A model for evaluating and managing organizational collaboration. Combines the People, Process, and Product mnemonic with a consideration of both time (past, present, and future) and the role of Governance.
Continue readingIn two previous blogs (Collaboration – Not the Vichy Variety and AIIM’s Collaboration Definition), I provided an overview to the definition and a lifecycle model of Collaboration. Developed by the American Institute for Image Management (AIIM), in this blog, I want to drill down on the Life-Cycle model. But first a quick re-cap, the definition is…
AIIM Collaboration Definition
… and the lifecycle model is an eight stage recursive loop:
AIIM’s Collaboration Lifecycle
| Lifecycle Element | Definition |
| Awareness | We become part of a working entity with a shared purpose |
| Motivation | We drive to gain consensus in problem solving or development |
| Self-synchronization | We decide as individuals when things need to happen |
| Participation | We participate in collaboration and we expect others to participate |
| Mediation | We negotiate and we collaborate together and find a middle point |
| Reciprocity | We share and we expect sharing in return through reciprocity |
| Reflection | We think and we consider alternatives |
| Engagement | We proactively engage rather than wait and see |
While I like the AIIM definition of collaboration, I have a hard time understanding and using the lifecycle model. The circles suggest that one moves sequentially from one state to another. While I would agree that Awareness is a good starting point, is motivation really the next state? Is engagement truly the end-statement; e.g. everyone in an organization proactively being engaged? Does this not also lead to a lot of organizational noise and tripping over each other?
Some of the states are very important, in particular Reciprocity. I would suggest that this is the most misunderstood aspects of human existence let alone collaboration. Without getting too far into social-evolutionary theory or economic transactional-theory (stay tuned for future blogs); altruism in organizations only gets you so far and often not that much. I know this because I have created numerous Microsoft SharePoint sites which now lie abandoned or have long since been deleted and forgotten. In many cases the underlying business need has come and gone. In others I failed to or stopped providing a reciprocal advantage for erstwhile users (… errr, on that note, thank you for reading this blog).
As a model, I think the Life-cycle is found wanting. However, as a set of principles, I think there may be something there. Read the stages again but this time with this principles lead statement such as the following:
We the members of our organization, where we choose to work, seek to create a collaborative culture and an effective organization through the following collaborative principles:
Thus, I think the AIIM Collaboration Lifecycle can help an organization establish a set of principles to allow for the creation of a collaborative culture. What the lifecycle fails to do though is provide a more robust conceptual framework to build, nurture, evaluate and continuously improve organizational collaboration. To do that, I would like to introduce the ‘3 Ps and a G over T Collaboration Framework’.
Full disclosure: I am not planning on disappearing and in fact I kinda like my little life just as it is. Nevertheless, Frank M. Ahearn has written a very accessible book on how to (and not to) disappear if you want/need to. Of course the criminal or terrorist comes to mind when you think about those needing to disappear. Ahearn however discusses numerous other legitimate folks who have wanted to disappear for mundane to very sad reasons (mundane: avoiding greedy family members; sad: avoiding ex-spouses who want you dead).
Ahearn got into the disappearing business by finding people. He was the guy who found you living in a trailer park outside of Vegas (or Balzac for us Canadians). He was able to find you through a bit of subterfuge and was able to get your current address from websites, utility companies or nice companies who have sold you goods or services in the past. Thus, while you were living under a pseudonym in Balzac, you transferred your warrant registration for your Harley Davidson motorcycle and you kept up your subscription to Pot-Pori-Monthly.
Ahearn got out of the finding people business because the tools of his trade were becoming increasingly illegal. Thus, he got into the other side of the business – how to fall off the radar. For us Canadians, it appears that many of the tools Ahearn mentions are specific to the United States. However, that is probably more of a temporary state of affairs rather than a bit of permanent protection. Some of the tools he (continues to use)/used include:
Even if you do not want to disappear, Ahearn suggests that you make yourself less visible on the web and perhaps in general. He stresses to keep this above board (e.g. nothing illegal and keep on paying your taxes; however he does have a great speculative section on Pseudocide – how to fake your own death). If you need no other reason, it is to avoid identity theft.
Some of his recommendations (fleshed out a bit from some web-searches) include:
I don’t need to disappear, but I do have enough of a spy novel fascination with it to enjoy the read. I also value my privacy enough to want to ensure I am not dangly more than I need to on the web. Now go and remove your real birthdate from Facebook – RIGHT NOW!
For more on Ahearn book: How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace
In a previous blog (Collaboration – Not the Vichy Variety) I provided an overview of the Association for Information and Image Management’s (AIIM) definition and model of collaboration. I like the definition as it focuses on people and business objectives rather than technology. The definition, with my annotations, is as follows:
AIIM Collaboration Definition
Collaboration is Directed: whether an organization likes it or not, people will collaborate because human contact is a need of all of us. For organizations, the important point is to direct that need toward, a ‘working practice’.
Collaboration Involves People: collaboration amongst machines (computer, mechanical or otherwise) is straightforward. Establish a channel of communication; create standardized messages: deal with any noise along the communication channel; receive and verify the message; act per the instructions, lather, rinse and repeat (for more on this, see my blog post: Drums, Writing, Babbage and Information). Humans are not so simple. We have complex and extremely rich methods of communications, we form tribal-like social bonds which may affect that communication and we tend to have our own agendas.
Requires Effort: Collaboration is work, good collaboration is a lot of work. Like anything of value, an effective collaborative model requires effort, resources and organizational support.
Has a Business Reason/Need: Organizations have three very good value propositions to encourage collaboration. The first is it reduces the transaction cost for the business process being collaborated upon. The second is that it can lead to innovation within and outside of that business process. The third is it encourages the social bonds amongst staff which in turn (hopefully) improves staff productivity, loyalty and interest for the work at hand. These immediate and less tangible results are the pay back to the organization for nurturing a collaborative culture.
I like the AIIM definition but for further consider, the following are some other potential definitions for organizations to consider and adopt as their own.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration
AIIM Definition: http://www.aiim.org/What-is-Collaboration
What is a collaborative organization: http://p2pfoundation.net/Collaborative_Organization
It is not uncommon in military circles to have a weekly after work drink. Typically occurring on a Friday afternoon, the officers get together and kibitz over a few libations. Easy to dismiss as frivolous, there is much more going on here. In the words of one retired US Air Force Lt. Colonel I worked with: “I got more work done in 30 minutes at the officer’s mess than I did all week.” His observation was that “… everyone was there, everyone was relaxed and we could quickly work through problems and come up with solutions.”
Given the hierarchical structure of military organizations, why would a beer, an officers’ mess and a Friday kibitzing be necessary? For the Lt. Colonel, his observation was that the casual environment promoted informal collaboration that led to more formal decisions and actions been taken the following week. The Friday meeting promoted a social bond that is less obvious in a formal meeting setting. This setting allowed people to work on a problem and not focus on the position or rank of the person at the table. There are valuable lessons from the military for any organization. Nurturing and supporting the ephemeral qualities collaboration is critical to achieving hard and tangible business results. Leaving the officers’ mess, it is time to go and find a definition (don’t worry, I will be your designated blogger).
As a person interested in history, I cannot hear the word collaboration and not see the image of a shaved-headed French woman, perhaps clutching a baby, leaving for an uncertain future while being mocked by her neighbours who have just been liberated from the Nazis.
Jeering neighbours after the D-Day libration
For me, the word has a dark recent-history. For the business world, the lesson from 65+ years ago is that collaboration can be positive or negative within your organization.
Collaboration’s Latin origin means ‘to labor together’; this definition is more relevant to the current business context and can be found in most current definitions. For example, the Association for Information and Image Management or AIIM defines it as:
Collaboration is a working practice whereby individuals work together to a common purpose to achieve business benefit.
A companion to the AIIM’s definition is its lifecycle model. Shown as a recursive loop, it involves eight elements.
AIIM’s Collaboration Lifecycle
| Lifecycle Element | Definition |
| Awareness | We become part of a working entity with a shared purpose |
| Motivation | We drive to gain consensus in problem solving or development |
| Self-synchronization | We decide as individuals when things need to happen |
| Participation | We participate in collaboration and we expect others to participate |
| Mediation | We negotiate and we collaborate together and find a middle point |
| Reciprocity | We share and we expect sharing in return through reciprocity |
| Reflection | We think and we consider alternatives |
| Engagement | We proactively engage rather than wait and see |
Beyond a definition and a lifecycle, AIIM also provides two flavours of collaboration tools. Flavor one is “Synchronous collaboration” such as online meetings and instant messaging; flavor two is “Asynchronous collaboration” such as shared workspaces and annotations.
A quick survey of the literature finds that other definitions are kissing-cousins to AIIM’s definition. As well, the lifecycle model and technology flavors are very consistent with most development views of collaboration. As a result, the work that AIIM has done is a good place to start when thinking about and managing organization collaboration and will be the basis of (hopefully) further blogs on the subject. However, lifecycle models and definitions is thirsty work – let’s head back to the officers’ mess.
The word collaboration has being rehabilitated since the dark days of the Second World War. Thus, whether it is in an officers’ mess, a board room or around a water cooler; collaboration is critical to the good functioning of organizations. In future blogs, I hope to drill down a bit more on a model which helps an organization balance the natural inclination to focus on technology while not losing sight of people or the business purpose that collaboration support. In the meantime, enjoy a Friday afternoon beer this coming week with your co-workers (or libation of your choice); and remember collaboration usually goes better with some salty peanuts.
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My oldest brother runs an excavation company and I remember riding with him once. He had dug up some dirt and was looking for a potential buyer. Someone had paid him to do the digging (actually it was me) and now he was looking for someone to pay for the dirt I paid him to get rid of. My brother had discovered what most individuals with a truck and an excavator do not know: the money is not in the work it is in the deal. I readily paid a price to get rid of dirt and someone else was keen to pay for the same dirt – and my brother happily knew the value of both sides of the equation.
I worked my way through this 500+ page beast, found parts interesting and large chunks way over my head. On the one hand it appealed to my interest in history by providing a summary of information including interesting dives into African drums, 4,000 year old invoices, the genius of Charles Babbage, efficient communication, cryptology to protect those efficient communications and then a theory of information. On the other hand, I may simply not be smart enough to ‘get’ this book.
Gleick starts the book with a discussion of ‘Drums that talk’; African talking drums that were used to communicate between villages. A few key points he makes includes the fact that while there were a relatively few number of drummers, most people could understand the messages being drummed. The second was the poetic nature of the messages which were not often straightforward. The reason being that the message had built in redundancy allowing for portions of the drum beats to be lost while the intent of the message was still transmitted. Finally there was the relative speed. A message could travel hundreds of miles within a few days with only a minor loss of fidelity. The information age (or at least the medium part of it) was born! (Read more on drums in communication: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drums_in_communication).
Another medium to communicate verbal knowledge is of course writing. This leads us to alphabets, written words, dictionaries and things of that sort. It also leads to how the written word affects how we think about the world around us. Strictly oral based cultures ‘… lacked the categories that become second nature even to illiterate individuals in literate cultures … ‘. The significance is that the written or graphically presented world fundamentally changed humans and greatly extended not only their information carrying capacity – but also how they thought and constructed the world. Gleick did not say this, but my inference is that the written word was when we became more than animals and became the über-species we are today. (Read more on orality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orality)
Possibly pre-dating the written word was the written-number and the organizational context that went with the numbers. 3,000 BC Sumerian tablets, when translated, where ‘… humdrum: civic memoranda, contracts … receipts and bills. … The tables not only recorded the commerce and the bureaucracy but, in the first place, made them possible’. (Read more on Uruk tablets: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wrtg/hd_wrtg.htm)
The numeric aspect of writing eventually leads us to one of those unique British geniuses, Charles Babbage. Amongst his many achievements, he managed to string the British Parliament along with the promise of a ‘difference engine’; basically a mechanical calculator weighing tons which everyone now carries around in the smart phone as default application. The purpose of the difference engine was the accurate calculation of mathematical tables needed for things like marine navigation or engineering. Better tables meant fewer lost ships and straighter rail roads. Beyond complicated machinery, Babbage also was both a code-writer and a code-breaker for which mathematics plays an instrumental role. (Read more on Charles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage).
Machines that communicate and securing messages continues into an ingenious French telegraph. It was a mechanical contraption in which the position of the arms of the communicator atop of buildings could communicate according to pre-set codes. A receiving station 10km or so down the line would observe the message, confirm it and then re-transmit to the next station. As a result, a signal could travel across 120 stations or 475 miles in 10-12 minutes. As with anything mechanical, it was subject to the elements, inattentive operators or sabotage. Nevertheless, this system was a brilliant solution in a pre-electric telegraph era. (Read more on the ‘French-telegraph’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Chappe).
One of the problems with efficient communications of information is that anyone with the knowledge of code can also quickly read it. Thus, the book diverts back into a history of codes and where we meet two important men that lead to the current computer revolution: Booles and Shannon.
Booles who was a contemporary of Babbage is the father of the Boolean logic. Anyone who has ever done any sort of computer program has used his namesake, Boolean Logic to perform IF, AND, ELSE type of functions (Read more: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/boolean.htm). Shannon was an American who worked for Bell Labs and help to develop code break and making during the Second World War. He was also known as the ‘Father of Information Theory’, basically how does a message get to a receiver and through things like noise. Your land line, cell phone, internet and Facebook page are all benefactors or Booles and Shannon in a long, protracted way involving mathematics for which I only have the fuzziest understanding. (Read more on Shannon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon ).
‘The Information’ ends its discussion of the world of information at the most macro and micro levels. Essentially the universe is information. Quantum physics is about probabilities and information about a particle’s position rather than necessarily physical units. Even DNA is fundamentally about storing information; the chemical structures are simply the medium-manifestations of the need to do this. Thus, with a wink to the movie ‘The Matrix’, we live, love, reproduce and die in an information universe.
From African drums to quantum physics is the journey Gleick takes us on in this book. It is a fascinating look at buzzing world of data and information around me for which I can only grasp at the most basic aspects. To some extents, reading this book makes me feel like a 2-year old child who first discovers that he is part of a wider world and is trying to make sense of it.
If you have a better grasp of higher math functions than I, make a living moving information about or share a love of history and how we got here – add this book to your eventual reading list. If you are happy to be an innocent 2-year who sees cell phones, the internet and Facebook as happy magic – feel free to avoid and never read this book. (Read More in my Books Read Comment Page).
Look for this in my Books Read section as well although I thought this book deserved a bit more of posting.
Title: The Social Animal, by David Brooks
A Recommended Read (out of 5, 5 being highest): 4
My thoughts: This book touches on my interest of the self-reinforcing roles of biological evolution versus social structures and how the two reinforce each other. Brooks accomplishes this through a fable of two individuals (Harold and Erica) who come from different worlds (within the American context). He proceeds to discuss all aspects of life including such things as why we marry (and should we), how we become happy (or not) the role of the rationale and unconscious mind.
A couple of great examples of how this fable story telling works includes the relationship of the newly arrived Harold and his mother and then the role of play and imagination in the development of children. To the first, some great quotes:
“Harold spent his nine months in the womb, growing and developing, and then one fine day, he was born. This wasn’t a particularly important event as far as his cognitive development was concerned, though he had a much better view.”
“Though he still had no awareness of himself as a separate person, little Harold had a repertoire of skills to get Julia (his mother) to fall in love with him.”
“Julia’s old personality battled back. You have to give her credit for that. She didn’t just surrender to this new creature without a struggle. … One night, about seven months into Harold’s life, Julia was in the chair with Harold at her breast…. if you could have read Julia’s mind at that moment, here’s what you would have found her saying: ‘F*ck!, F*ck!, F*ck!, Help me! … At this moment – tired, oppressed, violated – she hated the little bastard. He’d entered her mind with tricks of sweet seduction, and once inside, he’d stomped over everything with the infant equivalent of jack boots. … He was half Cupid, half storm trooper. The greedy *sshole wanted everything.”
About six years later, Harold’s father, Rob, tried to insert himself into a room full of boys as they were playing a fireman’s game:
“He (Rob) got the urge to join in (with the boys). He sat down with the boys, grabbed some figures, and joined Harold’s team. This was a big mistake. It was roughly equivalent of a normal human being grabbing a basketball and inviting himself to play a pickup game with the Los Angeles Lakers. Over the course of his adult life, Rob had trained his mind to excel at … ‘paradimgatic thinking.’ This mode of thought is structured by logic and analysis. … But the game Harold and his buddies were playing relied on … ‘narrative mode.’ … As their stories grew and evolved, it became clear what made sense and what didn’t make sense within the line of the story. … Rob was like a warthog in a frolic of gazelles. Their imagination danced while his plodded. They saw good and evil while he saw plastic and metal. After five minutes, their emotional intensity produced a dull ache in the back of his head. He was exhausted trying to keep up.”
A well recommended read to all who are interested in how the heck you got here, human/social interactions and generally a darn good story about two people (Harold and Erica) who you will end up rooting for. Generally I give away books after a read but this Brooks’ book will be a keeper.
From Chapters: With unequaled insight and brio, New York Times columnist David Brooks has long explored and explained the way we live. Now Brooks turns to the building blocks of human flourishing in a multilayered, profoundly illuminating work grounded in everyday life. This is the story of how success happens, told through the lives of one composite American couple, Harold and Erica. Drawing on a wealth of current research from numerous disciplines, Brooks takes Harold and Erica from infancy to old age, illustrating a fundamental new understanding of human nature along the way: The unconscious mind, it turns out, is not a dark, vestigial place, but a creative one, where most of the brain’s work gets done. This is the realm where character is formed and where our most important life decisions are made-the natural habitat of The Social Animal. Brooks reveals the deeply social aspect of our minds and exposes the bias in modern culture that overemphasizes rationalism, individualism, and IQ. He demolishes conventional definitions of success and looks toward a culture based on trust and humility. The Social Animal is a moving intellectual adventure, a story of achievement and a defense of progress. It is an essential book for our time-one that will have broad social impact and will change the way we see ourselves and the world.
Growing up in the 1970-80’s; I would regularly watch re-runs of the television show Bewitched. Like 97% of the male population, I was hopelessly in love with Elizabeth Montgomery (the other 3%, according to the Kinsey report were likely in love with Dick Sargent).
Recently my wife and I noticed that the show was available on Netflix and so as a bit of mindless entertainment, we have started to watch them. Despite some breath holding early 1960’esque moments relating to guys punch each other, jealous boyfriends threatening to kill estranged girlfriends (1–25: Pleasure O’Riley) and of course the whole suburban housewife thing – Bewitch (at least the first season and a bit) was surprisingly subversive for its day. Here are some examples from season one and the first couple of episodes from season two:
If these seem trivial in today’s context, consider this, while these were being broadcasted (circa 1964-1965):
Noting the social-historical context of when the shows were written, produced and aired – lends new perspective to something I enjoyed but did not appreciate from my childhood. This is a series about an emancipated woman (Samantha Stevens) adjusting to a set of suburban norms but who was also a fifth column of social change in the homes of America. Thus, I have new respect for the show. Of course it does not hurt that I still have a crush on the mid-1960s Elizabeth Montgomery. So, my wife and are looking forward to reliving a bit of our past and US history through a well written television series that is still very watchable.
In an essay found in ‘What’s Next?; Dispatches on the Future of Science‘, Lera Boroditsky discusses the evidence that how we speak influences how we think. Being a virtual uni-lingual anglophone (who at bests butchers rather than speaks french), this has always being an area of interest to me.
Some of the research mentioned in the essay is familiar. For example those whose mother tongue involves a gender (German, romance languages) tend to describe a noun differently depending upon their gender disposition. For example Germans describe a key (masculine in German) in male terms where as Spaniards describe the same object in feminine terms – although in both cases they were using English to make the descriptions.
Further to this essay, Mandarin speakers think of time in an up-down spatial orientation whereas English speakers think of it in a horizontal orientation. Boroditsky notes that “English speakers tend to talk about time using horizontal spatial metaphors … where as Mandarin speakers have a vertical metaphor for time.” She uses a simple experiment in which you stand next to an English and then Mandarin speaker. In both cases you point to a spot in front of you and say ‘this is now’. Then you ask each speaker in turn to describe, relative to that spot in space, to point to the future and past. ” … English speakers nearly always point horizontally. But Mandarin speakers often point vertically, about seven or times more often than do English speakers.” (p. 123, ibid).
An interesting party trick, but So What? one might ask. There are a couple of considerations. Firstly, this different perception in how we think is a good reason to learn a second language. Doing so creates a different linguistic-mental-model that actually changes how you think about the world around you. Beyond being good insurance against dementia, it is also a good way to expand one’s perception of the world around us.
The next reason is to expand one’s understanding of language as a driver of culture. Being aware of the influence of language on perceptions may help organizations (and those who run them) reduce conflict and cross-cultural mis-understanding.
I do have a more subtle question though beyond the relatively macro-scopic linguistic level. Do organizations also have a difference in perception because of their different use of technical-language? For example, I have noticed cultural differences coming from a numbers and empirical world of the Ministry of Finance to a more humanistic politically orientated world of the Ministry of Health. What is driving what? Does the use of a local Ministry specific lingo drive the Ministry’s culture or does the culture drive the lingo? My guess is a bit of both but what degree affects the other is the interesting question.
Alas, this last point is probably impossible to test empirically – but is nevertheless an interesting consideration as one studies organizations.
Organizational Biology 