From A-Z to Organization2.0: C - Cafeteria — catching the informal

June 5, 2008

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Let’s face it, when you deal with knowledge sharing in an organization, it becomes quickly obvious that most knowledge is shared personally, face-to-face over the telephone or in the cafeteria. In a personal conversation people can describe issues in length, reply to questions and tell the “real” story. Formal meetings often do not give space for vibrant discussions and are often not the forum to describe the pros and cons. Although by listening to the experiences of others, best learning can be achieved.

An ordinary organization has usually a top-down controlled Intranet, where the different departments add their contributions. Sometimes there is even a forum, but in many cases hardly used at all — it is somewhere hidden or a hassle to access. The organizational life is happening somewhere else and employees on a business trip or in a different branch are cut off.

Social software offers at least three new ways for organization to benefit from:

  1. To get a picture of what is really happening in an organization. What are the major topics? What is it what staff discusses and cares about? Not all is going to be public, but a lot more than a top-down Intranet or internal communication by the corporate communication department. Is your organization ready for that?
  2. To bring people with same interests together without typing with your numb finger over the telephone. Personal employee’s pages, such as yellow pages, can be easily linked through common key words (tags) by interests, competencies, blog posts, projects on wiki pages etc. Check your del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site) or this video and browse through it and see yourself how quickly you find like-minded people. On delicious it is often anonymous, but in an organization it is all linked to employees and their expertise, their projects and questions. Check out 20 things to do on a social network in the office.
  3. To increase productivity and emphasize innovation. To imagine employees to network on a peer-to-peer basis. A transparent open network will not only brings synergies and avoids to reinvention of the wheel, but also offers innovations. Like-minded people collaborate on their preferred topics. Staff with similar ideas find each other or new ideas arose out of discussions between people who have different departments.

Why should they do it? It certainly needs transparency and trust but the benefit and mutual gain can come quickly. But this is of course a nightmare scenario to all those employees, who treat knowledge as power. Because in this kind of open horizontal community you are what you share!

How to start?

Here are some rather bottom-up approaches:

  • Start a collaborative tagging experiment over del.icio.us with colleagues to see how easy the sharing of valuable information can be, or open up a room on friendfeed to discuss right away resources.
  • Use external tools for your team to make project management easier. One example could be a blog for your project’s history, milestones and other management tasks.
  • Connect with colleagues through existing social networks such as Xing, Linkedin or Facebook and use it for exchange.
  • Extend informal activities on the web and make other colleagues be aware of it: bulletin board, liftsharing etc.
  • As Joitske commented on my first blog post, you can address a specific problem and use social media for an open transparent discussion.

This is a blog post series about my experiences on web2.0 in an organization, consisting of at least 26 different blog posts highlighting potentials and challenges and focusing on success factors. Please feel free to comment, contact me for further information and/or let me know which other topics within this context you would be interested on.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A - Adaptation: From A-Z — the long trail of web2.0 in an organization

May 25, 2008

a-z.jpgThree years ago I started experimenting for the first time with web2.0 at my organization (GTZ). In Egypt, we implemented a blog to link different projects of GTZ. Since then, I have been taking part in several initiatives and joined many discussions with the IT, communication, knowledge management and other departments. I have learnt a lot about the complexity of organizations and the opportunities and obstacles to engage in social media.

Therefore, I decided to share the different experiences and challenges we have encountered and try to identify success factors, hoping this can help others who are also dealing with social media at an organization and encouraging them to implement it. I will write about this in a series of blog-posts over the coming months.

It is not the tools

To begin with, being a bit critical, I think there is a risk to believe just tools such as wikis or blogs can achieve something that was not there before. Because it touches quickly the core of an organization, namely its culture. If the organizational setting is based upon strict hierarchy, information silos and a very formalistic approach, then clearly open sharing and a horizontal communication is difficult to be implemented, with or without web2.0. Some would argue that new forums for this kind of transparency and openness can have an impact on the organizational culture, though.

What is the character of your organization?

Identify the right scenarios!

However, before implementing web2.0 tools in an organization, it is very important to analyze the already existing instruments, the organization communication behaviours, the degree of openness and trust of knowledge sharing, and the social setting. Most important web2.0 is best used where the quickest win is possible particular at the beginning.

So what are the usual scenarios where employees exchange knowledge?

  • Is it mainly in the cafeteria, on the telephone or mainly through email?
  • Does the organization rely on a dense meeting culture and direct contact?
  • How many different tools for communication already exist, other than telephone, meetings, emails, etc.?
  • So far, how have interactive web based applications worked? What went well and what wrong?

This list could be easily extended, please write me if you have some other points.

To find the right tools for the existing work scenarios

The challenge is that there are not only many different tools for online communication, but also they can be used so differently. The trick is to identify a deficit in a typical scenario of work context and find the right tool for it. Particularly, in the beginning, it is very helpful
to target a need and gain a quick win.

For instance, a wiki can be used for very different purposes and are best adapted to the organizational need.

  • Use it to write the protocol each week and to have a central place to follow up tasks. It can be written during the meeting and everybody can add it instantly or edit it later on.
    Advantage: It is a small start, implemented in a existing process and you can learn on the fly.
    Disadvantage: Only a small area of work or project management.
  • A glossary for a department to collect precise information for standard processes.
    Advantage: The benefit of sharing can be shown quickly when a critical mass of employees contribute. Writing together what already exists.
    Disadvantage: Needs support from the whole department. cannot easily be established if staff does not want to share and it needs trainingfor each one who is involved.
  • To organize the next company party or trip and use it for logistics.
    Advantage: For a temporary time and involves a small team. Shows transparency of the planning process to other colleagues.
    Disadvantage: Needs dedicated people and proper gardening of the wiki structure. Wikis can become easily confusing in larger projects (logistics).

These are, of course, only a few examples, but they shall show the variety of different implementation options. To analyze first what are normal work scenarios and then adapt a tool to it, it is therefore a key success factor.

This is a blog post series about my experiences on web2.0 in an organization, consisting of at least 26 different blog posts highlighting potentials and challenges and focusing on success factors. Please feel free to comment, contact me for further information and/or let me know which other topics within this context you would be interested on.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Tired of PPT: Start power point karaoke

March 12, 2008

Background

Bill Ives wrote a nice post about power point karaoke — a great way to relive us from boring presentations and to laugh about the mass phenomena of non stopping slides and too many buzz words. He writes, “This trend combines two of the most boring things around, PowerPoint and Karaoke so maybe it would be funny.” It was actually invented here in Germany by an ppt_karaoke.pnginteresting creative “think tank” called “Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur” (Central Intelligence Agency), who also runs the blog riesenmaschine.de. By the way, this guys also wrote an interesting book called “We call it work - the new digital bohemian,” which deals with new working models and the escape of 9-5 jobs. (Unfortunately, I think it only is available in German).

How to do Power Point karaoke?

I am pretty bored with Power Point presentations, but still quite surprised about the fact that slide records can be always beaten, and the amount of buzzwords that can be used. So, I must say that this is lots of fun!!! We did it in our team some while ago and enjoyed it. It definitely trains you in holding presentations in outer circumstances and improvising. It also feels good to talk random nonsense once in a while because, at the end, that is sometimes needed in case somebody gives you a presentation about all sorts of stuff. I am sure there are many ways to experiment with it, but this is how we did it:

Preparation

  • Go to Google advanced search and click the drop down menu “file type” and select Power Point (.ppt)
  • Now, search with random key words the web for PPT and check the presentations. Good results are, for example, strategic communication (surely full of buzzwords), ornithology, fire extinguisher or simply beer.
  • If you find some presentations, which shall not take longer than half an hour, you can rate them by the level of difficulty. We had three levels. When you look at each presentation, it becomes obvious that an ornithology presentation is not as easy as one about kitchen equipment — but who knows? Name the PPT files with the topic and sort them in three different folders.

Power Point Karaoke

  • Everybody has only 5 minutes to present. The presenter already knows the topic and the number of slides to be shown at the minute he/she has to begin.
  • The presenter can choose between the different topics within one category (level of difficulty). Just show the folder over a projector with the different files and topics.
  • The listeners give grades after each presentation is given and judge the performances. But please be fair, it is not that easy, I can tell from my own experience.
  • Once all have presented, and everybody stood naked in front talking about the weirdest things and maybe had to go through 80 slides in five minutes, the presenter with the worst grade passes out.
  • Then, a next round starts with less players and one level harder.
  • In the end there should be a winner, who improvised and impressed the best and came up with the most bizarre stories, which luckily, of course, have nothing do with the real content of the slides.

So it does not have to be a mass event or contest. It can be a great team exercise with PPT overdoses. Have fun!

Organizations can be democratic, flat and passionate

March 9, 2008

The web is full of thoughts and discussion around open, democratic and flat organizations. Most of this discussions and concepts are connected to web2.0, but that is not necessarily new, as Ricardo Semler proofs it in his book: The seven-day weekend. For more than twenty years, he has been experimenting with open knowledge models. I was surprised how good it fits to the contemporary approach, such as the new Wikinomics Playbook formulates.

Democratic

Seven Day WeekendWhile on holidays, I had the chance to read Semler’s book. The cover looks a bit curious, but the substance is quite inspiring. Thanks to Ignatia for recommending me this book. The main message of the book is that it is possible to have an open democratic non-hierarchical and successful company. In his book, already a few years old, Ricardo Semler tells his story about how he has transformed a company for the past thirty years until today, together with his colleagues through an open management model. He proved, to my surprise, that an ongoing cycle of questioning things makes progress and change possible. The book has a lot of fascinating insights next to some repetitions. Here is the excerpt, and here are two great quotes:

And the increasingly popular concept of work/life balance is not all that we seek. Balance also ensues when people are given room to explore so they can find out where their talents and interests lie and merge their personal aspirations with the goals of the company. Once employees feel challenged, invigorated, and productive, their efforts will naturally translate into profit and growth for the organization.

Giving up control also means relinquishing exclusive rights to information. Privileged information is a dangerous source of power in any organization. Information that one person has that others lack can be terribly important, and can give them the upper hand. To annihilate information hoarding and illegitimate power, information must be shared. The argument that competitors might latch onto sensitive information if it is widely known is not convincing enough to stop the free flow of information.

Flat
The wikinomics playbook — collaboratively written by the readers of the wikinomics book — will be printed soon. The online version, freely available, offers many different topics. I, particularly, liked very much chapter 2: “The Wikified Organization.” In the centre there is of course a wiki, which is less a technology than a chance for all to contribute and create something new. “At its heart, the wikified organisation is about communications—wide-open, no-holds-barred, inclusive communications.”

Wikis are not about bottom-up management, they are about round table solving of solutions where titles are null and void, where intellects win and where ideas are valued, not ruthlessly critiqued…Wikis change the paradigm… the goal is a refined idea…. not an idea beaten into consensus!”

With a wikified approach, a team can transform a “good idea” into a “cause,” and a cause has a life of its own. Often a cause is unstoppable—if the idea that spawned it is “good” enough. Later, a cause, if it has enough energy, capital and direction (read as steerage and guidance), can become a movement. And a movement can change the world.

Passionate
The authors of Playbook argue that this wikified approach leads to an ongoing open space of ideas and exchange between passionate driven contributors. Maybe that is why the company 37signals has recently announced a change to a four-day week and that they are funding there employees passions.

Three-day weekends mean people come back extra refreshed on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people come back happier on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people actually work harder and more efficiently during the four-day work week.

It could turn out to be just like the story from Semler. In one part, he describes when the company was introducing hammocks for lunch-break-naps and how this led to a creativity boost.


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