Camel or horse: Wisdom of the crowds

"A Camel is a horse designed by a committee" – so goes the old saying. However, Gen Y believes differently; with online communities becoming a powerful way of sourcing information, collaboration and co-creation is becoming the preferred way of working. In 2005, the word "Crowdsourcing" was coined – a portmanteau word originating from "Crowd" and "Outsourcing".
"Crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas or content, by soliciting from a large group of people, and especially from an online community."
~Source: Wikipedia
In his book, Crowdsourcing, Brabham classified crowdsourcing into the following types:

• Knowledge Discovery and Management: Where an online community is tasked with the responsibility of collecting and collating information relating to a particular topic. For example, when I put out an online question asking people of a Knowledge community for their definition of knowledge management, I am collating the different responses from group members, identifying key words used in the definition, the frequency of occurrence of specific key words, to come up with a definition that best expresses Knowledge Management.
  Interdisciplinary annotations and trends are yet another example of using the crowdsourcing approach to emergent semantic networks (a network that represents relationships between two concepts – for example, ontology and taxonomy, knowledge and intelligence)
• Distributed Human Intelligence Tasking: This is actually more of micro-task management. A large task is split up into smaller components and distributed across several people. This is then assembled to arrive at the final objective. Analysis of large data sets is usually carried out this way. Large projects which can be deconstructed into micro-projects are also usually crowd-sourced, with people bidding for the smaller projects. Organizations which have formal tie-ups with Universities as part of their University-Industry Linkage, have been known to adopt this approach.
• Broadcast Search: Ideation problems typically fall into this category. This is also what we usually find in online communities and forums. When people have a specific problem, they broadcast their question to the online community, for example, StackOverFlow, and then review the results to decide on the best result. This kind of problem usually has a definite answer – for example, "Why does 'Tour De Flex' show I am not connected to the internet, although I am online".
• Creative Production: The most famous example is possibly Threadless (https://www.threadless.com/make/submit/). This company encourages you to submit designs for t-shirts, and you get paid whenever a t-shirt manufacturing company selects your design for mass production. This is usually done when we need a creative design, not necessarily a single correct answer, and we end up asking the community for ideas. When Lays reached a plateau in sales, they turned to crowdsourcing ideas for new flavors – a competition resulted in several ideas for new flavors coming up from amateur flavor experts – housewives and children – reviving flagging sales by introduction of new flavors.

So, is all social collaboration Crowdsourcing. In a very loose manner of speaking, any collaboration that involves people outside a formally defined team can be called crowdsourcing. However, where the results cannot be quantified or substantiated as having been derived specifically as a result of participation of external resources, it cannot be called Crowdsourcing.
What are the characteristics of a Social Collaboration tool that supports Crowdsourcing?

• Online participation: The most fundamental aspect of course, is that the participation happens beyond the borders of an organization (or a business unit, in the case of very large organizations).
• Context: Crowdsourcing is most effective when there is a definite context in which participation occurs. Examples are:
  • A problem or issue that requires resolution, and internal sources may not have the requisite experience or know-how to address the issue
  • Data or Content Collection and collation: Used for obtaining data from a large group of people, which is collated. For example, research citations and profiling
  • Survey: Polls or surveys conducted to obtain data from a large source of people which is then used for research and analysis
• Platform: Ideation or Innovation platforms – this is usually organized around a domain or topic – where idea generation is the objective. The idea generation can take many forms – suggestion box, prototype presentations, contests – the platform usually supports reward and recognition mechanisms
• Micro-tasking – This is usually a specific configuration of generic crowd-sourcing tools – where the key functionality of project or task management will exist. However, the focus is on being able to generate participation externally, and the task is of a nature where it can be distributed.

Managing knowledge through Communities of Practice

A Community is defined as a social or other group sharing common characteristics or interests, and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists. In the organizational context, a Community of Practice (CoP) is a group sharing common interests or profession in a particular domain. The community evolves through the sharing of knowledge and experiences, learning from each other, and building tight bonds as a community on account of such shared interests. Of course, some organizations create these communities (as a task force) with a specific objective of gaining knowledge in a specific domain.

The key characteristics of a Community of Practice are:

• The domain in which the CoP situates itself
  
• The members of the community
  
• The practice
  

Domain is defined by who participates and who is a member; participation evolves over time through engagement and is further refined by alignment to a common shared vision. Some communities are self-organizing – it evolves based on the level of engagement and participation, the relationships it develops, and the shared experiences that become part of the way it works over a period of time. In some cases, they work within a framework or structure, and build their network of relationships along the way. A central organizing body usually formed from among the community members itself, defines the broad framework within which they operate, and define the vision for the community.

The practice itself defines what the community does, the value it creates, the actual practice it sustains and develops, and how it grows through the development of these practices. A community distinguishes itself from the larger society within which they operate by the boundaries they create – usually defined by relationships, connections and artefacts that they develop. It therefore stands to reason that for a Community of Practice to be successful, it has to develop around a common agenda, be able to engage and participate through shared experiences, and members need to develop a sense of accountability towards the community. Each community develops its own mechanism and process for knowledge creation and transfer; a community lacking foundational knowledge in its domain is likely to be able to sustain itself, since the concept of shared knowledge or experiences will be minimal or non-existent.

How can organizations empower strong and meaningful communities of practice that will be sustainable and create value?

• A Community of practice is based on shared experiences. This will essentially come from participation of its members. Recognition of member's participation will encourage active involvement which eventually will help build relationships across the community. An active community is able to draw in more members to its fold, enhance the level of participation, capture and build its repository of shared experiences, which eventually becomes the knowledge that the community shares with the rest of the organization.
  
• A community that has greater locality – not necessarily geographically, but in terms of shared interests, is more likely to sustain itself because of the sharper focus of the mutuality of their engagement. The commonality of beliefs and values, and the knowledge thus generated will carry more meaning for the community which set itself on a self-sustaining cycle.
  
• Learning and passing on common memories is essential to the power of practice. Community members become invested in other members through this common learning activity. Some examples of such learning are:
  
  • Codified knowledge in the form of user manuals, processes and written procedures
    
  • Rituals and shared beliefs which may even be part of the culture. For example, Friday 'brown-bag lunches' is a common ritual carried out in some organizations where members of the community get together, away from the work environment, to share their experiences and learn from each other.
    
  • Teaching and structured content which is prepared and delivered to members. In the technology-driven world, webinars are a means of engaging the community through structured presentations.
    
  • Everyday practice by the members – Members of the community develop a strong sense of bonding by actively engaging themselves in the code they have formed within themselves. For example, a CoP that prides itself on developing clear coding standards, diligently applies the learning and rules evolved by the community. This eventually leads to organizational level standards – sometimes extending to an international standard itself.
    
  • Enterprise activity that engages the members on a daily basis – this is usually driven by the enterprise itself to engage the members in an active manner. It could mean creation of surveys, polls, quizzes and other activities that will draw out participation and make the community a vibrant organism that is able to interact and contribute to the larger society in which it exists in a very dynamic environment.
    

  While the core principles that drive a Community of Practice are very much culture oriented, technology can play an important role in making it sustainable and available beyond geographic limitations. Active participation, however, will depend on how dynamic and participatory the individual members are.
  

  
   

  How do Communities of Practice operate in your organization? How effective are they in driving strategy?
  

Meaningful measures for managing knowledge

"Peter Brand: Billy, this is Chad Bradford. He's a relief pitcher. He is one of the most undervalued players in baseball. His defect is that he throws funny. Nobody in the big leagues cares about him because he looks funny. This guy could be not just the best pitcher in our bullpen, but one of the most effective relief pitchers in all of baseball."

~From the movie "Moneyball" (2011)

I was reminded of the movie during a recent conversation when someone asked me "Will a CEO be happy implementing a large scale solution to know that "nn" documents were shared in a group"? Measurement myopia leads us quickly to the maxim "What you can measure you can manage". However, as Einstein said" Not everything you count, counts; not everything that counts is counted". In knowledge management especially, establishing a relationship between business growth (and profitability) and organizational knowledge, is at best tenuous. While there are several research papers to establish that knowledge leadership has a definite impact on sustainable competitive advantage, growth, profitability, innovation and several other business performance attributes, it would be foolhardy to attempt to establish a formulaic method to arrive at this conclusion. Study of several organizations that have implemented knowledge management systems, and have progressed along the knowledge maturity path demonstrate empirically, that an organization that is able to leverage its intellectual capital is definitely better off than an organization that is struggling to get its thoughts organized. Enterprises with a higher level of knowledge management maturity have a higher potentiality to strategize and innovate. (Hagel et al, 2002)

That said, meaningful measures of knowledge management definitely have their place under the sun. It allows the organization insight into behavioural, cultural and aspects of organizational dynamics that facilitate or hinder collaboration, sharing of knowledge and therefore the capability to innovate. More importantly, it provides an anchor to correlate organizational performance to knowledge management, thereby enhancing the ability of the organization to improve business performance, by enhancing its capability to organize its knowledge management competencies. What then are some of the measures
^(*) that will eventually help link up to business performance?

• Number of sharing relationships resulting from exchange of knowledge (especially when it is across boundaries) – an indicator of innovation
  
• Re-use rate of frequently accessed content – an indicator for improvement in efficiency and quality
  
• Competency enhancement – A measurement of conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge evidenced from the conversion of online content into process / knowledge repository
  
• Lessons learned and Best practices implemented
  

At higher levels of maturity, organizations even go on to discover the accuracy of knowledge dissemination – the number of times a knowledge nugget reached / or was discovered by the right person at the right time. This along with other metrics like number of new ideas that translated into innovative products, practices or services, and so on provide valuable clues to the organization on the impact of knowledge on the organization's ability to lead them on a path of growth and sustainable competitive advantage.

Personally, I don't believe it is possible, as yet, to establish with any level of accuracy that sharing "nn" documents resulted in a $yy savings to the company. However, I think it will be possible to empirically show that such a relationship does exist. Knowledge Management is no longer that "leap of faith". In fact, with an ageing population, rapid change in technology and various other parameters, it is fast becoming a resource that no organization can do without.

How did your organization take its decision to implement a KM system? Write in with your feedback and comments.

^{(*) –} Adapted from the Knowledge Management Handbook – Edited by Jay Liebowitz.

Making sense of everyday chatter

"Benioff explained on Monday's call that Salesforce reps took the social enterprise mantra to customers, but "couldn't find the buyers," suggesting even Salesforce.com didn't exactly understand what it meant." After all the hype during the launch of the "Social Enterprise" in 2011, it was time for a new mantra "The Internet of customers". And as we hop from one jargon to another, customers are left pondering on what exactly they wanted when they bought what they did! (http://www.zdnet.com/salesforce-ceo-admits-social-enterprise-pitch-didnt-work-7000023336/)

Recent articles point to the growing disenchantment with social media tools as a powerful way of capturing knowledge. While they still may be a good medium to stay connected within the enterprise, there is growing realization that they do not exactly contribute to enterprise knowledge 
(http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-decision-maker/how-yammer-is-killing-enterprise-social-networking/). One of the reasons for this has been the absence of a definitive context – one of the key strands in the DNA of a Knowledge Management System. While most social collaboration tools advertise themselves as KM tools, the ability to transform chatter to tacit knowledge (one that gets embedded in the DNA of the enterprise) is still some distance away. It is just not sufficient to say that it has been captured in the knowledge repository of the organization, and therefore the knowledge now exists in an explicit form.

Why is this so? Knowledge is an active process of knowing, the processes and results of participation in organizational practices. At one end of the spectrum we have technical knowledge – knowledge relating to skills and expertise required to perform tasks. At the other end of the spectrum, is the knowledge required for strategy and innovation – the translation of experience and expertise into actions that promote sustainable competitive advantage and growth. While to a large extent the knowledge required to perform tasks can be codified, stored and retrieved, the other kind of knowledge is mostly tacit. The success of any knowledge initiative will depend on how well this tacit knowledge is elicited and used. Such knowledge in action results in new products and processes which are then institutionalized and become new explicit knowledge.

So, if we were to consider an oft-quoted statement "Knowledge walks out when your employee leaves the organization"… it is true only to the extent of social collective practices that the organization engages in. So, the real question that the organization needs to deal with is on how to create the context in which social engagement takes place. Social media cannot do this…it is only a facilitator for recording the process. Social tools can enable this process effectively if they are grounded in the context where participation results in exploiting the weak ties and enabling greater collaboration, outside the circle of influence. For example, induction programs in many organizations is merely a set of PowerPoint presentations and canned lectures that purportedly gives the new hires a bird's eye view of the organization. However, engaging the new hires in conversations that relate to real-world problems exposes them to the organization in a manner that no induction program can achieve; more importantly, the organization gets to benefit from the experience of the new hires from day one. How can a social collaboration tool enable this? This, I believe is the challenge that social media tools need to surmount.

Conversations need to connect people to people, people to content, or content to content, for it to be actionable. When this happens the tacit nature of knowledge lends itself to transformation – to becoming assimilated by others in the enterprise, and thereon to getting embedded in the organization's way of working. This sharing of experience that occurs results in higher forms of learning – those that can impact more than just transaction-level activities; resulting in the manner in which an organization innovates and strategizes.

Collaboration goes beyond just working together on a project; in today's world, where technology has made the world smaller, it means a whole lot more. Social learning, Communities of Practice, and the good old chatter we see on social media all contribute to some form of collaboration. In fact, social media has almost become synonymous with social collaboration in the enterprise. Yet, how much of this actually adds up to enterprise knowledge is anybody's guess.
What has been your experience with the use of social media tools in your organization?

Social Learning: Bandura and beyond

Social Learning theory postulates that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in the social context and can occur purely through observation or direct instruction, even in the absence of motor reproduction or direct reinforcement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_theory). Albert Bandura is credited with making significant contribution to this theory which integrated behavioural and cognitive theories of learning in order to provide a comprehensive model for the wide range of learning experiences that occur in the real world. However, Bandura's theory is quite different from how the term "Social learning" is being used today. With the advent of the digital age and social media, social learning has acquired a new flavour – one influenced by learning that occurs assisted by social media and collaboration. As a means of knowledge acquisition, learning from peers and through interaction has always been a considered a key component of the process of imbibing knowledge. So, social learning by itself, is not very new; the technology has however changed. It has become ubiquitous and with social media becoming a key element in almost every aspect of work life today, it is inevitable that learning would remain unaffected by it.

In the context of the enterprise, learning is an invaluable tool – one that ensures productivity and helps sustain competitive advantage. From Peter Senge who popularized the term "Learning Organization" to Berger and Luckman who brought social learning theory into Organizational Learning literature, there have been several proponents of the concept that an organization that is able to learn continuously is the one that will have a sustainable competitive advantage. Over the years, this has been implemented in several ways in organizations:

• Structured learning through formal training programs
  
• Apprenticeship and Internship which allowed employees to learn on the job
  
• Post-situational learning – learning from mistakes / introducing changes based on experience
  
• Collaborative learning – Learning through sharing insights and experience with colleagues and others
  

The internet and collaborative technologies have given rise to newer methodologies to implement these age-old practices viz. e-learning, blended learning models, Communities of Practice and so on. With Social Media taking centre-stage we are also witnessing an attempt to use social media tools for organization learning. Discussion Forums, Communities of Practice and other collaborative learning models have been on the rise. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) is yet another term that has gained popularity – structured learning programs have now been blended with a collaborative tool giving rise to several streams of discussions, insights and opinions becoming available on a single subject. While these have benefited the users by making available content, the likes of which we have never seen before, a concomitant headache has been the information overload that has accompanied this. How do we separate the wheat from the chaff? With nearly a million voices speaking at the same time, how do we identify what is valuable for us, in the current context?

What does Organization learning mean in the context of your enterprise? How close would you say your organization is to becoming a Learning Organization?