Technology and Organizations

Internet resources provide us with amazing power for innovation. For example, we have the ability to simulate earthquakes with great precision and thus stimulate new building approaches for greater safety; quality (and sometimes just fun) video production is in the hands of the masses (e.g., YouTube), and there is the broad availability of Internet interfaces that engender “mashups” across major platforms such as GoogleMaps  (here’s one that shows the “walkability” of your neighborhood).

However, these technologies are also relatively abstract.  They are available for our use – but will we think to use them?  A computer is just a dark screened paperweight until it’s turned on.  Does that trigger your thinking for innovation the same way a physical object would? Would the Houston engineers of Apollo 13 “Houston, we’ve had a problem” fame been as likely to find a jury-rig solution to fit a square carbon dioxide filter in a hole for a round one if they’d had to imagine the objects the astronauts had rather than having access to physical duplicates?

People are generally lazy – or perhaps “efficient” — even with just their thinking.  Louis and Sutton called this “habits of mind”.  We have to trigger new understanding if we want to spur on innovation. 

I’m getting to my question of the day.  Think about the Amazon Kindle eBook, recently promo’d by Oprah and so apparently moving into the mainstream.  Electronic presentation of written material has been around for a long time.  Yet only recently are we seeing electronic textbooks in significant use.  We don’t see people reading books on more general use laptops.  The University of Texas is running a pilot project where students get their textbooks via the Amazon Kindle eBook.  Is it the physical nature of the eBook that will make the difference regarding people reading electronically versus on paper?  The outcomes may extreme: smaller backpacks, smaller bookstores, no “used” textbook sales.

The physical existence of the eBook (and certainly the improved quality of the text in the high-end models) may be playing a triggering role.  Sony seems to understand the role of physical objects in changing perspectives.  Their Sony PRS-700 eBook is being introduced by 1000 specially trained sales people in 3000 physical stores.  They say this is important as people changed their minds about being “uninterested” in reading eBooks after physically being exposed to the product.

Do we need physical objects to help along otherwise abstract innovations? What other examples do we have?

I’m still a Twitter holdout, but Jessica Vascellaro’s WSJ column today claims Twitter Goes Mainstream.  As noted in my previous post on microblogging more generally, Twitter allows you to post “tweets” (messages of 140 characters or less) that are read on-line or on your phone.   I’ll let Jessica’s more informed perspective describe the possible work-related benefits of Twitter, but I did take note of the following:

To help employees get the hang of the service, Zappos has begun offering classes. They range from teaching basics like how to follow a friend’s updates to “advanced” topics like using third-party services for fancier tasks, such as adding images to one’s Twitter stream.

Microblogging has yet to find an obvious enterprise sweetspot – but if there are formal classes going on it may be time to pay attention.  Classes would help implementation by providing the basics of usage, and perhaps more importantly, the opportunity to brainstorm about uses that would help employees and the firm.  I believe an evolutionary (versus intelligent design) approach is less likely to consider the integration of both organizational practices and technology tools.  If a valuable mutation occurs, great.  But classes with formal discussion of possible links to other enterprise systems, consideration of organizational policies or procedures that might be effectively adjusted, discussion of pain points that might be addressed, and organizational support, are more likely to result in a technology system that provides value.  This intertwining of organizational and technological aspects is needed for Twitter or any other change introduction.  Ideally the implementation becomes a negotiation with full consideration of the costs and benefits for involved stakeholders.

Has your organization offered classes related to more “social” technologies such as Twitter or Facebook? Were the classes about how to use them for organizational benefit, or policy statements about inappropriate behaviors at work (remember when email wasn’t accepted at work?)  Were there opportunities to brainstorm about new uses?

…“I’m working on the Acme revision” …versus microblogging, say, at a party: “I’m so drunk.” Microblogging is blogging, but posts are limited in length (say 140 characters). Twitter is one of the most famous microblogging platforms. The key question for me is whether (and how), microblogging can help with coordination at work. In prior posts I’ve discussed the value of situational awareness amongst team members and the possible value of Twitter, but there hasn’t been a serious push for microblogging in work organizations – until recently.

Claire Cain Miller’s article in the WSJ Business Innovation Technology Society (BITS) section focuses on Yammer and the possible value of microblogging in organizations. Yammer is similar but different from Twitter in that Yammer’s key questions are “What’s happening at your company?,” “What’s happening on the project” versus the less formal Twitter “What are you doing?” (“Thinking about what’s for lunch”).

Miller’s article touches on the value of short updates and speaks to Yammer’s founder, David Sacks, about microblogging versus email and IM:

E-mail no longer serves its proper purpose, which is to request an active response, Mr. Sacks said. All the rest of the stuff that clogs in-boxes — mass e-mails sharing a link to an article, for example, or notifications of company events — makes e-mail less efficient. He wants to move all that to Yammer.

I certainly agree with the idea that email is broken for many of our organizational and team coordination needs, but I’m not sure if a stand alone microblogging platform is the solution. I’m still thinking about how we can support collaboration and work performance more as a symphony and perhaps less as jazz improvisation. Even with jazz, collaborators understand the possible instruments and how they best intertwine. We aren’t there yet with our understanding of work collaboration and its support. We do need to support situational awareness within teams – especially in virtual work situations.

Knowing when and how to communicate, document, and discuss are key to team performance. Tools like Yammer are an additional method, but the value will be in how the tool is interconnected with the team’s process.

Further reading:

Whitepaper on microblogging and Twitter 

Discussion of Twitter for enterprise use

Twitter hall of shame 

Slowly but surely the pieces to the healthcare/technology puzzle are falling into place. Amar Gupta’s detailed article in today’s WSJ speaks to the integration of information technology into healthcare. This article provides a clear analysis of how you can’t change just one thing in organizations. (Nor can you change everything all at once. Some people argue that FoxMeyer’s demise was a case of doing too much at once, with too little resources.) Gupta highlights how credentialing, billing, IT security, market forces, and research on work and sleep are finally at a intersection that supports significant innovation in IT and healthcare.

I’ve made the “just one thing” point in multiple posts, and I make this critical point as part of the first class session in every course and exec presentation I make. I’ll continue to highlight examples of excellent analysis or implementation as I find them.

Some prior discussions:

• Organizational Design, virtual work — and the Skwish toy model
• Document retention

As I promised in my “how-to” on using Google Sites for team projects, this post is a response to Dylan Salisbury’s  request for discussion around the roles for a project team.  While he suggested two roles, I’m going to extend to four.  He suggested:

Team leader: Responsible for making sure work is fairly divided, meetings happen, members are aware of what’s expected of them, and any executive decisions that need to be made.  (Of course it’s still great when decisions are made by consensus.)

Document editor (one per major document): This person is responsible for assembling everybody’s work and for high and low-level consistency of the document.  This person needs to be very quick on communication and editing near the document due date.  In a time crunch, this person has authority to make editing decisions or rewrite someone else’s work.

 As a professor, I’m thrilled to see a goal of ensuring consistency to a project that has piecemeal characteristics. If this particular task is left out it shows – in class projects or any other group task.  My contribution here is to push for a broader consideration of the team roles – one more focused on the overall behaviors needed for effective performance. 

Ketrow (1991) notes that effective teams cover three types of roles.  People who can do the task itself (e.g., ship builder, computer programmer, statistical analyst).  These people are the reason the project is being done.  Then, given it’s a group project, you also need to organize the process (procedural facilitation), and to make sure the knowledge of the team is made available (socioemotional facilitation).  The best person/people at the task are not necessarily the best facilitators.  In fact, you may not want them facilitating if you really need them focused on the task.  The team leader role above seems to be a combination of the two facilitation roles.  That’s fine if you have one person on the team who can do both (both be organized and be effective drawing out all the needed knowledge from the other team members), or you may have co-leaders.  I’d put the document editor role down as a critical task role.  You may also have critical roles assigned to the accounting expert, marketing guru, etc. depending on the nature of the project.  A strong suggestion: If you are trying to learn from this work (be it in class or on the job), yes, have the expert in accounting in charge of the accounting portion of the work – but also have the weakest person in accounting in a support role to that expert.   

What about the technology? As noted in the prior post, an early discussion about the role technology will play in the project is key.  Ketrow’s work was before the age of wikis, blikis, and blogs.  You may find value in extending the three role format (procedural, socioemotional, task) to include a fourth: technical facilitator (sometimes call a “chauffeur.”  You may also find value in seeing how you can off-load some of the procedural and socioemotional tasks to technology tools.  Anonymous brainstorming may overcome the need to have a socioemotional facilitator in the mix for some tasks.  To-do lists with “tickler” may take-on the reminder role often played by the procedural facilitator.

Overall, think carefully about:

• How you meet (face to face or electronically)
• How you store your work product and manage versioning
• What are the response time expectations – are their family or work obligations that block certain days for certain people  – calendar these. 
• Individual responsibilities
• Team expectations and timeline for feedback and adjustments.  No team is built perfectly from the start — you don’t know your resources or needs well enough.  Set aside time to renegotiate after the first few weeks.

Please feel free to add additional questions, suggestions for tools or processes, or roles that you think make a critical difference.  I’m especially interested in how you have best managed the discussions around team expectations and feedback.