Is Collaboration the End of Process?

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I understand where this question comes from — if you’re a “collaborator” you must somehow be opposed to process. Not true. A process (in the more ideal than evil world) is an embodiment of learning. It’s a way to automatically follow some best practices so that you don’t have to expend effort or brain cells figuring out how to do it. It scales very well defined tasks, and ensures compliance with various rules, regulations and policies. Processes have their limitations — they aren’t good at learning, experimenting or adapting. Which is of course what collaboration is extremely good at.

So in this “more ideal than evil” world we try to arrange for ourselves, we want to be collaborators — supported by processes.

Process Makes Collaboration Efficient

Let me share a recent example. I was working with a design group that was very efficient and process oriented. For good reason. They had a LOT of work to do. But what we were trying to do was well outside the norm. We were trying to create a new approach that embodied a new way of thinking. The design team, having full confidence in their processes, said great — here’s the process we’ll follow. The rest of us only had to complete the steps and move along the process, and we’d be assured a timely delivery.

Can you guess what happened? Boxes were checked, but the results were not so good. So then we changed the process. We said, we’re going to work through this as a team. We will discuss and review requirements, and we’ll discuss and review interim work, gaining a shared understanding of the issues, proposed solutions, subtleties and reactions.

Once we are comfortable that we have found the answers we need, we’ll plug them into the process. Requirements will no longer be written and thrown over the wall; results will not be sent via email. All will be discussed on the phone or through our shared workspace, so as to create a common understanding. Then the existing process will get us through the standard production bits.

Now guess what happened? Schedules were met and the outcome was great. We surpassed ourselves. It would not have gone as smoothly without the process, and it would not have mattered without the collaboration. But we needed to make an effort to make collaboration the dominant activity, supported by the process — not the other way around.

Collaboration Makes Process Meaningful

My esteemed colleague @mpedson (Michael Edson) is a creative, collaborative guy who put together one of the best ditties on process I’ve ever seen. It’s like an amusing, 10 minute course in process maturity models.

Processes are especially helpful when the problem is the same each time you meet it. Let’s say you are preparing the packaging for the latest release of your product. Say you sell shoes. The packaging creation process is the same each time you design a new pair of shoes, so it makes sense to have a process for creating the packaging for the shoes.

But now you’re trying to go green with your packaging — cutting your carbon footprint, minimizing materials, ensuring recycle-ability and non-toxicity. Now your existing processes won’t work. Now instead of Joe finalizing the text and sending it to Sally, who adds the imagery, who sends it to Trish, who finalizes the overall cut design, who sends it to the printer…now you need to figure some stuff out. Now you don’t need a checklist, you need a conversation. You need to discuss, debate, identify and discard possibilities. You need to collaborate.

Eventually, you’ll figure out what you want to do, and then you can put that solution back into the process — send it to the graphic designer, who gets sign off and sends it to the printer, the fulfillment center, etc.

Read the rest at  CMSWire: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-collaboration/is-collaboration-the-end-of-process-011282.php?pageNum=2

what does it mean to “know”?

When I was a kid, my mom would sush me outside dad’s study “don’t bother Daddy, he’s on the phone with London,” she’d say. I would imagine important conversations with the leaders of the city. I suspect that in reality he was talking to his college roommate.

Last October, I saw a New York Times headline “Panel Says Firms Knew of Cement Flaws Before Spill”. More recently, we’re hearing the media and others question whether the Pakistan Intelligence Agency, ISI, “knew” where Bin Laden was.

I don’t know the answer or details to either of those questions. But i do think it raises a very important question. What does it mean for an organization to “know” something? I think its essential to answer this question. Does “know” mean that some individual somewhere in the organization knows this as an individual? Does it mean that there has been a “discussion” amongst people? That a “memo” has been created? That someone on the executive team was briefed on the topic?

What do we want it to mean? Is it the goal, that when someone in an organization knows something, that everyone does? That any interested party can easily find out? That the executive team is aware? Understands implications? That a certain percentage, division, or set of specialists “know”?

Defining this notion – or at least working on it will be critical to understanding the effectiveness of collaboration, knowledge management and the “social enterprise”.

Have any of you seen work on this? Here are some of the questions I believe need to be answered or at least oriented for us to make progress here.

• What does “know” mean?
• When does it matter?
• Are there different types of “knowing”?
• Is there a legal precedent here?

Thoughts?