Technology and Organizations

Yesterday, David F. Gallagher wrote “I’m in Your Google Docs, Reading Your Spreadsheets” for the NY Times Bits blog. He describes how he was mistakenly sent a sharing invitation to a set of Google Docs by an employee of Community Newspapers Holdings Inc. — based on his email being similar to that of a CNHI employee. This gave him access to spreadsheets (among other things) with detailed financial data.

This highlighted for me the true but mundane statement that “Security is human,” and the role that security needs to play in our current discussion of the design of communication and workflow infrastructure for multi-organizational project teams. While I mentioned yesterday how I redesigned my prototype site based on specific needs for password controls, I haven’t yet broached the issue of how when you self-design for collaboration, you also need to self-design the technical and human aspects of security for your collaborative systems. We make decisions in face-to-face settings about whether to leave the conference room door open or closed, and we need to make similar decisions in more virtual settings.

Many of the current 35 comments to Mr. Gallagher’s post focus on bringing the collaboration tools behind the organization’s firewall. That works for some collaborations, but not for any of the ones I work with as they are all multi-organizational. Ultimately, security is human. Yes, it would be nice if Google Docs would do a check and ask you if you really mean to share with someone you’ve never shared with before – a suggestion Mr. Gallagher provides. (Google Sites does query your intentions when you add someone from outside your own domain.) However, as he notes,

in the end, security requires careful typing — and perhaps some careful decisions about whether some documents would be better left behind the corporate firewall.

I’ll add that careful consideration of permissions, access controls, version tracking, and the like are all part of the human/technology system that must be carefully intertwined in modern environments. We need to actively consider our security just as we should actively think about what to write on the white board, how the tables and chairs should be arranged, and who should be involved. When we make the decision to use teams, we take on the responsibility of proactively designing them as well.

Meet Teppo Raisanen, visiting researcher (from Finland) at Stanford. He works in the Persuasive Technology Lab at the Center for Study of Language and Information. As part of his work, he is writing and implementing tools (mashups) on Wikipedia to help users better comprehend what they read. One of the tools he showed me was a double-click word translator. You could double click on any word in Wikipedia and it would translate it into the language you had set. Teppo’s motivation was to enable non-English-as-first-language readers to use Wikipedia, get translation when they need it, while not breaking their “flow” as they are working to comprehend the given material. Teppo was interested in talking to me as he thought there might be a cross-over with his ideas around comprehension and my ideas about how technology features trigger sensemaking about the technology.

I was excited about his work as it raised issues of how people come to understand:

1. Knowledge management tool features and capabilities
2. How the tool can be used in a given context
3. The focal knowledge the tool and context were designed to support

As is often discussed in this blog, technologies alone do not have effects. Effects come from the combined/intertwined aspects of the technology, the organization, and related processes. What occurred to me as I talked to Teppo about implementing his tool was the staging: there are actually at least three stages of comprehension needed if we want technology tools for knowledge management to work. The three stages noted above are an excellent starting point as you plan implementation of knowledge tools, collaboration tools, or other workplace technologies. My concern, however, is that it is a rare setting where all three types of comprehension are considered. Yet without attention to all three it is unlikely that great value will result from a knowledge management tool implementation. Not impossible – especially when the need is so great that the users will put in extra effort – but much less likely.

Examples would be appreciated of success stories. Have you been involved in a knowledge management tool implementation where time/effort was made to clarify/discover the features of the tools, how those features might intertwine with the given organizational setting, and then how the tool/setting combination helped with comprehending the specific focal knowledge?

Speaking of mashups – create your own Dilbert cartoon punchlines

The January 2008 McKinsey Quarterly Newsletter (requires free registration to see the full article, also available as a podcast) includes an article by James M. Manyika, Roger P. Roberts, and Kara L. Sprague highlighting eight technology “trends to watch.” These are their eight, but I have used more familiar language in some cases:

1. cocreation (think Linux)
2. use consumers as innovators
3. elancing (freelancing via electronic means)
4. tech enabled productivity gains – for example, through wikis by getting greater value out of interactions
5. expanding automation given greater networking and access
6. unbundling production from delivery
7. putting science into management (e.g., evidence based management; using vast data collected by systems to make better decisions in general — great blog, great book)
8. making businesses from data (love the term “exhaust data”)

They include excellent summaries and links to further reading. I will not summarize further as the full article is so well done. I will say that what caught my eye (I subscribe to their emailed newsletter) was where they say “to benefit, companies must understand not only the technologies but also their business implications and the management changes they require.” This parallels a common theme in this blog, that technology outcomes are the result of the technology, the combination of particular features used, and the organizational practices surrounding their use. Proactive management is key (e.g., The Over Use of Teams entry).