Full Circle Associates

photo credit: rgordon

A while back my friend and colleague Shawn Callahan asked me to pitch in with him and fellow Anecdote-ite Mark Schenk to write a paper on collaboration. It is out today on the Anecdote site –> Anecdote - Whitepapers - Building a collaborative workplace. From the introduction:

Today we all need to be collaboration superstars. The trouble is, collaboration is a skill and set of practices we are rarely taught. It’s something we learn on the job in a hit-or-miss fashion. Some people are naturals at it, but most of us are clueless.

Our challenge doesn’t stop there. An organisation’s ability to support collaboration is highly dependent on its own organisational culture. Some cultures foster collaboration while others stop it dead in its tracks.

To make matters worse, technology providers have convinced many organisations that they only need to purchase collaboration software to foster collaboration. There are many large organisations that have bought enterprise licences for products like IBM’s Collaboration Suite or Microsoft’s Solutions for Collaboration who are not getting good value for money, simply because people don’t know how to collaborate effectively or because their culture works against collaboration.

Of course technology plays an important role in effective collaboration. We are not anti-technology. Rather we want to help redress the balance and shift the emphasis from merely thinking about collaboration technology to thinking about collaboration skills, practices, technology and supporting culture. Technology makes things possible; people collaborating makes it happen.

This paper has three parts. We start by briefly exploring what we mean by collaboration and why organisations and individuals should build their collaboration capability. Then, based on that understanding, we lay out a series of steps for developing a collaboration capability. We finish the paper with a simple test of your current collaboration capability.

I think the issue is beyond building a collaborative workplace. It applies to our communities and networks. But heck, starting with organizations is always worth a try, eh?

While we were co-writing (using a Google doc) I started reading more about the differences between collaboration and cooperation - which we don’t address in the paper, but which are important. So I’ve noted that for future writing. If you are interested in Cooperation, don’t miss Howard Rheingold’s work on this.

I have a copy, but haven’t had time to read it, but those of you interested in collaboration might want to take a look at Ken Thompson’s new book, BIOTEAMS which brings together Ken’s tips and wisdom into a single volume. His blog is rich in ideas, but it is always nice to have a book to pass on to an organization or team that can use a bit of advice. (As if we all can’t stand to learn how to collaborate better!)

Chris offers another succinct and useful “how-to” on using a social network for peer collaboration. Then his readers chime in with even more goodies. If you are asking the question “should I start a social network for my group, team, network, etc?” take a look at Enabling Peer Collaboration Using Social Networks .

Today on Twitter there was a lovely conversation about improvisation. Alas, my twitter timeline doesn’t go back far enough to capture it, but it was something that I think Jeremiah Owyang wrote about the importance of improvisation and achitwood and I chimed in about improvisation being a key skill these days. We noted that often it is seen as something risky and all about disruption, but it is in fact an amazing practice to bolster collaboration and innovation.

achitwood Improv - you gotta know your instrument (whether music, theatre, collab) to make music with others!

jowyang Nate wrote a great blog post on Jazz Improve because of this thread: http://tinyurl.com/23wtxj

As the conversation progressed, Jeremiah brought in the thread of jazz as one branch of improvisation and people started chiming in that they played an instrument or were in a band. That triggered some collective wondering if people who are interested in improvisation might be better suited to or interested in social media. That’s when Jeremiah came up with the idea of a wikis. So I set up a wiki! social media musicians. Come join in the play! In the meantime, here are a few snippets from the Twitter conversation.

jowyang Since there are SO many musicians here, I propose over the next 30 days we record ourselves playing and put it on a public wiki….. jowyang The wiki wouldn’t HOUSE the videos, but just point to them wherever they live (blip, youtube, metacafe, facebook, whatever)

veroniquec wishing I had a musical bone in my body to contribute to @jowyang ’s music wiki — sounds like fun!

Karoli @jowyang: that was a great post. My kid is a jazz studies major in college…improv is as much a gift as a learned skill. I’m in awe

ourfounder @jowyang - A public Music Wiki sounds fun actually. I wouldn’t mind contributing.

jowyang @all jazz social media folks, see this video of Bobby McFerrin involving crowd http://tinyurl.com/yq8369

I have been talking to the folks at Hosteling International USA about how to reach out to and connect with 18-25 year olds about hosteling and traveling. I told Russ Hedges, the CEO, that I did not know a lot about Facebook (one option) but I sure had a great network of people who did know a lot, and many who have focused on the use of Facebook by non profits and NGOs.

I proposed we convene a telephone conversation and toss around some ideas. Besides having this conversation, I suggested that whatever we learned, we would share out - Open Source Research. Russ was game, so I put the invite out on Twitter and within an hour had 8 RSVPs. Social networks in action, right from the start.

Today we shared conversation for an hour. Towards the end, Jim Benson suggested we walk the talk and continue our research on Facebook IN Facebook. We’d start a little group, scan FB for interesting non profit applications, leave links in the group, then reconvene to talk again in a couple of weeks. I agreed to start the group and post the minutes from today’s meeting, to begin that “sharing out” bit. So here it is… Facebook | Open Source Research on FB for Non Profits with Nancy’s Friends

Care to join our exploration? It complements some work Beth Kanter has been doing as well. Imagine, if we all share our research, we’ll either be collectively smarter, or even more confused!