Lasagna and chips - unexpected combinations for creativity and innovation

Communities of practice and bulldozers

2008-07-04T14:51:00.004+02:00

CPsquare invited Mark Bennett of Rio Tinto to talk in a teleconference about his experiences with fostering communities of practice within Rio Tinto, an international company. I missed the call because I thought GMT= London time, but I discovered that London is not the same as Greenwich. Fortunately, the call was recorded and I could listen to it while driving around. Since I was driving, I couldn't take any notes. However, I recall that Mark Bennett said that a good definition of the domain can be very compelling and attract new members to a community like a magnet. This is something I have observed too. The definition and formulation of the domain is an intervention that contributes (with lots of other factors) to the success of a community of practice. The definition should be such that people recognise it as one of their own interests. He further talked about the place of community builders and knowledge managers in the organisation. Research and development, human resource department or IT department? ?The last seems to be the worst option.

You can see a video he used to demonstrate the value of the community of practice here. It took quite an investment to make the video because he wanted to be absolutely sure that the innovation worked. The video tells the story of a coalmine in Australia with problems with bulldozer brakes. They used collaborative forums to ask for advice. They found out that two engineers in other parts of the world had experienced similar problems and had already solved them.

Join Be The Media

2008-07-01T09:34:00.004+02:00

I was triggered by a blogpost by Beth Kanter on the web2.0 Kool Aid. Kool aid is a reference to the 1978 cult mass-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. It means acting non-sensical through (strong) peer pressure. Not seeing things in perspective! At times people become over optimistic about web2.0 and what it can do. After all, it will not change the basic nature of human beings. So it is good to be critical. I always say that I don't think everyone should use blogs, wikis or bookmark. However, you should know about the tools in order to decide whether you want to use it or not.

Through Beth's blogpost I learned about the Be The Media project of Nten, which she is leading. The Be the Media project is "a community of people from nonprofits who are interested in learning and teaching about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world."

If this sounds interesting to you, you can join the google group. Or read about the other ways to participate in the wiki. You can use the tag bethemedia (initially I read it like Beth the media :). I wonder how it is overlapping with the nptech tag?

What does online community mean to you?

2008-06-26T10:26:00.007+02:00

Via Bob Stumpel I found this video with almost 100 (?) respondents to the question : 'What does online community mean to you?'. They're all young except one, who answers: 'young and old being friend together'. It video is about 8 minutes.

The answers range from crazy, addictive via revolution and inspiration to boring comedy and popularity contest. Listening to them, I realized that I'm using the same tools in a very different way. I'm on youtube, and blip.tv, but not feeling part of the 'youtube' community. I'm using it to connect smaller groups of people, networks and communities of practice. By using online means I'm actually hoping to get different conversations than when it's face-to-face. By the way, there were also a lot of answers refering to the worldwide connections.

Re-connecting with Modibo, Soledad and Jamlick

2008-06-23T21:15:00.006+02:00

(picture by Ptorres)

Yesterday I got a message on Facebook from Soledad, a girl I met in Portezuelo, Chile, in 1987 during my practicals (don't start counting how old I am!). I couldn't remember Portezuelo, because I had started to twist the story. When people asked me where I worked in Chile, I mentioned San Bernardo, Chillan and Temuco, and I believed I worked in Chillan, forgetting that it was actually Portezuelo, a village near Chillan. As soon as I found this picture via google maps, I remembered Portezuelo, the vineyards and Soledad with her long beautiful hair. Reconnecting on facebook means being able to hear her whole life story, it's like watching a film. She is married, has a daughter and is composing music and writing stories and poems! In similar ways I reconnected with Modibo (via skype) and with Jamlick (via a weblog project). All people I met across the globe in the writing-letters-with-stamps-age. Somehow, I never managed to keep writing letter for a long period.

The natural limit to friendship circles is said to be 150, the Dunbar number. The question is whether online social networking will increase that number. I think it will- we can keep much lighter connections with more people. I am able to leverage my 'old' face-to-face friends contacts online. At time I wonder whether we are too optimistic about the possibilities of internet, but when this kind of things happen, I can't help raving. Thanks to Facebook and skype these people with whom I lost contact were able to track me down. We can keep loose connections in future. Know how they are doing, and connect when possible. It's still not possible to be in close contact with all the nice people I knew in the past, Jamlick and I called each other on the phone twice, but we did not keep this up. However, I am now aware of Jamlick's project and Kenya, and it will be easy to meet up if your schedules allow it one day.

Proving versus improving

2008-06-19T13:51:00.005+02:00

I'm involved in the accreditation process of the Business School where I'm teaching one subject of the Masters course: Interactive Project Design. Educational accreditation according to wikipedia is: a type of quality assurance process under which a facility's or institution's services and operations are examined by a third-party accrediting agency to determine if applicable standards are met.

During the test interview for the accreditation process I participated in, I had an interesting experience. I realized how quickly as a group of teachers, we were becoming into a 'convincing the accreditors' mode, ready to twist information, or withold some information smartly if that yields a better result. I did not express any of my criticisms or constructive feedback I might have had. It's clearly not a learning process, it's an accreditation process. Nevertheless, I learned something about the other courses and the views of other teachers, you cannot turn off your personal learning process.

It made me think about all the evaluations that are taking place to evaluate development projects and/or programs, I have been part of them in different roles, as project staff and as evaluating consultant. I have been struggling with the popular concept of using evaluation for learning purposes, as there is a friction between the two. The friction is referred to as the dilemma between 'proving' versus 'improving' or 'accountability' versus 'learning'. In the accreditation case, it is a clear case of assessment for accountability, proving the quality of your masters education is of an adequate level. There are no separate learning objectives. When development projects/programs are evaluated often a learning objective is added. Though people involved in a evaluation always learn something, the process is enormously flawed by the need to prove that you are right. I've know it, but I've not felt it as strongly as when I was part of this team trying to convince the accreditors.

Today I found an interesting online resource from the Society for Organisational Learning called Assessing to Learn or Learning to Assess. A quote from Senge: "... re-establish a healthy balance between assessing for learning and assessing for evaluating. If the balance has tipped to emphasis on evaluating to the extent that it actually impedes learning, learning processes will benefit from increasing emphasis on assessing for learning. It is low leverage to complain that there is too much emphasis on evaluating, outsiders wanting to know if learners are adding value. It is probably much higher leverage to build our 'assessment muscle,' to help learners to get better at assessing for learning."

I believe the emphasis in the development sector has been on assessing to evaluate projects and programs to prove value to donors, rather than structuring assessments for learning. In doing so, it leaves important opinions, criticism and constructive feedback unheard.

How much time does web2.0 take?

2008-06-16T22:10:00.004+02:00

I often get the question how much time it takes to blog... Since I'm a meticulous time-writer, I know this blog takes me less time than I'd imagine myself- 4-6 hours per month with 2-3 blogposts per week - but then I measure only the writing of blogposts. If you'd include reading other blogs and thinking through topics for blogposts it'd be much higher.

I was delighted to find the museum2.0 blogpost talking about the time it takes a nonprofit organisation to engage with web2.0. The image was copied from museum2.0's blogpost too. It describes what you can do in a week or less of web2.0. Got 1-5 person hours each week? Become a participant, but don't start running an online community. If you have 5-10 hours per week, become a content provider. With 10-20 hours per week, become a community director!

As my example shows- you can be a blogger with less devoted time- but is it meaningfull to blog without taking part in the rest of the blogosphere? Then it becomes a PR tool with a different purpose - just to inform. To find all kind of practical things to do with the hours you have, you can go to the blogpost and read the great suggestions.

But yes, it DOES take time, and if you don't pay attention, people will experience it as extra workload. I think this is a huge problem that organisations underestimate the time it takes to network or engage with others online. For a face-to-face meeting, you get your hours, but networking online is often not costed (enough) in hours. Or people think that an online community runs itself...

From a meeting to a community of practice: lessons from the ecollaboration community facilitation

2008-06-13T16:03:00.005+02:00

From a meeting to a community of practice - Upload a Document to Scribd

Sibrenne Wagenaar and I co-facilitated the inter-organizational ecollaboration learning community for two years, basically from a meeting to a community of practice. Since there seems to be an interest to better understand what facilitating a learning community from a communities of practic theory means we decided to document our actions, observations and reflections in a wiki. We used those meticulous observations to describe our way of facilitating this learning communities. Maybe because of our own enthousiasm, or because of the detailed documentation, the article has become rather long: 20 pages. It was accepted by the Journal of the International Association of Facilitators and can be found online here, but you have to be a member to access it there. The full citation is:

Wagenaar, S., & Hulsebosch, J. (2008). From 'a meeting' to 'a learning community' Community of Practice theory-informed facilitation of an inter-organizational community of practice: the case of the e-collaboration learning community. Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal, 9, 4-25

Fortunately we are allowed to make it available more widely. Therefore I have uploaded it using Scribd (I first tried Edocr, but that didn't work) and you should be able to access it through this link.

We explain 11 principles that we have tried to put into practice. I think some of these principles are make it clear that facilitating a community of practice is not the same as facilitating a workshop or training, it's a different art. We tried to make it 10 or 7, but couldn't manage to reduce the number!

1. Act as learning facilitator-practitioner
2. Co-facilitate to reduce blind spots
3. Embed learning in actual practices
4. Stimulate self-organisation
5. Facilitate conversations in public and private spaces
6. Use the variety in the community
7. Balance the focus on tangible and intangible products
8. Guide meta-level reflections
9. Distinguish between two layers of practice in the learning community: the level of individual practices, and the level of collaborative practices
10. Manage sponsor relationships
11. Manage the boundaries

In search of germs

2008-06-08T12:22:00.006+02:00

On June 2nd, with a group of CoP enthousiasts, we organised a working conference about communities of practice in the Netherlands, which was attended by roughly 75 people. I had the impression not everyone who has experience working with this concept was present, but it's a good start. The start of the day worked well, everyone was handed a quartet card, and had to find the other 3 people to form a quartet. This offered a nice way to start networking, and lateron in the day, we came back to this group to reflect on our experiences. In the picture you see my quartet.

With Sibrenne Wagenaar, I facilitated the 'facilitation circle'. I enjoyed it very much. Though a lot of people are searching for 'how to facilitate a CoP' there were also some people with interesting experiences. The dilemma between 'sturen en loslaten' - 'steering versus let go' appeared to be a key theme for most of the participants. In the afternoon the term 'kiemkracht' - 'germinal force' was coined to represent the seed that you are looking for when you start facilitating. Without germinal force you may start pulling a dead horse and that's not fun!

From my experience I would see the following 4 signals to identify germinal force:

Signal 1: If a group of practitioners are together, conversations flow spontaneously and hardly need any facilitation. The exchange generates energy, it is an endogeneous process.

Signal 2: Different actors have a stake to innovate practices, the actors can be practitioners or sponsors of the CoP or both.

Signal 3: Practitioners are passionate about the domain, and have a personal connection with it, but may be working in relative isolation. One or several persons have a vision that working together may catalyze innovation.

Signal 4: There is already an informal network around the domain of the community, but there is no effort to systematically exchange and generate knowledge. There are possibilities to improve knowledge creation and innovation in practice.

In case of organisational CoPs, you could add a fifth signal:

Signal 5: The domain of the CoP is of strategic importance for the mission of the organisation

Any ideas? Do you need a Yes to all signals in order to invest or are there situations where you can work on a CoP without one of these germinal forces?

If we would use these signals to analyze the germinal force for a community of practice about communities of practice in the netherlands, you can say that signals 1, 3 and 4 are strong, but signal 2 is weak, there isn't really an organisation or actor with a strong interest to innovate CoP practices within the Netherlands.

The lion and the hunter

2008-06-07T22:43:00.004+02:00

I found this image on the weblog of my friend Denise who lives in Ghana and she gave me permission to use it. The picture is taken at a mural at Fort Prinzenstein an old slave fort located near the Keta Lagoon Volta Region, Ghana. During my time in Ghana, I enjoyed the lively metaphors my colleagues were using. Unfortunately I didn't write them down. Often there were animals involved. I enjoy this one because it highlights the subjectivity in stories and that there are always different perspectives to take.

Unfortunately the web2.0 is not yet leveraged at large scale by people in developing countries. Ít will need some historians to show that African countries are not only about misery and hunger. Looking at African countries in the misery and they need help way means we don't see what's there to learn (Not that I'd say that they are the lions and we are the hunters!).

Blogging to raise funds for wildlife conservation

2008-05-31T13:01:00.005+02:00

Via the Dutch blog Knowledgecafe I clicked through to the story on Wired about life, death and twitter on the African Savanah. I dislike the fact that they talk about the African Savanah, like Africa is one country, and the story is really about Kenya and Congo. It really happens a lot that people tell me they have travelled to Germany, Cambodja and Africa!! Do one country in Africa and you've seen them all.

Anyhow, this is the success story: William Deed, is an experienced and famous blogger from the UK who was recruited by Richard Leakey, the famous conversationist. He helped wildlife rangers of the Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to set up weblogs, see the Gorilla Protection blog. "The rangers' salaries are paid from park fees, but tourism has dropped 90 percent. To keep the conservancy running, the park's online outreach needs to raise $50,000 a month until the tourists return -- a job that's fallen into Deed's lap."

The park's online efforts are succesful! Kimojino is a Mara ranger who blogs here. He asked for donations on his blog: "100% of your donation, minus only a small bank fee, will go directly to the work of the Mara Conservancy.". The blog raised $40,000 from donations in March 2008, his facebook page drew about $2,000. Safari companies bought advertising on the blog too.

It's interesting example. If you peel down the elements of success, it is most likely the fact that people can read, see pictures and engage with the park stories directly. Donating directly may be nicer than donating through agencies like the World Wildlife Fund. Then they have used the expertise of an experienced blogger to set up the system and probably train and coach the rangers. And they have a well-targeted topic!

Blogging is good for you after all

2008-05-29T17:29:00.005+02:00

Via Steve Bridger's link on Twitter I found proof that blogging is good for you. After the news about early deaths of paid bloggers - not the same thing as voluntary bloggers - this is quite a relief! If I'd talk as much in a meeting as I'd blog I'd feel like I'd be boring everyone to death - so that wouldn't be healthy for others. With my blog I feel everyone's free to read or not and I tend to blurt out. It's become really an enjoyable habit for me, I like the writing process and it feels like producing something tangible when you press publish and 'view your blog'. Talking about your life and issues is healthy but blogging too.

From the article: "Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits." There is research ongoing into the neurological underpinnings. “You know that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively,” Flaherty notes. "Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art."

At times I'm relating blogging and other web2.0 web hypes like twitter to the pyramid of Maslow. Maslow developed the pyramid as a hierarchy of needs. People search to fulfill higher needs when the lower needs, basic needs like shelter, food etc have been fulfilled. The highest need in the current pyramid is self realization. Blogging may be a form of self realization in our times or a new form of self expression to the world - a creativity need. Maybe a new top on the pyramid?

Bridging and bonding in communities of practice

2008-05-26T21:54:00.003+02:00

I read in the newspaper that ethnically mixed neighbourhoods have lower levels of trust in general. This was already proven by a research by Putnam in 2007. Dronkers and Lancee repeated the research in the Netherlands and reached the same conclusion. BUT the inter-ethnical level of trust in heterogeneous neighbourhoods is higher than in the others. Which is kind-of logical: when you meet people from other ethnic groups you are likely to see that they can be kind and friendly too. In the homogeneous neighbourhoods, the social trust is higher, but the image of different ethnic groups can be very negative.

It sounds like a description of my old and new neighbourhood! I moved last year from a homogeneous village to a mix area of the Hague.

What really triggered me to blog about it was the coining of two terms: bonding social capital and bridging social capital. I recently attended a ecollaboration meeting where the people with developer skills were in the lead because of the topic chosen for the meeting: open source. As non-developer I could see how interesting it was for them to connect. On the other hand, if you don't pay attention, you get a reinforcing loop towards the developers side of the domain of ecollaboration. It was suddenly very obvious to me that the role of a facilitator of a community of multidisciplinary practice includes balancing the bonding and bridging social capital. Try to make sure that there is enough space for bonding between the disciplines, but include sufficient bridging capital. That sounds quite abstract, but I think it means being aware of the member who play a bridging role and enabling them to continue to play the bridging role. At times this may not need any intervention, at times, this may need some attention.

Secondly, since we facilitated the community of practice with a group of four non-developers, it might have been easy to overlook the needs of developers to connect and discuss at their level of interest. So whenever possible, try to have a balanced core group too.

Managing virtual teams

2008-05-21T11:08:00.006+02:00

(cartoon via Marketing and strategy innovation blog)

Together with Sibrenne Wagenaar I wrote a Dutch article of 15,000 characters on virtual teamwork. 15,000 is really short for all there is to say!

During the literature review one of the best articles we found is the article called Managing Virtual teams by Lisa Kimball. It is actually the text of a speech in 1997. As Lisa Kimball says:

"although the technology that supports these new teams gets most of the attention when we talk about virtual teams, it's really the change in the nature of the teams -not their use of technology- that creates new challenges for team managers and members. "

I think this an important observation, virtual teams require us to rethink the group dynamics of teams as we know them. This is the exciting part because why not try and create powerful virtual teams, leveraging a variety of tools to become more creative and productive than some of the 'normal' teams? However optimistic that may sound, I believe that with more tools and ways of communication, we should be able to do a better job than with only one tool and modality (face-to-face interaction). So that in the end 'normal teams' can learn from virtual teams how to use a variety of online tools to communicate and collaborate smarter. I can see the pitfall of increased miscommunication in virtual teams too, so we all need to become increasingly skilled in choosing the right tools for teamwork, and the right medium also depends not only on the work requirements but also on the preferences and experiences of you teammembers. This requires understanding of group dynamics PLUS how these dynamics work in a virtual team.

Lisa Kimball points out that there is a need for a new managers mind set- I agree and think this is true for the whole team that needs to shift mind sets. One of the needed shifts I believe is from "face-to-face is the best environment for interaction and anything else is less" to "different kinds of online interactions can be played with to draw out the best of all team members".

If you believe this, you can try and get an optimal mix of communications. As Lisa also observes, virtual teams may need more check-ins and short process checks. In a virtual team, you need regular feedback about the use of tools.

Our article purposely draws on the so-called web2.0 tools, in complement to the software packages offered by organisations. With web2.0 tools, a flexible toolset is within reach of the virtual team, and that may enhance the virtual teamwork. Rather than forcing a software package upon a virtual team, the team can then depart from individual online experiences and preferences and build upon those. Adjusting the toolset to the teammembers rather than adjusting the teammembers to the tools.

10 common objections to social media

2008-05-20T10:09:00.002+02:00

I found the excellent post by Marshall Kirkpatrick with the most common objections to social media and ideas how to respond. He got them by asking 1300 twitter connections. You can find the full blogpost here. It is very recognisable and I'm going to make a list for the Dutch situation on my Dutch weblog.

Here are the common objections:

I suffer from information overload already.
So much of what's discussed online is meaningless. These forms of communication are shallow and make us dumber. We have real work to do!
I don't have the time to contribute and moderate, it looks like it takes a lot of time and energy.
Our customers don't use this stuff, the learning curve limits its usefulness to geeks.
Communicators [bloggers, tweeters] are so fickle, better to stay unengaged than risk random brand damage. We don't want hostile comments left about us on any forum we've legitimized.
Traditional media and audiences are still bigger, we'll do new stuff when they do.
Upper management won't support it/dedicate resources for it.
These startups can't offer meaningful security, they may not even be around in a year - I'll wait until Google or our enterprise software vendor starts offering this kind of functionality.
There are so many tools that are similar, I can't tell where to invest my time so I don't use any of it at all.
That stuff's fine for sexy brands, but we sell [insert boring B2B brand] and are known for stability more than chasing the flavor-of-the-month. We're doing just fine with the tools we've got, thanks.

I recognise mainly number 1,2 and 9. I notice some are objections by marketeers, others by 'normal' users. The list might be stronger if that would be separated. Marshall provides possible answers too. I think it is important not to overestimate the power of social media and 'push' it onto people. Some objections are real. For instance, the time it takes, I've invested little time in Facebook, but feel like most of that time is wasted. So the advice to step in hand-in-hand with a more experienced social media users makes a lot of sense. A person guiding you will help you direct your energy into social media that make sense for your particular goals.

Pro-ana as a community of practice

2008-05-19T21:08:00.003+02:00

In the Dutch news there was an item about the so-called 'pro-ana sites'. Websites that connect girls with anorexia. The pro-ana movement believes their behaviour is not disease but a lifestyle. 25% of the anorexia girls/women under medical treatment visit the pro-ana sites, often weblogs. The three girls who were interviewed in the news explained that they were really attracted by the sites and the tips they can get on the sites eg. about 'how to avoid eating', 'how to cheat your parents'. One of them did not identify with the site during her first visit because the girls were too skinny. But later she was attracted to come back. Another girl could spend 3 hours per day on the websites. They feel the sites are dangerous because of the enormous appeal to the anorexia girls and the way the girls on the websites stimulate eachother with tips to give in to their obsession to avoid food, on a downward journey. You can still watch the interview with 3 girls in Dutch here.

Though I originally did not think of patient communities as communities of practice because they do not have a professional practice, I currently think you might think of them as one. Look at the way of living of the pro-ana members and they way they behave: a very strong practice. You can see that the websites give enormous power to the pro-ana communities. At the same time, it is an enormous reminder that communities of practice are not something good and to be promoted everywhere. It depends on the practices, the innovation etc. whether a communities can be labelled as good and should be encouraged or discouraged. The pro-ana community seems to do well in helping new entrants to get up to the task. However, the practice is horrible (no photos to match this blogpost...!)

Interview with facebook user

2008-05-16T13:44:00.003+02:00

Here's a video from Beth Kanter interviewing a facebook user. Everytime I see a video of Beth I'm inspired to do another one myself. Probably next week might be a good opportunity with the ecollaboration meeting in Amsterdam. In this video she interviews a facebook user, using it more than email, to stay in touch with friends. He doesn't know what a blog or twitter is. I think the interesting point is that at times I assume that the younger generation is fluent with all online tools. It may be so that they will learn new tools faster. But they may have their own preferences which are hard to change too. (good news: there may be a need for people who know about a wide range of tools and can help teams and networks make appropriate choices).

Lizard2.0

2008-05-14T11:10:00.003+02:00

This beautiful picture is taken by Pandiyan. In Intermediair, a Dutch magazine, I read about the research of the University of Ohio with 18 different types of lizards. Lizards can hunt using one of the following ways:
(1) they wait quietly till a pray walks by and jump
(2) they walk around to search pray and creep over
The researchers found out that all lizards can run, but only the types of lizards that walk around to search pray can actually walk. The 'waiting' types simply lost their ability to walk in a few generations.

This made me seriously wonder what the human2.0 will loose in a couple of generations, or already during the next generation. Suppose we would all become web2.0 adepts, what are the capabilities and competences that will disappear? Will we completely loose the need for intimacy to discuss personal matters? Will we loose the embarrassment emotion? Loose our sense of hierarchy? We will definitely adjust our eyes to 'computer screen mode' and develop keyboard fingers!

Obsolete (learning) practices

2008-05-06T08:30:00.003+02:00

Following on my last blogpost on Is Yours a Learning Organisation, I started thinking about change processes. Becoming (even) more of a learning organisation is basically guiding a change process and improving practices.

Yesterday I noticed that my arms are getting sun-tanned but that on the place of my watch there is an extremely white piece of my wrist. That's because I've taken on the habit of having my watch on all the time. Before I had children, I was quite reticent against watches. If I had one (and I regularly lost them) I kept it in my pocket. This all changed when I started breastfeeding. I was living so much by the clock that I kept my watch on day and night (yes, poor mothers even have to breastfeed in the middle of the night). Now my daughters are 6 and 8 years, so no need for breastfeeding - though I heard a story in Ethiopia that a man of 24 in Harar was still breastfeeding but that's another story altogether- and no need for a watch on my wrist day and night.

What does this have to do with changing practices? I'm really intrigued by practices and habits and entry points for changing them. I never liked the phrase 'resistant to change' because I think it lack understanding and respect for the person. Everyone wants to change, as long as you know what for, why and how, and you can see the point. So when you are talking about a learning organisation 'culture' try to find those obsolete practices and try to find out the history. If you can point out why they are obsolete, you have done half of the work. - time to get back to losing my watches!

Is Yours a Learning Organization?

2008-05-04T12:14:00.006+02:00

Via Jay Cross I found this learning organisation scan under the title Is Yours a Learning Organisation? on the Harvard Business Review site, developed by David A. Garvin, Amy C. Edmondson, and Francesca Gino. There is a short online survey with 12 questions, and a longer one, with more depth, can be found here. I'd recommend the longer one, with lots of relevant questions, most of them related to the culture in the organisation with regards to experimenting, networking, etc. A good tool to start talking about what a learning organisation is. To read the full article, you have to pay for it.

I think the term 'learning organisation' knows many different interpretations. A lot of development NGOs have used the Bruce Britton scan, as outlined in his paper the Learning NGO. You can find more information in the km4dev wiki here. Maarten Boers from ICCO started an interested discussion on the the email group of km4dev about the fact that ratings may go down when people become more aware of the complexity of a learning organisation. When discussions about being a learning organisation have just started, people may rate their organisation relatively high, because they are not so critical yet about their practices. Johannes Schunter linked this to a high relevant framework of the conscious competence learning framework. Hereby people move from the unconscious incompetence stage, through the conscious incompetence stage to the compentence stages. It is during the conscious competence stage that people become more critical about the practices in the organisation.

Personally, I shocked a manager once, by stating that his professionals were learning rapidly, but that his organisation wasn't. When the professionals left, the organisation was left at a loss. He was of the opinion that his professionals were not rapid learners. I made him look more carefully at the processes in the organization to leverage individual learning, to become organisational learning. For me, the crux of organisation learning is in making sure there are the processes that transform individual learning into innovation in the organisations practices are functioning. Secondly, it is important to see that the sources of learning, the feedback loops are the right ones. I have been in another organisation, where colleagues thought the organisation was learning, because it was changing all the time. However, the organisation was changing to the latest management whims rather than in response to feedback from its clients.

Working in virtual teams

2008-05-01T22:26:00.009+02:00

I've been busy writing a Dutch article for Leren in Organisaties, with less time to write for my blog(s). So I suddenly thought I could share a small part of the article, hitting two birds with one stone (or two flies in one hit as we say in the Netherlands). The article is about the use of web2.0 tools to support the work of international virtual teams for a thematic issue about globalization. Since there is not much room (15.000 characters) we have a relative narrow focus on small teams dealing with a clear, time-delinated project. Shawn Callahan, Mark Schenk and Nancy White have written a white paper in English with the title: Building a collaborative workplace. It was good timing for us, and we enjoyed reading it. They write about teams, networks and communities and hence have taken a much wider focus. It helped us to choose a focus.

Towards the end of our article, we try to illustrate the possible advantages of the ways of working of virtual teams (only in the best teams that is!) and suggest that 'normal' teams could learn from it too. The advantages are:

Access to a broader mix of expertise.

Stimulation of creative thinking.

Equality in communication and collaboration.

Collaboration outside the beaten tracks.

Easy 'harvesting' of knowledge products.

Working efficiently.

We do explain it further in the article. Did we overlook an important advantage? The paper is not as superoptimistic as this list might suggest- we do talk about problemteams too. By the way, we know that virtual teams are real teams. Virtual team is a funny name, as it sounds like a science fiction team. It seems to make sense to adopt this name for teams that are not co-located as it is a widely known term.

New media, new conversations (with the same old people)

2008-04-19T17:30:00.005+02:00

Let me crossblog this story from my Dutch blog, because I enjoy blogging about my daughters (apologies if it becomes boring..). My youngest (6 years) insisted on have a gmail account like her bigger sister, so we finally gave in. As soon as she had it, unlike her sister, she became an enormously active mailer, collecting mail addresses and checking replies. She asked her teachers for their email addresses and then sent them a mail talking about the noise in class and how it disturbs her. The teacher replied empathically, and asked whether she had any solutions. So she mailed grandma to ask about the situation in class in the part.

The story is illustrative on where I see the power of new media. I don't see everyone blogging (maybe they will, but I don't think they have to), but new media can make people enthusiastic by giving them new means of communicating. And it leads to a different kind of conversation. Ofcourse if all children start mailing the teacher, she may become crazy, but at least my daughter is using it creatively, and feels happy to discover new means of communication. My mother has learned to use email too. Even though I was the one trying to stop her (!) I can see she is happy. Her friends are sending around all the emotional and religious powerpoint presentation stuff ("you know a real friend by..." etc). Though it seems nonsense to me, it makes them -apparently- happy.

To be fair I should also mention all the conversations I did NOT have with my children because I was busy blogging...

7 Introductory resources into web2.0 tools

2008-04-16T15:13:00.006+02:00

Wikis, weblogs, mashups, photosharing, mapping, social bookmarking. People who start to learn about web2.0 tools, ask me where they can get a good and short overview of the various web2.0 tools. Honestly, I don't have one great resource to recommend to them. It's quickly overwhelming for people new to the field. Seven pointers:

1. Euforic is developing a web2share wiki, which is good basic resource.

2. The commoncraft show with its series of videos on tools like blogging, wikis, social bookmarking, twitter. It explains the advantage of the tools in very clear easy to understand language.

3. Tim Davies has developed some one page guides like this on social bookmarking. You can access the whole series here.

One level up in terms of overwhelminess:

4. The top 100 social media blogged by Steve Dale

If I really want to browse for tools (level 5 in overwhelminess) I go to:

5. Go2web20 website or

6. The organizer's toolkrib (less elaborate) and

7. The Seomoz web2 awards website

Enough about bloggers, how about the blog readers?

2008-04-15T21:39:00.006+02:00

Via a message by Stephanie to the online facilitation yahoo group I read an article on sciencedaily.com called Simple tools would enhance bloggers, blog readers experience. "UC Irvine researchers have provided new insight into blog readers' online habits and experiences, as well as how they perceive their roles in blog-based communities. ...The UCI study examined in-depth the blog-reading habits of 15 participants of various ages to determine how they consume content and interact with blogs and blog writers.". Two results that resonated with me:

1. Readers include non-technical elements in their definition of blogs. Social aspects, including the presence of conversation or personal content is important to them.

2. Regular blog reading often becomes more habitual and less content oriented. Similar to e-mail checking, blog reading can become ingrained into users' online routine.

I can imagine there are huge differences in blog readers. You may read one blogpost, or you may follow a blog systematically. I try to follow less than 50 blogs systematically, but I'm now at 70. There is a difference in commitment I have to the blogs. For some I really try to read the blogposts, even if there is a backlog to read. For others, I simply skim through and pick out any interesting topics. I recall that in the beginning I didn't dare to read some of the blogs because the content seemed so personal and not meant for my eyes, and when I started blogging my experience changed in that regard. At times, people ask me whether they can read my blog. Though I'm now surprised by that question, because I blog in public, so anyone can read it; I can recall the way I felt about reading blogs in the beginning and recognize the idea behind it. By blogging you get beyond a certain level of embarrasment.

How can nonprofits succeed in the online attention economy?

2008-04-10T13:34:00.002+02:00

I like the approach of Netsquared to ask a group of bloggers to write about the same question. Though I struggle with some of the topics because I don't feel I have enough expertise, I want to try to participate this month with the question: How can nonprofits succeed in the online attention economy?

Britt Bravo explains what is meant by Online Attention Economy in this blogpost. As more nonprofits, businesses and individuals create blogs, podcasts, rss news feeds, wikis, social networks, YouTube accounts, Twitter feeds, fundraising widgets, mashups, etc. what do you think nonprofits need to do to attract and maintain people's attention online?

Richard MacManus writes:
"A key point is that The Attention Economy is about the consumer having choice - they get to choose where their attention is 'spent'. Another key ingredient in the attention game is relevancy. As long as the consumer sees relevant content, he/she is going to stick around - and that creates more opportunities to sell."

One impression I have is that currently nonprofits can reap the benefits from 'being the first' and can currently have a comparative advantage in attracting online attention by virtue of using the 'cool' new media like videos, weblogs, podcasts, etc. Once the 'hype' around these tools is over and everyone is using these tools, you don't have people read your blog because it's one of the few blogs on international development for instance. (by the way, I'm looking forward to this!). I think we'll an interesting situation at that point because then quality of the nonprofit's work and engagement with constituency (is this a good word?) will matter more.

At that point we'll be back to having nonprofits be assessed for their merits and quality. What will be different from the situation before social media were used is that organizations will have a double strategy to connect with their constituency: online and offline will be seamlessly blended. For constituents the work done by the nonprofit will be more transparent and they can make more informed choices. They will not just connect with nonprofits rather because a marketeer in the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam convinced you to become a donor or a large advertising campaign. This will make nonprofits more accountable to their constituents. And last but not least there are more ways for small initiatives to connect, using network sites like helpalot or change.org.

So my answer to the question: how can nonprofits succeed in the online attention economy? is: by being very transparent and accountable about your actions, and by becoming good in blending on- and offline strategies to engage people for your course. (so the next round of netsquared questions is likely to become: how does a well blended on- and offline engagement strategy look like? :)

Is everything miscellaneous?

2008-04-09T11:31:00.005+02:00

When I made a picture of my professional books for my Dutch website I realized that all the social media expertise I gained was through experiencing it (online hours) and reading online resources, but not books. I thought it would be good to start reading some books too, as they give a more thorough understanding of a certain topic. I started with the famous book by Weinberger, Everything is miscellaneous. The book has its own website and blog (books are lucky nowadays). I blogged a video with Weinberger before, but I'm happy I read the book.

The miscellaneous in the title is an analogy to the disorder in one drawer of your cupboard. Everyone has a drawer where all things end up that don't have their proper place in your house, that's the miscellaneous drawer. Weinberger argues that online everything is now miscellaneous. His virtue is the thorough explanation of the 3 orders in organizing information.

First order: books on the shelf, one book can only be on one shelf

Second order: meta data about books on cards, allowing you categorize a book in several categories

Third order: Digital data and meta data, endless number of data possible and mixing of data and meta data

The first and second order give some level of control and power to the person or organization doing the organizing. One person or institute decides on which shelf the book will go. The strong example given of the Dewey library system is very illustrative of the cultural biases that are imposed or transferred to others by that process. They Dewey library system developed by a American (Melvil Dewey) has provided Judaism with its own number, but Islam has to share its number with Babism and Baha'i. And Buddhism doesn't have its own number but falls under the category of 'religions of Indic Origin'.

The third order or the miscellaneous (for an example, think of del.icio.us for social bookmarking online) hence endangers some of the well-established institutions who gain their authority on their grip on the knowledge. That in itself explains some of the resistance to web2.0 developments like wikipedia and weblogs. It's a new way of working and organizing information and there are people who lose authority. But there are others that gain! Weinberger has made me more attentive to the people and institutions who may loose in the development of information as the miscellaneous.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Weinberger doesn't explain in detail what the consequences are for working life, and knowledge management (though maybe that's too much to ask for). He does touch the upon the semantic web and explains that having all information miscellaneous on the internet may lead to fragmentation and to the effect that groups become more and more polarized in their views. I'm thinking there are problably new groups in control of determining the agenda (the social media converts??) and I'm left wondering how this works out. What does the miscellaneous offer in terms of reversal of power for marginal groups? Can we truely accomodate all views into solutions? It is evident that the English wikipedia is larger and more consulted all over the world than the Swahili wikipedia, but will the miscellaneous help to surface different views? Will people be more open to explore it? Personally, these are some of the questions I have after finishing 'Everything is miscellaneous'. Its explanation of the deep shift and giving examples of who may be effected is very useful. I'm thinking with these questions I may reread the last chapters to see whether there are no more answers!

As a professional I think the miscellaneous information has some opportunities to expand your professional learning process and widen your horizon. An example of this is the use of the word web2.0 versus social media. I noticed many people tag resources with social media rather than web2.0 which made me to explore the different notions between the two. As a teacher, I noticed that when I explain the 'current reality tree' student are capable of finding all kind of additional information, so the role of the teacher as source of information changes. That may be another example of how the development of the miscellaneous information on the web may be threatening to a group of professionals that used to derive their authority from being the source of information.