!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
Streamline Training & Documentation
Streamline Training & Documentation
Thursday, February 04, 2010
The Strength of Weak Ties
In 1973 Mark Granovetter, a sociologist now at Stanford, published a paper, "The Strength of Weak Ties" (pdf),1 in which he distinguishes between strong ties between individuals, i.e., relationships in which the individuals are friends, and weak ties, i.e., relationships in which the individuals are mere acquaintances.
Granovetter then goes on to argue, "Weak ties are more likely to link members of different small groups than are strong ones, which tend to be concentrated within particular groups." The significance of this is that weak ties can serve as bridges between social networks, and thereby give individuals in one network access to information beyond what is already known amongst their friends.
For instance, if someone is looking for a job, tapping acquaintances can provide additional leads beyond those that friends may be aware of. Or, if a community is trying to organize for collective action (Granovetter uses the example of threatened destructive urban renewal), it will have more success if weak ties facilitate the uniting of multiple closely knit networks within the community.
In a business setting, weak ties that act as bridges are valuable in any situation in which tapping expertise outside a team will help the team accomplish more, do a better job, and/or achieve results faster.
In the early '80s, Granovetter undertook a review of empirical studies testing the hypotheses in his 1973 paper. The review was published in final form in 1983, and you can read it here.2
__________ 1 Mark Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 6 (May 1973), pp. 1360-1380.
2 Mark Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited," Sociological Theory, Vol. 1 (1983), pp. 201-233.
I can't say I'm sold on the broad feasibility of "reality mining," a quantitative technique for tracking people's relationships and behavior developed by Alex (Sandy) Pentland, a professor of media, arts, and sciences at MIT. Reality mining uses electronic sensors to collect the data, which is then analyzed to identify patterns that are influencing performance.
The two videos below provide an overview. The first explains how "honest signals" — defined by Pentland as "unconscious human behaviors that give reliable insight into our relationships and attitudes" — are gathered and analyzed electronically. For more detail, you can turn to Prof. Pentland's 2008 book, Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World .
The second video presents clips of Prof. Pentland responding to questions concerning Honest Signals.
Data collection via sensors that record a person's location, body movements, tone of voice, etc., raises obvious privacy concerns. In an article published in 2007 in Booz Allen's strategy+business magazine, author Mark Buchanan lists Pentland's suggestions for dealing with the privacy issue in a business firm, which include:
... that the technology ought to be used on a voluntary basis, with individuals adopting it because they learn the benefits that it brings for both themselves and the company. An organization could store information on individuals’ own personal computers, rather than in a central location. It might also give people the opportunity, at the end of each day, to review the data that’s been recorded about their activities. They could have the option of deleting anything they’d prefer to keep private. The devices might be fitted with an additional button that would erase, say, the last 10 minutes of data, or data collection might be strictly limited to teams, time frames, and workplace settings where there has been explicit agreement in advance to allow the analysis. Although all these possibilities reduce the amount and quality of data that would be gathered, some steps along such lines will be crucial for giving people confidence that their privacy is being protected.
I leave it to you, after watching Prof. Pentland in the videos, to decide whether or not he oversells his concepts. As I indicated at the beginning, I am not convinced that his "sociometric" techniques have the broad application he claims. For instance, any alert business manager knows, without checking data collected by electronic sensors, that employees often need help in matching their styles to the expectations and preferences of those with whom they work, both internally and externally. On the other hand, I find Prof. Pentland's description of an application like the fuel economy game quite credible.
Back on Christmas Eve, at Web Worker Daily, Meryl K. Evans published tips for putting together an effective profile on LinkedIn that are well worth your attention. By "effective," Evans means good "at attracting contacts, generating leads and showing off your skills."
Here is a somewhat abbreviated version of her tips:
Use the name that most people know you by professionally.
The photo you upload should preferably be one taken by a professional photographer.
Add an effective Professional Headline on the “Edit My Profile” page.
Pick the industry that best represents what you do. Alternatively, you could use your clients’ industry if they all come from the same one.
When entering details for your current and past positions, highlight the activities that represent what you do or want to do by mentioning them first.
Write a summary that highlights your most important business information. (Remember that you can add details under “Current Position.”)
List your web sites and blog. Rather than using the name of your web site and blog, use keywords that describe what you do.
If you have a Twitter ID, include it in your profile, along with your your Twitter name.
Request recommendations. (Writing recommendations for others can lead to reciprocal write-ups for you.)
Add LinkedIn apps to enhance your profile. For example, if you have a blog, you can use a LinkedIn app to feed your blog entries into your LinkedIn account. You can also turn LinkedIn into an online document collaboration platform.
If you tweet, send selected Twitter tweets to LinkedIn. You do this by adding the hashtag “#in” to the tweet. (Turn on this feature in Twitter Settings.)
Select what to display in your public profile, using the Public Profile options (which is also the section where you set up your Public Profile URL — http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname). The more you reveal, the easier it is for people to know if they have the right person.
Review your settings to make sure you've dealt with everything you want to adjust, including the new features and settings LinkedIn provides from time to time.
When Evans's tips were summarized at BNET.com, some helpful comments came in from readers, such as this one from merribame: "[A]nswer questions in your area of expertise. You'll gain exposure. [Also] ... ask questions — even when you know the answer. You give others a chance to enter your world with their perspective. And they'll love you for it!"
As a follow-on to my recent post dealing with Nobel laureate Oliver Williamson's work on the boundaries of the firm, I'd mention that you can get a good idea of the state-of-the-art in the study of organizational economics by looking through the reading list for a course on that subject offered jointly by MIT and Harvard.
Uses of organizational economics within firms, between firms, and beyond firms (Robert Gibbons)
The reading list includes both foundational material, e.g., Ronald Coase's classic paper on "The Nature of the Firm" from 1937; and contemporary material, e.g, chapters from Baker and Gibbons' forthcoming compilation, The Handbook of Organizational Economics.
Since networking is not my strong suit, I was particularly pleased to come upon a post on Stephen Downes' blog offering advice that encourages people like me to do some rearranging of how we spend our time.
In brief, Downes "Seven Habits of Highly Connected People" are:
Respond to other people's points of view. Downes comes down a bit too strong when he says "Posting, after all, isn't about airing your own views." Often, that's exactly what posting is about, but all the same, one should also take time to offer thoughtful responses to views that other people post.
Fit yourself into the flow of the conversation. "When connecting online, it is more important to find the places to which you can add value rather than pursue a particular goal or objective."
Connection comes first. Again, Downes comes on stronger than I would. He believes that connecting with people online is of such importance that doing things like reading books and magazines is a suspect use of time. I would never go that far. All the same, I acknowledge that making time for interacting with others is a high priority, not something you barely squeeze in among other, noninteractive activities.
Share. "The way to function in a connected world is to share without thinking about what you will get in return. ... In a connected world, you want to be needed and wanted. This will, over time, cause resources to be sent to you, not as a reward for some piece of work, but because people will want to send you stuff to help you to be even more valuable to them."
Read the manual. "Almost everything a person could need to know has been recorded somewhere online ... Taking the time and effort to look at this work is not merely respectful, it demonstrates a certain degree of competence and self-reliance. ... [W]hen you do ask for help, you can state what you've read and tried, and why it didn't work. This saves people from giving you advice you don't need, and helps them focus on what's unique about your problem."
Cooperate. "To cooperate, it is necessary to know the protocols. These are not rules — anybody can break them. But they establish the basis for communication."
Be yourself. "The only way to enable people to understand you is to allow them to sympathize with you, to get to know you, to feel empathy for you."
If you'd like to compare Downes' Seven Habits to Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, a quick summary of Covey's Habits is here.
Carrying on the theme of a recent post — preparing for job transitions — I'd mention another compilation of helpful advice, in this case recommendations for how best to use LinkedIn.
It is apparent from the reader comments that Swearingen's article attracted that I am not alone in finding it valuable. And some commenters add links to further tips, such as here.
Donald Sull Makes the Case for Management by Commitment
Donald Sull, who teaches management at the London Business School, has long been a proponent of what he calls management by commitment.
As Sull explains in a brief interview posted at BNET.com on March 4, management by commitment involves looking "at an organization as a network of overlapping, continually evolving promises that people make to each other to get things done."1
Sull contrasts management by commitment to two alternatives:
Use of hierarchical power
"This tends to create silos: the hierarchy is very up and down and doesn't work well for work that requires cooperation across different units or functions. It's pretty slow as well; it takes a long time for information to get up the structure and for orders to find their way down."
Management by standardized processes
"This is hugely helpful — it allows you to squeeze out excess resources and continuously improve on what you do. But here we also have limitations, probably the biggest one being that standardization gets in the way of innovation."
For situations that do not lend themselves to standardization, Sull argues that management by commitment allows needed flexibility. Management by commitment also has a natural place in situations in which you need cooperation from someone over whom you have no authority.
Based on research he and his colleague Charles Spinosa have done, Sull cites five characteristics of effective management by commitment:
The commitments are public and they are tracked publicly.
The commitments are active, as opposed to being casual or pro forma.
The commitments are voluntary. The person from whom a commitment is sought can make a counteroffer, or even say no if what's being requested is something the individual really isn't able to take on.
The commitments are explicit, i.e., it is clear which individuals are committing to what objectives and tasks.
The commitments are motivating. People need to care about what they are being asked to do, so that they are willing to carry on when inevitable obstacles crop up. This requires clarifying the importance of, and the rationale for, the actions people are signing up for.
Note: In a longer interview published in 2007 that is well worth reading, Sull explains in more detail how management by commitment helps with strategy execution.
__________ 1 A brief follow-up BNET.com interview with Sull, citing specific examples of use of management by commitment, is here.
As a follow-on to my earlier post on competitive analysis, I'd like to call attention to a helpful article on "How to Make Sense of Weak Signals" in the Spring 2009 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review.
This article by Paul Schoemaker, research director of the Mack Center for Technological Innovation, and George Day, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School, covers a broader range than just the task of scoping out the competition. Schoemaker and Day describe a straightforward way of attending to and responding to weak signals of all sorts that are relevant to one's business, as omens either of emerging opportunities or of looming threats.
A weak signal is defined as a
seemingly random or disconnected piece of information that at first appears to be background noise but can be recognized as part of a significant pattern by viewing it through a different frame or connecting it with other pieces of information.
Schoemaker and Day divide the process of making effective use of weak signals into three phases:
Actively scan for weak signals. Three strategies to consider:
Tap local intelligence, i.e., information distributed among various individual locations in which the organization has a presence.
Leverage extended networks, i.e., networks encompassing partners, suppliers, customers, etc.
Mobilize search parties, i.e., task forces set up to monitor specific areas of interest.
Amplify interesting weak signals to help in deciding what they mean. Three strategies to consider:
Test multiple hypotheses. E.g., you might want to use red teams (MSWord) "to collect and synthesize information to prove that the current plan is wrong and needs to be changed."
Canvass the collective wisdom of your organization. E.g., you might want to try a prediction market.
Develop diverse scenarios. "Scenario planning systematizes the hunt for weak signals that may foreshadow fundamental shifts in the marketplace and society at large ..."
Probe further, clarify, and act. Three strategies to consider:
Seek new information to "confront reality," i.e., you need to recognize developments that make planning and executing an effective response imperative.
Encourage constructive conflict "to ascertain and interpret the facts as they are."
Trust seasoned intuition. "It takes many years of experience, with good feedback, to develop reliable intuition. But once it has been honed, intuitive hunches should be viewed as valuable inputs, along with more analytical ones, for the judgment process."
Schoemaker and Day conclude by reiterating the point with which they begin their article: "The major problem [in monitoring and responding to weak signals] is that managers are insufficiently aware of cognitive and emotional biases that can cloud their judgment when interpreting weak signals."
Strictly speaking, this is a rhetorical query because, at this stage of the game, a wealth of reports has accumulated of companies that have realized valuable results from adding tools like blogs and wikis to their intranets. The real questions Conry-Murray addresses are "Under what circumstances does enterprise social networking pay off?" and "How can you gauge the size of the payoff?"
The whole article, including its sidebars, is worth reading. As an overview, here are the five best practices Conry-Murray recommends for making the most of social networking:
Start with a low-cost pilot to see what tools deliver useful results.
Set modest expectations. "Don't promise executives that enterprise social networking will unleash, ignite, or synergize anything." Instead: "Describe one or two general business improvements you think are achievable. Set reasonable goals for user adoption, and salt your initial deployment with a few teams that are eager for these kinds of tools. And keep an eye out for ways to measure business value. You may not be expected to produce hard numbers from a pilot, but corporate management will want to know the payback down the line."
Let employees use the tools with lightly controlled freedom. If you impose any but the most obvious restrictions (e.g., "No flaming."), you will inhibit participation and constrain dialogue.
Resist exclusivity. When a business unit or team says they want their tools to be accessible only to themselves, press the argument that the full benefit of enterprise social networking comes from openness to broad participation.
Include robust search capabilities. And: "Be sure the search engine allows for user-generated feedback such as tags and content-rating systems, because the point of social networking in business is to let people provide input into the relevancy of content and people."
As a final note, if you find the powers-that-be are leery of the term "social networking," shift to something more business-sounding, like "collaboration tools," until the "social networking" label becomes familiar to the people who have to authorize introduction and roll-out of the tools you believe will contribute to your organization's productivity and growth.
An earlier post discussed the "paradox of power." When you look at the research on how people use power, it shows that "empathy and social intelligence are vastly more important to acquiring and exercising power than are force, deception, or terror." On the other hand,
... studies also show that once people assume positions of power, they're likely to act more selfishly, impulsively, and aggressively, and they have a harder time seeing the world from other people's points of view. This presents us with the paradox of power: The skills most important to obtaining power and leading effectively are the very skills that deteriorate once we have power.
For more on the dynamics of power, you can look at the materials John Carroll and Li Tao pulled together for their 2006 course in managerial psychology at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Particularly helpful is Lecture 17 (pdf), delivered by guest lecturer Maria Quijada, now a professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
At the beginning of her lecture, Quijada offers the definition of power that Jeffrey Pfeffer, one of my favorite thinkers on management issues, uses:
The potential ability to influence behavior, to change the course of events, to overcome resistance and to get people to do things that they would not otherwise do. Politics and influence are the processes, the actions, the behaviors through which this potential power is utilized and realized.
All of the lecture notes, which fit onto eleven PowerPoint slides, are worth thinking about. To give you an idea of where Quijada ends up, here is her summary of how someone, presumably wanting to avoid the unfortunate aspects of the paradox of power, can best manage his/her power:
Create resources, find new domains in which to operate
Build alliances by using reciprocity
Build your network — be a bridge, be central
Build your reputation, be careful of first impressions
Be in the right unit of the organization for exercising influence
Yesterday's post touted a model for rural economic development that includes peer learning as one of its basic principles.1
A prime example of what this principle looks like in action can be found at the training facility that Practical Action, a non-governmental organization headquartered in the UK, set up in the town of Sicuani in the Peruvian Andes about 90 miles south of Cusco.
A Kamayoq (agricultural extension agent) assisting with guinea pig husbandry (Practical Action)
The basic concept is to train farmers to deliver agricultural extension services to fellow farmers back in their home villages. These peer extension agents are called "Kamayoqs," the Quechua (Incan) name of people in olden times who were skilled in reading the weather and using their forecasting and other agricultural expertise to advise farmers on such things as when to plant their crops.
In line with another of the principles of the "new development paradigm," the interchanges between Kamayoqs and their farming peers are intended to be two-way, i.e., there is a concerted effort to identify best practices in horticulture and animal husbandry, whether from existing standout performers or from experimenting to see what works best. Learning by doing is central to this Kamayoq-facilitated approach to raising poor farmers' standard of living.
The Kamayoqs live in Andean communities above 3500 meters (11,500 feet), communities barely served by the extension staff of Peru's Ministry of Agriculture. The initial Kamayoq training at the Sicuani school occupies one day a week over an eight-month period. The topics covered include irrigation, Andean crops, horticulture, livestock, forestry, and agro-industry and marketing. Continuing education is also provided.
As explained in a 2006 article (pdf) about the Kamayoq program,
Throughout their training, the Kamayoq establish contact with technical experts from the private and public sectors and with other farmers, a useful network which they can tap into when they need information and technical advice once they finish their training. This "social capital" is recognised by many as one of the greatest benefits of the whole course.
The success of the Kamayoq program is seen in the willingness of farmers to pay for the Kamayoqs' services; the addition of marketable crops (e.g., carrots and onions) to traditional subsistence crops (maize, potatoes, and beans); higher farmer income, some of which goes for additional education for children; improved disease prevention and treatment for farm animals; and more sustainable use of natural resources.
An important qualitative impact of the Kamayoq program is increased self-confidence among farmers, an attitude adjustment that motivates innovation. Willingness to innovate is essential for continuing to raise living standards in the face of the changes that are occurring in the farmers' physical and socioeconomic environment.
__________ 1 Practical Action's methodology draws on the work of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator who devoted himself to developing pedagogy for the underclass. You can read more about Freire's work by visiting the website of the Paulo Freire Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Today at salon.com, Aliza Sherman offers her take — certainly more informed than mine — on how Twitter can be a productivity tool, and how it can waste time.
First, the productivity possibilities:
Short messages
Filtering, i.e., guidance from knowledgeable types on what to pay attention to.
Quick answers to technical questions.
Ability to set up reminders for yourself, e.g., of when you need to head out to appointments.
Ability to set up alerts, based on key words, that let you monitor what people are saying about your company, your clients, and you.
An especially immediate connectedness with others in your network who use Twitter.
Viral messaging through "retweets," i.e., copying other people's tweets that you want to spread in your own network.
Twitter's easy accessibility on multiple platforms, i.e., cell phone, web, etc.
Development of skill for using other applications that are similar to Twitter and that offer their own productivity advantages (e.g., Joint Contact) (something I need to do).
"Feel the Twitter Love. You feel it when you tweet a link to your latest blog post or podcast. You feel it when you ask your followers for support on a project. Twitter is full of love that can ease a web worker's workload (quickly identifying outsourcing talent), can ease a web worker's frustration (nothing better than a good sounding board), and ease a web worker's soul (like ego-stroking tweets from twittering fans)."
And then, the ways you can use Twitter to waste time:
Sometimes having to struggle to stay within the 140-character limit.
Following mindless chatter.
Following people playing dumb (even if entertaining) games.
Plowing through emails letting you know of new followers.
Coping with too many tweets coming in from people you're following.
Sending out a questions and not getting a quick response.
Checking too often for replies to your tweets.
Letting tweets come to you via SMS, which can mean endless interruptions.
Having the Twitter system go down.
Getting caught up in trying to handle negative tweets, e.g., about you.
For advice on how to keep track of the ever-expanding and improving universe of Twitter applications, you can turn to Robin Wauters.
In an earlier post, I discussed the work of Patricia Devine, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has shown that people can avoid acting in a prejudiced way by making a conscious effort to base their behavior on personal values that include being unbiased.
In the February 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Amy Cuddy, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, reports briefly on related research.
Cuddy, with colleagues Susan Fiske and Peter Glick, professors of psychology at Princeton University and Lawrence University, respectively, has investigated how people respond to a person they are meeting for the first time.
Cuddy argues that two questions instinctively go through a person's mind at a first meeting:
What are this person's intentions toward me?
Is this person capable of acting on those intentions?
The problem is that there is also an instinctive tendency for the person doing the sizing up to assume:
If the new acquaintance is a warm individual with benign intentions, s/he won't be very competent to act on those intentions.
Conversely, if the new acquaintance is cold with not-so-benign intentions, s/he will be competent to act on the intentions.
Cuddy goes on to outline the implications of this warmth/competence model of prejudice:1
We like to assist people we view as warm and block those we see as cold; we desire to associate with people we consider competent and ignore those we consider incompetent."
The obvious problem is that plenty of people are both warm and competent, and plenty of others are cold and incompetent. We need to be ready to consider all four possibilities when deciding, for example, whom to trust and whom to build connections with.
Cuddy recommends a straightforward approach to enhancing the level of conscious thought that goes into making such judgments as whom to hire, whom to put together on teams, and how to promote retention of high performing employees. The approach has two steps:
Push yourself to be aware of how you form impressions. Avoid "sizing people up on the basis of stereotypical perceptions of warmth and competence."
Separate the two dimensions. E.g., consider an individual's interpersonal warmth in its own right, and do the same for the individual's technical/functional competence.
The goal is to "recognize individuals' true talents, thus avoiding the high cost of mistaken judgments."
__________ 1 Cuddy contrasts the warmth/competence model to "the prevailing psychological view of prejudice — namely, that people simply favor 'us' and dislike 'them.'" She argues that the warmth/competence model is able to explain behaviors that don't fit the alternative us vs. them model, e.g., the tendency of many people to "disrespect the elderly while feeling positive toward them."
The December 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review contains at least one example of the annoyingly shallow material that seems to take up more of its space nowadays than in the not-so-distant past, when more of the authors had strong academic credentials (and, BTW, were allowed to use footnotes).
Leadership competency models can be found in virtually all major corporations. They seek to institutionalize managerial behaviors, knowledge, values, and motivations to produce steady, predictable results. They provide a common language to help supervisors and HR discuss emerging talent in the organization. These are worthy goals — but overdependence on competency models inevitably reinforces sameness rather than unity or cohesion, by eroding the conditions in which unique points of view and ultimately innovation itself can arise.
Training programs built on these models primarily teach participants how to manage within the organization as is and emphasize formal structures at the expense of informal ones. At the same time, they condition managers to minimize uncertainty and mitigate risk.
The organizational vetting process filters candidates for promotion according to well-known and widely communicated competencies that are ingrained in the company culture. As a result the field of rising stars narrows to those who most closely resemble their peers and bosses. Unique attributes and a willingness to deviate from the norm, take real risks, and embrace different points of view are not cultivated or integrated. Rather, they are slowly and methodically squeezed out of the system.
My complaints:
Companies do not necessarily adopt leadership competency models "to produce steady, predictable results." I believe companies effectively using such models intend for them to produce good results, defined in whatever manner a particular company considers meaningful.
"Overdependence on competency models inevitably reinforces sameness" is basically a truism. Smart management will not place excessive weight on how well rising talent seems to fit a particular competency model.
Effective training programs do not "primarily teach participants how to manage within the organization as is," nor do they "emphasize formal structures at the expense of informal ones." Obviously, a company designing leadership training should steer clear of such defective content. (For more on how companies are using social networking analysis to ensure that managers understand their companies' informal structures and intervene to optimiaze them, see here.)
Effective training programs do not "condition managers to minimize uncertainty and mitigate risk" in a way that defeats innovation. As indicated in my recent posts on enterprise risk management (e.g., here), the best companies are taking an increasingly sophisticated approach to risk management that identifies its purpose as helping the company achieve its goals, which presumably include innovation where appropriate.
As indicated in the second and fourth points above, smart companies indeed cultivate and integrate "unique attributes and a willingness to deviate from the norm, take real risks, and embrace different points of view."
In other words, Cohn, Katzenbach, and Vlak set up a strawman in their sidebar, something I dislike paying $119 a year to have access to.
[Previous posts dealing with competency models are here, here, here, here, and here.]
In a numberofpreviousposts, I've discussed the social networking research of Rob Cross, an associate professor of management at the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce.
You can get an overview of this research by reading an article by Cross, Thomas, and David A. Light, an Accenture Institute research fellow, that appears in the Winter 2009 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review. Illustrating their points with two case studies, the authors argue that poor decisions result not just from cognitive biases and dysfunctional small group dynamics, but also from shortcomings in the way an organization's informal networks are structured and tapped during the decision-making process.
When the researchers analyzed the networks of top-performing executives, they found an above-average number of connections "with people who bridged ties across functional lines, physical distance, and hierarchical levels." This helped avoid bias in the information the executives received, and improved the efficiency and effectiveness of their decision making.
One of the case study companies improved decision-making efficiency by correcting overcommunication — i.e., overcollaboration — among employees, a problem identified via process mapping and network analysis. The company took corrective action that included confining discussion of decisions to those who were directly involved in making the decisions, devolving authority for certain types of decisions onto more junior employees, adjusting its leadership training to support needed cultural and behavioral changes, introducing conflict resolution training, and adding proficiency in decision making to the competencies on which managers are evaluated.
The other case study company undertook a network analysis to identify where executives' networks were overloaded and where they were underdeveloped. The researchers report the executive team "learned that for framing strategic decisions, the company was fairly insular and could benefit from reaching out to more people. But for execution of decisions streamlining was absolutely critical to better performance within the group." Corrective action included individual coaching to help executives adjust their networks to eliminate gaps in the expertise they tapped while framing decisions, and revamping decision-making authority to take some of the load off the CEO and the most connected leaders.
21st Century Journalism XXX: The Savvy View of Office Politics
Kudos to Phyllis Korkki, writing in the New York Times on November 16 about "The Win-Win Way to Play Office Politics." In FAQ format, Korkki does a good job of concisely explaining the ethical way in which savvy people handle the political dimension of their work lives.
Korkki reports input from four experts/gurus (all female BTW):
understanding who has power and how decisions are made; being aware of how your managers and co-workers prefer to operate; adapting to the culture of your organization; and behaving and speaking in a way that helps you advance — and not hurt — your goals and those of your company.
Marilyn Puder-York, a psychologist and author of The Office Survival Guide. Key points: When you've engaged well in office politics, "you've enhanced your reputation with the right people." Effective involvement in office politics also means being able "to diffuse the conflicts that inevitably emerge in a group of people with different temperaments, needs, backgrounds, agendas and goals."
Franke James, editor of officepolitics.com and creator of a game called Office Politics. A key point: Pay attention to the interpersonal dynamics in your organization so that you "develop an awareness of the interrelationships and levels of influence that exist in your office and how those could affect your job and the work that you do."
As a follow-on to yesterday's post, I'd call attention to a comprehensive summary (pdf) of their Influence Model that Allan Cohen and David Bradford published in the Journal of Organizational Excellence in 2005.
(click to enlarge)
The whole article is twenty-four pages (including endnotes) and easy to read. Well-selected exhibits help you pick up quickly on the points Cohen and Bradford are making.
For example, Exhibit 2 lists the situations in which you are well-advised to make conscious use of the Influence Model:
The other person is known to be resistant.
You don't know the other person or group and are asking for something that might be costly to them.
You have a poor relationship (or are part of a group that has a poor relationship) with the group the other person belongs to.
You might not get another chance.
You have tried everything you can think of but the other person still refuses what you want.
Exhibit 6 is a helpful list of "Currencies Frequently Valued in Organizations":
Relationship-related currencies — acceptance/inclusion (feeling closeness and friendship), understanding (having concerns and issues listened to), personal support (receiving personal and emotional backing).
Personal-related currencies —gratitude, ownership/involvement (ownership of and influence over important tasks), self-concept (affirmation of values, self-esteem, and identity), comfort (avoidance of hassles).
Finally, Exhibit 8 is a brief checklist that helps keep in view all the main aspects of applying the model.
In an April 2006 post, I talked about the work Andrew McAfee, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, has done in analyzing the benefits to companies of business communication tools like blogs and wikis.
For many companies, these "Enterprise 2.0" collaboration tools are a revised approach to creating an intranet. Unlike many traditional intranets, the Enterprise 2.0 tools, properly set up, actually work, in the sense that they attract active participation and are generally easy to keep updated. The basic switch in platforms is from complex knowledge management software and one-to-many authoring, to easy-to-install software that enables many-to-many authoring.
To get a look at specifics of how some organizations are using tools like wikis, blogs, and social bookmarking, you can browse a slowly growing group of case studies posted at cases2.com, a site sponsored by McAfee and hosted by the social software vendor, Socialtext.
The cases themselves are presented using Socialtext's web-based wiki software. The submitters organize their stories by populating a template that includes these sections:
One sentence summary
Company information
Case description
Enterprise 2.0 solution
Results / Benefits
Hurdles / Challenges
Lessons learned
Screenshots
Information about the case — specifically, the name of the author, and any disclosures about relationships between the author and the company in the case, the technology vendor(s), etc.
Comments / questions from readers (virtually none, so far)
Among the cases you might want to check out:
The Angel.com case — illustrates how a company can implement wikis for communicating internally and with customers. This particular case was written by a Socialtext employee who did not get around to identifying hurdles and challenges and lessons learned, so the story is unfortunately incomplete.
The BUPA case — illustrates an application of social bookmarking to facilitate social networking, content management, and knowledge sharing. The iConcerina case, submitted by the same social bookmarking vendor, offers further useful tips.
The Citrix Community case — illustrates how an unofficial community can be created that fosters communication among employees, clients, and people at partner organizations. This case also enumerates hurdles that need to be anticipated and addressed.
The Intrawest case — illustrates how Enterprise 2.0 tools can help create solidarity among employees.
The Specialized Bicycle case — illustrates how use of online workspace can cut time to project completion, improve the accuracy of updates to information and status reports, and encourage transparency among team members in communicating their contributions to the joint effort.
The Uniglo case — illustrates an effective way of collecting timely feedback from hundreds of field locations (retail stores in this particular instance).
The YNNO case — illustrates how a consultancy can use an online knowledge sharing application as a document management system and collaboration platform.
I suspect that updates to the cases2.com site will be infrequent, but the cases already contributed provide a decent cross-section of applications of Enterprise 2.0 tools and, as such, are worth browsing.
The October 2008 issue of Chief Learning Officer has an informative summary by Agatha Gilmore of the importance of informal learning and of how organizations can best facilitate such learning.
The main theme of Gilmore's article is that informal learning, like anything else of significance to an organization, must be managed, but that the management must not be self-defeating. I.e., it makes no sense to use a management approach that bleeds most of the informality out of informal learning. As one interviewee puts it:
Facilitation is about putting in place the minimum level of systems and processes and providing, in some cases, evangelism to build energy around the subject without going too far in terms of trying to get in the middle of every discussion
Gilmore lists three requirements for effectively facilitating informal learning:
Creating a collaborative culture
Executive-level buy-in
Providing tools (which you keep as simple as possible) for:
organizing learning (e.g., communities of practice and online discussion forums)
easing the process of keeping published information up-to-date (e.g., blogs, wikis, and Web conferencing)
building communities, finding experts, and creating experts (notably, social networking)
As for managing the content that employees access, the goals should be making the time needed to find a particular bit of information as brief as possible, and ensuring that the information is accurate.
Training is also part of the story, but the objective is nothing more elaborate than making sure people know "what the tools are and how and when to use them." This equips them to make effective use of information that is relevant and accurate because it is being captured in ways that enable timely updating, something that is increasingly problematic for formal learning programs.
In a brief article in the July-August 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Adam M. Kleinbaum, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Business School, and Michael L. Tushman, his dissertation advisor at HBS, summarize findings of research they conducted investigating the best way to nurture cross-divisional innovation at a corporation.
Kleinbaum and Tushman recommend that managers "shape and cultivate" the corporation's informal social networks in order to "efficiently find and exploit innovations." Their research indicates that the type of network participant to focus on changes as the innovation process moves from the exploration phase to the implementation phase.
In the exploration phase, "idea brokers" — individuals who maintain broad networks throughout the organization — are best situated to "draw connections between — and recognize collaborative opportunities for — technologies, markets, or people that might otherwise never come into contact."
In the implementation phase, individuals with deep relationships across divisions are best positions to "mobilize the organizational support and resources necessary for execution." Deep relationships "enable the exchange of fine-grained and tacit information, help actors navigate the unfamiliar terrain of partner divisions, and allow cohesiveness to build within the network, increasing trust and reducing intergroup rivalry."
The role of managers is to facilitate the cross-divisional interactions of both the idea brokers and the "make it happen" employees. Managers must also proactively manage the transition between the exploration and implementation phases.
