In a previous post I’ve described the difference between interventions and projects. On the radio this morning (ABC 774) I heard about what I would classify as a classic intervention. The Victorian government has announced a series of changes to how they will combat domestic violence. One of the interventions will be the ability for social workers to issue accommodation vouchers to men who have been violent. The “voucher system would encourage men to leave the family home  - instead of the woman” providing a cooling off period while enabling time for legal advice to be sought.

This is an intervention because it is discrete, relatively simple to implement but at the same time the designers cannot be sure how it will affect the overall objective of reducing domestic violence. Now that the intervention is enacted those responsible for the programme must carefully monitor to detect the new patterns which will emerge.

For anyone involved in online communities, this new journal will be a useful resource.

The Journal of Community Informatics

Thanks to Bill Ives for the link

Denham Grey points us to what appears to be a very interesting book: Michael McMaster’s  The praxis equation. Design principles for intelligent organisation. I Googled the title and found that a couple of chapters are published online.

I found one of the design principles quoted by Denham a little curious:

I would have thought that the problem with a starting hypothesis is that it creates a danger you will look in the wrong part of the possibility space and conclude the phenomena had either ceased or didn’t exist when in fact it could have just happened somewhere else. I’ve suggested an alternative approach based on multiple monitoring strategies. I’m now keen to understand Michael’s point and look forward to finding the rest of his chapters.

There is a gradual awakening to how blogs might be used in business. Here is an article in Businessweek which provides a hosts of interesting facts and will bring you quickly up to speed on the blogosphere.

A couple of quotes:

Thanks to CorporateBloggingBlog for the link.

I learned that you cannot underestimate the power of an inclusive, action-oriented title for inviting potential members to participate in community activities. The invitation provides an opportunity, the kick off meeting (whether you use open space or not) stirs passion which results in action. And it is only action undertaken among committed, passionate people who care about what they are doing that creates community. That is our challenge in cultivating communities of practice.

Bill Godfrey has found, what I think is, a good list to help know whether you are dealing with a wicked (ie. complex) problem:

Finding good blogs is difficult. It is much like finding new friends when you move to a new city: it takes time and effort. Today I had a look at del.icio.us to see who else was bookmarking my website and then I checked out what else they were bookmarking. Hey presto—I found some interesting new blogs. Here is one called consulting commons—great place to share ideas and tools if you are consulting. Notice it’s labelled ‘beta’. I’m wondering whether they are using the Google tactic of labelling everything beta to give you freedom to try things out at a moments notice—it works for Google so why not.

Today’s Age has a article (requires free subscription) on Podcasting, the audio version of blogging, and suggests its adoption is outpacing its text-based cousin. While the numbers are still low—5000 podcasters in the US—the idea is exciting considering Polanyi’s idea: you know more than you can say and you will say more than you can write down. If it is easier to speak it, then recording an MP3 file and making it available to an audience might be an effective approach to transfer what you know.

A few weeks back I suggested a way to use blogs to help people find information rapidly and create new social networks using content as the catalyst. I can see how podcasting could be added to this solution but it is not just a simple replacement for blog posts. For a podcast to be effective—that is, be listened to—some work must be done to produce the podcast. I’m guessing an effective podcast sustained over a period of time will require more work to make it interesting that writing a regular blog.

Within an organisation I can see a variety of different types of podcasters:

• the official podcasters who craft professional programs which replace the audio tapes that describe the lastest product or new development;
• the sanctioned podcasters who are given time and tools to create podcasts such as key specialists within the organisation; and perhaps
• communities that wish to report, using techniques such as interviews, their progress and achievements

Can podcasting be a useful tool within organisations?

Welcome to the land of blogging Bill.

Bill’s blog (Change Management Monitor) will be an important resource for anyone wishing to keep up with the deluge of management books on the market today. Bill writes excellent management book reviews and it is the first place I go to find out which new book I should get hold of next. He also offers a subscription service to access his full length reviews and—I hope he doesn’t mind me saying this—as a subscriber I often drop him a note for his opinion on where I should look to get up to speed on a new topic. Terrific value. 

I spent last week in Fremantle, Western Australia, working with the folks at Spare Parts Puppet Theatre. They are a great bunch who’ve, over the last 8 years, turned their theatre into on of the most loved and frequented theatres in Western Australia. I helped them out in developing a knowledge map in preparation for a new General Manager. It was the first time they had a picture of the artefacts, skills, heuristics, experiences and natural talent (ASHEN) that make their company the success it is.

ASHEN is a Cynefin technique which I use for knowledge mapping and strategy. You need to register at the Cynefin site to download the papers that describe the high level process for using ASHEN. You can find them here.

This December, Christchurch, New Zealand, will host the 11th Annual ANZSYS Conference/Managing the Complex V. The theme is, ‘Systems Thinking and Complexity Science: Insights for Action’. Not to be missed if you are interested in the application of complexity principles to management practice.

Paul Graham writes excellent essays. This one caught my attention.

It’s interesting how a word affects what we do. Take ‘storytelling’. This is a hot topic in business and marketing today evidenced by the books appearing on the subject. Here is Steve Denning’s new book and here’s one on branding.

Each one, however, focuses on telling stories. There are very few instances where practitioners are focusing on the meaning of the stories already being told. I think this is because there isn’t an equivalent word to ‘storytelling’ so I’m going to propose ‘storysensemaking’. Sure, it’s a little cumbersome but it only has one more syllable than ‘storytelling’.

Dave Snowden, a pioneer in storysensemaking, has favoured the term ‘Organisational Narrative’ in attempt to differentiate his work from the storytellers, but the phrase is too long and is not a verb. You can’t do Organisational Narrative like you can do storytelling.

What do you think? Is there already a simple verb which means storysensemaking? If there is I’m all for using existing words.

I love using my tablet PC and I’m a frequent mind mapper. I use Mind Manager. You would think then I would be jotting all my maps on my tablet. But no. I tried it a couple of times and couldn’t work it out. Well, Hobie Swan has posted this one which explains it all. Thanks Hobie.

In helping companies cultivate communities of practice I frequently hear the following lament: this community idea is important but we just don’t have the time to get involved in yet another meeting. I can see their point. If you view the development of a community of practice like a project this will always be a problem. The project view, which tends to be the default, dictates a need for clear objectives, a defined time-line agreed and adhered to, and a set of tasks undertaken based on best practice lessons. The reality is that communities just don’t evolve in the same way as projects are rolled out. The project view employs a mechanistic metaphor applied to an organic phenomena. In a previous post I suggested we might develop a set of simple rules to help evolve communities. This post explores some simple rules for getting a community started which in turn suggests some possible interventions.

As our paper illustrated, the approach was based on helping the target audience clear three hurdles in order to spark motivated action. These hurdles, listed below, all start with understanding people’s needs because after clearing all the hurdles the outcome must satisfy at least one need. Here are the three hurdles:

• the activity must be easy compared to the output created
• the output must be appreciated
• the appreciation should lead to an outcome that satisfies a need

These hurdles provide us three perspectives for developing simple rules for community formation.

Simple rule 1: Participating in a community must be easy. Hold meetings on a regular basis—say the first Tuesday of the month. Make the technology dead simple. Avoid technology until you need it.

Simple rule 2: Someone ‘who matters’ must care about what you are doing. In the early stages it might be quite unclear how your community’s activities delivers business value. Consequently, the ‘people that matter’ must initially believe in the concept of a community of practice. More importantly, the core team and then the other members must care about the topic—nothing new there. Knowing what a group cares about can sometimes be difficult to work out. It requires discussions among members to discover the activities people would commit their precious discretionary time to. If you don’t find this, you don’t have a community in which case people will always be too busy. The choice here is to disband or persist in looking for a better topic. This is the point where your community activities should operate like a skunkworks. Low cost and exploratory.

Simple rule 3: Community activities must link to member needs. Remember I said the end result must link to a need. Some people need to be connected, others need public recognition, while some want greater access to power. Your discussions at the outset need to get a sense of the many needs your community should cater for. Running anecdote circles would be a good way to get people to express these needs.

Developing tasks that adhere to these three rules should remove the problem of people not having enough time to participate. Rather, you will hear a new lament: we just don’t have enough resources to support our community.

The brochure and registration form is now available for the Introduction to Narrative Workshop to be held in Canberra on the 11th May.