21st Century Organization

W. or Abilene Paradox Redux

Politics aside, Oliver Stone's W. is a good flick for those looking for management, senior team dynamics, leadership development, executive coaching, corporate sustainability, global sustainability case material.  It struck me about half way through this otherwise flatfooted film that the best parts were the cabinet meeting re-creations and that we have been here before - on the road to Abilene, now gone global!

Jerry Harvey's Abilene Paradox:the management of agreement, first published in 1974 and one of the most reprinted management articles, continues to trap leadership groups, possibly entire countries. In essence it is the agreement of a group to move forward on an action that is counter to any of the individual's desires in the group. In the case of top leadership groups it is often the suggestion of the leader or a group member with significant power or influence that sets the ball rolling toward Abilene - the undesired destination.

Corporate examples abound.  Some have called this behavior pluralistic ignorance but I prefer pluralistic denial.  Ignorance implies no understanding, denial - well somewhere in the gray matter lurks the thought, this is not going to pan out well. Think Enron schemes, credit default swaps, sub-prime loans, something for nothing, 1 to 40+ leverage, and "financial WMD".  It just gets better.

We seem to be living in a world of pluralistic denial.  We have a great opportunity to ask each time a plan sounds out of touch are we on the road to Abilene?  See W. and let me know.

~ Victoria  G. Axelrod

Stowe Boyd Constructed with Social Tools

In a 1999 email newsletter under the heading: The Rise of Social Tools, Stowe Boyd wrote:

“The big story of the transformation of business culture isn’t the props – the servers, networks, ten million web sites, and all the information lying around in databases in HTML – but what people are saying to each other and how they coordinate their actions, behaviour and goals." ~ Stowe Boyd

Stowe's decade long thinking about social tools and their impact on organizations is the topic of a recently published Inside Knowledge Magazine profile, now available here.

The profile was constructed using the "social tools" to which Stowe pointed us in 1999.  Stories and perspectives about Stowe's influence were gathered via blog posts, Twitter invitations and email exchanges.

My sincere thanks to all those who provided unexpected and rich contributions to inform Stowe's Inside Knowledge profile, especially:

  Chris Carfi, Martin Cleaver, Patti Anklam, William Anderson,  Nick Barker and Matt Balara

and of course to Stowe for sharing his latest thinking and insights.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Note:  Video interview with Stowe Boyd that informed The Knowledge profile is at YouTube.

If you are blogging or Twittering comments on this article please tag #IKStowe to join the wider discussion. Learn more about Stowe Boyd at www.stoweboyd.com.

Ambient Information = Connected Intelligence

Clive Thompson writes in Wired Magazine ... We're more likely to act on a subtle but continuously present message than an intermittent one we're forced to stare at. It's "the psychological paradox of ambient information".

Imagine using the device for measuring customer interaction with your company or  knowledge sharing among your employees. If it is up, customers are benefiting.  Let's call it a "Connected Intelligence Meter!"

This device exists and is used extensively by project teams at Google, eBay, Microsoft, and the Arkansas Children's Hospital. Ambient Devices CEO David Rose designed the technology which enables his device to tap into data streams which already exist but in their numerical form do not have as great an effect as a glowing orb which changes color.  You can even have the orb as part of your tool bar.

One of the latest applications is to track your personal energy use - are your adding to carbon consumption or helping to reduce it?

We just finished an article  on connected intelligence for Knowledge Tree, an Australian online  journal by using a wiki which Jenny Ambrozek has posted about here.

Although we will not be using an ambient device this time we will be taking real time questions on our live webcast on August 20th  if you are in the Northern hemisphere - midnight for east coast USA and 9 PM for west coast or August 21st for those past the international dateline. 

Please join us by registering at the Knowledge Tree Elluminate Portal  prior to the event.

To view the hardware and software pre-requisites for Elluminate Live! please visit

http://www.elluminate.com/support

Wiki's and other highly interactive social media which depend on collaboration - "connected intelligence" would definitely benefit from an ambient information system to measure participation.  A subtle pervasive indicator to let you know your participation has an effect.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

FAS Research: Visualizations of a Hypernetworked World

Thanks to Jeffrey Keefer for alerting me to FAS Research social network analysis and especially their Visualizations Gallery.  Jeffrey heard FAS spoke at Friday's Personal Decomocracy Forum. Judging from the program it was quite the event, starting with an opening keynote from Eric Schmidt and Thomas Friedman. although interesting ratings from the first commenters on the opening session.

FAS shares attention getting visualizations showing social network analysis applied to a range of business and political influence networks.

Thought provoking viewing.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

"They Rule" but where does the POWER really lie?

Via Michael Clarke's "Lazyboy blogging" post a terrific collection of interesting sites.  (If this is "Lazyboy" blogging clearly Michael sets a high posting standard.)

I was inspired to start a "Tumblelog" and will see if Tumblr delivers on their promise of:

"the refreshingly simple new way to share anything you find, love, hate or create".

What really caught my attention was "TheyRule" briefly explained this way:

"They Rule allows you to create maps of the interlocking directories of the top companies in the US in 2004.
The data was collected from their websites and SEC filings in early 2004, so it may not be completely accurate - companies merge and disappear and directors shift boards."

I found the interface a little confusing at first but how intriguing are the searches.

"TheyRule" and the transparency into boards it provides reminded me of Forbes recently launched Corporate OrgChart Wiki. (My colleague Victoria Axelrod blogged about the special Forbes 90th Anniversary edition on "Networks" that announced the Orgchart wiki.)

Has anyone seen traditional media coverage of either "TheyRule" or the Forbes Corporate OrgChart Wiki for I haven't and I'm wondering about this. I rather imagined the Forbes Wiki would make corporate executives uneasy.

Searching for reactions to both I did find an interesting BusinessWeek blog comment by Stephen Barker who found the OrgChart Wiki disappointing. Why? Because:

"I'm more interested in the informal structures of companies. OK, sew-and-sew is supposed to report to this person, but she actually has most of her interaction with that one. And in fact, there's a whole cluster of people who appear to be under the influence of... Is that an outside contractor?

Those are the sorts of relationships I'm looking for. The org charts in the Forbes Wiki outline the sidewalks and flagstones of corporate world as they're designed from on high. But how about the short cuts people take, those pathways where the grass has been worn away? Those show where people are really walking. They point to real power inside a company. How do we get that information up on a wiki?"

Great point and I have to believe David Krackhardt and Jeffrey Hansen would agree.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

A Question about Influence: Murdoch's Effort to Buy the Wall Street Journal

Deb Schultz in a wonderful "backlogged" post describes living in:

"a constant state of "behind on posts"  - it's a dull thud in the back of my head."

One of my dull "thuds" grew from watching "INFLUENCE" appearing in multiple blog posts, particularly in Steve Rubel's "Become an Online Influencer by Modeling Tiger Woods" and Ross Dawson quoting Dave Snowden in writing about Enteprise 2.0 Adoption:

"If you aim to influence, but not design evolution you have more control than if you attempt to design an ideal system."

After meeting Heath Row at NYC Podcamp I discovered his Doubleclick report on "Influencing the Influencers: How Online Advertising and Media Impact Word of Mouth". And of course Harvard Business Review's making Duncan Watts "Accidental Influentials" the number 1 breakthrough idea for 2007 gets one's attention.

Hence I listened closely today to a CNBC interview exploring concern about Rupert Murdoch's increased political INFLUENCE if he succeeds in buying the Wall Street Journal.

The effect of INFLUENCE and how you map it has intrigued me since Rob Cross, Network Roundtable convenor and author of "The Hidden Power of Social Networks" helped Joe Cothrel and I craft an influence question for our Online Communities in Business 2004 Study. (The findings appear in Chapter 4 of our report.)

What I'm learning as my blogging colleague Victoria Axelrod and I fine tune our forthcoming research study, is that writing elegant questions to map "influence" networks is not as easy as I recalled working with Rob Cross and Joe Cothrel 3 years ago.  In fact I've concluded it is both art and experience.

~ Jenny Ambrozek