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.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Managing Emergence

Work on Net Work continues. It is of course a study itself of net work, as I am drawing on and from my own network through, slogging through emails saved a year ago because there was a tidbit that might be useful, remembering people I haven't talked to for a while, finding an old book on my bookshelf that has just the right quotation ...

At the top of my pile cabinet right now is a recent MIT Sloan Management Review article, "Four Keys to Managing Emergence." It's a natural fit for the topic of managing the infrastructure that supports healthy networks, especially when the goal is innovation. Authors Ann Majchrzak, Dave Logan, Ron McCurdy, and Mathias Kirchmer.

Managers who excel at managing streams of "spurts" of innovation, they say, engage in four distinct practices:

Continuous discourse with potential participants. The emphasis in discourse is on diversity of ideas, engagement, and a focus for action.
Continuous updating of knowledge maps. The critical idea here is that "all members of an emergent enterprise maintain their own knowledge maps," that is, everybody needs to know "who knows what" and "who needs what knowledge," particularly in hand offs in the supply chain
Blurring boundaries between those inside and those outside the organization. Include all stakeholders, employees, suppliers, partners, and customers.
Governing through reputation networks. Providing ways for people to build credibility taps into the powerful motivator of acknowledgment

Simplified for Net Work, I'd say these are pretty good principles.

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Thursday, June 15, 2006

Introducing the Net Work theme at SLA

I just returned (from the SLA conference in Baltimore), catching up from a great symposium on collaborative networks at Bentley College sponsored by the college and Rhythm of Business, from two weeks vacation (at the beach, escaping the torrents of rain in New England for a while), from the getting started and pulling it together work of writing my book, Net Work (to be published by Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann).

Although my talk was about social networks and ONA, I decided that it was a good opportunity to begin to start to put ONA in the context of the theme of Net Work: which is: now that we understand that networks matter, social capital is essential to success in business, and we can analyze the underlying structure of networks, the new work of leadership consists of learning how to create and sustain dynamic networks.

Writing is the best way for me to develop ideas and to see how topics start to fit together. Just as when I go out to work in the garden, I am not always sure what I will actually complete in a day or what new ideas will emerge and find a place to grow. Sometimes I just go out to weed, and as I weed I find perennials that are not doing well where they are, so I dig them up and move them to another flower bed. While I'm shifting and digging for a space for them there, I notice that it's time to dig up the tulip bulbs that are dying back and make room for something in flower. Then I remember that I just bought some Pinks on impulse while I was at the garden center buying plants for a few large containers. Perfect. So I go out back and get the Pinks, where I notice that I didn't plant all the container plants. I grab those and think about where I can just nestle them into place in the box next to the deck. While I'm there, my eyes fall on the Japanese Maple next to the little waterfall pond, and I make a mental note to trim the leaves that are brusing against the ground. Where was I? Oh, that's right, putting in the Pinks next to the Russian Sage I just moved from the shade border to the sunny garden. And I'll just dig pull out a few weeds on my way.

People ask how the writing is going. That's how it's going. And when company comes on Sunday, the garden will be ready. When the deadline comes, the book will be ready.

Oh, where was I? I was about to blog about how putting a bunch of new ideas into an established suite of slides on ONA helped me understand the following core elements of the leader's Net Work:

(1) Attend to networks in the organization
(2) Network the organization
(3) Manage your personal network
(4) Building network-able staff

The presentation is posted at http://www.byeday.net/downloads.htm

Conference bloggers are encouraging me: Christina Pikas, on her own blog and the SLA conference blog, and Donald Hawkins, on the Information Today blog. My schedule didn't allow for me to attend the conference, but these blogs tell me that I missed a lot.

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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

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