Bill's Notebook

You ever wonder about the first person who bought a fax machine? The first person to buy a cell phone? How about the first person who set up an email account? These early pioneers must have had some difficulty in demonstrating the benefits of these these technologies because of the very small base of users. It wasn’t until a critical mass of users adopted the technologies that the fax, cellphone, email, and other networked technologies demonstrated their true value. This is the network effect – the more people that using a networked technology makes it more valuable.

I remember when I set up my Commodore 64 with a 300 baud modem to connect to my high school friend across the small town of Winchester, Kentucky so that we could type text messages to each other. I spent an entire weekend typing in machine code from RUN Magazine to create a bulletin board system (BBS). My parents didn’t understand why I went to all this trouble when I could have just called Steve, mailed him a letter, or just see him at school the next day. Today, billions of texts and tweets are sent daily all thanks to the network effect.

The Internet has fundamentally changed our world because it has helped us connect on a level never seen before in human history. I don’t believe we can go back to a time before we had the Internet because so much of our current economic and societal systems depend on this connectivity. And, according to William Davidow, we are realizing new dangers as we go from highly-connected to overconnected.

Davidow argues that as complex dynamic systems (such as economies) become more and more connected they shift from stability to instability. There is a cultural lag as organizations and societies cultural practices lag behind technological advances. Institutions begin to falter because they are not flexible enough to keep up with the rapid changes and increasing demands of more and more connections. We enter a vulnerability sequence as positive feedback from the connections lead to more specialization and network lock-ins.

Davidow gives numerous examples of the dangers of overconnection such as Three-Mile Island, the decline of the American steel industry, and the 2008 mortgage meltdown. His best example is a two-chapter examination of how Iceland’s attempt to be an Internet banking superpower led to the collapse of the Iceland economy and government. Here we can see how positive feedback driven by the Internet led to riskier investments by Iceland banks and citizens that made them very vulnerable to an external event – the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Thanks to a chain of connections from New York to London to Paris and so on, the ripple effects from Lehman Brothers collapse were magnified so that the ripple became a tsunami that led to a massive devaluation of Iceland’s currency.

That is the secondary danger of overconnection – the magnification of the effects of small events into greater dangers. You may have heard of the black swan theory in which Nassim Taleb describes events that are so highly improbable that they are hard to foresee but can have significant impact when they occur. Thanks to overconnection we are subject to more black swan events that have their effects magnified by the positive feedback of overconnections.

So what does this mean for government agencies? As agencies rush to increase social networking inside and outside of their organizations they are in danger of becoming overconnected. Can the agency’s culture deal with the increasing demands of the connections? Is the agency flexible enough to deal with the unexpected events that will come being more open to the world? Will the management even realize when a black swan event has occurred?

To combat the effects of overconnection Davidow describes three things organizations must do:

1. Provide buffers to mitigate the increasing positive feedback.
2. Develop more robust systems that can better handle system accidents.
3. Restructure organizations to be more effective and adaptable.

As we embrace Open Government we must realize that increasing transparency, openness, and collaboration has great benefits but can also lead to major unintended consequences. We need to strike that delicate balance between highly-connected and overconnected by moving at a pace where we transform agencies into more effective and adaptable organizations without going into a vulnerability sequence.

Reference:
Davidow, W.H. (2011). Overconnected: The promise and threat of the Internet. Harrison, NY: Delphinium Books.

The recent media frenzy over the latest social media offerings introduced at SXSW last week demonstrates that collaboration is one of the app themes for 2011. This isn’t the first time collaboration software has been the “next big thing’” I remember back in the early 90′s when computer-supported work applications were all the rage (remember when “Lotus Notes” was first rolled out). Organizations threw a lot of money and resources at early collaboration systems but many were failures from the beginning.

The failure of many early collaboration systems to catch on was perplexing because software packages for individuals and organizations were doing well. What was it about developing software for groups that made it so different from developing software for individuals and organizations?

In 1994, Dr. Grudin (a computer scientist from the University of California) published an article that answered that question with the simple observation that groups were just different from individuals and organizations. How they are different is explained in his eight challenges for developers:

1. Who Does the Work and Who Gets the Benefits. Ideally the labor in operating and maintaining the groupware application must be roughly equal among the group members. In reality this is rarely the case. Consider a project management application where the team members are required to update it regularly with progress reports, performance data, and other data. A good deal of the team member’s team is compiling information and feeding the system while the project manager just has to spend a minimal amount of time reading reports the system generates. The team member sees only a burden from the software and soon starts to avoid doing this extra work which leads to poor reports causing the Project Manager to quit relying on the system for information. Soon, no one is using software.
2. Critical Mass of Users. The collaboration software field is filled with a number of different platforms for collaboration. Many offer similar features and each has its enthusiastic community of supporters. In large government agencies you can see several collaboration systems in various pockets of the organization that don’t communicate outside of their pocket. Ironically the systems that exist to promote collaboration often end up promoting organizational silos as the various groups argue that their system is the best solution.
3. Social, Political, and Motivational Factors. Dr. Grudin gives a great example of this challenge when he describes the failure of meeting management software. It assigned meeting rooms based on priority but quickly became useless because no one wanted to admit that their meeting was anything but “high priority.” As Dr. Grudin explains, collaboration software can only model a rational workplace but actual workplaces are much more complex due to organizational culture.
4. Exception Handling. We rarely work the exact way that is described in our work processes. Collaboration software built only based on the documented office procedures is seen as too rigid and not able to handle the flexibility required frequently at work. Just think of how often you don’t have a typical day at work and have to improvise a work solution. Now, imagine trying to program that into software.
5. Decreasing the Communication and Coordination Load. Organizations are designed to reduce the amount of communication and coordination needed to do the job. How many times have you said that you could get more done if you were not interrupted so often? Of these interruptions, how many were due to email, phone calls, a colleague stopping by to talk, etc.? Sometimes you can over-collaborate and this often is the result of poorly-designed groupware.
6. Hard to Evaluate Groupware. It is difficult to test groupware because the group dynamics are so hard to replicate. It can take several weeks of careful observation to fully understood how a group works and software designers just don’t have the time or expertise to fully evaluate how their software will aid in collaboration. Often the groupware vendor blames this on poor user training and will continue the same type of software with better tutorials and help aids but never realizing that the fundamental problem is that people just don’t like collaborating the way the system is forcing them to collaborate.
7. Intuitive Decision Making. Because of the nature of our work we often have to make decisions based on little evidence and thus we rely heavily on our intuition. Groupware applications rarely support intuitive decision making but rather force users to input great amounts of data so that a fully-reasoned decision can be made. Often we do not have all of the data and a decision must be made quickly so we abandon the groupware application to use a simple spreadsheet or other individual application to support our intuition.
8. Managing Acceptance of the Groupware. Too often I have seen a collaboration solution launched where the users are expected to adapt themselves to how the software works rather than the software adapting to the way the group works. There is a particular system at my work which is universally despised because it practically handcuffs a group of users to a cumbersome and protracted painful process. I’ve only used the system once but that was enough for me to avoid ever having even to click on the program icon.

Despite these principles being over sixteen-years old I still see the same mistakes being repeated in today’s Web 2.0 collaboration tools. I also see where companies have put these principles into practice and have made great collaboration software that has endured and grown in popularity. I fully suspect that Google engineers must have memorized these principles when they developed their Google Docs system. You can also see these principles at work in the various products from 37Signals and Zoho.

I leave a final exercise for the reader: how many of these principles does SharePoint violate (if any)? Or does SharePoint violate new principles of collaboration software?

Reference:

Grudin, J. (1994). Groupware and Social Dynamics: Eight Challenges for Developers. Retrieved at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/jgrudin/past/papers/cacm94/cacm94.html.

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.

In the last twenty years, I’ve probably read hundreds of books and articles on organizational change. My dissertation was a case study of a major organizational change. In all that time and all that I read, I found very little that dealt with how to best communicate a vision for change. The advice was mostly anecdotal and boiled down to “communicate early and often.” In a 2006 Public Administration Review article, Fernandez and Rainey surveyed over one million articles on organizational change and they concluded that the field was filled with conflicting theories and very little empirical evidence supporting these theories. One area that needed further research was the process of initiating change by which the change leader(s) communicate the need for change.

Then I came across a recently published book that offered specific advice on communicating a change vision. Written by Dr. Nickerson, the concept is called changecasting and it is a simple method. The leader records a series of weekly or biweekly videos that are no more than two-to-four minutes in length. In these videos the change leader speaks directly to the camera while explaining the change vision using only one idea per a video. The videos are released through a secure website for the entire organization to view simultaneously. The members of the organization are then encouraged to give their feedback to the videos through an anonymous web-based communication method. The change leader answers the feedback in subsequent videos.

In support of changecasting, Dr. Nickerson offers a case study of two firms (identities hidden) where the presidents initiated a major organizational change. One president used the changecasting method as outlined by the author while the other president used video but didn’t follow the changecasting method. The firm that used changecasting of course prospered while the other firm failed at its organizational change effort. There is a website and, for a fee, your organization can have their changecasting videos reviewed for effectiveness.

I’m usually wary of such books because many business books have plenty of anecdotes but not much empirical evidence to support the author’s claim. In this case, I think the changecasting method is a good idea because it does track well with what I found out in my research on organizational change and general theories on communicating effectively.

When change is communicated the general model is that the change leader(s) creates a vision and then broadcasts the vision to organization through different communication channels such as posters, newsletter, all-hands meetings, intranets, etc. Rarely is feedback encouraged and even rarer is the opportunity to offer anonymous feedback. Much of the advice on handling resistance to the change vision is either by marginalizing the dissenters or enforcing compliance with the change effort. Most change efforts are initiated because of a threatening situation to the organization so there is little time for dissent or even questioning of the change effort. As you can imagine, there is very little interactive communication about the change vision.

This explains why a large majority of change projects fail despite the fact that organizational change must be one of the most studied topics in management science. According to research by the Standish Group, roughly 70% of projects will not deliver promised results, go over the budget, use more time than scheduled, and/or consume more resources than planned for . Clearly, current methods for organizational change are not working effectively. There are many reasons for this but the biggest reason is resistance to change due to uncertainty about the proposed change.

Now, I don’t believe that people in general are naturally resistant to change. If that were true, people wouldn’t buy lottery tickets. What people are naturally afraid of is not understanding the implications of the change that they are compelled to follow. And it also human nature to imagine the worst in situations we do not fully understand.

This is what attracted me to changecasting. I like the aspect of keeping the messages short and simple so as to fully engage your audience. I also like the frequency of communications but what really interests me about process is the anonymous feedback. Opening up a dialogue about the proposed change can help to reduce the uncertainty and thus the resistance to change. There will probably be some residual resistance but I believe that the change leader(s) will gain more acceptance of the change vision than if they simply broadcast the change vision.

Organizational change is a fascinating area of study that also has major practical implications. Methods that can switch the 70% failure rate to a 70% success will be extremely beneficial considering the vast amounts of time, money, and resources the government now wastes on bad change projects. I am greatly interested if any readers of this blog were engaged in a change project where feedback was encouraged and if this feedback led to a successful outcome. I think the changecasting concept is a good method but it needs more empirical support.

References:
Fernandez, S., & Rainey, H. G. (2006). Managing successful organizational change in the public sector. Public Administration Review, 168-176.

Nickerson, J. (2010). Leading change in a web 2.1 world: How changecasting builds trust, creates understanding, and accelerates organizational change. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press

“Breitbart is, in short, expert in making the journalism industry his bitch. ‘The market has forced me to come up with techniques to be noticed,’ Breitbart says. ‘And now that I have them, I’m like, wow, this is actually great. This is fun.’”

How Andrew Breitbart Hacks the Media – Wired, April 2010.

By now, you have probably heard of how Shirley Sherrod, a former(?) Federal official, was forced to resign after a heavily-edited video of a recent speech she gave at an NAACP event was used as evidence of reverse-racism in Obama’s administration.  After the tape was released by Mr. Breitbart to FOX News, both the NAACP and White House called for Ms. Sherrod’s resignation.

Then, the unedited video was released (you can view it here).  Basically, the videotape shows that Ms. Sherrod’s statements were the exact opposite of what FOX News reported.  The NAACP apologized last night for being “snookered“  and called for her case to be reconsidered.  The farm family that Sherrod referred to even defended her while, just a few hours ago, the White House apologized.

Of course, all of this could have been avoided if the White House and the USDA remembered one basic fact – FOX News is not an actual news station.  Also, once they realized that Mr. Breitbart was behind the videotape, they should have remembered how an earlier, heavily-edited videotape falsely accused ACORN (and let to that organization’s demise).  At the very least, someone should have asked to see the complete unedited tape.  Even Mr. Breitbart admits that viewing the entire tape demonstrates that Ms. Sherrod is not a racist.

Mr. Breitbart and others like him are taking advantage of the decline of journalism.  Newsrooms are cutting back on staff and especially investigate reporters.  At the same time, they have to fill the 24-hour news hole and compete with other cable stations and local news.  Ratings are more essential now than ever.  Media manipulators know these weaknesses and use them to their partisan advantage.  As the Sherrod case shows, reputations can be damaged in just a few hours.  What is unusual about the Sherrod case is that the true picture came just as quickly.  In cases such as ACORN or Climategate, it was several months before the truth came out but was of little help in averting the damage.

It is imperative that the audience become more skeptical and reserve judgment before all of the facts are in.  More and more media manipulators are taking advantage of the decline of traditional journalism to spread their falsehoods.  Unfortunately, I don’t hold much hope as when obviously fictional news events (such as this from the Onion) are viewed as investigative journalism.

You have a strange idea of “fun,” Mr. Breitbart.

Two interesting articles about organizational culture in the latest issue of the “Journal of Organizational Change Management.”  The first article is a cultural analysis of organizational memory and its role in organizational change while the second article describes how organizational memory can hinder learning a new technology.

In the first article, McCabe gives a more detailed description of organizational culture as a collection of shared memories.  These memories can contradict each other or just be ambiguous about past organizational events but, woven together, these memories form a dynamic and conflicting culture for the organization.  McCabe disputes the common belief of many management theorists that the past can be erased in favor of the new reality because the past always blocks change.  Organizational memory is more complex than that because some memories can help facilitate change while other aspects resist change.  McCabe concludes by stating that organizational memory cannot be managed as part of the change process but must be accounted for.

McCabe’s article illuminates the findings in the second article by Becker.  The second article deals with the process of acquiring new technology in an organization.  As Becker explains, for employees to adopt a new technology they must unlearn the old technology.  They do this through releasing mental models of the workings of the old technology and create mental models of how the new technology works.  Memories of past change efforts can hinder the process of unlearning if it promotes fear and anxiety among the employees.  Becker does not have any specific remedies for dealing with organizational memory and unlearning but she does argue that further research is necessary to fully understand the unlearning process.

The relevance to Gov 2.0 is clear.  Many agencies have long and painful memories of past change efforts that have been woven into the current culture.  Gov 2.0 advocates must understand and acknowledge the past while developing strategies to alleviate the fear that will prevent government employees from unlearning the current way things are done in favor of making government transparent, open, and engaging.  Gov 2.0 advocates must take the positive aspects of the past and use those events to counter the negative past events while realizing that culture cannot be fully controlled.

References:

Becker, K. (2010). Facilitating unlearning during implementation of new technology. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 251-268.

McCabe, D. (2010). Taking the long view: A cultural analysis of memory as resisting and facilitating organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 230-250.

“Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?”
The Graduate – 1967

In the late 60s, plastics may have been the growth industry but, according to Mike Loukides at O’Reilly Radar, the ability to work with data is the new growth industry.

There is an experiment at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to change how government works. The idea is to stop measuring how much time an employee spends at the office but rather to measure how productive the employee is. The employee sets their own working hours and negotiates with their supervisor on what they should be producing and how it will be measured. It is a revolutionary concept and has worked in private industry.

A great example of this is how IBM has reinvented itself to use a ROWE-like environment. As Robert Paterson explains, IBM employees can live where they want and work in virtual teams based on their own schedules. What holds the workforce together is the use of social networking tools and the occasional face-to-face meeting. As Paterson writes, “If IBM can do this with 200,000 people so can you.”

One aspect that he mentions is the use of chat tools in place of meetings. This is not revolutionary as places I have worked at have using instant messaging systems to hold impromptu meetings. You can quickly get to the point, bring in people as needed, and there is a record of the meeting when you are finished.  And this was easily done with 2001 technology. I do not understand why more organizations don’t hold meetings this way instead of dragging everyone into the conference room for the weekly staff meeting.

Another great example from IBM is how well the virtual team works even though employees are in different countries and different time zones.  Allowing people to work at their natural productive hours means you will have better work and happier people.  An interesting point in the IBM experience is that face-to-face meetings are used to help workers build trust and tend to be about team-building rather than doing work.  I wonder how much more effective government workers would be if agencies devoted substantial time to team-building?

ROWE solves a lot of problems from the time wasted to commuting to balancing work-life issues. I’m hoping the OPM experiment is a success.  ROWE is clearly working in the private sector.

According to Mark Drapeau of O’Reilly.

I’ve been saying in various posts on GovLoop how important apps are to Gov 2.0 (not a unique insight as plenty of others have come to the same conclusion).  What is great is the idea of crowdsourcing the development of government apps.