Sep 16, 2010 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Communication
Social networks have boomed, tools to enable the networks abound, MySpace, twitter, face book et al being the most well known, but many more fail than succeed, and they do so based on the degree of mutuality that exists.
Bear with me here.
Imagine 2 people who have $10 to distribute between them, one has the power to divide the money any way he likes, the other has just one thing, the right to accept or veto the deal for them both.
Rational economics would suggest that the holder of the veto would accept any deal that has him better off beyond the inconvenience of saying yes or no, say 2 cents, as both parties will be better off with a yes. However, experiments consistently demonstrate that the second person will veto any offer he sees as unfair, resulting in both parties losing, and this “fairness” point kicks in around a 70/30 split.
This implies there is a deep willingness to punish unfairness, even at personal cost, and that there is a strong emotional dimension to decision making, something very hard for economists to take account of in their models.
This emotional dimension underpinning behavior has profound implications for the way we should be thinking about the development of networks, irrespective of weather they are social, commercial or political ones.
Social networking works because there is an unspoken deal in place, which promises mutuality, Wikipedia being a shining example, there appears to be no control and there isn’t, control is exercised by the “wiki community” by virtue of their ability to remove any incorrect, irrelevant, or corruptive content, the access to the edit key which is easier to exercise than the effort required to post something, keeps things on track. Wikipedia in its earliest incarnation was a failure, as it left control with a small group of expert editors and contributors, with nothing left for the community which then failed to show up, as the “mutuality deal” was not in place.
Much of my work is with farmer groups, and the greatest challenge in the formative stages of getting a group “over the line” is the notion of mutuality, and how the group coalesces around a source of that mutuality, then finds ways to self regulate, if it is to be successful.
Sep 14, 2010 | Change, Management, Operations
In any environment, those on the front lines see ways to complete a task easier, faster, cheaper, better, simply because they are doing it all the time, it is just that we usually do not listen enough when the front line employees they try to tell us, and once bitten twice shy.
Labor costs are typically seen as an expense, something to be trimmed and managed, rather than as an investment that can be optimised and leveraged.
All the fancy computer programs, training, and supervision in the world will not even begin to replace the value of an engaged employee who has some control over his environment, and recognition for making it more effective.
What is it like in your factory?
Sep 9, 2010 | Management, OE, Operations, Small business
It seems almost all improvement programs I see have as a central objective the reduction of inventories. That is pretty easy to achieve, order less, less often, and in smaller quantities, objective achieved.
However, when you count customer service, and cycle times into the equation, something the financial inventory measures do not do, reduction of inventory can have a catastrophic impact on financial results, as if nothing else changes, you just fail your customers.
Reduction of inventory is usually an outcome of the reduction of waste, but should not be the objective, waste reduction, waste in all its forms, should be the objective.
Sep 7, 2010 | Management, Operations
We all find ourselves dealing with ambiguity, preconceptions, vested interests, status quo methods, and often hubris as we set out to consider options in any management situation. In these circumstances, we usually mix quantitative data with what we know, and what we believe in a varying recipe that delivers a result we are comfortable with.
In this post by Eric Paley, the tensions inherent in these differing and mixed methods of analysis are beautifully articulated in a sporting story most can relate to.
Sep 1, 2010 | Communication, Management, Personal Rant
PowerPoint, the Microsoft program has become such a part of the daily regime of sharing information sharing that it has impacted on the way we communicate, and it has its detractors, of which I am one.
Some time ago, I was at a conference where a senior bureaucrat was presenting her departments position. The presentation was replete with animations, and the various tools in PPT to the point where she was prattling on about the great features of the program. What dross.
PowerPoint is the default position now in many situations, but is becoming a crutch, as illustrated in the NY times story.
The lessons are simple:
- Use minimum words on a slide,
- Dump most of the tricky features that just distract from your message,
- Use the opportunity to sell a simple proposition, not to do a “brain-dump” of everything you know,
- Watch and respond to the audience, connect with them,
- Use the program to illustrate your points, not just list them .
Aug 29, 2010 | Alliance management, Leadership
This hung election has generated a tsunami of comment, but nothing I have seen on the mechanics of collaboration, a key factor in any lasting resolution to the impasse I would have thought.
The idea of a “party” is simply an expression of the need for group action to get anything done. In the case of the two major parties the early collaboration around an idea has long been replaced by the institutional battle for survival, the original reason for the formation of the party forgotten.
By contrast, consider the Greens. They evolved from a protest group coalesing around opposition to the Franklin dam in Tasmania, through to political group with the power to protest in a wider forum of proportionally elected houses state upper houses, (Federal senate, NSW Legislative Council) from which all we expected was protest, to a party that now carries a veto over all legislation, which is a far wider remit than a one issue protest.
This last step is a game changer, one the Democrats failed. But what of the three independents in the house of Reps? Almost by accident they have the power of veto if they act collaboratively, but it seems to be emerging that consistent collaborative action may fail them just because the rallying point around which they can coalesce is far more ambiguous than the Greens “save the Franklin” and the Democrats “keep the bastards honest” and therefore the collaboration lacks some of the “glue” essential to a collaborative effort, and they lack the institutional organisation that is the alternative.
It will be interesting to watch, and I suspect that there will be an agreement that sees the “Mad Monk” as PM with the nominal support of the three independents, which will become very fragile as the next full moon impacts on Bob.
