Ethical Collaboration: The Vacuum Effect

In a former post, I talked about the beginnings of a moral framework for collaborative behaviors. The question of what rights an individual inherits in such an environment was the next area to explore.

Contextualizing

Image Credit: Marvel Comics, Inc.

When we were building D.Wiki, we committed a lot of thought to what policies, guidelines, and procedures should govern the environment. At Deloitte, a heavily regulated business, we have a lot of policies around data disclosure, access permissions, and appropriate content. We talked about how those policies applied to the wiki and what gaps needed to be filled. Ultimately, we decided that there were no gaps in policy, just gaps in understanding how the policies applied to the space. We came up with a very simple concept to express all those policies; The Spiderman Principle. “With great power comes great responsibility.” This principle very succinctly captured the notion that this new environment was not immune from our rubric of governance, but at the same time made clear that the wiki was distinct from sending point-to-point messages in chat or through e-mail.

Rights Entail Responsibilities

This may sound strange, but the Principle reinforces a common understanding about the environment. It articulates the expectation that people should behave professionally while having fun and delivering enhanced client service. It also allows the end user to “opt in” or “opt out” of the conditions governing the space. The user is given the choice to accept the benefits and subscribe to the responsibilities being levied upon her/him. Acceptance of these responsibilities becomes a social contract between the individual and the collective corporation. In reality, by already being an employee they have already signed-up to our high standards of ethics and individual responsibility. So in the example of D.Wiki, when a user elects to become a member of the space, they accept the power and responsibility of contributing valuable, meaningful content.

Responsibilities to a Collaborative Space

A behavior I commonly observe in collaborative environments is the “vacuum effect.” This is the user practice of consuming information, but never contributing back into the space. They may also pump the system/people for information, but can’t be found when others are in need. Worse still, the person does not volunteer information that may be of value to others. These are examples of someone leveraging their right to access information, but not taking-on the responsibility to build on the knowledge base. My colleague Justin Franks wrote brilliantly about this topic sometime ago.

The Business and Ethical Implications

There is both a business and ethical impact if this behavior is allowed to continue. On the business side of the equation, the vacuum effect will literally suck the oxygen out of the environment. Trust evaporates. No one will wish to contribute to a space when they discover that their content is being shared and used, but that no one is willing to reciprocate. The stovepipes you sought to demolish will resurface. The cost efficiencies you sought to create will not materialize. And the capital invested into your collaborative environment will be lost when people stop contributing.

On the ethical side, the relationship between the sharer and the consumer is not balanced. It is still true that information is power. Continuing that power imbalance ensures that valuable pieces of knowledge are not shared and denies other participants an opportunity to grow. More to the point, the vacuum marginalizes those who have the best ideas. In an organization with a “vacuum effect”, the information extractors now get credit for the ideas of others. This is intellectually and professionally dishonest because the extractors did not do the cognitive work and will be rewarded for staking claim to it.

It’s just like it was in grade school: No one wants to be the kid that everyone cheats off of.

It All Comes Back to Responsibility

The extension of credit to originators is a fundamental ethical responsibility in a collaborative environment. Extending that credit can occur by tracking the digital exhaust of contributors and consumers, linking to content that is relevant to your idea/work, or by explicitly citing their work. Finally, pushing that such metadata forward in a transparent and easily accessible manner ensures that knowledge theft is pulled into check. Ultimately, regardless of the technical platform, there is always the risk that others will steal your work without you knowing it. In a transparent environment it is aggravating to know people are actively acting against your personal interests. If you find yourself victimized by a knowledge thief, remember to take the high road. Changing a culture of information hording occurs one user at a time. If you believe in the value of collaboration, don’t compromise your own sense of ethics in favor of short-term rewards.

A Framework for Ethical Collaboration

So I get this e-mail . . .

A user of my client’s collaborative environment wanted to lodge a complaint against a fellow user. The e-mail sender (User A) submitted an idea for collaboration to a wide audience of other users. User A was asking the community for insights and ideas on a problem he had. This type of data trolling is common and encouraged. The prevailing understanding of the collective is that when data is shared for this purpose, it is usually going to be used for a work product by the requestor. Many people view the request, assess the data available to address the problem, and then a few of the collective offer their perspective. Then a lurker (User B) enters the environment near the end of the collaborative event. He agrees with the collective conclusion of the group and then decides to use the information to advance a localized need and, in turn, advance his career.

So back to this e-mail . . . User A wants User B disciplined for unethical behavior in the environment. On the one hand, I am totally unsympathetic. User B was faster to produce his work product and satisfied his customers in a more timely manner. On the other hand, User A submitted the information in good faith and had an expectation that the collective would respect the product he was working on. It occurred to me that these were really two moral frameworks in conflict. In this case, it was the needs of the community versus the needs of the individual.

Data Poor

This whole episode made me realize that such conflicts of interest and behaviors will only become more common in collaborative spaces. This worries me quite a bit since we lack the moral framework to even understand and frame these ethical problems. Stepping back further, we don’t even have the moral framework to even argue one perspective or another.

I did a fair amount of reading on the topic online and in the library and have formulated some initial thoughts around this framework. I decided to write a blog series about ethical collaboration and this post is the first of many that will follow.

Towards a Moral Framework

In order to understand the “right” or “wrong” of a situation (ethics), you first need a common moral framework to interpret what we know (ontology) and how we learn (epistemology). Why is this important? In order to broker and mediate knowledge sharing conflicts, ethics and situational conditions directly impact the resolution of the situation. So what is the moral framework in a given collaboration space? More directly, what rights to you inherit as a participant in a collaborative space?

As knowledge workers, we expect to have a few immutable rights. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but some of those rights would include:
• Free speech and expression
• Free to interact
• Free to not interact
• Free to supply data access to others
• Free to not supply data access to others
• Free to take action with information

A person has these freedoms and can elect to undertake or reject all of them or each individually. I’m still thinking about this concept, but it is also possible that information has rights too. The idea of endowing an artificial construct with rights is a stretch for me now, but I think the concept is interesting.

Access to Information as a Right?

These freedoms impart both responsibilities and rights on people. It can be argued that people have a right to obtain access to information. Why? We are given one natural defense as humans; our brains. As social and cognitive beings we have biological needs that can only be fulfilled with access to information and sensory stimulation. We are learning beings. We need to learn and understand simple things like how to use a toilet, how to read a book, how to perform mathematics, etc. These simple needs are critical to our ability to function in society. Without access to these basic learning opportunities, a person is deprived of their ability to fulfill their potential. More precisely, people are denied access to other basic rights and liberties.

This brings us to the beginning of a moral foundation for our ethical framework. If actions are taken that restrict or erode a person’s access to information it eventually hinders their freedom of action. This alone is neither “good” or “bad” because situational elements are the ultimate arbiter of “goodness.”

So back to the e-mail I received. The offender (User B) did not “accept” the notion that the information provided could not be used for alternative purposes. In fact, User A had two reasonable expectations in the environment. First, they expected that he would get something in return for sharing the information. Second, they also expected that the collective would gain additional unrealized value by sharing the data. What User A did not expect is that the information would be used for purposes that worked counter to their larger strategic goal.

Having rights means that you also have responsibilities. But more on that in my next blog.

Build It and They Won’t Come

If you build it, Joe Jackson will probably not show-up and thank you

There’s a prevalent myth out there about technical and physical collaboration projects. It might be a symptom of unbridled optimism, but I have heard this phrase far too often: “Well, if we just build it [or do it], people will come.” I have rarely seen things thrown together that “just work.” What is astounding to me is that I’ve been in meetings where smart people know that throwing it together won’t work, but do it anyway. It’s like they turn into Kevin Costner and start hearing whispered voices.

You’re Either the Michael Jordan of Collaboration Or . . .

I don’t care what you might hear/read from others, collaboration is a lot of hard work (Randy Nelson is a very cool guy BTW). Does it make your job easier, faster, cheaper, and better? I think it does. But like anything worth doing, its a difficult path to victory. There are some people out there that make it look easy, but even then they will tell you it has been a challenge to get to that level of professional implementation. Even those folks will tell you that getting people to work collaboratively is a grinding, ceaseless battle.

. . . You’re Crazy

I think there are many reasons that people fall into the “just build it” mentality. One reason is the very human (American?) desire to show immediate results. You may have been tasked with creating a collaborative experience or environment, but if there is a disconnect between the organization’s goals and the task then its activity at the expense of progress.

Another reason stems from standing up the technical solution first and then getting business practices to align. Sometimes it is necessary to make this compromise to get the collaborative inertia going. This can not be, however, your only approach. Thinking about collaboration as a multi-faceted business process change problem is much more productive then landing on a technical solution before knowing what the adoption picture looks like (there are some smart guys over there at Wikipatterns.com).

The final reason, I think, has roots in social science community’s theories on psychological dissociation. Clinically speaking, I do not think that just saying “build it” means that people are dissociative (“The unexpected partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s conscious or psychological functioning that cannot be easily explained by the person”). However, when we pair the entertainment industry’s notion of “suspending disbelief” and clinical dissociation, I think there is something compelling to explore. When faced with a very serious challenge, the human brain can become overtaxed and people are unable to make decisions. As the severity of the consequences rises for the individual, so does their inability to effectively make decisions. This was a highly contentious point of discussion in the nuclear warfighting literature during the Cold War. In the context of collaboration, you’re not making a life-or-death decision, but the enormity of the task might overwhelm your senses and mental logic processes. Given the enormity of a collaboration task, you may be more willing to suspend your sense of disbelief or pessimism in favor of a more favorable projected outcome. The logic trail might go something like this:

Thought A: This is a really big problem
Thought B: We don’t have enough time to figure it all out and build a solution
Thought C: Well, we could just start building it and figure it out later
Thought D: Besides if we build it, people might just start showing up and that would be good

The pain of giving in to the voices comes later when either (a) your customers scream and complain about the solution you selected or (b) don’t show up.

What to Do: Thinking Beyond the Technical

I’m certainly guilty of focusing on technical solutions prior to thinking about the problem. What keeps me on the straight and narrow is asking two simple questions:
1. What is the objective of the activity?
2. Who are the customers?

Be it a conference, brainstorming session, or technology implementation, these questions are important framing devices for any collaborative effort.

Just remember three things: planning, more planning, and executing. Have an idea of what you want to do and what you want to get out of it. Engage early with the customer of your effort to find out how they can help you get what you want and what they want. Finally, be prepared to follow-though on what your customers have asked for. If your budget or other constraints won’t allow you to accommodate all their needs, then you can choose to manage customer expectations or pick the best amongst the ideas to move forward. Just remember if you start hearing whispered voices, please seek professional help.

The Promise and Pitfalls of SharePoint

Ok, I am guilty of taking an occasional swipe at SharePoint. (Much to the chagrin of my dear friend Lewis Shepherd.) So given all the pot shots I take at the platform, I thought I should do the noble thing and advance the debate. I had a recent client experience that highlighted for me the strengths and weaknesses of SharePoint.

Share-Biblio-Point

I think it helps to start-off with a basic frame to understand the design of SharePoint. Think of SharePoint like a virtual library, where librarians decide what you get to search, read, checkout, and use.

SharePoint, at its heart, is a list-oriented database. Like books in a card catalog, SharePoint compartmentalizes functions and data in “lists.” The document library is a list, the picture library is list, the discussion board is a list, etc. The data hosted in each of these functions is then placed into this list superstructure; like books on a shelf. Each of those lists can then have features like access controls, audience customization, data visibility controls, and data feeds imposed over top of the hosting environment.

Screenshot of a typical SharePoint site

For SharePoint, files and documents are king. Any collaborative effort and knowledge creation occurs within the documents and presentations themselves. Some consultants parse this as the difference between document management and records management. This perspective illustrates that we are really talking about file-oriented objects and work products which revolve around the quality of the content resident in the file.

Using Its Powers for Good

SharePoint is well-suited for a few defined business processes. It is ideal for hosting Microsoft Office documents (doc, ppt, xls, etc. – don’t forget to add the “x” at the end of your files if you have Office ‘07). SharePoint tightly integrates with these file extensions and enables features like sequential edits, workflows, and refined document management (check-in/out function). These features make a traditional shared drive model look outmoded.

The platform also integrates with other Microsoft tools like Windows (Instant) Messenger and can supply presence awareness for those who are also logged-on to the network.

Simple web design and customization makes even the most junior SharePoint developer look like a wizard. For those who invest a fair amount of time to understand how the webpart system works, you can quickly deploy a blog, discussion board, or a survey. Your boss and coworkers will start referring to you as “Gandalf” when you can establish a team site within 15 minutes as opposed to 15 weeks.

Then There’s that Evil Thing . . .

An often overlooked issue with SharePoint is the hidden cost of an implementation. That hidden cost manifests itself in many ways. Let’s talk about the Microsoft marketing strategy . . .

Investing Small, Losing Big

If an organization/company purchases enterprise licenses for Microsoft Office, they will throw in the SharePoint software in for “free.” Along with that they may offer some light consulting services to assist with the implementation. As a CIO, you’re thinking, “Free collaboration software? Score! Maybe this will shut those ‘web-savvy’ customers up.” Unfortunately, by the time you complete the implementation and training, you learn too late that the platform doesn’t bend as easily as you may think. Some of the functions that you may want to suit your business needs will likely require the purchase of additional web parts. Its at this point where the Internet becomes your enemy. The number of vendors offering enhancements to SharePoint seems never ending. Users will come pounding on the CIO’s door to make SharePoint do things that it was never intended to do. If you do choose to install some of these apps, you have new licensing and upkeep costs for a wide variety of vendors.

Content Management and Critical Mass

Most collaborative environments thrive on the achievement of critical mass. In SharePoint, the opposite is true. The platform performs best when the collaborative ethos is well established, tight, and contained to a group of about 10 – 30. Why is that? The search features of SharePoint are not as robust as you may think. As evidenced by the rise of third party vendors around search, SharePoint’s search and discovery capabilities are seriously lacking. Files, upon which the environment is predicated, are not easily found. So the more people you have contributing content to the environment, the more difficult it is to find said content.

Making It Too Easy

While one of the greatest strengths of the environment is its ability to quickly deploy web parts to users, it is also its greatest hindrance. With just some light self-driven training, a user who is granted “Design” or “Owner” privileges can deploy any capability they desire. This is often a path to disaster because said “owners” deploy everything out-of-the-box regardless of the business need. This blog said it best:

First let me say that I think SharePoint is a fantastic idea . . . Have you ever heard the “KISS” theory? Keep it simple stupid. Well unfortunately nobody on the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server team seems to have heard about it. First off, let me say that SharePoint Portal Server is an awesome tool, in theory! However, it seems to have been designed by people that thought they were rocket scientists, and expected some massive adoption . . . Another basic rule in Microsoft has again royally broken, is the “Less is more” rule. Especially when you are dealing with non power users.

The end result is that users who you would like to attract to your site are immediately confused by all the functionality and walk away. It’s always easier to default to your existing business processes than try something new.

One of the things that is rather elegant about a WordPress or MediaWiki installation is that it requires users and developers to think about why and how each environment functions. That thought process surfaces important discussions between developers and users about the business rules that govern the placement, disposition, and processing of data.

It’s Still About Collaboration

Above all else, in my humble opinion (and other’s), SharePoint is not a collaborative environment. The value and Achilles’ heel of the platform is its security model. It is far too easy to restrict data from the prying eyes of others. If you are operating in an organization where data sharing (let alone collaboration) is not the norm, SharePoint does not improve this condition. If there is one thing I have learned in collaboration consulting, if you offer the average user two options of restricting or sharing their information, they will choose the most restrictive option.

The document-centric/list orientation of the environment also makes it difficult to process, analyze, or manipulate data. This document-centered view of information grounds an organization in a print and publication model that is quickly becoming irrelevant.

In summary, SharePoint installations result is pouring digital concrete down organizational silos. I understand Ian Morrish’s perspective that SharePoint does not create silos because there are ways to add authenticated users. With the greatest respect to Ian’s work, this is precisely the problem. Security, once again, is the determining factor for the sharing of information in SharePoint. As long as the information management model prefers access controls, then your chances for bumping into unknown sources of data and knowledge are greatly reduced. This is a highly important feature of truly collaborative environments.

Beyond Leadership “Buy-In”

I have grown tired of the term “leadership buy-in,” because what qualifies as “buy-in” is rarely that. Case and point: This video collected by Melcum about leadership’s willingness to allow a SharePoint implementation at ERM. The interviewees praise their leaders for allowing employees to participate in blogs and adopt an “employee-centric” model. These interviewees claim that without leadership support, the collaborative environment would not have been implemented. I have arrived at the conclusion that leadership “buy-in” is necessary, but not sufficient for transformative change within an organization.

I don’t work for ERM and I have never seen their implementation. So it is highly possible that their environment is vibrant and robust with leaders that swap truck-loads of knowledge regardless of company rank or position. It is equally possible that the leadership passively observes and is informed by the events that transpire within SharePoint.

More often than not, the later condition is more common in organizations. Leaders “permit” what occurs in the collaborative space, but they do not contribute to it.

Truly collaborative solutions have two immutable features: (1) transparency and (2) a merit-driven incentive structure. Such solutions are highly threatening to people and organizations that rely on opacity and a incentive structure that is not grounded in merit.

So what are the factors that shape a leader’s decision to participate or not participate in a transparent meritocracy?

Longevity vs. Achievement

Some organizations believe your ability to perform is overshadowed by your tenure in the organization. In the Federal government career system, this is certainly true. This is, of course, also balanced against a set of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) criteria built around each leadership position. Still, time-in-service is a strong determining factor. In addition, Federal managers are expected to take-on more job responsibilities for personnel reviews, special panels/reports, and other largely administrative tasks. The Federal manager is quickly taken away from the day-to-day activities of their employees and starts to filter office information to maintain a basic level of situational awareness.

When a leader is occupied with other tasks that are not germane to their mission, the decisions she/he has to make are based on less information and contain higher degrees of uncertainty. Collaborative solutions challenge the occupational longevity model by exposing the decision calculus of the careerist leader who only has incomplete pieces of data. A transparent information environment can make leaders look incompetent because they did not consult the wider body of institutional knowledge. Logically speaking, it is in the better interests of leaders to not adopt transparent technologies because they do not assist in improving the integrity of her/his decision calculus.

The Opacity Monopoly

Bosses are bosses because every organization, no matter how informal, needs a hierarchy to make decisions. As such, bosses need unfettered access to information. As a boss you have the right to know about personal leave schedules of every person in the office and you have the right to ask why a person is taking an “unusual” amount of leave. You have a right to know if there is an employee behaving “unprofessionally.” As a boss, you also have the responsibility to discipline people for their behavior. As a boss, you can mandate collaborative behaviors and information sharing regarding the office’s business interests. You can even enforce this perspective by hitting people in their wallets. However . . . that mandate does not flow both ways. Being the boss means that you have the authority to know all there is to know about an office, but you have no obligation to share that data.

Leaders have a information opacity monopoly for legitimate and illegitimate reasons. There is some data that is not appropriate to share in the workplace. For instance, it would be irresponsible for a boss to share the salaries of everyone in the office. Then there is other data that needs to be shared early and often. As an example: Changes in the strategic orientation of the company/organization. The rules are such that leaders derive a significant degree of power from the information they possess. These same leaders also have a responsibility to restrict some information from the workforce. And there is always the possibility of “spooking the herd” by disclosing information that is inappropriately timed. In the view of many leaders, their incentives to share information are laden with risk rather than benefit.

Legacy Business Processes as the Center of Gravity

Everett Rogers advanced a theory back in 1962 that there is a diffusion of innovation effect in any consumer marketplace. He argued that four categories of people surface along any innovation curve: Early adopters, pragmatists, conservatives, and laggards. The Web 2.0 community has incorporated this theory in many ways to explain why certain people gravitate toward one technology or another. I am skeptical of its applicability to organizations because I have seen the model proven both right and wrong.

In any event it is a helpful frame to understand why it is difficult to shift toward collaborative solutions. E-mail, as a common business practice and a technology, is a good example of a business process center of gravity. E-mail fails at doing many things especially collaboration.

Organizations use e-mail as a primary mode of communication. It was the electronic replacement of the old paper-based memo system. It is now the primary means of documenting important business decisions, deciding on where to have lunch, determining who’s bad-mouthing who, and sending around corporate spam newsletters. Leaders are only a reflection of this bias toward this electronic center of gravity.

When Opacity Collides with Collaboration

Jumping the Early Adopter Chasm

So what happens when an e-mail-centric culture installs collaborative technologies?

I can’t take credit for this analogy, but I think it is a perfect illustration of what happens when collaborative technologies are dragged-and-dropped into an organization. As Chris Rasmussen has explained, the Intelligence Community has installed a robust set of collaborative technologies, but still can’t seem to move past the information product-oriented nature of the culture. As a result, the community finds itself suffering from a perpetual early adopter phase. There are many possible reasons, but my guess is that one of the principal reasons is because the collaborative technologies available to leaders do not help them abandon their e-mail inboxes.

Its important to keep in mind that to leaders e-mail is safe, private, and warm. They trust the recipients of their e-mails will not inappropriately forward the messages to others. This imposes an interesting social pressure for recipients and inserts a high degree of ambiguity over how the information in the e-mail can be shared. In the case of the Intelligence Community, add on top the classified nature of the business. Now it becomes even more difficult to justify abandoning e-mail because it may compromise secrecy. In the meantime, the analysts who work intelligence problems continue to push for more openness through collaborative technologies in spite of the organizational bias toward static information products. Leaders may see the positives in changing the mode of delivering intelligence, but do not feel comfortable enough to make the switch. So the users of solutions like Intellipedia and A-Space find themselves flying over the early adopter chasm in the General Lee wondering what’s going to happen after the commercial break. In the meantime, I would guess that the pressures of intelligence production continue to push on leaders and the preference for e-mail overwhelms the usage of collaborative venues.

The specifics of the Intelligence Community’s problems aside, it appears to be a truism that if the organization is dependent on e-mail so are the leaders that run it. So from a structural/organizational stand-point, as long as leaders continue to rely on e-mails to send information to the workforce, then the collaborative posture of the organization will not improve.

It’s not enough that leaders “permit” collaborative environments, there has to be a wholesale change in the way business is conducted across the enterprise. Technology can do many things, but one thing it can’t do is make an organization flatter. Flatness requires a leadership element that actively seeks to restructure the organization around collaborative outcomes and processes. Change out the rules, not just the servers.

Hip Hop and Blogging

While I was listening to my Flo Rida Pandora station I was introduced to Kayne West.

In-cred-i-ble.

Things You Don’t Know About Me

I’ve been a hip hop fan since the early 90s. I grew up listening to Digital Underground, Public Enemy, Dre, and Cube.

What I love about music in general, and about hip hop/rap specifically, is that it has rich commentary about important topics pertinent to the human condition. Old Skool rap spoke to me because it made real critical societal issues like crime, racism, drugs, and the decay/neglect of the inner city. I was turned-off by recent trends in rap that appeal to the lowest common denominator in entertainment. bell hooks has written on the topic and expressed my concerns in ways I never could. Her interview with Cube for Spin Magazine (1994) is probably the best example of confronting a rap artist on the issues of misogyny and race.

Making Rap Respectable Again

Kayne West has brought me back to the genre in a big way. I first heard Graduation and I was instantly hooked. I bought everything in his catalog and loaded it to my iPod. The political messages he hits on makes me think about how we conceptualize our educational system, where our American values reside in our cultural psyche, the disruptive impact of money on youth, and the art of collaboration. Some of his music carries the stereotypical themes resident in rap culture and has some profanity. The difference between Kayne’s style and his colleagues is that his use of profanity is targeted at the exact emotion he seeks to illicit. In other words, his application of 4-letter words is not gratuitous or done haphazardly. I respect his style because it is deliberate and calculated.

And Where Does Blogging Fit In?

Kayne, like Dre, is also a producer who mixes original lyrics with beats from classic songs and links together unusual talents like Jamie Foxx. Gold Digger is a good example. Like a good blog, a good musical piece draws on the expertise, perspective, and talents of many contributors. Blogs that are self-referential have value. Blogs with exponential value connect multiple thoughts, themes, and content from a wide variety of sources. Good songs, like good blogs, have a perspective on an issue. Whether that issue is as unique as love or as pressing as inner city crime, the artist’s perspective on the issue is what gets consumers to come back.

Good hip hop songs also feature artists of notable skill (but not necessarily of any notability) to foster the future talent of the industry. Digital Underground, for instance, took Tupac Shakur under their collective wing because they recognized raw talent in their back-up dancer. Bloggers in many ways have the same responsibility to foster the future talent of the industry. Good blogs also feature up-and-coming talents or perspectives from other writers and seek to build on the collective knowledge base of the topic. This is something that separates the popular press from the blog-o-sphere. Knowledge sharing in the press occurs only when it suits the needs of the journalists involved. Bloggers are knowledge consumers, but they often do not need to worry about the WIIFM factor.

I have come to the realization that blogging is not an individualized activity. It is a collaborative activity because it draws on the collective knowledge and perspectives of many people. Without the crowd, blogging would be neither rewarding nor informative.

So while performing a musical piece for your own entertainment may be personally fulfilling; a large audience makes a big difference.

(Stadium status . . . )

Things I Learned Sitting in the NICU

"Ah, I see you have the machine that goes "PING!"

I first published this blog internally at Deloitte. I read Andy McAfee’s recent blog and I thought I should re-host it publicly.

On 06 October (2008), my wife gave birth to our daughter; Gabrielle. Although our daughter is relatively healthy, she contracted a virus called Group B Strep. It is a common virus contracted in the womb and about 25% of people carry it in adulthood. It only affects people in their early and later stages of life. In order to overcome the infection, she needed to be treated in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). So here I am, writing this blog inside of the unit.

This is both a very happy and very sad place. The nurses that run the place are top notch. The medical equipment and facilities are state of the art and clean (I think the even have the machine that goes “PING!”). Everyone is very happy and friendly from the cafeteria staff up through the on-call doctors.

The NICU is also a depressing place for a variety of reasons. Only parents and no more than 2 guests are permitted in the NICU during visiting hours. There is an additional constraint which only permits 3 total people to visit a patient in the NICU. This means that the participatory conditions are set-up in such a way that it discourages visitation. The NICU is also located on a separate floor from the hospital’s rooms for new mothers. New moms need to be carted around in wheelchairs and are not permitted to undergo any strenuous activities. In short, parents have multiple disincentives to visit the NICU. The result is that very few parents visit their children when their treatment is most desperate.

In my daughter’s room there are approximately 10 babies at varying stages of health. 2 of those babies are visited everyday. I’ve seen parents and visitors for 3 other babies at least once. All the rest (~50%) have never been visited. On either side of my daughter are 2 kids that each probably weigh less than a pound. Both are in incubators and have multiple tubes and wires protruding from their tiny bodies. Neither has been visited. It is profoundly sad to see children who are so sick to only be cared for by paid strangers.

Those strangers, by the way, are probably the most collaborative team I’ve seen. The NICU has put in a series of policies and procedures which ensure continuity between shifts, reliable and complete knowledge capture, and an “at ease” crisis posture.

There are two 12 hour shifts per day which switch-off at 6:30 each meridian. Visitation is suspended for one hour and each shift hands-off their patients. Each nurse has no more than three babies. Patients that require more constant care get a dedicated nurse and in some cases more than one nurse. During the shift change, the departing nurse gives an overview of what has transpired over the course of the shift. This session is done in two parts. The first is a face-to-face interaction where issues that do not require charting are discussed. Issues like:

How involved are the parents?

What is the demeanor of the family? Are they under extraordinary stress? Are they prone to violent behavior?

What is the experience level of the parents? Is this there first child? Second?

What is the overall bedside manner strategy?

The second part moves to the computerized charting system. Every medical professional in the hospital is permitted to edit and contribute to any patient’s chart. Each change is logged and attached to the person’s log-on. The departing nurse scrolls through the electronic chart and goes over the details of medications administered, feedings, biological purges, the doctor’s treatment plan, and the target discharge date. When it’s all said and done the nurses know more about the patient than the doctor.

These computer terminals, by the way, are everywhere. In every hospital room with a bed, in the hallways, and by each baby’s bedside in the NICU. There was even a terminal in my wife’s labor and delivery room. The nurse was recording her medical history and Gabrielle’s in real time. This was an important capability when the NICU needed advanced warning to prep the room for her arrival and order medication from the hospital’s pharmacy.

As I indicated some of these babies are really sick. There were a few with sleep apnea on my daughter’s unit. Others have heart problems or are under constant threat of major organ failure. So how does the unit handle these issues? Aside from monitoring the heck out of and attaching an alarm to everything on these little ones, there is an ebb and flow in the unit where responsibility is shared between all the nurses. When a patient to an assigned nurse falls into trouble, that nurse is responsible to act. When that nurse is involved with another patient, his/her cohorts step-in to help. Unlike what you might expect, these nurses walk-up so coolly and calmly to identify the trouble, solve the problem, and stabilize the patient. Panic in these situations helps no one. Those same cohorts will also supply assistance when they have spare cycles by changing diapers, doing feedings, drawing blood, or performing some other routine action. In other words, while they are part of the same fight, they work individually and like a team.

Perhaps most striking aspect of all of this is that the stakes are extremely high. This is a no kidding life or death environment. Even though the stakes are so high, the medical staff defaults to collaboration. This is yet another example of where collaboration does more good than harm. So as Andy so well stated in his title, its time to “stop doing harm” and default to a collaborative medical model a

Working in “The Box”

I had a recent professional experience that I wanted to share that revolved around data-sharing and collaboration.

As a person who works and lives in public, my digital exhaust is rather pervasive across the Internet. I made a deliberate decision to pursue a public persona and as a result it is my default working mode. [Real shocker coming up here, folks] Not everyone is inclined to work in public. Why people feel that way is a topic for another blog.

So what happens when people who work in public encounter colleagues who work in “The Box?”

What is “The Box?”

To me “The Box,” which often comes in the color of black, is the deliberate decision of a person to work on a computer, but do not choose to leverage social software solutions. These folks are comfortable with their own hard drive. The words “shared drive” prompt curious looks and head scratching. Having a WiFi connection or wireless card is really not a priority for them. They might use e-mail, but they hate it or find it annoying. It’s very warm in “the box” because errors and problems are under the control of the person who lives there. “The box” is safe, clean, and familiar. There’s a Lazy Boy in the corner too.

People who like “the box” are hostile to living outside of the box.

Living in “The Open”

So, I live outside of “the box.” You say wiki? I’ll rattle-off my current edit count and tell you about the pages I watch. You say blog? I have 5! (only this one is public) You say social bookmarking? (You get the point) So unlike my colleague in “the box”, I am hostile to my own hard drive or a shared drive. I think we can always do better than SharePoint for a collaboration solution. If you start talking to me about walling-off data, I’ll immediately question that motive. If you don’t have a wireless connection at your restaurant, I’ll say something to the management. The only thing that ties me to my friend in “the box” is our hatred of e-mail. I’ll use Twitter, Yammer, IM, or a wiki page before I’ll write an e-mail. Living in “the open” is cold, wet, and dirty with data. The furniture hurts your back sometimes, but we’ve got iPods.

Boxing

So I was approached by a person who lives in “the box” and questioned about what I was working on. I told them what I was doing and this led to a conversation about where the work was located. This “boxer” was concerned that I was trying to hide data from them. I pointed this person to my work on the client’s wiki and blog. This has now set the stage for a battle royale between those in “the box” and those outside. My colleague does not find value in how I work and I do not find value in how s/he works.

This typically leads to a requests like, “Can you send that to me in an e-mail?” Now we are back to a communication device that we both detest, but is within the comfort zone of the person in “the box.” This is not a request I am inclined to fulfill because it just means more work for me. My data is already public. Why do I need to cater to this person’s stubbornness?

There’s a flipside to that coin. Why am I being so stubborn? You might say, “Brian, you just as easily could work the way your colleague is.”

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I don’t work that way because I know that my approach delivers more value than living in “the box.”

Personally speaking, I am able to point toward my own digital exhaust when others question what I have been working on. I can also create bodies of knowledge and information and point people to them with a few simple search terms rather than sending (and resending) around attachments in e-mails. I can go on vacation and not worry about people picking up my work where I left it. I know more people that I can leverage to get our collective work done because I connect with them all the time. The furniture may hurt, but work is more fun and I don’t fall asleep in the Lazy Boy.

Creating Middle Ground

There is a middle ground here, but it’s not easy. You have to be a leader for your colleague, even when that colleague may be your superior. You have to be willing to take the time to explain your viewpoint, process decisions, and demonstrate how it makes your work better and/or faster. Patience is a virtue. You will need to be patient with your colleague because they will be introduced to this mode of work for the first time. A couple of closing thoughts:

Be prepared for your audience to not accept your mode of work. Remember “The Box” is cozy, safe, and warm. Your world may be very scary or non-sensical to your colleague. Perhaps they don’t need to accept your worldview, but you do need to ensure that they do not take actions to prevent you from working in this way. This is especially true if your colleague is your supervisor.

Be prepared to compromise and, perhaps, do double work. The hard truth is those who use Enterprise 2.0 solutions are in the minority. We still are under the common theology of PCs, Microsoft, and thick-client installations. You may have to live in your web-enabled world and move data between the two environments.

Keep at it! A knowledge worker is (or at least should be) expected to use these tools. We are breeding a new leadership workforce which promotes transparency. You may not be able to win-over the digital troglodytes, but you should set the example.

Facts Are Stubborn Things

My wife and I have been watching and re-watching the John Adams HBO series on DVD. Somewhere in the bowels of Netflix, a video jockey continues to wonder why the Drake household pays $25 a month for a set of DVDs that can be purchased for $30. The series has been incredibly inspirational to me for a variety of reasons, but principally among them is contained in the first disk of the series. John Adams is called upon to defend a collection of British soldiers who fire into a crowd. This became known as the “Boston Massacre.” Adams successfully defends the soldiers based on eye-witness accounts, evidence collected at the scene, and other indisputable facets of the situation. In his closing statement, Adams speaks frankly to what is likely a highly biased jury stating,

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

What struck me was the notion that facts and evidence are indisputable, immutable conditions that construct our interpretation of the world.

Facts are stubborn things. When faced with facts and evidence it becomes difficult for others to argue biased points of view. There may be disagreements about particular modes of evidence such as unrecorded conversations, but the existence of activity (or the meta-data) may be proof enough.

The Power of Honest Collaboration

At Deloitte, we leverage an internal wiki called D-Wiki. When our deployment team was developing the rules that would govern the environment, one of the pillars I lobbied heavily for was the principle of “honesty.” At the time, this was strange to many of my colleagues for me to feel so strongly about. Drawing my past client experience, I knew that people lie for lots of reasons and not all of them bad. Some people do not want to be brutal with their feedback, some people want to protect the equities of their project, and others are not informed of the full facts so they insert their own. Well, facts are stubborn things. The exposure of the truth in highly complex situations requires a deliberate focus on participant honesty and integrity. We crowd source our knowledge creation because it brings facts, data, and evidence to bear on a problem and improves our service delivery to our clients.

But People Still Lie . . .

One interesting thing about crowd-sourcing as a integrity/honesty building technique is that we still see participants “spin” information. The traditional crowd-sourcing theory is that people care about what they write or say and try to protect their digital reputations. This is largely true and has been proven in actual case studies. What is interesting to me is that there are still people that think they can be deceptive or tell half-truths in a transparent environment. The beauty of crowd-sourcing is its self-correcting nature. Lies or inaccuracies are exposed quickly and can be redressed with equal measures of speed.

Even in a digital age with mountains of data and mixed motives it seems that Adams’ got it right way back in 1772.