| 5/11/08 | | The behaviour of networks |
Here's a great ABC documentary on Network Theory: How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer.
It illustrates the six degrees of separation phenomenon using the idea of synchronization, the paradox of small worlds, bacon numbers - a game showing how every hollywood actor is linked to Kevin Bacon, the structure of the internet and its hubs, how Sadaam Hussian was caught by disrupting the hubs in his network, and finally a network map of all the human diseases.
Some interesting characteristics of networks they talk about:
- It's important to understand who is listening to whom in a network
- Events are not isolated; we need to understand how they interact
- Adding a random link can have an enormous impact on the network
- Networks are not random; they have a structure and behaviour (or pattern of behaviour)
And one really good question: How can we shrink the pathways in our network to make it more connected?
Thanks Catherine for sharing the link.
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| 25/07/08 | | Being a connector has its risks |
New research has shown that we notice popular people and don't notice unpopular people. OK, so we probably didn't need research to tell us that but Cameron Anderson and Aiwa Shirako were investigating how reputations form and Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily describe the results this way:
It turns out that your reputation for cooperativeness is only affected by your behavior if you're already popular. If you're not popular, it appears that no one takes notice of your behavior, so it has no impact on your reputation. People with lots of social connections can build a good reputation -- or a bad one -- with much more ease than people with few social connections.
So for those people doing social network analyses spotting all the connectors you should also be providing these hubs with a warning: it's true you are in a great place to build your reputation but also equally good place to tear it apart.
Cameron Anderson, Aiwa Shirako (2008). Are individuals' reputations related to their history of behavior? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94 (2), 320-333 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.2.320
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| 23/10/07 | | Making information find us |
I really enjoyed watching this video about the web challenging our most basic assumptions about 'finding' information.
Technorati Tags: findability
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| 21/06/07 | | Three types of collaboration |
Nancy White and I have been working on a project to help our client enhance their collaboration practices. In the process we've identified three types of enterprise collaboration. Love to hear what you think of the idea. Nancy is riffing on this topic too and has added a bunch of other cool resources in her post.
Collaboration is the act of working with people to get something done. We can look at collaboration at three levels within the enterprise.
In Team Collaboration, the members of the group are known, there are clear task interdependencies, expected reciprocity, and explicit timelines and goals. To achieve the goal, members must fulfil their tasks within the stated time. Team Collaboration often suggests that while there is often explicit leadership, the participants cooperate on an equal footing and will receive equal recognition. An example is a research project to develop a prototype for X in five months with six team members and a set of resources.
In Community Collaboration, there is a shared domain or area of interest, but the goal is more often learning, rather than task. People share and build knowledge, rather than complete projects. Membership may be bounded and explicit, but periods are often open or ongoing. Membership is often on an equal footing, but more experienced practitioners may have more status or power in the community. Reciprocity is within the group, but not always one-to-one ('I did this for you, now you do this for me“) An example might be a community of practice that is interested in the type of research mentioned in the team example above. A member of that team may come to her community and ask for examples of past projects.
Network Collaboration steps beyond the relationship centric nature of team and community collaboration. It is collaboration that starts in individual action and self interest and accrues to the network. Membership and timelines are open and unbounded. There are no explicit roles. Members most likely do not know all the other members. Power is distributed. This form of collaboration is driven by the advent of social software, a response to the overwhelming volume of information we are creating. It's impossible for an individual to cope on their own.
An example of network collaboration might be members of the team in the first example above bookmarking web sites as they find them. This benefits their team, possibly their related communities of practice but it also benefits the wider network of people interested in the topic. At the same time, they may find other bookmarks left by network members relevant to their team work. This sort of network activity benefits the individual and a network of people reciprocally over time. The reciprocity connection is remote and undefined. You act in self-interest but provide a network-wide benefit.
Technorati Tags: nancy white, social software
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| 15/05/07 | | Last.fm - social software for music |
I've been having a blast the last couple of days. I signed up for last.fm after hearing Euan and Johnnie Moore talk about it. Last.fm keeps a track of the music you listen to (Here you can play the music I've been listening to, http://www.last.fm/user/Unorder/) and then you can hear a bunch of recommendations streamed directly to you. It's just like listening to the radio without commercials or radio announcers. There is a heap of other connections you can make, such as finding the people who listen to similar music etc.
Technorati Tags: last.fm
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| 22/03/07 | | How work really gets done |
I just entered my presentation on How work really gets done into the World’s Best Presentation Contest. It would be great if you popped on over to the contest site and registered a big thumbs up for this preso. Send me an email if you would like to see the presentation handout that goes with it.
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| 20/03/07 | | Sensemaking |
This description of sensemaking makes the most sense to me.
Sensemaking involves turning circumstances into a situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard into action. (Weick et. al 2005)
I’ll tell you why.
When I run lessons learning sessions I’ll often start the session by asking, “So, what did you learn from this project?” The typical response is, “Hmmmm, let me think … Nup, didn’t learn anything really.” Then we timeline the project, identify key events, retell stories of what happened and then this happens: “Remember how we got the funding? It was a shocker. We had to get the Commissioner to move money to the large projects vote and as a result we never really had a project sponsor. I would never do it that way again.” It’s this point of putting the idea into words, usually as a story, that the lessons are identified (not sure they’ve been learned yet).
The same think happened to me last week. We (I’m working with Patti Anklam and Bruce Hoppe on this one) are running a social network analysis for a global community of practice of chocolate experts. When we presented the first SNA charts the immediate response from the client was, “Nothing new here really.” After a number of discussions the response was, “Wow! Heaps of insights.”
Weick, K. E., K. M. Sutcliffe, et al. (2005). “Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking.” Organization Science 16(4): 409-421.
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| 3/03/07 | | Revitalising communities of practice |
I’m truly blessed in knowing lots of interesting people. I don’t mean to boast but this morning it really dawned on me. I’m very lucky. The other thing I’ve come to understand about myself is that I’ve reached an age, or perhaps a stage in my career, when I’m happy to admit that I don’t know the answer. More than that, I’m comfortable in contacting my many friends and colleagues (usually on Skype) and say things like, “I’m giving a presentation next week and I’m not sure I really know that much about one of the aspects they want me to talk about.”
I said something like that to John Smith this morning on the topic of revitalising communities of practice. He said that I should start by thinking about the Etienne Wenger’s CPD model (community, practice and domain).
Thinking about this model will prompt you to ask a series of questions, he said.
- maybe the community needs new domain areas or domains that were once on the periphery need to be brought into the centre
- perhaps the community needs to explore new tools and practices to expand its repertoire
- perhaps there are members who have left the group in the past who might now like to re-enter and invigorate the community
Now here’s the interesting thing. After only five minutes listening to John’s suggestions a whole bunch of things sprung to mind for me. For example, I’ve seen communities flagging because the members didn’t really have a strong, shared identity with the community’s domain. One example is a community I’m part of that discusses complexity science in organisational settings. It continues to struggle because none of us really identify as complexity-dudes. It fails my “I am a …” test.
Contrast this with the communities of practice we’re working with in mining companies. Many of the community members have been with the company for 15 or more years and have only done one type of job. They might be underground safety guys or iron ore process guys or pit optimisation guys. They define who they are by the work they are doing and in many cases a job well done will save lives. When this is the case the community of practice seems to thrive if you also have good community coordinators and it’s developed a good rhythm of activity.
John left me with this thought, “If your community of practice is flagging then get the group focussed back on practice.” One way to do that is to implement my action-oriented CoP process.
A couple of years ago Etienne Wenger stayed with me and my family for four days. The poor man. I kept bugging him with CoP questions and my strongest memory from this time was Etienne’s most common answer to my questions of how to do this and how to design that He simply asked, “So what do the members think?” Get the members to design the community activities, the domain, the practices. So when your community is flagging, go the the members for help.
Having people you can contact quickly to have short, meaningful conversations is priceless. Knowing someone’s name, their contact details and their expertise is not enough. You need to have a relationship with someone, a common language and an ability to absorb what you are hearing. John and I are in a community (of CoP practitioners) which helps this conversation happen. At the same time John exercises choice in what he tells me, how deep or wide he goes, how much time he spends and how much effort he puts in during the interaction. This is his gift.
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| 14/02/07 | | Finding success stories |
Have you ever been asked to find success stories and been unsure where to start? Done well success stories slide effortlessly from one teller to the next conveying company values, strategic directions and the good reasons why your company should invest in initiatives like communities of practice. Done badly the stories remain captive and moribund in content management jails.
What is a success story?
We have all heard the term ‘success story’ but what are we really talking about? First let’s take a look at a few examples.
In their Change This manifesto, Talking Strategy, Chip and Dan Heath retell this story from FedEx, the company that promises to deliver your package “absolutely, positively” overnight.
In St. Vincent, a tractor trailer accident blocked the main road going into the airport. Together a driver and ramp agent tried every possible alternate route to the airport but were stymied by traffic jams. They eventually struck out on foot, shuttling every package the last mile to the airport for an on-time departure.
Here is one from SCORE—the counsellor's to America’s small business.
Judith Moore, a lifetime baker, was on a quest to find the “perfect” chocolate chip cookie recipe. Her son-in-law thought she should start her own business.
“I started investigating what it would take to start a cookie company,” she says. Charlie Elberson, who owns an advertising agency, offered to develop a brand identity for her. In return, Judith would supply him with free cookies for a year.
Judith next contacted Coast SCORE in North Charleston, S.C., for advice on her business plan. SCORE Counselor Greg Kopatch helped her focus her vision. Greg also recommended that she create a spreadsheet and produce cash flow projections for three years of business.
His encouragement and enthusiasm helped to keep Judith going forward. “I could not have accomplished this much without SCORE’s help,” she says. Greg’s guidance was crucial to the completion of Judith’s business plan, as well as the necessary financial data to support it.
Greg continues to advise Judith on her ongoing business and its structure, business management and growth. And, it’s been a recipe for success. Judith recently entered into a new partnership with Dean & Deluca, a retail and catalogue gourmet food company based in New York City.
“It’s been a pleasure working with Greg, and a thrill to have all that information available to a small business, like we are, at no cost,” Judith says. “Having the expertise of SCORE counsellors is invaluable!”
And finally here is an example of a success story from Sun Microsystems.
SIM University (UniSIM) has to operate in a different manner than other educational institutions — the curricula, modules, programs, and even classes have to be flexible to enable students to strike a balance between work and study. The university recognised that it has to invest in its IT infrastructure to efficiently manage and operate an online e-learning solution to give its students a flexible learning environment. “Since we have decided to implement the e-learning infrastructure, it is increasingly critical that the system that supports this remains highly available and that the archives are easily managed,” says Gary Teo, Senior Manager of Educational Technology and Production for UniSIM. “We have to have systems that are always available so that our students can log in anytime, anywhere. We need something that is robust, stable and scalable. Most importantly, it must be cost-effective and highly reliable, which is why we turned to Sun.”
With almost everything online, learning becomes more flexible and interactive as students can now submit their assignments online, chat with their tutors and peers, download course materials online and even watch lectures online — from the comfort of their homes or wherever they happen to be. “We knew we made the right choice to go with Sun when the company took these seemingly irreconcilable requirements, customized them, and set up our infrastructure within a very short time,” adds Teo. “We are all very impressed.”
In order to run the Blackboard Academic Suite, the school put together an array of high-performance Sun products, including a storage area network (SAN) to house its mammoth database of lecture materials and administrative documents. To minimize the need for staff to manage the system, UniSIM acquired high-performance Sun Fire T2000 servers for high availability and automated recovery, and a Sun Fire X4100 server to support video streaming applications. To manage its database, UniSIM chose the Sun Fire V890 server. UniSIM’s critical storage and archive systems runs on a Sun StorageTek 6130 Storage Array and Sun StorageTek C2 Autoloader. As a result, UniSIM is now set for future archive expansion with additional arrays that can easily be added seamlessly.
Success stories come in all shapes and sizes but they share the trait of wishing to communicate, “look at us, look how clever, persistent, innovative [insert positive characteristic] we are.” But that’s where the similarities end. The FedEx story can be told and retold—it’s an oral story. The cookie story is more like a journalist’s version of a ‘story’. Sun Microsystem’s is more like a case study. These three examples are a microcosm of the possibilities.
Most organisation have had experience writing case studies and commissioning journalists to write pieces for their corporate newsletters. As such, I would like to focus on the characteristics of oral stories and how to find them.
The first thing to notice about an oral story is their length. They’re short; an anecdote. While there are examples of storytellers retelling epics like Homer’s Iliad, mere mortals like us find it difficult to remember really long stories. A good oral success story is memorable. Its short length helps but there are more important features that make a story memorable.
People remember concrete details that create a picture of what’s happening in our mind’s eye. What did you see when you read the FedEx story? Did you see anything while reading the cookies or Sun stories? If the story recounts events we’ve seen before—airports, delivery truck, traffic jams—we can picture the story and it’s memorable. We simply replay the pictures to remember the story. If the scene is unfamiliar other devices are needed such as analogies, similes and metaphors. But, beware of the dead metaphor.
A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves (George Orwell, Politics and the English Language)
Or as F. Scott Fitzgerald noted: “The very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned ‘character’ leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a tiger through the Bois de Boulogue.” The Great Gatsby.
But this is not an essay on writing. We just want to be in a position to identify good success stories when and where we hear them. Some of the other characteristics to look out for include:
- a hero overcoming adversity
- detailed and concrete rather than vague and abstract
- simple and clear
- and most importantly, authentic and plausible
BHP Billiton, one of the world’s largest resources companies, justified its significant investments in communities of practice through the collection and retelling of success stories. They purposely created two versions of the same story: an oral retelling and a case study replete with detailed graphs showing savings, increased quality and reduced downtimes. Their most successful story is the rope shovel story. Here is how it was told to me.
In Ok Tedi there was a rope shovel, the largest moving machine on the planet, that was up and running 63% of the time. The very same type of rope shovel in a mine in Santiago had very little downtime by comparison and the Global Maintenance Network (the internal CoP for maintenance) wondered why. So they sent a team from Ok Tedi to Santiago to find out. After a few weeks with their colleagues in Santiago, they worked out that lubricant cleanliness made the difference. After changing their practices at Ok Tedi their rope shovel gradually improved its availability over a five year period saving BHP Billiton more than a million US dollars every year. And that was just one thing the Global Maintenance Network has done.
The details might be wrong but the message remains intact. The Global Maintenance Network is helping members improve their practices and saving the company significant money.
We could improve this success story by finding out the names of people who were involved and then tell it from their perspective. Some dates would make the story more concrete and verifiable. An analogy might help those of us who haven’t seen a rope shovel. I know its big, but how big? How about, a rope shovel would barely fit into the MCG and could be seen poking out above the stadium and be mistaken for an additional lighting tower. I guess this only works for Australians, but football stadium comparisons are always effective.
One last story before we look at how we find these examples.
Ruby S. presented with lower abdominal pain. She was tender in the right iliac fossa, and was therefore operated on as acute appendicitis. On opening the peritoneum there was a smear of turbid fluid, but the appendix was normal. Loop after loop of small bowel was pulled out, much to the irritation of the registrar, and there, in the upper jejunum, was a toothpick sticking through the wall. (Cox, 2001)
This story illustrates the effectiveness of an unexpected ending, the power of specific and visual language (loop after loop), and the need to use the language of the intended reader.
How do you find success stories?
The first step is to know what you’re after. Who are you trying to impress? What do they value? What is your purpose? Kathy Sierra recently posted a request for success stories which shows a woman who knows what she’s after.
The overall point is to find success stories about people whose lives have been affected by the web or software apps. I'm particularly interested in places where there is an intersection between live (face-to-face) interaction and online interaction (like people who've met online then forge off-line relationships). But even purely online experiences are important to me as well.
So here’s the first strategy. Ask for success strategies. This approach works when you have a large group of people listening. Kathy Sierra certainly has a large audience being one of the most popular bloggers in the world. You might have a similarly popular communication channel like a well-used intranet, email lists, or newsletters. But in large organisations this if often not an option. Broadcast communication channels are carefully guarded.
A good plan ‘B’ is to go to your social networks. Who are the connectors and mavens who know what is going on in the organisation? If you don’t have a well established network, I suggest you seek out roles that tend to be performed by natural connectors.
- Personal assistants
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Professional association leaders
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Community of practice leaders
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Union reps
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Successful business developers (connectors outside the organisation)
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Good (internal) head-hunters
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People who travel around the organisation
Social network experts say that we’re most effective in finding the people we are seeking by first exploring likely physical locations. “We need stories that illustrate good safety behaviours. Where are some of our most dangerous operations? Don’t we have operations the Ukrainian Donbas?” The next place we should look is in the organisational structure. “Our mine operations people will have some good stories. The coal division would be a good place to start. Who heads up that division?” In combination with getting to know the company’s connectors you should be able to pin point a plethora of possibilities.
A way to use oral stories to target case studies
Many companies are obsessed with writing customer case studies. The Sun Microsystem example above gives you a feeling for what these case studies look like. When I worked at IBM we had an extensive case study database. These systems cost a fortune to maintain. And I have to tell you, I’ve never really found them that useful. I suspect because each case study requires so much effort to compile they are never done well. Here is an approach inspired by what I learned when I ran a photographic library.
Our photo library had over 100,000 photos. All the images were transparencies ranging from 35mm to large formats. It was impossible for us to catalogue the entire collection with the resources at our disposal. So we developed a general understanding of where groups of slides were physically located (which slide box) and when we sold a picture we catalogued it.
Oral success stories could represent an organisation’s first attempt at recording a success story. It’s essential that the oral story can be easily retold, just like the FedEx van driver story above. Some stories will be what Dan and Chip Heath call ‘sticky’, that is, they will be told and retold and eventually there will be a queue of people wanting the full case study. This is the signal to investigate and report the full story enabling a wisdom of crowds prioritisation of which case studies get written up and when.
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| 4/02/07 | | The Craft of Connection |
by Tim Laseter and Rob Cross
Charlottesville, Va., January 31, 2007 -- A growing number of companies, including Chevron, Halliburton, and Whirlpool, are seeking new methods to stimulate innovation and streamline global practices. By mapping the relationships between key thought leaders within a company, executives can bolster innovation by building connections between critical employees -- those who offer specific expertise or deep knowledge about the company and industry. By creating a database of these employees and their respective specialties, leaders can draw on the experience of these individuals to help solve problems, increase productivity, and share domain knowledge with others in the firm.
To read the full analysis:
www.strategy-business.com/enewsarticle/enews013107
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| 27/12/06 | | Why people do the things they do |
Christmas reading has help me stumble across two very different essays with the same theme: people are enormously influenced by their social ties. Anyone reading this blog won’t be surprised by that theme but these essays present two very different contexts. The first is called Knowing the Enemy by George Packer, which was recently published in the New Yorker. It’s a lengthy treatment on how social scientists are re-conceiving the way the US government might approach insurgencies. The “War on Terror” moniker has mislead policy makers and commanders in thinking primarily from an armaments and military force perspective. The essay suggests that in order to combat insurgencies we need information, influence and the ability to connect people in different ways.
The other essay is called Darwin on the Bounty: The How and the Why of the Greatest Mutiny in History by Michael Shermer. It’s a chapter in his book, Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown
What does this mean for organisations? Well I think one of the social scientists from Knowing the Enemy, Australian Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, said it best in his tips for company commanders (read, managers) about to be deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Know your turf—Know the people, the topography, economy, history, religion and culture. Know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader, and ancient grievance. Your task is to become the world expert on your district.
[thanks to Les Posen for the link to Knowing the Enemy]
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| 3/12/06 | | Action-oriented communities of practice |
This a re-posting as I have updated the diagram that goes with the post and there seems to be a growing interest in this simple model.
There often comes a point in the life of a community of practice when the group really benefits from creating tangible things designed to improve the members’ practice. This point occurs sometime after the early days of formation after the members have worked out their domain, and they know who’s participating, how people get on with one another, and how members communicate.
Following is a simple approach designed to coordinate action within a CoP.
There are five parts to this approach:
- general discussion
- discussion tables
- a list of possible projects
- small groups (ideally 3 people) working on things together
- database
The general discussion is anywhere the community talks together as an entire group. This might be at regular face-to-face meetings or online using a discussion forum. It’s important not to overwhelm or bore members with too much information or information that is only relevant to some members. The general discussions, therefore, benefit from some level of facilitation.
A discussion table is when community members come together to discuss a topic related to the community’s domain. The community coordinator might organise discussion tables on a regular basis. They can be done face-to-face or be conducted online. There should be no more than 12 people at a discussion table at one time to ensure everyone is present and active. If there are more than 12 people interested in the discussion table topic then run multiple discussion tables. During the conversation a participant notes down the ideas of things the community might do to improve their practice. For example, if you were part of a business narrative community and the topic was ‘running effective anecdote circles’ someone might suggest, “we should develop a anecdote circle facilitator’s kit” or “we should develop a member’s training program”. These ideas would be noted and added to the list of possible projects. A summary of the discussion table conservation is also distributed to the entire community.
The list of possible projects is a simple list of all the suggested projects and activities arising from the discussion tables and other forums. You might put the list online and allow members to vote on each suggested project. Members are invited to take on a project from this list in groups of three and ideally with people you haven’t work with before. This simple rule helps the community create new social networks. These small project teams might use an online collaboration space. Once they’ve completed their project they communicate the results to the entire community and store the outputs where members can access them (database).
The community makes progress by hosting discussion tables and encouraging active and robust conversation that leads people to suggest things that would be good to do as a community. The list of projects grows and some are tackled based on the energy and enthusiasm of members. The process of undertaking these projects in small groups creates new relationships which in turn creates new conversations and new ideas for future discussion tables.
Related posts:
- Using Quickplace to support a Communities of Practice
- New white paper: connecting people with content
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| 2/11/06 | | Kurtz and Snowden on inter-organisational learning networks |
Cynthia Kurtz and Dave Snowden have written a thought provoking chapter on inter-organisational learning networks. I’ve seen their ideas develop over the last few years (on listservers, Skype chats, rare meet-ups and presentations) and this paper is an excellent synthesis and application of three key ideas (in my words):
- idealistic approaches predicated on predictability, analysis and the depiction of ideal future states are total nonsense for making progress in a highly connected, complex environments.
- dispassionate and objective observers can carefully analyse and diagnose ‘the problem’ then implement a solution—more nonsense. The fact is observers impact what they observe and every diagnosis is also an intervention.
- experts have the solution—even more nonsense. The knowledge required to change and successfully adapt exists within the group and participatory approaches seed and harness natural social processes.
The chapter goes on to say:
Two of the most important elements of the naturalistic sense-making approach are narrative (as one of the primary mechanisms of complex knowledge transfer, creation and interpretation in human society) and networks (as one of the primary realities of human life – we are still, unless artificially constrained, tribal and clan-like in our needs and perspectives).
The rest of the chapter looks at inter-organisation learning networks from the perspective of tangible benefits delivered by this type of organisational structure. K&S note that “Inter-organisational learning networks are valuable yet intangible: while participants feel that they and their organisation have benefited, they struggle to explain what exactly those benefits are and how they can be expressed.” According to K&S, the broader literature points to speed of innovation difussion and improved knowledge creation as tangible benefits of these types of networks, but Cynthia and Dave suggest three more:
- improved negotiation of multiple identities
- increased discourse regarding trust and rule structures
- greater productive conflict
I’m not going to give a blow by blow description of the paper. Instead I will highlight a few of the ideas that grabbed my attention—mind you, it sparked many thoughts.
Naturalistic approaches … seek to understand a sufficiency of the present in order to act to stimulate evolution of the system. Once such stimulation is made, monitoring of emergent patterns becomes a critical activity so that desired patterns can be supported and undesired patterns disrupted.
Most Significant Change is an obvious technique for monitoring because of its participatory nature and it’s story based. I know Dave has a slight reservation about MSC because he sees it as privileging some stories over others. I think Dave makes a fair point and MSC done badly will focus on the selection rather than the dialogue that’s created by the selection process. This is a danger to keep in mind for MSC practitioners.
Many employees do their work without being able to answer the question, "Who are you in this organisation?" (And possibly just as importantly, "Who are the others in this organisation?" and “Who is this organization?”).
When I was in London last week I met Martin Clarkson from the Storytellers and their business is entirely focussed on using a story approach to address “Who is this organisation?”
I was reminded at this point of the simple test I use to assess the likelihood a community of practice forming. If you can sensibly complete the sentence, “I’m a <blank>”, then there is a chance a community might form. For example, I was helping a Defence organisation start a community of practice for project managers. I asked them, “do people ever say, ‘I’m a project manager.’?” Absolutely! Great … people identify themselves as project managers so we could get a community going. The next community was more problematic. They wanted to create a community around the competency of ‘technical.’ Does anyone say, “I’m a technical.” No… I suggested they think of another possible community to establish.
One of the ways people have always talked about identity has been through the telling of identity stories which feature the individual or group as a coherent character with certain highlighted characteristics – the lone genius, the band of principled rebels, the misunderstood nobility. Stories told for purposes of identity negotiation (both individually and collectively) are fundamentally different from stories told for other purposes.
K&S point out three characteristics of an identity story:
- the story is well known
- they tend to have a dramatic or performance nature
- they are apparently useless; they appear to be about nothing
These stories help people understand what it means to be part of the group. I heard this story last week which I think is an identity story:
A new salesman joined the company and a week after joining was told by his manager that the team was meeting in Jervis Bay. On the day of the meeting the salesman got up at 4am and made the trip down the coast and on arriving at the bay phoned his manager on his mobile to find out the exact location of the meeting. The salesman was told the Jervis Bay is the name of the meeting room of their conference centre in the city.
The example of a sacred story of the nine day fortnight reminded me of the importance of trying to find these stories in organisations. One way might be to ask, in the middle of an anecdote circle, whether anyone is aware of stories that are told and retold. I did this a couple of days ago and the fellow I was talking could immediately recall two negative stories. I’m not sure these are the sacred stories described in the chapter but I’m sure they are important to how things get done.
I loved the analogy between a Tour de France team (a peloton) and an organisation dealing with complexity.
K&S suggest a set of three heuristics for ethical narrative work:
- always declare up front the use of narrative techniques (no stealth story work)
- if asked any question about what sort of narrative intervention you are doing (such as instructing executives in how to tell stories for cultural change), answer honestly
- appoint an independent arbitrator for any dispute over the use of narrative techniques in organisations
The last section of the chapter is about productive conflict. I have to admit that before reading this section and before chatting to Dave about the use of debate in a variety of forums I was sceptical about its effectiveness. As I saw it practised it seemed to be very much “I’m right, your wrong” approach that seemed to me less that productive. But I think if productive conflict is practised as described in this chapter I can see how a level a friction can be extremely beneficial. K&S’s main point, as I understood it, is that if a group focuses on conflict around ideas (cognitive conflict) and avoided conflict associated with interpersonal relationships (affective conflict) and conflict over who should do what (process conflict) a product outcome can emerge. This also assumes the group has a desire to improve the understanding or has a group problem to solve. Using a sporting metaphor, “play the ball, not the player.”
This chapter is well worth a read. The only criticism of have of it is the slight feeling of disjointedness throughout. Each section was interesting and useful but I couldn’t always see how it fitted into a larger picture.
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| 30/10/06 | | Social network perspective of knowledge-retention strategies |
Salvatore Parise, Rob Cross and Tom Davenport have teamed up to write an article for Sloan Management Review titled: Strategies for Preventing a Knowledge-Loss Crisis. It’s a description of how Organisational Network Analysis can be used to identify people who would be sorely missed if they left the organisation. They focus on three social network roles: central connectors, brokers and peripheral players. Here’s a summary, from the paper, describing the knowledge-loss risks and possible actions for each of the three network roles.
Central Connector
Knowledge-Loss Risks
- Technical expertise and organizational memory as well as a set of relationships that help many others get information or other resources to do their work.
- Experiential knowledge and reputation that enable rapid onboarding of new employees
Actions
- Use personal network profiles in career development and onboarding practices to create network redundancies systematically where departures might dramatically fragment a network.
- Reallocate information access and decision rights to ensure that one point does not become too vulnerable in the network.
- Have central connectors lead communities of practice as a means of creating connections around them.
- Require central connectors to help newcomers get acclimated through strategic introductions, “shadowing,” mentoring and joint projects.
Broker
Knowledge-Loss Risks
- Broad knowledge of how the organization operates and ability to reconize opportunities that require integration or disparate expertise.
- Ability to mobilize and coordinate efforts of disparate groups to pursue those opportunities.
Actions
- Identify and develop brokers through staffing and rotation across division, geographic and expertise groups.
- Assign brokers strategically where information gaps exist or where ideas can move from concept to action.
- Give brokers preauthorized decision limits to tap into network resources. Allow them to experiment to obtain real-time information.
Peripheral Player
Knowledge-Loss Risks
- Niche (and often marginalized) expertise or early-adopter ideas that have the potential to reshape offerings or operations.
- Set of external relationships built on trust and familiarity.
Actions
- Ensure relevant peripheral people agree visible and engaged, for example, by encouraging their hosting of “lunch-and-learns” and webcasts.
- Invite external partners to conduct workshops and attend meetings to broaden the network.
- Reward employees for bringing external ideas and connections into the organization.
Parise, Salvatore, Rob Cross, and Thomas H. Davenport. 2006. Strategies for Preventing a Knowledge-Loss Crisis. MIT Sloan Management Review 47 (4):31-38.
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| 21/10/06 | | The role of social networks in IT systems implementations |
I had coffee with my friend Trevor Moore yesterday and we got talking about a system implementation he’s involved in. It’s a large project affecting more than 500 people in the organisation. Trevor shared with me a sketch he uses to illustrate what is likely to happen to staff performance as the system is developed, tested and made available.
From October people are taken away from their jobs to be involved in testing and training. Performance gradually declines. The system is implemented in December at which point performance drops off dramatically as everyone comes to grips with the new ways of working. If things go well performance will steadily increase and exceed the levels prior to the system implementation. If things go badly … we don’t even want to think about that 
As Trevor was describing this scenario it occurred to me that the level of connectivity among the staff affected by the system might be a major factor in their ability to cope with the new system. If the staff are sufficiently connected in useful ways they will have relationships to turn to when things go wrong, when they need to untangle a mess, ask a favour and therefore by able to more rapidly enhance their practice of using the new system. Connectivity and conversations will provide resilience.
So for our example, now’s the time for the system implementers to understand how well the protagonists are connected. Social network analysis is a useful tool. The next step is to stimulate new connections and this can be done by moving away from a training mindset and moving to a learning mindset. What often happens on large IT systems implementations is that everyone who will use the system is trained, which usually involves getting people into a classroom and teaching them how to use the system. And that’s it! You are now trained to use the system. A learning approach, on the other hand, start with some teaching, then provides some practical experiences followed by an opportunity for groups of people to reflect and learn from their experience and the experiences of their colleagues. How you group people for these reflections would be a good way to create new social networks. This learning approach would unfold over a longer time and provide a more sustainable approach to learning and using the system while reducing the risk of the system falling over in the first months of operation.
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| 2/08/06 | | An SNA Sensemaking Activity- Preparing people to see |
We’ve learnt that for SNA to be effective in group situations there is real value in preparing people for what they may see within typical social network maps. The “hubs and bridges expectations warm-up” is one of our sensemaking processes useful for such preparation. This warm up activity aims to prepare groups for sensemaking in a productive and non-confrontational way.
This activity uses as its basis the broader Delphi process of brainstorming, narrowing down and ranking. Unlike the traditional Delphi approach which usually occurs anonymously and asynchronously, this method is usually done in a group setting and resembles Bob Dick's description of Delphi Face-to-Face. This process does not require the same rigour which the typical Delphi process employs as the purpose of this activity is to provide a sensemaking activity complimentary to the more formal activities associated with a typical social network analysis.
The Hubs and Bridges expectations warm-up
This process can work for 3-50 people. It is assumed that people are at tables with 5-7 people per table at Step 2. Materials required: Post-its, A4 template, Butchers Paper, Red dots = 6 per participant. Total time: 20-30 mins
Step 1: Introduce the group to the Hubs and Bridges concept
Time: 5-7 mins
Introduce people to what a 'hub' is and what a 'bridge' is in social network analysis. Experientially, this can be done using sociometry "networks in action" warmup exercises.
Step 2: Brainstorm and narrow down the list of Hubs and Bridges at table level
Time: 5-7 mins
First invite participants to privately spend 2-3 minutes brainstorm a list of people who they think would be key Hubs and Bridges in a given context. The context may be about information flow, problem solving, knowledge hoarding etc. Tables then are to work together to compile a list containing all the brainstormed Hubs and Bridges. From the compiled list, each table is to come to a consensus of their 5 most important Hubs and Bridges. No ranking required here, simply the 5 most important Hubs and Bridges. This can be decided through vote, discussion or any other means which the table decides.
Step 3: Feedback and group voting of narrowed down lists
Time: 10-15 mins
Invite each table to provide its list of 5 most important Hubs and Bridges. Compile this onto 2 large sheets of butchers paper (one for Hubs one for Bridges) with two columns: Name and Vote. Once compiled, invite the group to vote for the Hubs and Bridges they think would be the most important in the given context. Tally the votes. The groups expectation of who the Hubs and Bridges is now available for broader conversation and discussion.
Note: The 5 most important, could also be the 5 most … valued, key, influential,…
You might also be interested in my squidoo lens on Social Network Analysis and Sensemaking.
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| 26/07/06 | | Relationships create resilience |
I remember a great story told by Margaret Wheatley about how the US Federal Aviation Authority successfully landed all the planes in US airspace on September 11. I was searching around for it today and found it. Here is it:
On September 11th, as we all know, every plane was grounded. It took four hours for them to clear the skies, and during that time, they had to continue to assess whether terrorists were controlling any other plane. There was one incident in Alaska where the pilot was Korean and was giving the wrong code, so they thought he was in trouble, but he wasn't. The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) had to land 5,000 planes. Never been done before. No preparation, no simulations, no training. The person who was head of the FAA, was new to the job; it was his first day on the job, and I remember that he said, “In the interview for this job I asked, ”Will I have complete authority to make decisions?” and they said, “Yes.” He never thought that his very first day would be one where he was going to buy the farm on if it didn't work. He gave the order. Several airlines, like Delta, had already asked all their planes to land. Many of the planes had to land at small airports. Small airports have air traffic controllers, rulebooks, and well-trained people, but there was no rulebook that covered this kind of circumstance, so they had to invent or disregard procedures. Everyone was being asked to be courageous by going against the book. And they all did it very well. It was a monumental task.
Later, they realized that the reason they succeeded was the strength of their relationships. They trusted each other as they were communicating across the country. There was a real esprit décor; they were smart. They could make new policies. They could make up rules that worked in the moment. So after Sept. 11, as any good organization would do, the FAA wanted to learn why this had worked so well. But of course, being a federal agency, they wanted to learn what worked so they could put it into a rulebook. After its research, the FAA did something extraordinarily brave. They decided not to write a rulebook about the incident; they understood that what had made it work was people's intelligence, dedication, and relationships. That's a lesson we all need to learn right now. The only way through an uncertain time is to have a certainty about your values, your purpose, and a certainty about each other. We call it trust, but it's even more than that. It's knowing, as my friend's daughter who plays rugby says, “When you're moving a ball down the field, you can’t see the people right behind you, but you may need to pass the ball to them, so they just keep signaling to you and they just keep staying with you, with you, with you.”
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| 30/06/06 | | Organising your community of practice for action |
There often comes a point in the life of a community of practice when the group really benefits from creating tangible things designed to improve the members’ practice. This point occurs sometime after the early days of formation after the members have worked out their domain, and they know who’s participating, how people get on with one another, and how members communicate.
Following is a simple approach designed to coordinate action within a CoP. I first spoke about this approach in relation to setting up a Quickplace environment, which in retrospect might have been a mistake because many people couldn’t see how the ideas where relevant if they weren’t using Quickplace or when technology isn’t in the community’s sights.
There are three parts to this approach:
- discussion tables
- a list of possible projects
- small groups (ideally 3 people) working on things together
A discussion table is when community members come together to discuss a topic related to the community’s domain. The community coordinator might organise discussion tables on a regular basis. They can be done face to face or be a facilitated online discussion. I think there should be no more than about 12 people in the conversation to ensure everyone is present and active. If there are more than 12 people interested in the discussion table topic then run multiple discussion tables. During the conversation one of the participants keeps a note of ideas involving members taking action to improve the member practice. For example, if you were part of a business narrative community and the topic was ‘running effective anecdote circles’ someone might suggest, “we should develop a anecdote circle facilitator’s kit” or “we should develop a members training program”. These ideas would be noted and added to the list of possible projects. A summary of the discussion table conservation is also distributed to the entire community.
The list of possible projects is a simple list of all the suggested projects and activities arising in the discussion tables and other forums. You might put the list online and allow members to vote on each suggested project. Members are encouraged to take on a project from this list in groups of 3 and ideally with people you haven’t work with before. This simple rule helps the community create new social networks. These small project teams might use an online collaboration space. Once they’ve completed their project they communicate the results to the entire community and store the outputs where members can access them.
The community therefore makes progress by hosting discussion tables and encouraging active and robust conversation that leads people to suggesting things that would be good to do as a community. The list of projects grows and some are tackled based on the energy and enthusiasm of members. The process of undertaking these projects in small groups creates new relationships which in turn creates new conversations and new ideas for future discussion tables.
Related posts:
- Using Quickplace to support a Communities of Practice
- New white paper: connecting people with content
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| 13/06/06 | | Getting your survey questions tuned |
It seems to me that the word ‘survey’ is often clumped together with other words like ‘mother-in law’,‘cane toad’, ‘pestilence’ and maybe even ‘microsoft’. For all that we hate surveys they are still a powerful way of getting things done. There is definitely a science and an art involved in producing a ‘good’ survey.
For anyone putting together a survey, one thing you will need to do is design your questions. The language that you use can have a big impact on the response rates which you get on your survey and also how ‘threatened’ people may feel answering your survey questions. Here is a humourous example (albeit adapted from "Asking questions") of some different ways to ask the question: “Did you kill your pet cat?”.
A. The casual approach:
“Did you happen to kill your pet cat?”
B. The numbered card/option approach:
“Please choose from the options below which correspond to what became of your pet cat”
(1) Natural death (2) I killed him (3) Other (what?)
C. The Everybody approach:
“As you know, many people have been killing their pet cats these days. Did you happen to kill yours?”
D. The “Other People” approach:
(1) “Do you know any people who have murdered their pet cats?”
(2) “How about yourself?”
Disclaimer: No pets were harmed in the making of this blog post.
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| 7/06/06 | | Interested in Visual Complexity? |
Check here for more…
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| 11/05/06 | | SNA Sensemaking |
Social Network Analysis has spent alot of its evolution and development down in the weeds where the expert has been king. Crunching and analysing. Not surprising really. There are traps for young players in SNA and there is a clear role for someone like an expert to keep us clear of traps.
Eventually however, when the crunching and analysis has been worked through, which these days happens mostly through software, a delicate opportunity emerges to provide the visualisations and network maps to a group. A group of people such as senior leaders or managers, or even people from ‘the coal face’. Whomever, they are people who will then face the challenge of ‘making sense’ of the ‘data’.
Until now SNA as a field hasn’t had much to say about how groups can ‘make sense’ of social network maps. The sensemaking perspective has been missing. Maybe this is because, as I mentioned, there is a delicate opportunity to presenting network maps to groups. Delicate because social network maps contain very delicate information. People’s names. The opportunity is around moving beyond ‘the expert recommends’ and more towards ‘the group thinks’.
Whichever, as I discuss in our seminar, SNA sensemaking can provide a powerful way forward. A way to action.
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| 11/05/06 | | Bridges and Hubs in Social Networks |
When it comes to Social Network Analysis (SNA) a common practice is to use centrality measures such as Betweenness (Bridgeness), Closeness and Degree. For instance, we often represent “Hubness” (in-degree) by colour scale, and “Bridgeness” (betweenness) by size. Resulting in:
Hubness as it suggests gives an indication of who are the hubs in the network. Betweenness (or bridgeness) gives an indication to the people who are acting as ‘bridges’ across various networks. Centrality measures such as these give us a way of making sense of the ‘data’.
As Bruce Hoppe has mentioned there are subtleties to these centrality measures. One subtlety which I have dug around for an answer on is: how sensitive are measures like bridgeness and hubness to missing data?
Why bother you ask? If you are using a survey tool then you might be familiar with the phrase ‘survey response rate’. And maybe how poor response rates can often be.
As this figure illustrates, even with a survey response rate of 75% there is only 56% complete relationship data available for use with the centrality measure of your choice. So, comparing between Hubness and Bridgeness, which is most robust to missing data? Turns out it’s Hubness. Interestingly, maybe even ironically, Bridgeness is sensitive to missing data. [See Costenbader and Valente 2003 for the details]
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| 28/04/06 | | Phase changes in social systems |
You may have heard of the Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing metaphor for team development. This metaphor provides a lens by which you can view a groups evolution through the initial ‘forming’ right through to when teams are ‘performing’. Just as water, when boiled, goes through a phase change from liquid to gas, social systems also go through phase changes. It seems to me that a phase change for a group or teams’ evolution would be the moving from ‘storming’ to ‘norming’. Another kind of phase change might be the awareness and perception of ‘insiders’ versus ‘outsiders’ in a developing community of practice.
Network theory provides interesting insight into phase changes. In this tiny application (3.2M) called ‘Connectivity Avalanche’ you can see a demonstration of how a collection of nodes, getting randomly connected at each step goes through sudden, unpredictable phase changes characterised by what is known as a connectivity avalanche. That is, there are periods when the whole system remains fairly unconnected, and then suddenly the system will undergo a phase change and go from low connectivity to high – in this example around 5% to over 60%. You can see repeated avalanches as the system keeps unfolding.
When it comes to thinking about phase changes in social systems, I wonder what some other kinds of phase changes might be?
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| 14/04/06 | | Connecting People: How to Foster and Harness Your Organisation’s Connectors |
I wrote this article with Stewart Forsyth from FX Consultants. Stewart and I have done a few projects together in New Zealand and it is always a pleasure working with him.
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While passers-by see the granite and glass of high-rise buildings, well-connected people think of the organisations within as collections of interesting people they want to meet. Mention a business and these ‘connectors’ will spill out the names of key informants and decision-makers. Connectors know lots of people.
One of us worked once with a business developer who, no matter what south-east Asian city he was in, always had names and contact details of locals in his PDA. According to legend, he was once arrested and thrown into a cell for not having the appropriate visa, but he was out within hours—he wangled a call to a mate who had the right connections. Connectors have the happy knack of getting things done, often making it look so easy in the process.
Connectors such as these are the human circuit-makers through which ideas, opportunities and resources flow. They ensure that the products proposed by R&D teams can be made economically and will sell. They help their organisation to spot competitor activity and environmental shifts that present threats and opportunities to be managed. They pick up even the weak signals. In our view, the informal connections made by your people are more important than the formal channels in getting the job done. The benefits to your business are increased responsiveness and adaptability.
Our emphasis is not only on how these people work. We want to help you mobilise their capabilities, and so your organisation’s capability. Specifically, how do you identify and develop people with connector potential?
Looking at the level of team performance, there is good evidence1 that teams with effective connectors are more productive. Just schmoozing and collecting information is not where it's at. In fact broad environmental scanning can be counter-productive. Two purposeful sorts of connecting make a difference—promoting the team and securing resources, and reinforcing linkages with other groups in the work flow. It is just impossible for the team to know everything, so it is critical that they can find the person who has the requisite knowledge or skills.
Assuming that you want to build the effectiveness of your up-and-coming connectors, to keep your teams and your business plugged into break-through thinking and emerging opportunities, what would you look for?
The behaviours of those who manage to develop networks across and beyond the organisation seem to include2:
- Listening—based on a genuine spirit of inquiry, and including listening for emotional meaning as well as information (a useful question: ‘So what are you working on?’)
- Being prepared to take a stand and being interesting—so that others know what they stand for and want to talk with you
- Cultivating people and, importantly, building reciprocal and collaborative relationships (and a reputation for integrity)
- Having a reputation for making useful introductions, and being authentically helpful without a tit-for-tat mentality
Using social network analysis (or even analysing email traffic, or nominations for 360-degree reviews) could help you identify those who have the mix of both strong (and deep) and weak (but extensive) ties to people in other groups, inside and outside your organisation.
A ‘quick and dirty’ approach (and illustrating what we mean by ‘connectors’) is to identify those people who are likely to be connectors based on their role or some other identifiable characteristic. Here is our first cut of connector categories. Our contention is that these types of people are most likely to be connectors—there are of course others.
- Union reps
- Successful business developers (connectors outside the organisation)
- Personal assistants
- Professional association leaders
- Community of practice leaders
- Good (internal) head-hunters
- People who travel around the organisation
It is useful to pause for a moment to consider the network structures of which connectors form an integral part. As we have suggested, connectors are hubs. For example, in Figure 1 the main connector is Louise. People come to her and she connects to others. Nick is also a connector.
The biggest connectors—the ones with the most connections—by their very nature will attract further connections. This ‘rich get richer’ feature is predominant in social networks. The highly connected will always have an advantage over new entrants. It’s a bit like Microsoft’s DOS operating system: while it wasn’t the best system available, it became popular and so eventually became the de facto standard.
This is not to say that other connectors cannot emerge. If there is a dearth of connectors, new hubs will have space and will help to join up a network. But there is a carrying capacity of connectors in a network and you definitely don’t want a social network full of connectors because it makes the system unstable.
If aspiring connectors offer what other connectors already offer, then they will always remain second and third-order connectors. However, if they can offer something completely new, a better way, a better fit, then they can overtake the established hierarchy of connectors. We’ve seen this happen when Google offered a better way to search and trumped Alta Vista and Yahoo.
There are some similarities between effective connectors and entrepreneurs and leaders. Entrepreneurs, amongst other attributes (such as high need for achievement and resilience), have the ability to create, recognise and shape opportunities. Where do the opportunities come from? They are spotted by the entrepreneurs and then exploited through their networks.
Effective leaders also get results through people. Inspiring, supporting and developing the people in their teams or business groups are their most visible roles. But leaders also have to get resources (including people), develop a positive and relevant vision, and ensure the outputs that their people produce meet a market need. All of these tasks require networks—for obtaining resources, gaining environmental intelligence, and selling products (or meeting the needs of those further along the business process).
While we do not consider that effective connectors will necessarily have the full complement of entrepreneurial or leadership skills, aspiring entrepreneurs or leaders do need to develop the connecting skills that will improve their capabilities.
We think it is also important to highlight another, less positive, similarity—that between connectors and some personality disorders. You may have met some delightful people who were not all they claimed to be. He (males are disproportionately represented in this group) is charming, articulate, plausible, and usually with very good connections—or at least good at dropping the names that indicate he has such connections. It usually takes time before people realise that the appearance is a sham, that if this person delivers at all, it is based on ‘borrowing’ the effort and output of less visible others.
This is a description of an organisational psychopath. While the people who leave a trail of broken promises and unfulfilled hopes in organisations may not be violent, or even fully fit the clinical definition of psychopathy, it is possible for their ‘sub-clinical’ behaviour to be very disruptive and counter-productive.
In promoting the careers of up-and-coming connectors, especially to the point where they represent your business and personify your brand, you need to know that they have an interest in sustaining your business’s reputation as well as achieving their own immediate gratification.
Some development suggestions:
- Include appropriate ‘connecting’ training (including the behaviours described above) in the development plans of your knowledge workers and all those involved in project work.
- Introduce these people to established communities and to well-connected coaches who can model as well as guide the development of these skills.
- As a leader and shaper of your organisation's culture, get in the habit of asking, ‘Who do we need to have on this job?’ You'll ensure that you get the best talent, and also encourage people to think about who are the people with the various talents, both inside and outside the team, group or business.
- Appreciate connecting, and especially its knowledge-sharing and idea-generating benefits, as a performance indicator, but whatever you do, don't make it a target!
Connectors may not bring in the greatest amount of business, but they are building your capability to do the business.
Stewart Forsyth, FX Consultants
Stewart is Director of FX Consultants, an organisational improvement consultancy known for its creative approaches to lifting individual, team and organisational performance http://www.fxc.co.nz
References:
1 Ancona, D. G., and Caldwell, D. F. (1992). ‘Bridging the boundary: External activity and performance in organizational teams’. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37, 634–635.
2 Baker, W. E. (2000). Networking Smart: How to Build Relationships for Personal and Organizational Success. Lincoln, NE:iUniverse.com, Inc.
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| 14/04/06 | | GAP Forum and increasing links in a social network |
I was invited to attend the GAP Forum on Leveraging Networks in Business last week and caught up with some old friends like John Finnigan and Robert Kay. The two days were focussed on getting an interesting group together to work out ways to apply network theory and practice in a business and trade context.
John’s presentation on network theory got me thinking. Particularly the idea of network avalanches—how connectivity in a network progresses in sharp transitions rather than gradually (this feature of a network is what worries people about avian flu). I’m sure Andrew will talk about this phenomena at his seminar about making social network analysis more social, so I wont say more about it here. It did get me thinking about ways we can create new links in a network. Please feel free to suggest others.
- communities of practice
- open space facilitation
- training course cohorts
- out-placements and secondments
- being able to express multiple identities at work (I’ll talk more about this idea in another post)
- membership of clubs
Partly tongue in cheek, Andrew suggested that the person running the social club raffle has a good opportunity to form new social ties. But I think a social tie’s strength (remembering the strength of weak ties) relies on shared experience and perhaps the amount of pain or pleasure you’ve shared. I remember hiking up Pigeon House mountain with 4 guys, 2 or whom I only knew briefly before the walk. We left late, it started raining, the last 100 metres involved climbing up rusted and rickety ladders and we didn’t take any food. Needless to say the walk was miserable but the friendships are enduring.
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