Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness
Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks.

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Project Team Analysis and SNA

A colleague, Dennis Smith (we've worked on one project together and are starting a second), has published an article, "Network links go well beyond straight lines." Dennis and I met about two years ago, and about a year ago we had the big "aha" about how SNA can provide a useful diagnosis of the current context of a project. Dennis' expertise is in project management, and he consults with project leaders on overcoming the obstacles to success.

Dennis's insight, expressed well in the article, is that the links between tasks on a project chart often represent [the need for] multiple conversations, iterations between two people completing a hand-off of one's completed work to the other. As he says, "...microlevel interactions are left for those two people to work out and simplified to a single line in the project plan."

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Monday, July 26, 2004

Enterprise SNA Workshops with Valdis Krebs

Just heard that Valdis Krebs is doing two 1-day seminars on enterprise SNA with the KM Cluster. The seminar price includes the student version of InFlow (you can map up to 75 nodes with this version) and a copy of Rob Cross's book, The Hidden Power of Social Networks. A pretty darn good deal. The dates and info:

New York City (Tuesday, October 19 -- just 4 days after our "Networks to Net Worth" event in Boston): http://www.kmcluster.com/nyc/NYC_Fall_2004.htm

San Francisco (Friday, September 10)
http://www.kmcluster.com/sfo/SFO_Fall_2004.htm

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Sunday, July 18, 2004

Lost Knowledge

I've been reading a galley ofDave DeLong's book, Lost Knowledge. I'm reviewing it for Knowledge Management Magazine. Dave's research and the countless interviews he conducted have resulted in a thorough and engaging work. I'll post a link to the review when it's completed.

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Saturday, July 17, 2004

Visual Treat

I have been referred to Peter Gloor time after time, and have looked at various web sitees that describe the work he is doing at MIT in analyzing email to show interactions over time. I was disappointed when I first looked, several months ago, to find that the tool (which is downloadable) works only on Eudora email systems.

Yesterday, I went to look again and found that although the tool still works only on Eudora, there are a number of delightful flash movies available on the site for ICKN (Innovative Collaborative Knowledge Networks). The framework is outstanding, and the taxonomy of network types is insightful. Enjoy.

One of the people who reminded me of Peter was Bill Ives, formerly of Accenture who is now a Gennova member. Bill has developed a great blog and, as I browsed it I found (coincidentally -- or not!) his own posting about the CKN site.

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Thursday, July 15, 2004

A Story about the Value of Networks

I am prepping and working on two projects (in addition to client work). One is the KM Cluster in Boston in October (see link on the right of this pae). The KM Cluster's conversation will be about the value of networks -- intrinsic value, business value, the return on investing on the difficult work of network, relationship, and trust building. I just love this story Valdis Krebs posted to SOCNET.

A client of mine is an expert soccer player/coach. He and I had a conversation about soccer games and networks many years ago. We extended the conversation from soccer teams to business teams.

I also noticed network dynamics on my son's soccer teams. The first team was very cliquish [3] and tended to pass the ball within cliques, even when a player from another clique was open. Needless to say this team always argued, blamed each other, and lost most of their games.
Then my son joined another team of overall less skilled players -- but they were all good friends in school. They were pretty evenly skilled and did not have any superstars on the team. Not only was soccer fun now, but they won many more games -- even against teams that had a superstar player or two.

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Tuesday, July 06, 2004

Socialtext's SNA -- Realizing $$ value from social networks

Socialtext has come out with a brilliant case study, summarized on their site blog, in the articleVisualizing Socialtext Collaboration. It's a wonderful example of using SNA to see the patterns of interaction in an organization.

Even more interesting is the related case study, Ziff Davis Media Accelerates Project Cycles and Reduces Group Emails from 100 per Day to Zero. The case demonstrates that the use of the wiki-based Socialtext[TM] platform saves Ziff Davis an estimated $1M/year just by reducing the emails.

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patti anklam. How to make networks work.

Find me person-to-person !

KMWorld 2008 September 23-25, San Jose, CA. I'll be doing a session on Net Work and moderating a day with KM thought leaders.

links: network analysis

My ONA Page

Rob Cross
Bruce Hoppe
Valdis Krebs
INSNA
ONA-prac. The online community for learners and practitioners in the emerging field of Organizational Network Analysis.

links: blogroll

21st Century Organization
Anecdote
Bill Ives
Dave Snowden
David Gurteen
Denham Grey
Jack Vinson
Patrick Lambe
Ross Dawson