Twitter Lists – 1st Insight?

October 31, 2009 at 9:31 am · Filed under Emergence, Event Announcements, Twitter

What might be a outcome of Twitter Lists? I think it may be a step nearer to “Emergence” in some key areas.

This slide shows what happens to children’s language as they approach Emergence in the 3rd picture on the right.

I think our use of Twitter can track this trajectory. At first it was me and a few friends that I knew from my face to face or blogging life prior to Twitter.

Then in the last 3 years, I have added a few more friends from the Twitterverse. These in my case have come mainly from Pub Media and from the Bryant Park Gang that Morphed into the Planet Money Gang.

I exclude myself from the many who merely add thousands of folks indiscriminately. I have added several hundred of these but I find that only 1 or 2 have been people that I have learned to care about or interacted with in a good way. The Dunbar number is not a nice to have but a Rule!

What I have immediately seen from the new lists that are emerging around the two and related areas of my interest – the PM/BPP Gang and Pub Media – is that I have some real gaps. Those that created the lists whom I like care for and admire have people that I don’t know and who don’t know me.

But it is highly probable that we will get on – your friend is my friend!

So we move toward phase 3. When we get a critical mass of Trust – Affection – Attraction then don’t we get close to “Emergence” being possible?

Andy Carvin’s NPR News List would surely make an incredible starting point for more experiment – now add to it his Pub Camp list and you have the 300 Spartans!

This then is power.

A large, talented and also diverse group that has a large bond of trust.

Such a group can surely take on the “Persians” of our time?

Comments (42)

The meaning of Twitter

October 30, 2009 at 2:52 pm · Filed under Social Media, Twitter

Here is a short piece made by a client of mine – KETC in St Louis about Twitter and its chairman – a native St Louisan – Jack Dorsey

What hit me as I watched was the attitude of the young people in the film – do you ever imagine that they will feel comfortable in an organization that does not allow access to social media?

So if you don’t allow this – what’s your plan?

Comments (17)

A Children’s Party Plan – What do you do? Emergence

October 28, 2009 at 6:37 am · Filed under Emergence

Here is the brilliant Dave Snowden in less than 5 minutes nailing a better way – as I heard the “Normal” way we plan I had to cringe – did you?

Comments (5)

Emergent behavior and unintended consequences in social systems

October 26, 2009 at 7:45 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

One of the defining characteristics of Enterprise 2.0 implementation efforts according to Andy McAfee, among others, is the presence of emergent behaviors in the organization as participants interact with and adapt to new technology functions and features. The notion of ‘emergent behavior’ is pretty well established in the study of complex systems. Yet it still seems to trouble many executives, particularly those with strong project management and operations backgrounds.

I was pondering this over the weekend and I think I’ve found a way to explain it in a more satisfying way.

Emergent behaviors are unintended consequences that make you happy.

We are social animals that have evolved to operate optimally in small groups (check out Dunbar’s number). As social systems get larger, they exceed our capacity to make accurate inferences and predictions. Complex organizations and political entities represent design solutions that compensate for these limits and allow us to take on tasks and efforts beyond the grasp of small groups. Technology adds to the complexity and increases the capacity of the system at the expense of making the system still more difficult to predict.

‘Unintended consequences’ is a consulting term for ‘oops.’ It’s a belated admission that it’s difficult to predict all the ways in which a system will react to its environment. A typical response is to work more diligently to lock things down, usually by squeezing out opportunities for human judgment and adaptability. This leads to the TSA and zero-tolerance policies that suspend six-year olds.

A better response is to stop treating people like interchangeable components in a machine and start designing with an eye toward integrating human limits and human creativity into our systems. Assume that the new system will produce unexpected results. Focus your design effort more on swinging the balance toward pleasant surprises and less on eliminating surprises altogether.

Comments (22)

Fun as Major Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Factor

October 26, 2009 at 12:53 pm · Filed under Event Announcements

Rex Lee recently did a nice blog post, Maximizing Business Value from Enterprise 2.0 through Fun & Motivation that is very relevant to the theme of this blog.  He begins with scientific premise that providing financial rewards to people for knowledge-based tasks is counter productive. Rex offers an excellent video from Dan Pink that argues that while rewarding people for many simple work tasks from the 20^th century and before might increase performance, doing it for cognitive tasks does not work. The reason is that it narrows the focus and does not promote the exploration of options that can occur with other motivations. I have also found that it undercuts the team sprit and sharing that collaborative organizations need.

I think this makes sense.  If you try to use performance incentives to promote enterprise 2.0 adoption, you need to be very careful that it does not reward the wrong behavior.  It certainly needs to be aimed at overall team success if used at all.

So what does Rex offer instead? He writes, why not fun.  Here I am completely onboard. I have often been involved in knowledge management implementations where we introduced fun as part of the awareness campaign.  This approach succeeds even more if it makes the work more fun, such as meeting new interesting people to collaborate with and finding out more about your colleagues.

Rex closes with a great video from Volkswagen that seals the deal. It shows how if you make one channel more fun it will trump the easier, formerly more popular,  one.  We should add the spirit of this approach to our enterprise 2.0 implementations. It could only help.

Comments (24)