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, April 27, 2005

Network Roundtable

The Network Roundtable is officially launched! Tom Davenport hosted Rob Cross's kickoff today at Babson. Forty-five companies have signed on; there were people from 10 additional companies attending as guests. We'll have to wait to see the votes tabulated to see how many want to work on the "ONA and large-scale organizational change" research topic (being led by yours truly and Nat Welch). But it was an engaged, interested, and very smart bunch of people.

Steve Borgatti showed up and said it's official: his BC grad students Inga Carboni and Pacey Foster are doing an SNA masterclass at Boston College June 13-15. This one will be geared toward consultants, so not as mathematically dense as some UCINET course. I'll link to the details as soon as they are posted.

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Saturday, April 23, 2005

Speaking about complexity and SNA/ONA

Thursday was a busy day. In the morning I presented a webinar to 60+ people in HP, the primary audience being the enterprise solution architects community. My former colleague Leo Laverdure, who has had a long-standing interest in complexity and evolutionary architecture, invited me to speak. I was able to cover the basics of Cynefin and social network analysis in the two hour slot, at least enough time to convey the concepts, framework and methods. The responses were quite good: an indication to me that there is a need to start introducing the ideas of complexity into the methods for enterprise and systems architecture. This theme enables me to reach back into my own roots in software development and provide a bridge in language and ontology between the two systems.

It was not my first experience delivering a talk over the web to an unseeable audience. However, the HP classroom software helps maintain interactivity and provides some sense of how people are perceiving the pace, what things people have questions about, and so on. The feedback was also immediate, and that helped, but nothing like being able to really see how people respond.

My evening slot, a presentation to the Boston OD Learning Group with Bruce Hoppe on social network analysis, was altogether different. In addition to short "burst-mode" powerpoint introduction to SNA and some case studies, we did a "real-time" SNA survey, collecting data as people came into the session and showing them the map at the end. We had also planned a yarn exercise to show OD specialists how they can create a live map with people in a room by having them string yarn between connections. Bruce took this idea "up a notch" and actually created a role-play that illustrated how executives would form a team in the face of a serious competitive threat.

We also had interactive break-out groups to have people talk with each other about what they already know about networks. Naturally, organizational development people have long understood how formal and informal networks impact productivity. It was a terrific conversation.

Being in the room was altogether different than speaking over the phone and focusing on the PC screen. The venue -- Tufts Health in Waltham, MA -- added an extra benefit. As people were in the breakouts, I cross the hall to check on one group. There, outside the cafeteria entrance, was a large poster proclaiming, "Large Social Networks May Help Women's Hearts." (Details on WebMD)

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Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Valdis Krebs on AOK

Valdis Krebs has just started his "Star" stint on AOK (Association of Knowledge Work). (You may have to sign up for AOK if you are not a member already.) He is collecting stories of how networking practices (or lack thereof) reveal whether companies (organizations, the US Intelligence agency) are smart or stupid. I expect it will be a rich two weeks of reading.

I've already contributed my thoughts about a terrific network practice from the late but still lamented Digital Equipment Corporation. I've written about the collaboration aspects in a couple of articles. And there are new memories, aspects of how things worked at Digital that I had not thought about for a long time. Program Offices, for one, were a staple of life at Digital. Chaos brewing in a new technology area? Lots of groups doing independent investigations? Something emerging? A program office was a structured attractor that brought diverse perspectives, talents, and knowledge together and stablized frameworks for collaboration.

Of course there is a story about how and why Digital failed, and that is probably some kind of network story as well. Later.

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Thursday, April 14, 2005

Linking Out and Looking for Objects

A former Digital/Compaq colleague, Bob Fleischer sent me a link to Jyri Engeström's blog entry, Why some social network services work and others don't — Or: the case for object-centered sociality, which provides an interesting perspective on what's working and what's not working in social network software and applications. He contrasts two views of social networks. The current perspective of networks as "maps of relationships among individuals" is what drives LinkedIn. But, he argues that LinkedIn misses the point by not making accessible the context for the link -- usually an object.

He provides good background and references for the alternative view, "object-centered sociality." Among the references are a gaggle of web sites I have yet to explore and experience, including Flickr and del.icio.us.

As I read Jyri's well-written article, I immediately flashed on a key learning about collaboration software from a conference on GroupWare (some number of years ago). Intel chairman Andy Grove presented (remotely) from his office. Intel was launching a real-time collaboration product full of features that are now pretty standard -- shared screens, co-editing of documents, video, presence. At the time, collaboration junkies were focusing on getting the video so that people could see each other talk over computers. His comment, "people don't need to see each other. They are collaborating over something, and the key is to focus on enabling the ability to co-create [a document.]"

The above is of course paraphrase, but his assertion has stood me and many others well as a fundamental principle in designing the environments in which collaboration systems are deployed.

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Monday, April 11, 2005

Collaboration flattens the world

Thomas Friedman's new book, The World is Flat, has just been published. I've admired his analysis for many years, as he is one of those people who can help us make sense of large global political and economic trends. I haven't read the book (yet) but was pointed to this article in the NY Times Magazine (Sunday, April 3) by colleagues.

By flattening in the economic sense, he means of course that the "playing field has been leveled" and that the technologies supporting global work and collaboration have enabled countries like India and China to compete. Strongly.

As a student of collaboration for many years, I warmed to his argument, and will probably use this metaphor and some of Friedman's good points.

He segments into three eras: Globalization 1.0 (1492 to 1800), 2,0 (1800 to 2000), and the current era. Globalization 3.0, he says, is about how individuals and small groups can connect: "the fact that we are now in the process of connecting all the knowledge pools in the world together." Knowledge pools. I like that.

He cites three "flatteners" that created the platform for collaboration: Windows 3.0 (near coincident with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and all that it symbolized); the overbuilding of telecommunications infrastructure that was triggered by Netscape's public offering and the dot-com bubble; and web-enabled workflow.

This platform enabled six collaboration models: outsourcing, offshoring, open-sourcing, insourcing, supply-chaining, and informing (this last being the Googlization of the connected world). These converged around 2000, he says, and concludes: "The last 20 years were about forging, sharpening and distributing all the new tools to collaborate and connect. Now the real information revolution is about to begin."

Implications of Friedman's view are enormous, and this work should spark public debate particularly in the U.S., where we have not been doing a very good job competitively in response to this flattening.

But I want to return to this notion about what the last 20 years have been about. It's terrific to see collaboration as a concrete, well distinguished management topic. I hope that we'll also recall that the last 20 years (which is how long I've been working in the field) have also been about understanding how humans really use these technologies and that the success of these collaboration models rests not just on the technologies, but on those who have made them safe, useful, and easy to use.

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Saturday, April 02, 2005

Distinctions in the domain of complexity

I've been continuing my learning process in the Cynefin framework, and have been reviewing Shawn Callahan's site (and blog), anecdote. Shawn writes from Australia, where there are Cynefin and value network workshops this coming week.

Shawn has worked with Dave Snowden since 1999, when he was (then at IBM) inspired by Snowden's work on narrative. He is an impressive practitioner and shares his insights richly.

I've started my personal workbook cataloguing the Cynefin distinctions. Although I've been through the Cynefin training and read all of the work I can get my hands on, it's always good to hear how someone else puts the concepts of attractors and interventions in complexity in their own words.

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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