterings of leadership models and employee engagement as organisational design fundamentals.

I posted a link to my post on Google Plus and it received just about 50 comments…that’s more than my blog has ever seen. Anyway two impressive comments were by Sig Rinde on hierarchies (which I will have to think a bit more about) and Jon Husband who spoke of an old concept/program/scheme/methodology called "Gainsharing".

Here’s what Jon said:

The way money is dished out as salaries and boni (that sure sounds weird, doesn’t it?) is directly related to and based on position in a traditional hierarchy, and as some of you know, my position is that (due to the now-networked environment) until the methodologies underneath the process of assigning boxes on the org chart changes (somehow) then money and the practices of ’scientific’ management will remain in place and continue to cause much dissonance and (mostly) needless resistance to change.

Re: money, again. I am really very surprised that no one (well, except me once, in a tweet) has ever brought up the concept of "gainsharing", an old-ish remuneration philosophy and methodology that had some experimentation back in the day when there were still some viable unions.

I’d argue that it at least in concept is tailor-made for a networked world where will perforce see more self-directed work groupings, a massive change in the role of middle management, and a diminution in the more-or-less automatic attribution of positional power and status that we see in traditional hierarchies.

Just think of it .. more of the money paid to people based on what happens as a result of sharing information and knowledge in relevant and pertinent ways, and the distribution of that money paid made on the gains (from a baseline) accomplished by carrying out work.

Gainsharing as a productivity-development and remuneration concept began to go dormant around the year 2000 .. which may coincide with a range of factors .. less unions, more "back to basics" in business after 9/11, and so on.

As I said, I really wonder why no one has brought it up before.

Could it also be that a decent proportion of the people who have been the standard-bearers for Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business are tech-oriented people who are (in all fairness) basically starting to learn about organizational sociology as they go ? < /teasing >"

I really like what Jon gets at, that those who actually do the work are the one’s the get recognised; and at the same time we are not paying others just for their job title (positional power), but rather their effort and talent. And basically that can happen as regular workers now have access to people and information, and perhaps the autonomy to make decisions within their local work environments. So basically we now have the ability, but traditional structures and the profit-obessessed purpose of which business has become (the CEO and shareholder relationship) stand in the way for complete change, as they have much to lose…politics and power play. It’s not always this way.

Gary Hamel puts it more eloquently:

Modern” management is one of humanity’s most important inventions, Gary Hamel argues. But it was developed more than a century ago to maximize standardization, specialization, hierarchy, control, and shareholder interests. While that model delivered an immense contribution to global prosperity, the values driving our most powerful institutions are fundamentally at odds with those of this age—zero-sum thinking, profit-obsession, power, conformance, control, hierarchy, and obedience

I then shared a comment linking to a post by the insightful Olivier Amprimo on the denatured role of management; which riffs off Jon Husband’s thoughts on the shareholder gains driver which is a root that needs to be pulled out, or basically a new plant needs to be seeded for the future of work to naturally unfold.

Olivier says:

…there is one blind element that no one really addresses in the current crisis: the selfishness of senior management.

Back in the 80’s politicians have deregulated the capital market by dis-intermediating it. Before when senior managers wanted to have money, for most of them, it was compulsory to visit bankers. Bankers were lending money at a certain rate, for a certain time, for a certain risk. Bankers are not perfect but they are providing middle / long term visibility.

Since deregulation senior managers issue shares of the company they run (and bankers are forced to design junk products to make a living ). By doing so they transform their company in a commodity on a market and they face competition from all other listed companies, including those in more profitable industries.

This creates a push toward relentless search for profitability. Either they align or they don’t get money, the shares drop and the company goes havoc. To make sure this does not happen, investors have incentivised senior management to deliver short term and high returns.

They have denatured the role of management, that classically is there to secure the long term of corporations.

To be successful senior management has set short term evaluation criteria, mostly on individual basis as this is the easiest ones to monitor. Some people buy it, some don’t and withdraw, demotivated by the absence of sense/long term vision. Either way this is the best way to kill collaboration or ‘engagement’, understood as an effective contribution to the company, the collective…

This is precisely what social computing tackles, by connecting people and surfacing implicitly (i.e. making ‘publicly available’) their contributions. Smart social computing lets people be selfish (ego) yet deliver positive side effects for the group.

As usual Technology is used to solve human and organisational issues. Because this goes against incentives systems and behavioural norms, it is a painful and time-consuming process to make ‘Enterprise 2.0’ happen"

And Jon’s response:

Yeah .. the shorthand for what Olivier (a very very smart fellow IMO) wrote about is <b>"managerial capitalism"</b> .. managing the business so as to earn as much, as quickly as possible, from increasing share prices and the accomplishment of short-term performance objectives approved by a friendly Board and compensation committee.

I responded with a few more links on managerial capitalism:

re: managerial capitalism

After years of stress and long hours to get the partnership, why would I be interested in the long-term future of the business? I have earned my reward, and nobody is going to take that from me until I retire. As an MBA student said to me in a class last night, becoming a partner is like a pie-eating competition and the prize is that you get to eat more pie

- John Steen

This creates the management culture of forcing efficiency changes to the point where you are gambling that no external “knock” will topple you. And with today’s high executive rewards, it is better to go for a few years of high profits and risk being kicked out as a result of lack of resilience than creating a long term viable operation. Trouble is, you are gambling with lives (mining) and shareholder value (recent derivative scandals) as well as climate (fossil emissions).

- Steve Hinton

As a manager organizing work you need to make strategic decisions about the capabilities of the organization. One of them is the level of resilience against external challenges verses operational efficiency…resilience describes an organization’s rebound capability…At the opposite end of the scale is efficiency. The more a network can specialize and streamline, the better it can get at doing one or a few tasks effectively. Of course, the trade off is that it cannot withstand a wide range of challenges, especially if these challenges are not factored in when designing and putting together the network…Process streamlining is another tactic, especially using automated IT systems and machines. Here again, the process will work well until an external challenge upsets the whole thing. And that is what Corporate Management is all about: it is a gamble that the unlikely outer challenges your organisation faces will not affect profits for the year you are responsible. And after all, if the awareness of any external challenges is not present, a manager cannot be blamed for not factoring it in.The recent Icelandic volcano ash surge is a good example. No one could have been expected to factor it in, and therefore the European transport network is unable to cope with an air traffic ban. Companies go bust, people get forced to take paid leave, and huge debts mount up. But there is no blame on management.If international oil companies no longer have any fields to explore and open up, thus reducing their output, it will not be blamed on management if they had only a short-term profit goal to maintain.

- Steve Hinton

Like you say it all comes down to the fundamentals of capitalism:

Reward long-term thinking and punish short-term selfishness

Sustainable value as opposed to shareholder value

From thin to thick value

Anyway I thought I’d Google "gainsharing"; and noodled through about 5 pages of results and read four or five articles

The concept of gainsharing has roots that are much deeper, dating back to the 1930s when a labor leader, Joe Scanlon, preached that the worker had much more to offer than a pair of hands. The premise was that the person closest to the problem often has the best and simplest solution. Moreover, if the worker is involved in the solution, he or she most likely will make the solution work. Scanlon used a team approach to solicit, review, approve and implement employee ideas and suggestions to drive the improvement process. Moreover,

Scanlon and the gainsharing concept shared the financial gains from improved performance. The Scanlon approach often was referred to as “a frontier inlabor management cooperation.

Gainsharing is a very literal term. In short, as an organization gains, it shares. The typical gainsharing organization measures performance and, through apredetermined formula, shares the savings with all employees. The organization’s actual performance is compared to baseline performance (often a historical standard) to determine the amount of the gain. Because gains are measured in relationship to a historical baseline, employees and the organization must change to generate a gain. The gainsharing system is one that builds ownership and employee identity to the organization. The employee becomes more of a stakeholder. Gainsharing is focused on social aspects of theorganization and looks to make many of the smaller day-by-day changes that drive continuous improvements. The steady and small improvements lead to significant progress over time. The performance bar continues to rise in daily work activities, the employee mindset and the way people do their work.

Compared to Lean Six Sigma, the focus of gainsharing is less on technical tools and more on the social and philosophical side of the workplace. Lean Six Sigma is more of a top-down process. Lean Six Sigma involves a limited number ofemployees through performance improvement project teams. On the other hand, gainsharing attempts to engage the total workforce through many different mean

“As we make these improvements, what’s in it for me? Sure it’s nice to have a job, but don’t executives receive larger bonuses when we help make these improvements? Is that fair?” Gainsharing provides the all-important link to this question. Gainsharing companies believe it is fair to share. Gainsharing’s bonus system provides a common focus, “a score.” As performance improves by working smarter, everyone shares. Interestingly, it’s not about the “money;”it’s about the “sharing.” Sharing and its impact on the sense of equity are very powerful, leading to a significant impact on the principle of identity.

As we all know, an owner of a business acts much differently than the workers. Identity speaks to the sense of purpose, belonging, accountability and ownership. This is what sharing drives. As identity and understanding grow, the need for change is recognized. Change leads to improvement, and improvement leads to gains. As identity and the sense of ownership are developed, employees naturally will have ideas on ways to improveperformance. Involvement is a means of “working smarter,” and there are never-ending ways to do so. Involvement and working smarter foster continuousimprovement.

- Robert L. Masternak and Michael A. Camuso

One of the main differences between Gainsharing and Profit Sharing is that Gainsharing very directly spells out what people need to do to drive the gains. A Profit Sharing system pays out if the company beats the goals set to trigger the Profit Sharing payout, but it doesn’t tell people what they need to do to make the profits happen.

Since the Profit Sharing bonuses just "happen" from time to time and people don’t know exactly what they did to make them happen, Profit Sharing becomes an "entitlement." That is, an expected part of their compensation.

Because people don’t understand the connection between what they do and profits, they feel entitled to the profit sharing. You don’t need to do anything particular to receive it. If you work here when it’s paid out, you receive it."

- Charles DeBettingnies

The concept of gainsharing is simple. First, the hospital calculates its historic rates of productivity (and, where measurable, quality). Then, new targets are set. If performance reaches the new targets, the hospital and its employees share the monetary gains. Because it involves money that the hospital otherwise would not have saved or earned, the program isself-funding. In this sense, it is a win-win program for both the hospital and its employees.

- Kent E. Romanoff andJames B. William

I like the concept of gainsharing, but I don’t like its execution. Rather than an incentive scheme it needs to be a natural part of how we work; given the right organisational design conditions, such as autonomy.

To me, gainsharing should be non-existent or in the background, just like KM, collaboration, employee engagement. Now by saying background I don’t mean they are not important, far from the truth; what I mean is that rather than schemes or programs, they simply need to be absorbed in the natural flow of work. They are not promoted as a thing on their own, rather they’re simply part of how we work around here.

To me gainsharing can be thrown in a bucket with all sorts of business goals or ways to achieve business goals. Instead what we can do is pay attention to employees, and behavioural goals…by doing this I think we will see the fruits of gainsharing via an indirect approach.

When you read this sentence tell me how gainsharing is different than KM, collaboration, improvement, engagement:

Recommending ideas and executing them; see where pain points and local gaps are and having the autonomy to budget and run with them. As a result of this type of self-managing and improvement you get a cut of the gain; and do meaningful work and become recognised by peers.

OK, what gainsharing brings to the table is you get a cut of the gain…cool. But just like KM, collaboration, engagement, performance and improvement it’s about people being able to do their job better. We don’t need a top-down managed program to do this with targets and outcomes and measurements. We just need to understand how employees work, pay attention to meaning, purpose, challenge, autonomy, recognition, etc…as a result we will achieve our goals (performance, enagement, KM, etc…) in a more indirect way.

It’s the execution, strategy, and implementation that needs to change. Instead of programs, the strategy is to understand employee needs, likes and wants. That’s a generic strategy that will achieve a myriad of business goals as a by product. Not only that, paying attention to employees will surface new business goals management haven’t thought of or realised.

In a nutshell, gainsharing is part of the natural flow of work; when you have purpose, autonomy, and are engaged it’s only natural you come across pain points and want to fix them (and have the means/autonomy to fix them), and that you have ideas. When employees have a stake in what they do, they are more purpose-driven; they act as if they own part of the organisation. For me it’s not about scouting to fix things in order for the money grab; it’s more about everyone improving their flow; it’s not about targets, it’s not a separate thing we do.

I needn’t explain the cancer of rewards and the perversion of targets. Again we are not trying to achieve something like sharing, being more engaged, improving; instead we are simply being.

Of course this brings us full circle to our Google Plus discussions about control, hierarchies, short-term gain, and shareholder value; it’s this dissonance that will continue to prevent complete change.

Actually I like this focus on group outcome and swarm type work, which talks to both my posts on the future of work and measuring employees on group how they help others:

Regardless of the actual plan used, there are several reasons that may account for the growing popularity of gainsharing. First, an increasing number of firms are moving toward a team-based work design (e.g., Scarp, 1995). The basic concept of a job may be undergoing a fundamental change from a prescribed set of tasks and duties assigned to individual workers to a broad definition of expectations, including a person’s ability to perform multiple tasks and beflexible to contribute to one or more work teams depending on need (Manz & Sims, 1993). This new emphasis on flexibility and cooperative efforts is conducive to an aggregate incentive plan, such as gainsharing, that rewards employees for group outcomes (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin,1992J. While team based incentives may be used, their application is limited by the fact that teams are often transient, individuals belong to multiple teams, the performance of various

teams is likely to be interdependent, and inter-team competition may be dysfunctional to theachievement of overall corporate goals. Gainsharing is particularly well suited to a team environment because rewards are linked to the performance of the entire unit which reflect the cumulative contribution of all teams (Welbourne, Balkin, & Gomez-Mejia, in press).

A second reason for the increased use of gainsharing is dissatisfaction with other types of pay-for-performance systems. In particular, programs to reward individual performance (such as merit pay and bonuses) more often than not lead to disappointing results (e.g., Cumming, 1995; Mount, 1987; Pearce, Stevenson & Perry, 1985). Many reasons have been advanced for this dissatisfaction, most notably the difficulty in untangling an individual’s contribution from that of other employees (e.g., Ilgen & Feldman, 1983; Liden & Mitchell, 1983; Yammarino, Dubinsky & Hartley, 1987); performance measurement problems or supervisory rating errors (e.g., Cardy & Dobbins, 1993); lack of credibility because many non-performance factors (such as position in the salary range) enter into these decisions (Schwab & Olson, 1988); and social disruption engendered by increased competition and disgruntled employees who feel that they deserve better (Pearce et al., 1985; Hughes, 1986). As firms scramble to find alternative mechanisms to reward performance, gainsharing is often adopted as a "lesser evil" or as a viable option with fewer negative side effects (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 1992)

…some forms of gainsharing provide an operational mechanism to implementparticipative management. The desirability of employee involvement has its roots in the human relations movement as exemplified in the Hawthorne experiments of the 1920’s. Despite much lip-service to this concept over the years, participative management has been more of an academic than a practical reality (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, & Cardy, 1995). Gainsharing represents a major exception. Many gainsharing plans contain a committee structure to elicit and evaluate employee suggestions thereby providing an efficient channel to promote employee involvement and convert it into an action plan

Participative Management…The oldest stream of theory based research on gainsharing focuses on the basic notion that inducing employees to cooperate by giving them voice and a chance to participate in important decisions regarding their jobs is likely to augment commitment to the organization, improve work motivation, and enhance overall productivity. Employees understand their jobs far better than management and tapping this knowledge through gainsharing offers an important means to increase organizational performance. This view can be traced back to the classical writings of Mayo (1945) and his followers who argued that ". . . the administrator is dealing with well-knit human groups and not with a horde of individuals. . . every social group must face two perpetual and recurrent problems of administration. It must secure for its individual and group membership: (1) the satisfaction of material and economic needs, and (2) the maintenance of spontaneous cooperation throughout the organization (p. 9) . . . the eager human desire for cooperative activity still persists in the ordinary person and can be used by intelligent and straightforward management . . . " (p. 112) Gainsharing provides a medium to accomplish this by aligning the cooperation imperative of workers (through suggestion committee structures) with the objectives of the organization (through the criteria used to trigger payoffs) while at the same time satisfying the material and economic needs of workers (through the bonus system)

Social Dilemma…One of the concerns with aggregate incentive systems such as gainsharing is the so called "free-riding" effect whereby individuals accrue the benefits of the group effort and this serves as a disincentive to individual efforts (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 1992a). In the terminology of Cooper, Dyck, & Frohlich (1992), gainsharing creates a social dilemma because employees can benefit from an improvement in group performance regardless of their personal contribution to that performance. In a manner akin to the participative management models, Cooper et al., argue that this social dilemma may be solved through group decision making to decide how rewards are to be allocated within the group.

This literature contributes to our understanding of gainsharing by reminding us that these plans should not be introduced (or indeed studied) as stand alone entities without simultaneously examining other organizational factors that may singularly or interactively affect their success. However, this literature suffers on three counts: First, the empirical tests, so far, leave open the question of causality. Second, the identified factors (perhaps because of their global, often amorphous nature) are difficult to measure and the theoretical constructs themselves are subject to a wide range of interpretations. Third, it tends to neglect the possibility that the gainsharing program may be introduced as a change agent to alter the conditions which have been identified as prejudicial to these plans (such as low employee identification with the firm and lack of control or empowerment).

-Theresa M. Welbourne andLuis R. Gomez Mejia

In the end gainsharing to me means giving people autonomy and meaning at work, full stop. It’s not a program, "look into my eyes there’s no such concept as gainsharing". In their everyday work employees will come across things that need enhancing and improving. To do this they can form swarm teams, they can source their networks and help each other out (they may have to ask for permission, but the employees themselves do the sourcing, forming, and executing…as we now have access to information and people). At this point they can use their autonomy to naturally fix and fill these gaps. This on its own gives them belonging, ownership, meaning and purpose. And on top of that the organisation can respond and recognise in monetary and other ways.

No program, no target, just autonomy.

Related

“I am knowledge worker”, says the Janitor

The cancer of rewards

From strategic planning to purpose and resilience

Measure impact rather than outcomes and the folly of targets

People need ownership to be motivated

Involve front-line people in decisions

Knowledge worker 2.0

Value is created at the frontline not the IT department

The Toyota principle

Management must trust employees to perturb processes

Enabling opportunities for employee driven change

The era of employee empowerment is on us

How do we motivate business to devote their existence to people

The secret is creating the conditions for great inner work life

Where employees want to be

For achievable business goals we need to action behavioural goals

Behaviours are actions not results or values

"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.

 

Here’s a slide from Tom Chatfield’s presentation at TED, 7 ways games reward the brain.

Yep this is Engagement - it’s what I want to do, and I am enjoying the experience of doing it…both my desire and expectation is being met, and perhaps more.

Tom is referring to the engagement Gamers have when playing virtual/video games.

John Hagel and John Seely Brown tell us in a post from a of a couple of years ago that over 11 million people around the world now play World of Warcraft.

According to Jane McGonigal’s TED presentation (which I noted here) since 1994 5.93 million years have been spent playing World of Warcraft.

She says there are nearly 80000 articles in the World of Warcraft Wiki, making it the worlds second biggest wiki.

Jane goes on to say "The average young person today in a country with a strong gamer culture would have spent 10,000 hours playing online games by the age 21." …and that in the US from 5th grade to graduation, children (with perfect attendance) will have spent approx 10,000 hours in school…a parallel track of education.

This is totally related to Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus (which I’m currently reading and have correlated with other posts).

John Hagel and John Seely Brown have a post called the "Collaboration Curve" about the network effect and how gamers in the World of Warcraft practice KM principles (enterprise 2.0).

Even though, within the game, experience points become more difficult to acquire as you advance, World of Warcraft players are improving their performance four times faster as they continue to play the game.

How? Most improve their performance by leveraging a broad set of discussion forums, wikis, databases, and instructional videos that exist outside the game. Here the players share experiences, tell stories, celebrate (and analyze) prodigious in-game achievements, and explore innovative approaches to addressing the challenges at hand. This "knowledge economy" is impressively wide and deep: in the US alone, the official forums hosted by Blizzard Entertainment contain tens of millions of postings in hundreds of forums. And those are just the forums hosted by Blizzard. Independent forums are proliferating at an even faster rate.

So why don’t we have this type of engagement at work, and is it possible?

Not all people at work are engaged as they don’t have the "wanting" and "liking"…for some people it’s just a job. Whereas gamers choose to play games as a recreational activity, and they are fulfilled from doing so. Most of us have to work, and some don’t really like our jobs…sure organisational design can make it a more enjoyable atmosphere if it is recognised that people spend more time at work than with their families, but this won’t guarantee total engagement…it’s only part of the solution.

Whereas if you gave others the choice, of getting paid to do what you want everyday, or to keep doing your job…some would keep their job, as their job happens to be what they want out of life, it fulfills them. But this is the few.

Others may have these qualities of "wanting and liking", but may not be fully engaged since they don’t have good leadership and empowerment (autonomy).

Others may have these qualities, but may not be fully engaged since they have organisational design constraints - silos are not bridged, they don’t have online networks and groups to legitimise their offline and email networks.

So even though you may introduce social computing software it doesn’t mean people will become engaged as we have barriers such as: leadership, whether they like their actual job, whether they like their office or work culture, whether they are recognised or even allowed to help others on their tasks ie. do business units know how to pass on local costs, whether they are measured (or allowed time) for how well they use the network to deliver quality work, whether they are allowed to discover others with like interests and collaborate on tasks that interest them (you belong to a team, but have an element of freelancing or swarming around tasks and problems), or even free time to initiate projects.

If some people (I refrained from calling them workers in this context) do have "wanting and liking" at work ie. they are engaged, then social software will support or enable or enhance or amplify this engagement. This is not to say social software doesn’t have any positive effect in building engagement in unengaged work cultures ie. work cultures that have many barriers to engagement listed above…but we always need to remember technology alone is not often the fix it solution.

Already engaged people will make use of blogs, forums, wikis, networks as these new tools enable and support and enrichen their present mode or attitude to their work ie. connecting, sharing and helping others achieve things. They may have done this offline or in email, but now these same attitudes can be re-purposed online. They may be engaged; even though there still exists some barriers to engagement (as listed above).

End note

Like gamers, workers too can be engaged (to a degree); but there is a difference between these worlds which needs to be explored. Often our initial reaction is if it works in one context, why not the other…this is the whole ignorance problem with best practices.

These worlds have different purpose, dynamics, structures and complexities that we have to examine first in order to get any correlated (or cross-disciplinary) value.

Workers often don’t get to swarm around things they’d like to work on (we often stay put in silo boxes); if they did it would make it more on par with gamers in that they get to choose an activity, and hopefully like it (and as a result be engaged).

Unlike gamers, workers have leadership constraints, whereas gamers don’t have the unfortunate case of a boss curbing or not recognising their potential.

Unlike gamers, workers have a different sort of pressure; they have deadlines and deliverables that have consequences if not performed eg. if I don’t perform, I may be out of a job, which means I can’t support my family

Workers work within the rules of organisational purpose and boundaries. Yes there are cultural and informal norms, but there are also visions (not yours, but the organisations), values, mission statements, and all that top-down stuff we are meant to adhere, obey and behave to. You are also working for a boss and what he/she intends for you to achieve…you don’t decide (co-creation as the exception). Whereas gamers choose the game because they feel one with the mission ie. the story line. If not they can choose a game that resonates with them (workers don’t always have the luck to land the right job with the right firm)…for gamers it’s more based on informal norms, rather than top-down values…not that I’m a gamer but I’m assuming here the code of conduct is not so much how we want or expect you to think or value; but more the etiquette of what not to do.

Related

Gamification concepts for organisations