Teams and communities and networks! Oh, my!
"Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my!" is one of the more famous lines quoted by Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz as she travels down the yellow brick road with some obvious trepidation regarding the dangerous animals she might encounter down the path. This post plays off that quote because I sense organizations are similarly fearful regarding emerging social computing trends as they travel down the enterprise yellow brick road (so to speak) towards improving organizational productivity and process performance. Teams, communities and networks (the lions, tigers and bears) are viewed as essential building blocks within the enterprise to achieve growth and sustain innovation levels.
What makes this topic difficult for many business and IT strategists is that it reminds them of the KM fiasco of the nineties that saw the rise and fall of a plethora of KM technologies all touting how such tools could improve knowledge capture and facilitate knowledge sharing.
So the question in many minds: Are blogs, wikis and social networking the 2005 equivalent of search, content management and expertise automation products of the nineties?
The right answer of course is: That’s the wrong question.
The worse thing we can do is throw more technology at the problem before understanding that the underpinnings of the problem are not primarily technology related but are anchored around more subtle organizational issues. I don’t want to devalue the role technology plays (e.g., instant messaging, virtual workspaces, presence, blogs, wikis), but before you even get to that part of dreaded KM discussion, you need to understand a lot more about the (1) the macro and micro organizational issues (2) the process and work practices, (3) information sources and exchanges and (4) workplace structures (e.g., global vs. local, office vs. mobile/remote, etc) to name a few.
So the right question is more along the lines of: how do we improve the effectiveness of the people, relationships and know-how we have available to us as an organization?
And that gets us to a dialog that will lead to a discussion on teams, communities and networks. And we never mentioned the term “knowledge management”! Not that KM is dead – but KM is additive to other endeavors and not and end in and of itself. If we anchor the discussion around improving a process or ensuring that we have the right competencies and skills within the workforce (e.g., as part of succession planning) or improving group interaction around R&D activities, then we are speaking the language of business and that will lead to the business case and metrics.
And eventually, gets us back to teams, communities and networks.
So where to start? I’d recommend some type of organizational survey of the group (small or large) that you are focused on. You might think of a survey/interview activity that scores the readiness of that group to collaborate better. Questions might include those below. Correlating the answers can lead to interesting insight and identify problems that might be alleviated by HR programs, management communication, process improvements and yes, even technology:
· People have a good sense of who their counterparts are (e.g., peers) elsewhere in the organization.
· Sharing is such a core priority that it is embedded within people’s MBOs and related job objectives
· People feel that they are consistently left out (intentionally or not) of activities that they should be a part of given their role or professional expertise.
· People feel that a large percentage of mistakes that derail key activities happen because the right people where not involved at the right time.
· People often go outside of their own department or work unit to solve problems, innovate or just bounce ideas off of someone (brainstorm).
· People collaborate via e-mail to avoid face to face discussions
· People always know what’s going on within the organization that impacts their areas of research, work, projects and professional development / career paths
· People believe they have all the tools they need to share information, collaboration and make group decisions
· People want to collaborate with each other.
· People recreate work done elsewhere in the organization because they did not know it exists or they do not believe it to be credible
· People feel that they always have access to the right people and the right information at the right time to get their work done.
· People feel that they can voice their viewpoint and that opinion will be respected by peers and management
· People leaving the organization is viewed as a critical loss in experience and something that impacts team performance for a long time until someone else comes up to speed.
· People feel that they can e-mail, phone or meet face to face with anyone in the organization that can provide assistance.
· People learn more from official training programs than by interacting with peers and subject-matter experts
· People rarely go outside their own work group to seek help, feedback or advice.
· People believe that it’s faster to go through channels and follow formal processes than to seek assistance from team members and other community experts to resolve problems or apply workarounds.
· People feel that work processes are inhibited by siloed functional areas and organizational hierarchies.
· Collaboration outside my department or division requires management approval.
· People have a clear view of where they fit into the overall process/project goals and objectives
· People rely on management to identify and focus attention on critical areas where improvement is needed.
· People feel that the organization responds quickly to changing business or project circumstances.
· People reflect of past performances and failed projects to learn and apply best practices going forward.
· People tend to hoard what they know.
· People learn more from the people they work with about what’s going on than from official channels (e-mails, web sites, management hierarchy, meetings).
· “Red tape” often gets in the way of people innovating or executing on new ways to work better together.
· People believe that they would innovate better if they had more opportunities to collaborate with people outside their official work structures (teams, divisions).
· People believe that there are others in the organization who can help them perform better but they do not know who they are or how to contact them
More on team, communities and networks later. But there are some interesting posts on topics related to this:
Community Indicators By Nancy White
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