Getting Clever Together » Knowledge Management

Do Collaboration Tools Work?

mary — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:52:48 +0000

This is a very good question, given the costs associated with implementing software and hardware that is supposed to enable collaboration. Whether collaboration actually does occur or increases is another point entirely. If a team or division was not known for its collaborative efforts before an initiative it is unlikely that throwing resources at the problem will change things. Helping team members to develop their collaborative capacity should be the first step to creating a team that can use technology to further enhance their willingness to collaborate.

This blog post http://bit.ly/4uB4FX makes some very good arguments about where and when collaboration tools can actually work.

Knowledge – Use It or Lose It

Stephen — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:29:49 +0000

“Sharing knowledge is not about giving people something, or getting something from them. That is only valid for information sharing. Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes.” Peter Senge

With the rapid rate at which our society is changing and the ‘information explosion’ we are all experiencing – managing information and more importantly knowledge is becoming a basic survival skill. The old saying ‘it’s not what you know – it’s who you know’ is no longer just as valid as it used to be. Now it’s more like ‘it’s not what you know but who you know and what they know’ – in other words the hermit-genius approach to dealing with problems is being sidelined for the collective-intelligence approach to solving challenges.

Andrea Saveri of the Institue for the Future recently made a presentation at the NLab: Creativity and Collaboration conference in Leicester, England. In that talk she shared some future job ads. I was amused to see the position of ‘Collective Intelligence Officier’ described as ‘Someone to oversee the improvisational human resources for our company’ – what a great job. I think Andrea is on to something here and it will be sooner rather than later that we see companies realizing that they need people to do these sorts of things full-time for their organizations.

Knowledge, who has it, who knows how to grow and use it, is increasingly going to define the companies that create and shape the future of business. Anyone thinking that KM is just the latest fad are themselves firmly on the road to obsolescence.

Communities of Practice & Collaboration

Stephen — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:51:41 +0000

Communities of Practice: are defined as : ‘the process of social learning that occurs and shared sociocultural practices that emerge and evolve when people who have common goals interact as they strive towards those goals’. (Wikipedia)

There does not seem be in any doubt – our economy and that of the entire globe is going through pretty strange times. One of the features of this ‘global crisis’ is the amount nations are trying to collaborate. The penny has finally dropped, political and business leaders seem to be realizing that we are all in this together. When it comes to ‘throwing’ there isn’t an ‘away’ anymore. Everything that is thrown lands somewhere, usually in another nations backyard.This applies just as much to economics as it does to refuse.

At the same time enlightened employees of business organizations are realizing that if their company is going to make it through the tough times ahead, then everyone is going to have to get engaged. But this is more than “everybody get behind and push” – as Jonas Salk pointed out – “Our future evolution will not decided by the survival of the strongest but by the survival of the wisest” .

And this brings me to my real point – to be the ‘wisest’ we have to start tapping into our collective capacity and this is why I say it is time we started ‘Getting Clever Together’. Communities of Practice (often called CoP) are a brilliant social invention whose time has come.They existed long before we named them – bacteria have been using use the principles behind CoP for over 3 billion years, so I guess the model has held up to the test of time. When I am speaking to business audiences I often make the point that it’s time we got as collaboratively smart as bacteria – but we do have a lot of ground to cover.

Never have we needed each other more (considering all the systemic threats facing us) and never has our ingenuity and resilience been more tested. CoPs enable us to craft deep wisdom around important competencies in a dynamic and adaptive fashion. There is literally no end to where they could take our larger social structures.

Companies that embrace the CoP model and are willing to support them with the necessary resources now, will be those that are able to emerge on the other side of this planetary challenge smarter and stronger.

Collaboration – Can We Own Knowledge?

Stephen — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:03:07 +0000

Our society is fast outstripping it’s ability to keep up with the production of knowledge and information. The Creative Commons sprang from the urge to make and create with a modified concept of ‘ownership’. Extremely successful in the creation of software and in the early days most notably the operating system ‘Linux’. The CC licencing approach has moved into the arts, novels, plays and non-fiction business books (my own book ‘Teaching an Anthill to Fetch’ as an example). This movie is a beautiful (even mesmerizing) piece of art that is shared with you courtesy of a Creative Commons Licence.

Sharing what we know vigorously might is the only we can move our society forward – patent lawyers will only make the ‘commons’ impoverished while benefiting a small percentage of the population. People have to be able to benefit from what they produce and I believe the Creative Commons is a great solution to this dilemma.

I’ve ranted before about how bacteria are outsmarting us because they are more ‘collaborative’ with their information. I also realize our society is much more complex than that of a colony of Ecoli – however the question remains – how can we become more like Ecoli with it’s amazing adaptability and resilience?

Collaborative Intelligence: Google Exercising Its ‘CQ’

Stephen — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:27:23 +0000

If you think the concept of collaborative intelligence is irrelevant – check out this video that mixes history with speculation about arguably the most collaboratively intelligent business on earth – Google.

Collaborative Intelligence, Democracy & Web 2.0

Stephen — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:15:12 +0000

When we think of Collaborative Intelligence in action one of the things that comes to mind is Wikipedia. With a reliability that compares favorably with the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia is championed as the intelligence of the crowd, made available to the crowd. An interesting post by Chris Wilson at ‘Slate’ takes a slightly different view:

‘Social-media sites like Wikipedia and Digg are celebrated as shining examples of Web democracy, places built by millions of Web users who all act as writers, editors, and voters. In reality, a small number of people are running the show. According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site’s edits. The site also deploys bots—supervised by a special caste of devoted users—that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.’

That 1% sounds suspiciously like the small number of individuals in a beehive that act as ‘diversity generators’. Diversity generators are a small % of the hives work force and their task is to go and forage for new sources of honey. While the majority of the hive take off on their daily commute to known locations of honey, diversity generators plug away at the new and novel ultimately producing the locations of new nectar deposits. If you are curious about how we know bees operate in this way you might like to check out Howard Blooms ‘Global Brain’.

Collaboration : Why is it the Key?

Stephen — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:34:21 +0000

In ‘Nine Shift‘ the authors state…

‘There are several reasons why collaborative work and study is fundamental for the 21st Century:

The world is so complicated, the solutions to problems so complex, that many problems, especially the biggest and most important ones can no longer be solved by one person.
The world is so diverse, with so much speciality and subspecialty, that non one person can know or grasp enough knowledge across a broad enough spectrum, to solve a problem or complete a major project without collaborative input from others.
That the process of finding out what others are doing, even as they are doing it, actually enhances and improves one’s own learning and work.’

Only in the last few days I have been providing feedback to colleagues that asked for me to look at what they are doing and comment. This sort of informal 360 is very effective at helping us to find the gaps in our project design and planning. The above points also have significant implications for the peer-to-peer movement. I can’t resist saying that what the authors are talking about is also the development of collaborative intelligence or CQ.

Collaborating to Get Things Done

Stephen — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:57:02 +0000

If you have read any amount of this blog you know that I am BIG into the idea of what we can achieve together. I’m not blind to the fact that we also have to be effective at getting things done when we are all on our own. In fact my own work schedule is so busy that I have to use every trick in the book to maximize my productivity.

So when I bump into something that substantially improves my ability to manage my work load – I like to share it. In case there is even one other person out there struggling to get all things they want to achieve done. Active Words is one of those things – a simple little tool that enables me to make more time by automating various functions on my computer. I won’t bother explaining it here – the site explains it better than I could. But if you have ever wondered if there was an easier way to automate opening that particular folder you visit a lot (as an example) – well yes there is and Active Words is it.