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Showing posts from 2008

All the World's a Stage

This famous quote from Shakespeare has probably never been more apropos than in this age of emerging social media. I could not resist sharing this fascinating and profound presentation by Michael Wesch , the Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. Michael was also the author of the famous viral video, Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us . The video below is compiled around Michael's recent talk at the Library of Congress. It's an entertaining and touching journey through the history of social media and how these changes impact our behaviour and develop new cultural norms. The presentation is a little lengthy, but definitely worth the watch! Jaques: All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. William Shakespeare - As You Like It Act 2, scene 7, 139–143

The Company with an Agile Core

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I keep tripping over a fascinating company with an intriguing set of values, processes and services. They are committed to community, to making the world a better place, to taking innovation to a new level, and at the same time are commercially very successful. And no, I don't work for them... yet. Salesforce.com . What's the big deal? CRM as a service, so what? Sourceforge has taken the "R" in CRM seriously, and have nurtured a core competence that's sure to keep them in the lead. We're already seeing these dynamics in play in their ongoing dance with Google . It's refreshing when companies actually do what they believe in. It provides a fundamental driving force that accelerates their success... inspiration . They Care The Salesforce Foundation was set up within a year of the start of the company. The " Power of Us " philosophy is a core value of the company: giving back to the community. 1% of employee time is allocated towards commu

Taking Teamwork beyond the Boundaries

Agile development experience has demonstrated how practical conditions and simple processes foster highly-performant teams that produce sustainable results. A Small-World View Here are some of the "rules-of-thumb" that contribute to success: A small number of people, no more than can be fed by two pizzas Everyone in the same room with no walls and barriers Lots of collaborative tools, include shared computers, full wall visuals, and whiteboards Optimal mutual availability and accountability Full awareness of roles and capabilities Easily communicate with all members Maximum opportunity for serendipity and knowledge sharing Everyone focused on a single well understood project No personnel turnover Beyond the Ideal Of course, we all would love to have the conditions that accelerate effective teamwork as described above. The reality is that people are constantly moving, often collaborating across corporate and geographic boundaries, and working on a variety of projects in very

The Politics of Social Networking

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This artifact from Xplane is a terrific combination of several areas I have been covering on this blog: image from Xplane - full pdf version available It's another example of how Xplane creatively combines graphics and text into content-rich, single-page visualizations to produce clear and powerful communication vehicles. Over the years this company has been a great source of communication ideas and inspiration. It highlights the disruptive dynamics and scaling capabilities of social networking . It demonstrates how social networks are far more than merely relationship building tools and trivia exchange centers. In fact they are extremely efficient engines for raising money and driving revenue . No Rocket Science There's nothing terribly new here, social networking and word-of-mouth dynamics have been impacting business and society since the rise of the first human communities. The exciting difference is the emerging visibility of these networks and the ability to observ

The 90-9-1 Rule

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What does successful collaboration look like? Understanding how communities and people interact online is essential for setting the right expectations. Often people misinterpret metrics or focus their energy in the wrong direction because they do not have a reasonable benchmark to assess how well their on-line communities are functioning. All Things Are Not Equal In any team or community you can expect to find a variety of expertise and strengths. We usually don't expect everyone to do the exact same thing, or to have the same skill sets and strengths. In fact, the complementary nature of individual strengths is essential to creating strong teams and vibrant communities. Knowing this, it is surprising that the default expectation for online interaction is identical contribution, with performance metrics that reinforce this unhealthy view. Not only is this unrealistic, it's a sure recipe for failure! Setting Expectations Most everyone is familiar with the Pareto principle

Measuring Collaboration

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Your company does not need to be very large before it starts grappling with two significant problems that plague the knowledge economy: How to maintain and improve effective teamwork between people that are often separated by geography or time. How to share timely and useful information across the organization, reusing existing knowledge and channeling emerging experience. Photo Credit: PMThink! Blog Technology Helps Fortunately, Web 2.0 technologies and emerging communication practices are helping slow the growth of these corporate tumors. However, it takes more than just technology to reverse the trends. Effective design, initial content seeding and proactive facilitation are critical factors for re-firing in the innovation engine. Is it working? There's only one way to know... metrics . Measuring for Success A successful community generally has two hallmarks : a high level of interaction between the participants, and a growing body of valuable content. That's a wonde

The Knowledge Factory

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SECI Model at Fuji Xerox - from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology A Model for Learning When researching knowledge management and organizational learning you're bound to come across the SECI model and the work of the Nonaka and Takeuchi. Appreciating the value of tacit knowledge (carried in people's minds) and explicit knowledge (codified or articulated) is paramount for the knowledge based industries. The authors of the SECI model emphasize that as valuable as the knowledge assets may be, the process of creating knowledge and how it is transformed is where the real potential lies. Simply managing existing knowledge is not enough . The Heart of the Machine Intuitively we know that human talent is the critical success factor in hi-tech and other knowledge based contexts. Creativity and innovation are primarily human functions and are hard to systematize but are essential for ongoing success. Additionally, the picture below demonstrates how all significa

Why Wiki? Part 4 - Publish As You Write, Together!

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What looks like a doc, sounds like a doc, but doesn't behave like a doc? It's a Google Doc! Google Docs , along with similar offerings from other web based vendors, is an innovative collaboration environment that behaves a lot more like a Wiki than a traditional document management system. Mike Riversdale captures this eloquently in his post, " Google Docs ... so what - the ONE reason why you should care " Wikis live by understanding the connectivity of their environment and the innate desire of 'words' to love all and be loved by all. In the future there will be no difference between a Google Doc and a wiki page ... in fact, it may be so close already it's just a matter of semantics and opinion. Collapsing the Publishing Process One of the dynamics of a Wiki is that whatever you create is immediately, or very quickly, published. This means that knowledge can be communicated as quickly as it is captured, significantly outpacing the change in knowledge d

Why Wiki? Part 3 - Knowledge Incubation

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Perhaps because we were raised on encyclopedias and textbooks, we tend to think of knowledge in two primary forms: Steam - The thoughts, ideas and concepts that rattle around in our heads. Ice - Books and polished documents that we reference from time to time. In the context of knowledge work, this oversimplification fosters miscommunication and information management bureaucracy . A far better metaphor is to see knowledge as a dynamic, continuously flowing stream, with resulting artifacts passing through various stages of a knowledge lifecycle . How Knowledge Grows You don't require too much imagination to visualize how knowledge transitions from simple ideas through further crystallization, eventually forming reusable artifacts and polished publications. All knowledge workers have participated in this process. Many of the steps occur informally or are managed in isolated environments on personal computers. Content Management Systems (CMS) or Document Management Systems hav

Why Wiki? Part 2 - The Transparency Effect

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Photo Credit: Dominion Coal and Wood Silos - from University of Western Ontario Libraries One of the fastest ways to build trust and foster collaboration is to make everything visible. Complex organizations quickly become specialized and fragmented, creating isolated knowledge silos. Significant human effort and heroics are often required to bridge these gaps and maintain ongoing productivity. How Dangerous Is Open? In most organizations the tendency is to emphasize protection instead of knowledge sharing. Many systems start with out-of-the-box permissions that restrict everyone, allowing for manual overrides to allow individuals and groups to share content. Not only is this a sure recipe for clogging the knowledge arteries in an organization, it also tends to generate complex and unmanageable access matrices that introduce new risks and security holes themselves. The reality for most information is: Most people can't find it anyway, even when they have full access. Generally,

Why Wiki? Part 1 - A Design Definition

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Photo Credit: 3D Wiki in Second Life - 3pointD.com Almost five years ago, I introduced one of the first wikis into the corporate environment of a large healthcare company. We needed to solve a very simple, pervasive problem. The common challenge for a global team of analysts was twofold: I found something interesting, but there is no obvious place to store it in the project infrastructure or corporate taxonomy. I need to quickly find this stored information when it becomes relevant, even if I forgot about it in the interim. The best solution at the time: a reused server under my desk loaded with SWIKI, a dead-easy Wiki server, all under the radar of corporate IT. Apart from solving the above-mentioned problems, we quickly experienced some of the exciting knowledge flow and work team dynamics that are inherently encouraged by Wiki technology . Five years later, Wikis are the talk of the town. This same company has now purchased an enterprise Wiki that is accelerating interaction and

How Training is the Enemy of Learning

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Learning Cycle: University of Tasmania Buried deep in the psyche of quality management systems is the discipline of training. It goes something like this: Define what needs to be done Train people how to do the work Test to ensure compliance Repeat activity in a predictable manner Optimize as needed The Danger Zone Much of this emphasis finds its roots in Taylorism. Also known as Scientific Management, this discipline focussed on studying current work processes and optimizing quality and performance in mass production environments. Unfortunately, the context has shifted dramatically to what is needed in today's knowledge-based organizations. "In political and sociological terms, Taylorism can be seen as the division of labour pushed to its logical extreme, with a consequent de-skilling of the worker and dehumanisation of the workplace." from Wikipedia: Scientific Management Learning in the Brave New World The truth is that in our current information-age work contexts,

The Community Is the Platform - Part 2

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In the last post , I talked about the importance of focusing on communities as the context for collaboration and knowledge sharing. How do you accelerate community building in your organization? Here are some ideas: Community Portal - Create a convenient, helpful central page of information that helps others discover, explore and engage your community. Include elements like: Identification Info - meaningful description of community context and purpose, links to core community artifacts. Communications - engaging news about community activity and contributions. People - highlight who is involved in your community. Exploration Tools - intuitive links, search and other navigation to help visitors find valuable content. Self Help and Interaction - FAQs, Q&A, and discussion forums to help the community find answers and kickstart collaborative contribution. Orientation - online training and help to remove barriers for new visitors, paving their transition to community con

The Community is the Platform - Part 1

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In a previous post, I suggested that the People are the Product , particularly in knowledge-based industries. However, when people in these contexts work and interact in a community , it becomes the platform for realizing continuous improvement and value innovation. What is a Community? Some of the definitions for community from the Miriam-Webster dictionary include: a unified body of individuals an interacting population of various kinds of individuals a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society In businesses, you find a variety of structures that help people interact and align to create value: Organizational units and teams Functional teams Cross functional teams Project teams Ad hoc communities of practice Informal associations and social relationships If we only recognize the traditional or formal "communities" or organizational structures in a business, we can easily end up managing and assessing only a fracti

Six Sigma Under Tension

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A friend of mine passed along an insightful article on the challenges of balancing efficiency and creativity at 3M. It describes how James McNerny, the previous CEO helped "turn-around" the failing stock price through aggressive cost cutting, discipline, and efficiency measures, modeled after successes realized at GE. This included the introduction of an army of Six Sigma "black belts" trained to measure and eek out every opportunity to improve the organization. The program had its desired result: predictability restored, conformance enforced, and profitability returned to target levels. Despite this success, dangerous side-effects were beginning to emerge. Break-through innovations were no longer the hallmark of 3M , a company that regularly generated a large amount of its revenue from newly introduced products. Patents based on new research also began to dwindle. When McNerny left for a position in Boeing in 2005, he was replaced with George Buckley. Buckley h

Success in Complexity - Scrum

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Most significant software development projects feel more like a ride on a roller-coaster than a managed success. We lay out the track, check that everyone's strapped in, and scream our way through the out-of-control ride. However, unlike the amusement park counterpart, we feel more frustrated than exhilarated when we step back out on the platform. The Power of SCRUM Does it have to be this way? Discipline and good engineering are definitely lacking in many contexts, but even where these are rigorously applied, there is ample dissatisfaction from excessive delays, lack of creativity, and the inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Perhaps there is an alternative that gives us the best of both worlds -- discipline for the known challenges and adaptability for the emerging ones? Enter Scrum , a set of software development practices and roles that use agile principles to empower teams to delivery high value on time. Combining flexible requirements prioritization techniques,

Why CRM is the New Project Management

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Well, not quite... but definitely getting closer. I've been having the pleasure of playing with Highrise, an innovative CRM (Customer Relationship Management) offering by 37Signals , the makers of Basecamp and sponsors of Ruby on Rails . As my initial experiment with Highrise turned into serious reliance, I realized something magical was at play. The Project's Not the Real Challenge Here is the magic, the people are the project! Of course, defining what we know about the project is still critically important. Goals, milestones, and work breakdown structures are still highly useful for the known elements of the project. However, as any experienced Project Manager will tell you, project success is primarily about managing the people and managing the unknown . This is where some of the core elements of CRM are extremely helpful. The focus of CRM is the people (traditionally in the form of leads and contacts). Highrise lets you quickly organize your tasks and communications ar

Managing the Unknown

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We've become experts at managing what we know. To achieve our goals, we break down the work and carefully measure our progress. We squeeze out efficient business practices and powerful system architecture through rigorous planning, testing and execution. But it's not good enough. Are we not often blindsided by the unforeseen? And isn't it true that most of the really valuable discoveries seem to be things we inadvertently trip over, almost by happenstance? Managing Complexity Rather than relegating these circumstances to luck or fate, complexity science offers us some insights into how to manage the unknown. This is the premise of the recent HBR article published by Dave Snowden and Mary Boone, entitled " A Leader's Framework for Decision Making ". The authors suggest that by identifying the context of a business situation, leaders can consciously choose an appropriate management approach: Simple , in which the relationship between cause and effect is obv

Making a Mesh - Social Computing in Business

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After viewing Robin Chase's video on how wireless mesh networks could help reduce global warming, I was struck by how the characteristics of mesh networks are related to human interaction improvements in the business world. What is a Mesh Network or Meshwork? Meshworks are highly distributed networks of devices which connect to each other without prior infrastructure. Let's apply some of the characteristics of mesh networks to our innovation design for human networks in the business context. Characteristics of mesh networks include the following: Many possible interconnections. Any node can connect to any other node. Connections are dynamic and temporary. People have many dynamic and temporary interactions with a variety of others, both within and outside of the organization. By increasing presence awareness , through capabilities, such as instant messaging and self-publishing, it is possible to dramatically improve the frequency and range of interactions. Nodes have purp

Looking for Intelligence

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I am fascinated by the emerging thinking about how to individually and corporately thrive in complex environments. A common thread in these discussions is the growing dissatisfaction around our experience of optimizing known processes and activities. It seems that the more we use technology to eliminate one type of human effort, the more we need new human capabilities to bridge the glaring gaps. This awareness manifests itself in a variety of contexts: Highly controlled sequential development vs. Agile methodologies Capability maturity vs. Value innovation Rigorously implemented workflow vs. Adaptable decision support Six sigma continuous improvement vs. Creative process innovation Business intelligence data vs. Business process management Enterprise Project management vs. Dynamic social collaboration Directed leadership vs. The wisdom of crowds Tightly integrated implementations vs. Autonomous loosely coupled services It's Not a War Although the proponents of any emphasis te

Silicon Valley Innovation at Your Company

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How do you get companies to start investing in future innovations, when their tendency is to finance past success? I read this article about Gary Hamel's observations on Silicon Valley dynamics and how these principles can foster innovation in a corporate setting: Requires a diversity of funding options. Creates an environment of emergent business planning Naturally aligns with "angel investors" (sponsors with direct interest and coaching capability) Hamel suggests replicating this effect internally by creating a corporate wide network of "angel investors", allocating a portion of corporate budgets to these individuals, and encouraging innovators to "pitch" their ideas, competing for the attention and funding needed. Read the full article , or Gary Hamel's book, The Future of Management , for more thought provoking ideas...

Innovative Process Management as Business Design

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© BPTrends - www.bptrends.com - Click Image for Larger View Although we have been emphasizing the importance of fostering a culture of social innovation, there is no excuse for neglecting the existing value creation capabilities of the organization. The BPTrends Pyramid is a very helpful model for keeping things in perspective, demonstrating the strategic placement of business processes. Why is attention to business processes key to business success? Basically, they form the "design" layer of an organization. We are all familiar with the power of innovative product design . As I pointed out in a previous post , value-driven design creates a powerful overlap between opportunity and capability, envisioning a creative outcome that can be realized as a new or improved product. In the same way, processes are the design bridge in an organization. This is where we creatively leverage corporate resources (capability) to achieve business vision and strategies (opportunity). The

Looking Forward - Emerging Social Technology Trends

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In the McKinsey Quarterly article, Eight business technology trends to watch , it is interesting to note that 4 of the 8 trends identified are related to social computing. This juncture of technology and relationships is seen as a growing opportunity for business value. The authors affirm: Technology alone is rarely the key to unlocking economic value: companies create real wealth when they combine technology with new ways of doing business. Social Computing Trends 1. Distributing co-creation There will be an increase in the use of technology to enable the entire value chain in the innovation and product development process. This trend is supported by emerging standards and the open sharing of technologies and integration platforms. Companies are beginning to deliberately shift from protective internal R&D strategies, to the opportunities of open collaboration. They are trading IP (intellectual property) control for increased innovation and competitiveness. 2. Using consume