Collaborative Thinking

Feeling the Heat: The Effects of Performance Pressure on Teams' Knowledge Use and Performance

Worth reading (especially if you have a techno-centric view of collaboration) - additional information and download information on the HBS Working Knowledge site:

Executive Summary:

Why do teams often fail to use their knowledge resources effectively even after they have correctly identified the experts among them? Project teams are a prominent feature of the knowledge-based economy, and member expertise has long been recognized as an important resource that can greatly affect team performance, but only to the extent that it is accurately recognized and used to accomplish the objective. The step between recognizing others' expertise and then actually applying it to achieve a collective outcome, however, is highly problematic: Even when individuals know who holds relevant task expertise, they are often unwilling or unable to give the experts appropriate influence over the group process and outcomes. HBS professor Heidi K. Gardner takes a multidisciplinary approach to develop theory explaining how interpersonal dynamics in teams affect members' use of each other's distinct knowledge, ultimately leading to differential performance outcomes. Key concepts include:

• Teams facing significant performance pressures tend to default to high-status members at the expense of using team members with deep knowledge of the client, with detrimental effects on team performance.
• The more important the project, the less effective the team: Excessive performance pressure results in the team reverting to less effective ways of divvying up influence over its end product, in turn leading to lower performance ratings for the whole team.
• Team process is important in enabling organizations to harness knowledge resources for the benefit of maintaining strong relations with their clients.

Feeling the Heat: The Effects of Performance Pressure on Teams' Knowledge Use and Performance — HBS Working Knowledge

The Era Of Volunteerism?

Just a short excerpt from an upcoming document on the business and cultural aspects of enterprise social networking that came out of my field research project:

"When interviewees spoke of “culture”, their anecdotes revealed a spectrum of issues that influence the degree to which employees choose to participate in work-related activities. The role an employee has in a business activity compels him or her to perform a task and contribute certain information. However, the depth or richness of actions taken and information shared on a voluntary basis beyond what that role minimally demands can vary tremendously based on cultural influences.

A culture that causes employee’s to hold back what they know, or suppress their level of participation beyond the mechanics of their job, means workers are not engaged to their full capacity. Under such circumstances, workers may be reluctant to share their expertise with co-workers, or divulge what they know only within trusted social circles. Such a cultural atmosphere can thwart efforts to persuade people to connect, share, and build community in ways envisioned by social networking proponents. Social networking projects however are not the first organizational or IT strategy to identify overcoming unhealthy cultural barriers as a critical success factor. During its heyday, similar issues stymied knowledge management (KM) projects as well – and still do.

A common thread between social networking and KM that strategists should acknowledge is the principle that volunteered participation and resulting contributions are a daily decision employees make – and one that they essentially control." (emphasis added).

I've tried to distinguish in several of my E2.0 blog postings on the difference between "directed" and "volunteered" participation. Often, when people discuss communication, information sharing and collaboration, we lose sight that in most enterprises - people converse, share information and work together to some degree whether they like it or not - especially now (it's just nice to have a job). People's roles, duties - and sometimes continued employment - "direct" then to interact - especially if those activities are part of business processes or other structured activities.

For instance, working together to put out an RFP, or respond to an RFP, can be a highly collaborative endeavor. If you are assigned to that activity - you will work together. But people don't always do the best job they can, or should, in terms of collaborating with each other. People inside the team (or outside the team for that matter), may not fully contribute - even if they see, or are given, the opportunity. It might be for no other reason other than they simply chose not to fully engage and take action. Why? Do we just chalk it up to culture and give up because it cannot be changed? Note: I disagree with this viewpoint.

Ultimately, people still make choices on sharing what they know. How do we influence them (if possible) to make choices that directly help co-workers and indirectly help the organization overall when they are not compelled to do so by the structure of their role/task? How do you instill a sense of volunteerism (if that's even the right phrase)? We find ourselves shifting from tooling into the realm of attitude and behavior change (some might include culture change) which are better understood through the lens of psychology, sociology, etc. I agree with Kate that changing culture is difficult but not impossible. Enabling an environment where people are more willing to volunteer above that which they feel is necessary has been one of the intractable challenges faced by industrial-age organizations.

That seems to be the area where E2.0 attempts to address. I don't believe E2.0 applies to all types of communication, information sharing and collaboration. Some might disagree (which is fine) - but my understanding of E2.0 hinges on the term "emergent". Although McAfee phrases it as "use of emergent social software", I've always interpreted it (rightly or wrongly) as "emergent use of social software". The notion of emergence, participation, and volunteerism come together when you consider O'Reilly's thoughts on an "architecture of participation" and Snowden's thoughts on rendering knowledge "Knowledge ... cannot be conscripted".

Why is ROI so difficult when it comes to social networking and Enterprise 2.0? One core factor might be the intangible nature of the beast. How do you predict the ROI of something that hinges on your ability to deliver practices and systems that influence attitude and behavior - which, in turn, may/may not create better business outcomes or achieve some other organizational goal? In many of the E2.0 case studies being quoted lately it seems that the ROI numbers are based on looking back on a deployment of some kind - not predictions beforehand that later proved to be true. ROI is a little easier when done in the rear view mirror - but that might be the best we can do right now (perhaps stories are the new ROI and the people in them the new metrics).

Unfortunately, many project teams don't have that luxury and are confronted with predicting ROI (and the metrics use to gauge success) before they gain project approval or can expand out of a pilot stage and reach any type of critical mass that might generate the success stories. In any case, the main point of this post was to highlight the notion of volunteered participation. I veered off a bit into ROI but the two seem somewhat intertwined...

In Down Times, Avoid Bad Advice

The article below contains such bad advice that the only reason I'm posting is that you might come across it, but my hope is that you don't follow it.

1. You cannot "force" people to tell you what you think you need to know. You cannot conscript knowledge (refer to David Snowden and others). Some work activities allow workers to share more than they know - that discretionary contribution beyond what is needed to process the transaction or complete the activity does not so easily occur by management edict.

2. People will just as easily shut-down regarding contributions to a knowledgebase as they will contribute. If they believe that what-they-know is the only reason for their continued employment, and the culture has turned unhealthy, they will view open sharing very skeptically. Workers are not so naive as to recognize that they only reason you're being nice to them when layoffs are being rumored is to trick them into helping you out.

3. Rewards at this point (amidst layoffs, rumors of additional reductions) will result in as much garbage information as anything of value. Suddenly implementing reward and incentive systems while treating workers poorly will be viewed as an obvious ploy.

4. Harvesting email in hidden ways will just cause people to use other channels and taint any trust employees might have had with management.

So what do you do? For some organizations - those with cultures that are already viewed as unhealthy by employees, then there's very little, if anything, you can do from a management perspective - you are reaping what you have sown so to speak. You can improve data/information management and hope for the best. But suddenly "finding the light" in terms of treating your workforce in a respectful manner is going to come across as very self-serving when you do it only in bad times and revert to original bad behaviors in good times.

For organizations that have healthy, or reasonably good relations with its workforce, then there are things you can do. A lot becomes with communication, engagement, shared decision making - options  like a reduction in hours or freezing salaries across the board to show shared burdens. Leadership also comes into play. I remember a Hartford, CT CEO who was quoted in the local newspaper (and I'm probably paraphrasing), "If I wanted loyalty I'd own a dog." That type of arrogance and belittling of employees killed any change of people rallying together and helping to rebuilt a sense of community within the enterprise. Condescending attitudes on the part of management are not going to cause workers to participate/contribute with any type of knowledge management effort. Most of what organizations can do involves leverage its "soft power" with employees. Explicit techniques that are authoritarian in nature, or tactics that leave workers with the perception that in down times they can at best expect a culture comparable to that of a police state, only hastens the downward spiral that the organization finds itself in terms of knowledge loss. 

Layoffs Send People and Knowledge Packing - ReadWriteWeb

The scale of layoffs over the past few weeks is unprecedented. The impact on these people who have been shown the door and on the companies that have let them go will linger for years to come. Besides the emotional damage that occurs when people are forced out, there is a tangible cost to companies when knowledge and experience walk out the door. Once that knowledge and experience are gone, no amount of TARP money will bring them back. It may be too late for some companies to prevent this now, but putting measures in place will lessen the blow in future.

Layoffs Send People and Knowledge Packing - ReadWriteWeb

This is also posted on ReadWriteWeb, where I occasionally write.

The GroupSwim Diving Board

More On Digital's Knowledge Sharing Efforts

John commented on my post, Why History Is Relevant To The Future Of Collaboration, which itself was a call-out reference from Patti Anklam that I caught on Twitter re: The Camelot of collaboration: The case of VAX Notes - Inside Knowledge. More on "Understanding collaborative learning in networked organizations" in the article below - please follow the citation link.

History shows that we've been tackling these challenges for some time...

Knowledge Ability Paper: Web 0.0 Social Media

Below is a paper that I wrote in 1991 which, amongst other things, gives a picture of enterprise-wide collaboration and knowledge sharing in Digital Equipment Corporation.

My reason for resurrecting this paper is to show that Digital (in 1991 the second-largest computer company) had, fifteen years ago, a culture and thriving practice of knowledge sharing based on an early collaboration tool, the VAX Notes discussion forum system (called then a computer conferencing system).

Today forward-thinking individuals and organisations are getting excited about Web 2.0 social media (notably blogs and wikis). I want to point out that there was a generation of Web 0.0 social media and a body of knowledge about what made them successful which remains relevant. Only the tools have changed: the people factors haven't. (By 'Web 0.0' I mean that there wasn't any web in 1991.)

In the paper I describe Digital's use of discussion forums for enterprise-wide knowlege-sharing, and I spend some space analysing the particular culture that supported that. I still believe this insider's view is relevant to enterprises today who want to achieve a knowledge sharing, collaborative culture.

I didn't know it at the time, but that culture in Digital was to change. When in 1992 the President and founder, Ken Olsen, resigned and large-scale programme of lay-offs (called 'right-sizing') started, I saw the use of these discussion forums rapidly decrease. After 1993 I can't comment, as I had been right-sized myself. The parts of Digital that hadn't been right-sized were acquired by Compaq in 1998, which then merged with Hewlett-Packard in 2001.

Because the paper is written in an educational context, it discusses at the beginning the fit between discussion forums and collaborative learning (which a year later I christened 'networked learning'). If readers want to skip this earlier material, Section 5 is where the description of Digital's conferencing and knowledge sharing begins.

Another paper on this site has more about discussion forums' use in the context of team knowledge management, and I wrote about a network-based agile learning strategy in our book Agile Networking.

In this paper I called the process supported by the VAX Notes system 'computer conferencing' which was the term in use then. Today that functionality is provided by discussion forums, bulletin boards, message boards, and (publicly) internet newsgroups.

John Gundry
Malmesbury UK
September 2006

Knowledge Ability Paper: Web 0.0 Social Media

Circling Around To KM

Excellent (the post below).

Why? Because there's no mention of blogs, wikis, social networks, Enterprise 2.0 or the dreaded "KM Architecture" (there might be one or more - but it is not an IT architecture in the traditional sense - I would consider a patterns-based argument for KM though).  Technology is the tail wagging the dog when it comes to knowledge management - it always has been. Many of the failures of the KM hype of the nineties were a result of the exuberant belief that KM was a tooling problem (e.g., search, content management, portals... the list goes on and on). Clearly technology has a role - a vital role in many situations. I am not anti-technology when it comes to KM - it's just that almost all my conversations with clients over the years have been anchored to a tooling discussion. It began with search and content management systems, then portals, and now it's rooted in social software (if one limits social software to blogs, wikis, tags/bookmarks, feeds and social networking).

Technology helps people discover, filter, aggregate, connect and so on. Arraying technology in a poor fashion can undermine KM efforts. If arrayed effectively, technology can have a tremendous positive influence on KM efforts. But even if you execute well on the technology side of the equation, tools are still only enablers to help people and organizations attain the goals of KM that they have defined for themselves (e.g., at a personal, group or enterprise level).

There is a certain level of know-how involved in getting technology to properly augment KM efforts - but the more challenging barriers are the people and organizational factors that remain regardless of the tools involved. Some of the latest blog and twitter conversation threads on KM vs. social computing or KM vs. Enterprise 2.0 or KM vs. social-anything miss that subtle point. Some KM practitioners put the ratio at 90/10, others 80/20 (role split between non-technology to technology elements that comprise KM). Whichever ratio you want to hang onto - all of them are dwarfed by the non-technology elements.

From time to time over the years you do hear issues raised re: tacit vs. explicit (wrong focus, see below), centralized KM vs. decentralized KM (a balance of both is needed in my experience - the degree of emphasis between the two is contectually unique to that organization), and KM tools (there are none - tools are not defacto KM - it's a how used, not what is issue). 

So I find it very refreshing to come across posts like this:

Back to First Principles for Knowledge Management

1. We don’t know how we know what we know, or make decisions; and therefore unwittingly misrepresent what we know when asked to describe the process.  Lakoff claims that understanding “takes place in terms of entire domains of experience and not in terms of isolated concepts.”  He shows how these experiences are a product of:

• Our bodies (perceptual and motor apparatus, mental capacities, emotional makeup, etc.)
• Our interactions with our physical environment (moving, manipulating objects, eating, etc.)
• Our interactions with other people within our culture (in terms of social, political, economic, and religious institutions) p.117

Gompert, et al., examined the dual roles of information and intuition in decision-making in their investigation into how to increase “battle wisdom” for U.S. forces.  Asking General Patton how he made the decisions he did will not prepare you to respond similarly in like circumstances.

Snowden puts it this way:

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.

Medina agrees:

The brain constantly receives new inputs and needs to store some of them in the same head already occupied by previous experiences.  It makes sense of its world by trying to connect new information to previously encountered information, which means that new information routinely resculpts previously existing representations and sends the re-created whole back for new storage.  What does this mean?  Merely that present knowledge can bleed into past memories and become intertwined with them as if they were encountered together. Does that give you only an approximate view of reality? You bet it does. p.130

2. We learn through fragmented input and internal cognitive patterns, embedding extensive context from our environment at the time of learning.  Medina, discussing the work of Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel (2000), relates how the brain rewires itself.

Kandel showed that when people learn something, the wiring in their brain changes.  He demonstrated that acquiring even simple pieces of information involves the physical alteration of the structure of the neurons participating in the process. p.57

Fauconnier and Turner discuss cognition - in part -  in terms of guiding principle for completing patterns, as humans seek to blend new concepts onto what they already know.

Pattern Completion Principle: Other things being equal, complete elements in the blend by using existing integrated patterns as additional inputs.  Other things being equal, use a completing frame that has relations that can be the compressed versions of the important outer-space vital relations between the inputs. p.328

Brown, et al, take on traditional teaching methods in their work showing that “knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used.”

The activity in which knowledge is developed and deployed, it is now argued, is not separable from or ancillary to learning and cognition. Nor is it neutral. Rather, it is an integral part of what is learned. Situations might be said to co-produce knowledge through activity. Learning and cognition, it is now possible to argue, are fundamentally situated.

The context within which something is learned cannot be reduced to information metadata - it is an integral part of what is learned.

3. We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down. For my third principle, I am borrowing directly from Dave Snowden’s extension of Polanyi.  (Snowden’s blog should be at the top of your KM reading list):

The process of taking things from our heads, to our mouths (speaking it) to our hands (writing it down) involves loss of content and context. It is always less than it could have been as it is increasingly codified.

Having read through the first two principles, it should now be evident that relating what we know via conversation or writing or other means of “making explicit” removes integral context, and therefore content.  Explicit knowledge is simply information - lacking the human context necessary to qualify it as knowledge.  Sharing human knowledge is a misnomer, the most we can do is help others embed inputs as we have done so that they may approach the world as we do based on our experience.  This sharing is done on many levels, in many media, and in contexts as close to the original ones so that the experience can approximate the original. 

Dr Fuzzy’s Weblog

Oracle Buys Intellectual Property Assets of Tacit Software

Interesting - while Tacit was never a broad-based success on the market, it was considered unique in its underlying discovery, correlation and brokering engine. The acquisition should augment the capabilities Oracle had acquired from BEA regarding its Pathways product. I would imagine that ultimately - the assets will find their way into products other than Beehive - namely WebCenter (given its focus on Enterprise 2.0).

Enhances Oracle Beehive with Expertise Location Capabilities

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif – Nov 3, 2008

News Facts

Today Oracle announced that it has acquired the intellectual property assets of Tacit Software.

Tacit Software’s unique automated profiling technology is an expertise location solution that helps organizations uncover new opportunities for collaboration.

Oracle plans to integrate Tacit Software into Oracle Beehive, a secure, integrated, standards-based enterprise collaboration platform.

The combined solution is expected to enable enterprises to make effective and immediate use of the knowledge present in their people, messaging and content.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Oracle Buys Intellectual Property Assets of Tacit Software

KM Principles

A concise and very effective set of guidelines from David Snowden:

Knowledge can only be volunteered it cannot be conscripted. You can’t make someone share their knowledge, because you can never measure if they have. You can measure information transfer or process compliance, but you can’t determine if a senior partner has truly passed on all their experience or knowledge of a case.

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.

Everything is fragmented. We evolved to handle unstructured fragmented fine granularity information objects, not highly structured documents. People will spend hours on the internet, or in casual conversation without any incentive or pressure. However creating and using structured documents requires considerably more effort and time. Our brains evolved to handle fragmented patterns not information.

Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success. When my young son burnt his finger on a match he learnt more about the dangers of fire than any amount of parental instruction cold provide. All human cultures have developed forms that allow stories of failure to spread without attribution of blame. Avoidance of failure has greater evolutionary advantage than imitation of success. It follows that attempting to impose best practice systems is flying in the face of over a hundred thousand years of evolution that says it is a bad thing.

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.

We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down. This is probably the most important. The process of taking things from our heads, to our mouths (speaking it) to our hands (writing it down) involves loss of content and context. It is always less than it could have been as it is increasingly codified.

Cognitive Edge

Talent Management: Create An Environment, Not An Edict

Worth visiting the site where there is a transcript, audio and video session available:

Ask any CEO or senior level executive what his or her biggest challenge is, and the answer is almost always finding and keeping good people. Yet most executives fail to manage their company's needs in a way that recognizes the unpredictability of the global marketplace. In a book titled, Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty, Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources, proposes a new approach to this issue based on applying the principles of supply chain management to people. He and Joyce Bradley -- senior vice president and general manager, Delaware Valley region, of Lee Hecht Harrison, a global human capital consulting firm headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, N.J. -- spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about talent management, including the challenges of managing employees in a recessionary economy. An edited transcript of the interview follows.

The Talent Hunt: Getting the People You Need, When You Need Them - Knowledge@Wharton

Share - Or Else...

Including information sharing skills and competencies as one facet of a review process is usually a good thing but it cannot be the only practice to encourage a more participatory environment. If improved information sharing was made possible simply through inclusion as a metric within performance evaluations we would have solved this problem decades ago. It's more complicated. But - when implemented properly, this can be a valid institutional approach. 

If federal employees do not personally adopt a policy of sharing intelligence information, they may soon face a poor performance review, the government's top information-sharing czar warned Monday at an intelligence conference.

Thomas McNamara, program manager for the Information Sharing Environment, told an audience gathered at the annual Department of Defense Intelligence Information System Conference that a mandate to share information that the intelligence community follows should be extended governmentwide.

If members of the intelligence community hinder the sharing of information with colleagues, managers can include such actions in annual performance reviews. McNamara said the same disincentive to not share information should be applied to all government employees so that the culture shifts from one based on "need to know" to "need to share."

"It would be a disaster for the country" if the culture of information sharing did not permeate all federal agencies, said McNamara, whom President Bush appointed in 2006 as head of information sharing, a job established by the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Protection Act.

Information czar calls for performance reviews to include sharing (3/18/08) -- www.GovernmentExecutive.com

Unlocking the DNA of the Adaptable Workforce

Worth reading this blog post summarizing a panel session at the Human Capital Institute Summit. One word repeats itself several times - "collaboration":

As our panel of experts, Bill Craib VP of HCI Communities, Amy Lewis, Director of the Talent Acquisition Community, Joy Kosta, Director HCI Communities and Christine Abbatiello, Director of the Talent Strategy Community all from the Human Capital Institute settle in, the room grows full.

These experts are speaking today about: “Unlocking the DNA of the Adaptable Workforce”. This session is being moderated by Denis Brousseau, Partner, IBM Global Business Services. IBM is also sponsoring this session, you can feel the excitement as the discussion prepares to start!

Experts discuss "Unlocking the DNA of the Adaptable Workforce" at the Human Capital Institute Summit. « 2008 Human Capital Summit Blog