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

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Enron email traffic and communication patterns

My sister-in-law just called to tell me that the New York Times Week in Review today includes the article, Enron Offers and Unlikely Boost to E-Mail Surveillance. (You may need to subscribe to see this online.) It summarizes research by Dr. David Skillikorn (Queen's University in Canada), Kathleen Carley (Carnegie Mellon), and Michael Berry (U of Tennessee) on the public dataset of 1.5 million e-mails from 150 accounts at Enron. As a tool for retrospective analysis of the events leading up to the collapse of Enron, it offers both telling correlations (such as the spurt in e-mail traffice during the manipulation of California energy prices), and insight into how the use of e-mail analysis might be used, for the public good (tracking terrorists).

Like many articles on SNA that now appear outside the confines of academic research, this one clearly contributes to the education and awareness of this new application in the social sciences. This is new evidence for the scaffolding being built to help us understand how to live, work, and manage in a networked world.

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Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Business Blogs: A Practical Guide is out

Over at Gennova last Friday, we had a preview of Business Blogs: A Practical Guide, by Bill Ives and Amanda Watlington. Since I met Bill about a year ago, I've been learning a tremendous amount about the world of blogs and continue to get truly practical advice about blogging (I don't take it all, but it all makes very much sense). He's teamed with Amanda, whose expertise in search and marketing have combined into what looks like a blockbuster of content.

They decided to self-publish, an adventure in itself in this new media world. I wish them both the best in this endeavor; I know how much work they've put into it and know that they are focusing on helping individuals and business understand how to truly use blogs for knowledge management, marketing, and corporate connectedness.

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Saturday, May 14, 2005

Time to Collaborate: A tag line for the 21st century

I used our new tagline, "time to collaborate," in a Gennova meeting yesterday, not by way of introducing a taqline, but as a way to use it in conversation to see if it would stick. I like phrases that have several meanings. I can say, as we know, that it takes time to collaborate. Projects starting out need to allow time for team members to set out their norms for how they will work together, coordinating, sharing content, communicating, development community and context.

Two current clients are both facing corporate enterprise-wide mandates to become more collaborative. In this sense, time-to-collaborate has assumed a correlation with time-to-market, time-to-innovation, time-to-profit. How long it takes to make the organizational shift necessary to reflect changes is the time to collaborate. Of course that happens in incremental steps, starting "small but smart" as one client is saying.

This client is also very focused on making sure that the collaboration work (strategic communities of practice in this case) focuses on the right things (the right strategic elements). We are using ONA to ensure that once the right projects are identified, we can work on having the right people with the right connections.

Working on the right things, with the right people, at the right time. And making sure that people have time to collaborate.

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Connectedness reaches stardom in SNA community

I was pleased to get an email last week from Barry Wellman, one of the founding researchers in social network analysis. He sent a note to his private distribution list (which subsequently when to all of the INSNA SOCNET list) commending Bruce Hoppe's blog, Connectedness.

Barry said,

Two consulting friends have pointed me to this blog focusing on a very business-application uses of networks as a metaphor and analytic tool. It leaves a lot out, but does provide some interesting links and insights into what one chunk of the consulting world thinks of as network analysis.

Of course, I pretty much ceded the SNA territory to Bruce a while back, as he covers just about everything. More than once I've gone to blog on a topic and discovered that Bruce covered it weeks before. I'm happy to give good work its due.

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Monday, May 09, 2005

Building networks for the common good

My SNA session with Valdis Krebs and June Holley at a conference in Boston last week went very well. There was definitely a good bit of interest in the topic, especially in the work that June and Valdis have done with ACEnet. They have dozens of stories of how the creation of a network of small businesses in rural southeastern Ohio has created jobs, enhanced the small businesses, and engendered a real sense of community.

June kicked it off by getting to the ground truth of where she's at with philanthropy: "It's about ending poverty." I was reminded that I forgot to blog about John Edward's talk at Harvard last month. Edwards (Democratic party candidate for Vice-President in last fall's election) is launching the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

More to the networking point, June (a natural network weaver, if ever you have met one) said that a key benefit to networks is diversity: "Networks can help you rub up against people who can take your blinders off."

Philanthropic organizations are coming to the KM game with fresh eyes and leapfrogging early generations of knowledge management. Our talk was at the 2nd KM conference for the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) group. Roberto Cremonini, Chief Knowledge and Learning Officer for the Barr Foundation, arranged our talk. He and the Director of the Barr foundation, Marion Kane, are no slouches when it comes to leveraging network building. They have incorporated the importance of networks into their tagline, "Using knowledge, networks, and funding to Build a Better Boston for all." Their resources pages include links to articles on networks, including (modestly positioned near the bottom of the page), a link to a terrific study that they funded, "Network Power for Philanthropy and Nonprofits" by Peter Plastrik and Madeleine Taylor.

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Thursday, May 05, 2005

KM is about relationships (to paraphrase a paraphrase)

Hugh McKellar, KMWorld Editor in Chief, weighs in on the future of knowledge management in the current issue of KMWorld. He summarizes a report by TFPL produced following its annual CKO summit last fall. (I've ordered the hardcopy report which is available for free from the TFPL web site.)

Two of the three key findings that Hugh reflects on are:

KM is shifting back to individuals, encouraging "knowledge-conscious behavior.

The role of change management in the impleentation of new technologies: "cultural mismatch is an excuse for poor implementation"

The third goes straight to the heart of my work: relatedness. Though stated in the context of outsourcing, he paraphrases the key learnings as:

Study and understand all relationships�don�t risk losing highly connected and competent people (and this certainly addresses knowledge retention and loss),
Build relationships with partners and users across the organization,
Embrace the value of relationships in order to learn and grow, and
Concentrate on both internal and external partnerships.

Amen.

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Tuesday, May 03, 2005

SNA/UCINET Course at Boston College June 13-15

From Pacey Foster:

Attached is a PDF announcement for an upcoming social network analysis master class at Boston College June 13-15, 2005. This will be an exciting, hands-on introduction to SNA for managers, consultants and practice-oriented academics.

It will be taught primarily by Inga Carboni and Pacey Foster -- two of Steve Borgatti's senior doctoral students who have significant consulting and training backgrounds. The master class will include presentations by Steve Borgatti (a leading SNA researcher and author of its most popular software packages UCINET, NETDRAW and KEYPLAYER), Patti Anklam (a well known consultant working at the intersection of networks and knowledge management) and Bill Torbert (a senior scholar/consultant in action research and leadership development).

The program fee of $799 includes continental breakfast and lunch each day and a notebook of course materials. Participants will be responsible for making their own accomodation arrangements and for downloading a trial version of UCINET from www.analytictech.com prior to the training.

Direct inquiries to

Inga Carboni (carbonii@bc.edu)
Pacey Foster (fosterpb@bc.edu)

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patti anklam. How to make networks work.

links: networks

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

Dave Snowden
David Gurteen
Jack Vinson