Feb 20, 2011 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Social Media
Things have changed, the tools of web 2.0 make collaboration, at least theoretically, really easy, so why it is so hard to get done?
Outside the web, where Wikipedia, Linux, Ideo and a few others have rewritten the rules, and boomed as a result, the output from new collaboration tools appears far more limited. Most businesses I deal with are struggling with co-ordinating a video conference, and that is about the end of the tools that they are using.
In a fundamental way, they need to consider the architecture of their collaborative efforts. What works for a co-located team, even if it has a few “fly-ins” will not work for a truly distributed team, or one that is working on a complex development, even when co-located. It seems a few rusted on practices need to be revisited:
- Responsibility for the outcome should be clear, along with budgets and timelines. It is the group that holds responsibility collectively, not individuals, and individual performance is measured by their contribution to the groups achievement of the outcome.
- The “how to” get the job done is left to the team.
- The team should be able to co-opt and manage outside skills as necessary to get the job done with relative freedom.
Feb 17, 2011 | Leadership, Management
This is a story of 2 bosses.
One bloke I worked for over a considerable period in two different corporations never told me exactly what to do. We agreed outcomes and the resources to achieve them, project time frames and milestones, and he was always willing to discuss, encourage, provide council, and play devils advocate, but never directed, but through the conversations, always knew exactly what was going on, and was engaged in the process. This left me with the responsibility for the outcome, and a personal commitment to achieve it.
The second bloke wanted to micro manage activity, providing a continuous stream of “advice” that were in fact instructions, which left me with no feeling of personal responsibility. I had the authority to get stuff done, but little engagement with the outcome beyond staying out of trouble, until we parted in mutual frustration.
This recognition of the differences between authority and responsibility is more than a matter of style, it is the core of leadership, and success.
Feb 16, 2011 | Collaboration, Social Media
Forming and directing groups has become pretty easy with the advent of email, mobile phones and photography, face book, and other forms of mobile, instant technology applications.
This reality is simply that the new tools have removed the transaction costs that previously existed that prevented simple, cheap and spontaneous communication of one to many.
It is inconceivable that the spontaneous riots that occurred in 2005 in Cronulla would have happened without the coordinating tools of mobile text and established networks of connected and like-minded individuals. Everybody was surprised at the speed, size, and emotion of the mobs that formed, and then the emotion expended, the groups dissipated just as quickly.
The recent QLD floods have seen social media play a pivotal role in the communication of the events as they happened, directing the official response to the points of most need, and creating the networks that resulted in thousands having the information necessary to offer and deliver their assistance with the clean-up as it progresses.
These tools have become integral to the way we behave in a decade, an astonishingly quick behavior adaptation that goes to the heart of they way all our institutions need to be managed to engage effectively with their stakeholders.
Feb 15, 2011 | Change, Collaboration, Innovation, Social Media
Finding professionals to develop stuff for you is getting easier by the day. A whole range of services are evolving to meet short term needs, by matching the booming IT capabilities in emerging nations prepared to work for what in a developed economy is peanuts, to the needs of individual projects.
In addition, on line services like surveys can be done quickly, and simply to test hypotheses before significant expenditure is committed.
Agility does not equal poor planning, so long as it is in the context of an overall objective to be achieved, rather it reflects a humility necessary to recognise you do not have all the answers, and a willingness to adapt simply reflects the reality of complicated, fragmented, and rapidly changing circumstances combined with the edge of the envelope moving at increasing speed.
Feb 14, 2011 | Collaboration, Social Media
Access to information, rather than being for abstract analysis, is a call to action which in the past has been to the individual, but now can be across huge numbers who have no connection apart from the cause.
As the analysis of the dynamics of the changes occurring in Egypt emerges, it will be fascinating to watch the extent to which the analysis of the power of social tools as argued by Clay Shirky in “Here comes Everybody” are confirmed.
Shirky’s book, published 4 or 5 years ago does a great job of putting words around what we now see every day, people who do not know each other organising with the assistance of social tools. This can be as simple as two people meeting for the first time, using a phone to identify each other in a crowded café, to something more co-ordinated like the student protests at the behavior of HSBC , to the hundreds of thousands that gathered in Cairo’s main square demanding change.
Others who hold power by exercising autocratic control must be watching the revolution in Egypt, and carefully considering their Swiss bank accounts.
