Bill's Notebook

As I wrote in a earlier posting, I coined the term collaborgagement while attending a session at Content.gov. John Newton (Alfresco’s CTO) commented that the next generation of enterprise IT tools need to serve the middle of the enterprise – the domain of the knowledge workers. These tools need to support collaboration, knowledge management, and just-in-time sharing of expertise. Even so, collaboration/knowledge management software doesn’t automatically empower knowledge workers. There has to be more than just new tools.

Collaboration is important but it is not sufficient. Nicholas Charney noted this in a great posting where he questioned the value of collaboration as it was currently practiced in organizations. I commented that a tangible product from the collaboration would make the process better but I am becoming more convinced that even that is not enough. What is needed is something that would continue the benefits of collaboration between the collaboration sessions. A way of engaging the person’s thoughts and focusing those thoughts on the collaboration work even when the person is working alone. A process that I call collaborgagement. Not just a combination of collaboration and engagement but a process that is synergistic.

The foundation of collaborgagement is the mental model. The mental model has been variously defined by different fields but the consensus seems to be that mental models are “deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action” (Wind and Crook, 2005). Individuals have mental models but so do teams and departments. The purpose of the mental model is to make sense of various aspects of our lives including our work. Mental models take a great deal of effort to build but the benefit is, that once built, they reduce our thinking load.

For example, researchers have found that expert chess players actually think less than novice chess players because the expert chess player can focus on several pieces at once and perceive patterns of board arrangements. The novice chess player has to focus on separate pieces and build the pattern from the individual pieces. The expert chess player has a library of mental models they can consult that makes them better players because they can “look up” the answer to a chess problem while a novice is still calculating the problem.

The same process can be seen in everyday life. Think of how you learned to drive. Remember all the steps you had to master to start the car, put it in drive, and begin your journey. Repetition and observation helped you build a mental model so that driving almost becomes an automatic process requiring very little conscious thinking.

The challenge is that we rely on our mental models so much that we strenuously resist changing or discarding our existing models. This goes for team mental models as well as individual mental models. But our changing world requires that we change our mental models or they quickly lose their benefit and can even harm us in the new realities we face. We need a process of engaging peoples’ attention at the level of their mental models and then collaborate together to help explore current mental models and modify or even replace these mental models on an individual and team level. This is the purpose of collaborgagement.

There are probably several methods for examining current mental models and altering them but I like the process Wind and Crook (2005) outline in their book The Power of Impossible Thinking:

1. Understand the power and limits of mental models.
2. Test the relevance of your mental models against the changing environment, generate new models and develop an integrated portfolio of models.
3. Overcome inhibitors to change by reshaping infrastructure and the thinking of others.
4. Transform your world by acting quickly upon the new models, continuously experimenting and applying a process for assessing and strengthening your models. (p. xxiv)

With Wind and Crook’s (2005) process in mind this is how collaborgagment would work:

1. Before a team meeting the individual members examine their existing mental models that relate to the topic of the meeting. The team member may want to blog, mind map, or similar tool to help him or her to surface the mental models and produce it in a tangible form.
2. During the team meeting the individual members display their mental models. Then the team works together to surface the team mental models in a tangible form.
3. The team then examines the new reality of the topic and lists the characteristics. The goal of this phase is to come to a consensus about the new reality.
4. After a consensus has been reached, the team compares the current team mental model to the new reality. Does the team mental model need revising or is a completely new team mental model needed? The team works to determine the revisions or constructs the new mental model.
5. After the team meeting the individual members go on their own to reflect on the consensus about the new reality and how their current mental models compare to the new reality. The member then revises their existing mental models or constructs new mental models that reflect both the new reality and the team mental model.

What is important about this process is that it engages people on a deeper level than what usually happens in change efforts. I have been to plenty of meetings where great ideas and energy has been generated but it quickly dissipates once the meeting is over. For deep and sustainable change to happen you have to engage people at a fundamental level and produce collaboration that carries on ever after the meeting is over. I believe that starting at the mental model level is the best way to produce lasting transformative change.

Reference:
Wind, Y., & Crook, C. (2005). The power of impossible thinking: Transform the business of your life and the life of your business. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing.

Previous Posts on Collaboration and Engagement:
Without Engagement Gov 2.0 Will Fail
The Goal of Collaboration: Navigating the Network of Idea Spaces

I attended the Content.gov seminar in DC today. The seminar was hosted by Alfresco and of course revolved around how this open-source enterprise content management tool can improve content management for government agencies. I’ve experimented with it a bit and think it is a good product.

What I took away from the conference was some ideas from Alfresco’s CTO, John Newton. He argues that enterprise IT has essentially been on hold since 2000 while consumer IT (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) has been on fire all throughout the first decade of the 21st century. Employees are demanding enterprise versions of what they use in their daily lives to connect and collaborate with their families. Not an original thought but a good summary of what is about to hit enterprise IT.

What was original and started me thinking was his later point that enterprise IT needs to build systems of engagement. That is, applications that focuses on the middle of the enterprise where the knowledge workers are. He states that we don’t need anymore applications for the frontline workers nor the top management because their needs are already met. I agree with the point about the top management but I am still not convinced about leaving out the frontline workers.

I do fully agree that the people in the middle of the enterprise do need better tools from enterprise IT. Tools that incorporate collaboration, knowledge sharing, and a whole host of activities under a new umbrella term that I just coined – collabogagement. A quick Google search shows that no one has used this term so I claim to be the first. In a future posting I will try to define it.

I started my government career as a street-level bureaucrat. In the summer of 1990 I was a paralegal intern for the Richmond, Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy. This was a public defenders office that covered four counties and my job was to interview the clients that had been arrested and jailed. I would spend the morning in the jail interviewing clients and the afternoons writing up reports and doing legal research. Even for a small college town we were quite busy. The average caseload for our attorneys was between 200 to 250 cases a year. It was this experience that led to my lifelong interest in street-level bureaucracies (SLB).

What makes a SLB different from other government agencies is that SLBs have immediate and direct contact with the public while most employees in other agencies deal almost exclusively with other government employees. SLBs are where policy is realized and implemented. The bulk of government employment are street-level bureaucrats such as police officers, teachers, social workers, and so on. As Michael Lipsky observed these government employees are charged with implementing and administering an ever-increasing set of policies and laws to an ever-growing population while facing shrinking budgets and resources. It may not be as bad as being consigned to Hades and tasked with eternally rolling a boulder up a hill but there are some days that it is close.

Street-level bureaucrats (SLB) have devised a number of methods to cope with their job as Jeffrey Prottas details in his book People-Processing. The SLB picks the rules that they will follow because to follow every rule that comes down would immobilize the agency. The SLB trains the citizens it meets into becoming good clients who make life easier for the SLB by being compliant and not making extra work. The biggest advantage that the SLB has is their superior knowledge of the rules and processes through which the SLB can punish or reward clients by withholding or supplying information. Even though the SLB is required to exercise as little discretion as possible in fulfilling the agency’s objectives, they manage to carve out a good deal of autonomy.

The studies that established the characteristics of the street-level bureaucrats (SLB) and their practices were done in the late 60s and throughout the 70s. You will see an occasional paper on SLBs but nothing yet as to the impact of social networking technologies and how they affect the work and practices of the SLB. I think that social networking will have a profound impact on SLBs because it will destroy the information advantage SLBs have while better performance measurement tools will reduce the autonomy of SLBs.

Let’s discuss the performance management tools first. When dashboard cameras were installed in police cars the police officer’s actions in the field were now more easily observed and monitored by their managers back at the station. Dashboard cameras were first resisted by police officers but then they realized that this was objective proof of why they had to deal with someone the way they did and now most police officers welcome the scrutiny. Another related technology, GPS “tattlers” that record the routes taken by public service workers is not so well accepted but has helped cut down on abuse by some workers.

But where the most profound impact of the social networking technologies is in erasing the information advantage the street-level bureaucrat has over clients. Just think of how car buying, medicine, law, and so many other areas have been influenced when consumers can go to a website and research the history of a car, the symptoms of a disease, or create their own will with freely-available information and the advice of a community who had similar experiences. There is a large market out there for the person who writes a Dummies guide to the local welfare office or releases an app to help a citizen negotiate the process of applying for aid. I remember how empowered I felt when I first gained online access to my bank account and could see the same information the bank clerk saw as we spoke on the phone. The SLBs will lose a great deal of discretion when faced with a group of empowered clients who know the process and their rights even better than the SLB.

But these same social networking technologies can greatly benefit the SLB as well. A large part of the work is screening the client which could be done through an automated process thus freeing the SLB to deal with the exceptional cases (you can see this already in some jurisdictions). Another benefit is for SLBs to form online communities where they can receive guidance from their peers at their desk ans while working with clients. I also believe that the performance management tools will provide an objective view of the burdens SLBs work under and may discourage management to stop producing so many rules and erasing existing rules. We will not know the full impact of the new social technologies on the street-level bureaucracies for several years as the innovations diffuse through the agencies but I am hopeful the impact will create a better future for both Client 2.0 and SLB 2.0.

References:

Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Prottas, J.M. (1979). People-processing: The street-level bureaucrat in public service bureaucracies. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

I succumbed to the hype and joined Quora last week. Two weeks before that I joined Academia which is a social networking site for academics. Friday night I joined Eegoes because they promised to help me organize my rapidly-expanding universe of social networking sites. I had a great time building profiles, looking for people to follow (like Stephen Hawkings!), and registering my interests (game theory and the Three Stooges). I post daily on FaceBook, participate in LinkedIn discussions, and haunt the GovLoop site at least an hour a day. Add in my Twitter activity and I put in a significant amount of time and effort creating content and interacting with others.

It was from Twitter that I came upon this posting from Derek Christensen that compared Google’s latest business efforts to Tom Sawyer’s scam to get his friends to whitewash a fence for him. As Mr. Christensen points out, the key is the packaging of the onerous task into an activity that people are fighting to do. You can go swimming anytime but it’s not everyday you can WHITEWASH A FENCE! Or answer questions from other people! Or share your academic papers with other academics so easily! Thanks to my efforts and the efforts of others we are helping to make Mark Zuckerberg a very, very rich man by contributing thousands of free hours of labor to make the FaceBook community valuable to other users who in turn contribute even more free labor.

I helped make FourSquare a major success and all I got was this lousy badge?

No, I am not that cynical. I benefit a great deal from the social networks. FaceBook allows me to keep in touch with friends on a daily basis when before I would occasionally call or only see them at special occasions. Twitter is a great resource for the newest stuff in my fields and GovLoop has given me a great platform to showcase my work and to connect with a great group of professionals. My Social Return on Investment (ROI) has been much better in the last three years than at any other time in my career. I am certain others have seen similar benefits from being on social networks.

But nothing fails quite like success. 2011 looks to be the year of the social networks as more organizations and entrepreneurs compete to build the next FaceBook/FourSquare/Twitter/LinkedIn. Look at the recent hype surrounding Quora. This will be a common event all through 2011 because the barriers to entry are so low and the potential payoff is so high. In a nice weekend afternoon and with a premium account on Ning I can build a competitor to GovLoop (BillLoop?). A three-day weekend, a six-pack of Five-Hour Energy, and a hosted Drupal account and I have a very sophisticated social networking site. Just add a critical mass of members and I will soon have a movie made about me.

Why does this matter to Gov 2.0? Because 2011 will also be the year of engagement fatigue. It will seem like everyone from your local grocery to your alma mater wants you to put a profile on their site and give daily status updates while constantly asking you your opinion on a quick survey. According to neuroscience findings, 150 is the maximum number of social contacts our brains can comfortably handle. Many people have quickly surpassed that number in their online social networking contact lists. By necessity people will start scaling back so expect to see major pruning as people determine just who are the most important members of their personal networks. And woe to the social network where people have just discovered they were tricked into helping the network owner into building a valuable body of knowledge that only the network owner will profit from.

So, how do you tell if you are benefiting from a social network or just whitewashing someone’s virtual fence?

1. What’s In It For Me? Put a dollar value on your time and treat your social networking time like an investment. Is being part of this network going to benefit me by keeping in touch with friends and family? Is it going to help me build a reputation in my field? Can I make a list of at least five ways I personally benefit from being a member?
2. How Much Can I Personalize the Experience? Can I form subgroups of interests? Can I specify who I will interact with? Can I determine the level of interaction I want and not be harassed to interact more?
3. Do I Have Ownership of My Work? At various times, FaceBook and Second Life tried to alter the user agreement so that they and not the user owned the work that was contributed to their respective sites. If you are in a social networking site that tries to claim ownership of your original work and/or does not allow easy exporting of your work, then you don’t want to be a member of that site.
4. Is the Site Owned by the Community? As the site grows has the social network owner ceded more and more of decision making to the community? Is there a diversity of opinion on the site? Is it easy to question and affect decisions about community operations? Is there a formal council of members that rotates membership on a regular basis?

In 2011, I expect to see the rise of many copycat social networking sites as more people try to gain in this emerging market. There will be many beneficial sites but I fear a greater number of social-fencepainting sites will also arise. The challenge for Gov 2.0 citizen engagement efforts is to first be heard above the din of all the new sites and then to survive the coming backlash from the collapse of many of these new social networking sites. The American people are great advocates for collective action but only if the benefits are clearly visible and evenly shared.

As the first decade of the 21st Century ends, I hope that the economic events of the last thirty-five years finally loosen the hold that neoclassical economics has on public policy.  It is widely recognized that the accepted economic models that governments use to shape policy are just not empirically valid.  Today’s economies are vastly different from the industrial revolution economies that shaped neoclassical economic theory.  Yet, these theories are the basis for setting interest rates, regulating the stock market, determining the level of environmental protection, almost every aspect of government regulation (Smith 2010, p. 65).  It is time to modernize the economic theories that are used to guide government and economic policies.

The case against neoclassical economics has been growing in recent years.  As Yves Smith (2010) details in her book:
1)  Economics is not a real science because it is difficult to do the empirical evidence to validate the models economist develop from their assumptions (pp. 20-21).
2)  Many of the core assumptions of neoclassicism (people are totally rational, have complete information, only act to maximize utility, etc.) have been disproved by experiments in behavioral economics (pp. 94-97).
3)  Despite the fact that they are working with faulty assumptions, economists claim that the implications derived from the assumptions are still valid because they are good approximations of reality (p. 41 and pp. 47-48).
4)  Hard sciences also use simplified models to explain phenomena but the crucial difference is that economists add unrealistic properties to validate their models.  For example, economists add the property of perfect information to make supply and demand models work (pp. 48-49).

Some economists counter by admitting that neoclassical economics has these problems but the cure is to do more empirical research.  But with more empirical research, the neoclassical assumptions are giving way to a new economic theory – complexity economics.

Eric Beinhocker (2007) surveys the rise of complexity economics in which researchers apply complexity and network theory concepts to economic activities.  The main advantage of complexity economics is that its assumptions can be empirically validated and that its findings apply to modern economic phenomena.  Thus, this is a better basis upon which to base policy decisions.

Beinhocker’s  (2007) core argument is easy to understand.  Businesses use a mixture (business plan) of physical technologies and social technologies to compete with other businesses.  The businesses that have more fit business plans out-compete businesses with less-fit business plans.  Based on this model Beinhocker details several implications for policy makers:
1)  The role of markets is to process the immense amount of information from buyers and sellers into the most coordinated and effective manner while also determining how fit a business is.  Thus free and open markets must be maintained by regulations that do not impede the flow of information available to all parties (p. 423).
2)  Government’s role is to provide and preserve the vast array of social technologies that make it possible for businesses and markets to exist.  Social technologies such as contract law, antitrust enforcement, and securities regulation (p. 425).  Therefore, government plays an important role in shaping the fitness determination role of markets (pp. 426-427).
3)  Behavioral economics indicates what kind of social programs will be more readily accepted and politically-supported.  People will support aid programs that have strong reciprocity – programs designed to help people become functionally independent (pp. 418-421).
4)  Countries that score higher on measures of societal trust also have higher economic performance than countries with lower societal trust scores (pp. 432-433).  Thus, an important role for American government is to build up social capital in the U.S. (pp. 439-440).

As the above demonstrates, government has a vital role in preserving and strengthening the U.S. economy.  The argument of neoclassical economics that government should have little or no role in market economies is a false one and has led to extreme reactions from the Left and the Right.  With a clearer understanding of government’s actual role in the U.S. economy policy makers can craft effective policies that preserve the best features of the market system while building up the necessary social capital to strengthen the economy and serve the U.S. people.  We just need to move beyond the false answers given by neoclassical economics to the insights of complexity economics.

References:
Beinhocker, E.D. (2007). The origin of wealth: The radical remaking of economics and what it means for business and society. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.

Smith, Y. (2010). Econned: How unenlightened self interest undermined democracy and corrupted capitialism. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Further Reading:
Berreby, D. (2005). Us & Them: The science of identity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Cassidy, J. (2009). How markets fail: The logic of economic calamities. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Lehrer, J. (2009). How we decide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Pfaff, D.W. (2007). The neuroscience of fair play: Why we usually follow the golden rule. New York: Dana Press.

Schelling, T.C. (2006). Micromotives and macrobehaviors. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Shermer, M. (2008). The mind of the market: Compassionate apes, competitive humans, and other tales from evolutionary economics. New York: Times Books.

Stiglitz, J.E. (2010). Freefall: America, free markets, and the sinking of the world economy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Thaler, R.H., & Sunstein, C.R. (2009). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New York: Penguin Books.

Ubel, P.A. (2009). Free-market madness: Why human nature is at odds with economics – and why it matters. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.