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.

This blog is MOVING: new site is almost ready: change your readers, now: http://www.pattianklam.com/blog

Monday, March 28, 2005

Talent Management

I've been connecting with Robin Athey this week. She's one of the SNA network (KM cluster, Network Roundtable). Her current focus is on talent management, and she's just published with Deloitte the first in a series of articles on the topic. This first one, It's 2008: Do you Know Where Your Talent Is? presents the framework that extends the usual HR hiring and retention processes to a more holistic set of practices that include developin, deploying, and connecting individuals in a way that meets their top criteria for job satisfaction:

Doing work that engages them
Learning how to do it better,
Encountering fresh challenges,
Interacting with people in positive ways

She (naturally) emphasizes the importance of the task of keeping people connected and ensuring that their personal networks are healthy and brings in good references to the network research that correlates job performance with good social capital. It's really good to see the understanding of social networks coming into more and more organizational research and practice.

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Friday, March 25, 2005

Complexity, Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space

The AOK conversation with Dave Snowden continues to provide insights and perspectives on how others are working with complexity. Following a post by Dave Pollard, I reviewed his blog on Appreciative Inquiry, Complex Systems, and the Four Practices of Open Space. Pollard describes the similarity in the models of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and Cynefin by noting that each has fundamental practices that enable working in complex environments:

Discovery
Vision
Design
Action

In AI, the key is the "topic choice" or (as Marilyn Darling would call it), the "framing question." I think from the Cynefin perspective the question comes from the sense making activities in which individual worldviews emerge in defining the problem or oppportunity.

These four, and the notion of the worldview are all also key elements in the "communication technology" and conversation model, the conversations being:

Relatedness
Possibility
Opportunity
Action
Breakdown
Acknowledgement
Closure

The underlying similarity (dare I use the term isomorphism?) continues when you think about the management of conversations as a set of interventions to shift the dynamics in a situation.

At any rate, Dave Pollard is a good writer and a good thinker and I've enjoyed many of his blogs before. He does a good job of summarizing both the AI and Cynefin frameworks in his post.

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Thursday, March 24, 2005

Meeting David Gurteen

While in London last week, I had the pleasure of meeting David Gurteen f2f. I have pounced on his monthly newsletters for some time as they are always full of good insights, information, and connectivity. We had a delightful breakfast, hosted by Martyn Laycock, prior to the London Innovation conference. Martyn had a booth promoting the London Knowledge Network. We poked around the booths a bit and found that there are a lot of people in London focused on different aspects of "KM" -- best practices, emergent learning networks, and the like.

In talking with David, I discovered that his rich web site is really a Lotus Notes database, which makes sense after we talked about his tenure at Lotus. It's interesting how once we get wired to use a tool set, we adapt it to new purposes. (Of course, it has to be a sufficiently rich and flexible tool set to begin with!) He also puts together some stunning events and knowledge cafes. I'm really motivated to find more excuses to go to London (if the value of the dollar weren't so abysmal).

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Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Knowledge Amnesty

I loved teaching the Master Class in SNA. The class coalesced well and I think had a good time as well as a good learning experience. One of the class, Graeme Hawley from the National Library of Scotland, is building SNA into his overall strategy for "wisdom management." I particularly liked his idea of including a "knowledge amnesty." The amnesty would allow people to:

Admit to areas of ignorance
Admit to areas of knowledge that they had been hoarding

without penalty or prejudice. I'm not sure how it would all play out, but it's a delightful idea.

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Comment from Bill Ives

Apparently my blog's commenting capability went south. I am not sure it is back. (Anyone who'd like to comment, please help me test it!).

What I like about Bill's comment is that it uses the "B" word -- boundary. I am just beginning to understand more about the notion of the boundaries between sense making domains in Cynefin and their importance.

I received the following email from Bill Ives with respect to my March 13 blog about Kate Ehrlich's insight:

Yes - and then blogs are at the boundary between publication and conversation - so they are a natural fit with personal knowledge management. Look forward to learning more about your Cynefin work.

What I like about Bill's comment is that it uses the "B" word -- boundary. I am just beginning to understand more about the notion of the boundaries between sense making domains in Cynefin and their importance.

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Network Types and Domains of Sense Making

The research by Rob Cross, Leigh Weiss, and Jeanne Liedtke, presented at Leading in a Connected World last fall has been published by the Harvard Business Review: "A Practical Guide to Social Networks," by Rob Cross and Jeanne Liedtka of UVA, and Leigh Weiss of McKinsey. It's a very useful guide to how different network structures support different styles of business:

1) Customized. Each customer situation is different, and multiple and different skills and talents may need to be applied each time. A highly connected and diverse network is best for this kind of business which requires invention and innovation.
2) Modular. Many elements of the business are repeatable and easily packaged for different customers. Collaboration between people in similar roles and consistency of expertise are important in this type of network.
3) Routine. The work follows well prescribed patterns and responses, so there is not much need for diversely connected networks.

Once again, Bruce Hoppe beat me to blogging about this. In his blog last Wednesday, he does a nice job of summarizing the article. His big "aha" was about how sociologists tend to like things in threes (see his Thursday blog).

My big "aha," when I first read the article, was about how the three types could also map to three of the distinct domains of sense making in the Cynefin framework:

1) Visible order -- the routine, well known and practiced
2) Invisible order -- the knowable but often complicated stuff that it takes expertise to make sense of
3) Complex -- the domain of changing relationships, ideas, and innovation

Dave has started his third stint as guest on the AOK Star Series, which already contains some rich conversation. I'll be blogging some of the insights as they start to pop.

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Sunday, March 13, 2005

People stuff and knowledge

Packing up for the second time in three weeks, I am lightening my desk. A sticky-note surfaces with a note I took from a conversation with Kate Ehrlich (always an inspiration to me!).

"knowledge is at the intersection of stuff and people .... people need to share interpretation as well as data."

I'll have to work this into my Cynefin work, as part of the understanding of how sharing one's own perspective into the domains of complexity, complicatedness, and simplicity increases everyone's awareness.

Cynefin North America web site has been launched.

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Friday, March 11, 2005

Microsoft and Groove

David Coleman's Collaborative Strategies arrived in the inbox this morning with the news of Microsoft's acquisition of Groove. The commentary is very good. Lots to think about. Actually it makes me think of meetings at Microsoft I sat through in 1995/1996 while I was still in Professional Services at Digital Equipment Corporation, listening to MS plans for collaboration and coming away quite unconvinced. Sharepoint V1 was awful, but I was impressed with V2 when I worked with a client with a year-long pilot of it last year.

It will be a challenge to work with my clients on collaboration software strategy and pilots over the next year as the implications of this sort out. But, at least it appears that Microsoft has finally put someone in place who gets it: Ray Ozzie will be their CTO.

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Thursday, March 10, 2005

Catching up with SNA events and Cynefin

I'm back from Belize, and not terribly happy about it. It's already snowed once since we got back and another storm is due tomorrow. It's hard to get back into the slush of things. Fortunately, Bruce Hoppe's blog keeps me really up to date on happenings in social network analysis. I'm going to cede the floor to him more and more as the months go on.

One event that Bruce alerted me to is MeshForum, happening May 1-4 in Chicago. Jack Vinson, whom I've know through the AOK network, is one of the people putting this together. I see this as a great "convergent" event in that they are blending topics on networks from different disciplines (computers, airline, etc.) with human and social network issues.

I am getting packed up for London and the SNA MasterClass. Before I leave, the Cynefin North America website will be launched; my Cynefin colleagues managed to get quite a bit of work done while I was gone! I am using Cynefin concepts and models in many of my client conversations on topics related not just to collaboration, but also learning, knowledge retention, and strategy. There are Cynefin training sessions coming up, all training announcements will be on The Cynefin Centre site's Events page, and I'll do "news" postings on some of them. I notice that Verna Allee is doing a workshop with Dave Snowden in Brisbane... lots going on in other parts of the world!

Also getting back into the details of an SNA case study for the UVA Roundtable. Almost 30 companies have signed up for the roundtable so far; the first meeting will be April 27 at Babson. It's such a pleasure to work with Rob Cross, especially to see the launch of a community of practitioners who are advancing the methodology and so willing to share.

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patti anklam. How to make networks work.

links: networks

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Rob Cross
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