Penny Edwards blogs atWikiConsulting.com

Another addition to the open-source participation economy is the contest for the creation of new futures contracts. It is being staged on MarketsWiki - an online open source knowledge base for current and historical information about the global exchange traded capital, derivatives, environmental and related OTC markets, with idea and opinion contributions being encouraged from investors and traders alike.

The ‘Great Contract Challenge‘ provides another illustration of the prospective benefits of crowd sourcing. In other words, tapping the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ offers greater innovation potential than traditional approaches which have viewed and relied on exchanges as the source of new/novel financial instrument creation. Prospective customers’ involvement in the design and selection of those instruments which appear most promising, should also constitute a form of natural selection and help ensure only the fittest new products make it to market.

Aside from the shift in mental models, the contest also underlines the departure from traditional approaches to control - of information and processes - and a move towards participation, transparency and democratised decision-making. Admittedly, the contest is being staged in the public domain, where such ideas have already found fertile ground, and social networking and idea-sharing sites, and technologies in support thereof, are now relatively commonplace. Nevertheless, there’s also increasing evidence of this type of change occurring in many professional service organisations, not least of which being their growth in the adoption and adaptation of social tools tailored to suit their business purposes.

Even if those organisations don’t subscribe to an ‘innovate or die’ approach apparent in the derivatives sector, they still need to pay careful attention to the strong steady changes fostering teamwork, dialogue and learning, being nutured by their more adventurous competitors. To that end, we’re now seeing ever increasing interest in the customisation and use of tools such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, tagging and RSS to help better connect knowledge workers with current relevant information and expertise to extract value from complexity and commoditisation alike. Those same tools which support MarketsWiki and other collaboration environments.

As noted by Bruce MacEwan in his recent blog about law firms, billing hours and complexity:

“There will always be both ['expert' and 'commoditized service]. That said, I think what constitutes either will evolve. Some of what is viewed as expert now - will devolve into commodity. New areas (unseen before - maybe new types of financings to emerge from the current crisis) may be the new “expert” (i.e., the always-sought-after high value engagements) areas.

To lubricate this information -> knowledge transformation cycle, and for firms extract value from it, they need to make it far easier for their staff to generate, find, share and use information and expertise. One straightforward way to do this is through systems which flex, shape and emerge depending on what people are trying to do. Systems which not only give people a better platform on which to work, but which can also make use of the trails people create as they search, bookmark, rate or view things - all very simply stuff focusing on supporting and gathering intelligence from people’s interaction with the system. And when these individual activities are aggregated, they provide powerful indicators of what is most useful or important to people across the breadth of the organisation. Another example of crowd sourcing - but this time applied internally - to tap the wealth of (informal) sharing which often occurs in casual exchanges, via email or other channels, and can so easily be lost in organisations which fail to innovate, or at least improve, their current information and technology environments.

From time to time it’s instructive (and fun) to explore other systems and theories, as a way of learning and coping with problems in our projects, company or wider business environment. Take, for instance complexity theory and life in the Kruger National Park.

Broadly speaking, complexity theory suggests there is an underlying natural order to the behaviour and evolution of complex systems - be they ecosystems, financial systems, business operations or herds of buffalo. The following clip illustrates how herds and prides comprise sub-systems in the greater (Savannah) system. Each buffalo (or lion) operating with its fellow herd (or pride) member to form a unit, seeking to achieve a common goal, without anyone of them managing the operation! Each unit in the clip responded to the action of the other (and a third party intervention - in this case that of the crocodiles) - and together effected a pattern of self-organising behaviour, where the group was responsible for dividing and attacking the target. Something that each individual could not have achieved alone.

In other words, the disparate elements worked together in a self-directed manner to achieve coherence in the overall outcome. With each actor having some freedom to attack or kick from a certain angle or at a given target, allowing them to spontaneously adapt to the situation - all elements of ’survival learning’.

So what are the implications for our work with people, information and technology?

Many organisations, in particular legal and professional services firms, are eternally challenged with ‘managing’ knowledge (and associated spin-offs for innovation). Until recently, they have been trying to do this through standardised inflexible top-down controlled systems, which require ‘knowledge’ to be distilled, refined and polished (all as separate time consuming activities to people’s daily work load), and then ‘filed’ in pre-determined siloed categories with associated taxonomies. Not much room in there for self-directed action!

That has led some to implement more flexible solutions and processes - including the use of social tools. Complexity theory suggests that, given enough latitude, people will self-organise and bring about their own natural order by using tools such as wikis, blogs, tagging, etc, to suit their information and process needs. (Social tools having the innate flexibility to support that type of behaviour.) That has direct implications, amongst other things, in respect of any top-down structuring of content, and managerial support and direction in the use of the tools.

It follows that people should be allowed and encouraged to use the tools to create their own view of the information, by tagging, linking and bookmarking content which is useful to them - i.e. bottom-up activity. Not only will that help the individual later find and use the content, but when each individual’s activity in the wiki is aggregated with that of others, it creates a collective intelligence and signals about the information people find most useful and the way they are categorising/labeling it to promote its future findability (because people use terms and content which are relevant and useful - rather than ‘miscellaneous’). As people use the tools, and reflect on and update the information/knowledge therein, they learn how to adapt their behaviour and what works best in their circumstances.

In other words, this behaviour is self-directed and emergent because it is dependent on the current issues and opportunities people have to deal with. Those issues and opportunities in turn impact on the value of yesterday’s information, which usually needs constant attention and updating to ensure it is current and relevant, so as to be able to help in solving today’s problems. So, as people query, discuss, update and re-categorise information, they leave crucial footprints and create new information - all of which can be captured (as part of the participation process) within the social tools, and collated to form new information which is fed into the stream of current awareness people use to make decisions about the issues they face. As such, trying to plan for and create wholly top-down structures (like categories and taxonomies) for information, and responsibilities for its capture and upkeep, is somewhat futile. That approach cannot reflect real-time changes and learning derived from people’s experience with the system.

And the take-away point here is: Allow people to self-organise in their use of social tools, and the creation, updating and maintenance of information/knowledge therein.

As I outlined in my last post, that will require businesses to take a different tact regarding control - i.e. stepping back and letting people develop their own patterns rather than trying to predict and standardise the structure of information and its use from the outset.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean a wholesale departure from top-down categorisation since the system may, to a certain extent, still depend on the interactions with certain pre-defined/categorised elements. Nor does it mean that the use of social tools, and the management of information therein, should be devoid of strategic planning for their development, enhancement and future growth. Planned emergence can play a key role here in helping to ensure we develop our ideas, knowledge and expertise, and systems in support thereof, in a way that helps us best deal with our everyday problems and ambuguities. As the lions demonstrated, it’s just not enough to catch your prey, you’ve got to be able to follow through in uncertain rapidy changing circumstances.

Last week, I went along to the RSA to listen to Charles Leadbeater talk about his book “We Think”, research and thoughts on the web and the web’s effect on mass creativity, innovation and collaboration.  He indicated how the web has created new vantage points on old questions (e.g. effect of technology on societal change and the scale of such change) and new dichotomies (e.g. sharing vs making money, and autonomy vs authority, where online collaborations create new hierarchies and different forms of ‘control’).  This provided the context for the central themes of his book, namely

• Ethic of Participation:* Prior behaviour characterised by ‘work during the day’ and ‘consuming or engaging in social pursuits by night’ is becoming more complex, and being blurred by people (who are ‘amateurs’) creating things in their leisure time (traditional ‘consumption’ time) to a very high standard, and using those outputs during work time (e.g. open source s/w).
• New ways to collaborate:* Involving hierarchies, but of a different kind to those which we are accustomed, being more meritocratic, transparent and fluid.  That is leading to new forms of organisation, which allow us to imagine how we can get stuff done together, as well as giving us new perspectives on control and value chains - now being more like hives or nests.
• New motivations: Which asks us to look at why people are contributing to the content and community of the web.  Some motivations revolve around recognition.  The implication being, that if businesses/organisations don’t get it, they are not going to be creating environments where people will contribute (creatively and innovatively), nor will the businesses/organisations themselves be contributing (or able to do so).
• Ethic of Sharing:* How wealth in the broadest sense gets generated in an economy of ideas.  He suggested that the above three themes invite us to think about wealth creation in entirely new ways, and to depart from traditional models of closed investment/ownership/private property (historically) being the necessary ingredient for the development/exploitation of primary goods, labour, ideas and innovation.

These themes in turn raise considerations about freedom and its relationship with creativity - where one is perhaps derived from experiencing the other and forms part of the new ‘motivation’.  It also raises the question about how deep the participation culture will go when, for example, ideas are circulated and one organisation alone profits from their exploitation.  In other words, where people are choosing to do things in different ways, and are participating in new modes of on- and off- line collaboration (made possible by the web and the variety of technology available to users), what type of sharing models are available in a world based on wealth, and how do we innovate the business models themselves (not only the products and processes)?

In one area, new models have been facilitating the flow of resources and action to issues that need addressing even where there is no (or little) money to be made.  Take Kiva for example.  Kivais the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.  Guy Kawasaki explains that Kiva’s model involves a minimum $2.50 voluntary fee that lenders pay when checking out their “shopping cart.”  Consequently, lenders receive no interest and pay a voluntary fee to Kiva in order to loan money.  Great business model!  Relying as it does on people’s motivation to share and participate in the building of an online community (and to pay to do so).  Here, innovation in technology (web) and the business model itself has facilitated pockets of local action, which collectively, are having a tremendous global effect.  This type of thinking and action is also behind many climate change initiatives, not least of which being Do The Green Thing.

In other areas, the discussion surrounds the organisation, and its generation and exploitation of ideas and knowledge.  Chesbrough explores these ideas in his recent book “Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology“.  He discusses the departure from prior models which relied on creativity within the firm, to the need for innovation in the business model itself (i.e. models of ‘open innovation’) which enable firms to tap ideas of customers and users and involve customers as co-producers.  It also requires ideas to flow - into and out of the business - requiring a different approach to control and the creation of value.

Proctor and Gamble is perhaps one of the more famous examples of open innovation, actively seeking user-community participation in developing new product ideas.  Another interesting ‘environmental’ example, promoted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and IBM, is the “Eco-Patent Commons”.  That initiative makes available patents to “encourage researchers, entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes in any industry to create, apply and further develop their consumer or industrial products, processes and services in a way that will help to protect and respect the environment”.  Then, there’s Free Beer (thanks for the reference Eliot!).  It’s ‘free’ in the sense of “freedom”, not beer give-aways.  The organisation is using Creative Commons licences to give public access to the recipe and brand (for pleasure or profit).  Usual terms apply: “If you make money selling their unique beer, you have to give them credit and publish any changes you make to the recipe under a similar license”.  All the writing about ‘wisdom of the crowds’ suggests that the Free Beer recipe could be the best one yet!

Coming back to the themes above, about motivations, sharing and profiting from ideas, Leadbeater is suggesting that it’s unlikely that people will be satisfied with being anonymous contributors to a company’s ideas - they want a certain level of autonomy/freedom to create and to be appropriately recognised for their contribution.  And this is where many organisations are still getting it wrong by not understanding what is motivating people to participate, collaborate and share their thoughts.  As illustrated in the above examples, for this to happen, companies have to give away control to allow ideas and creativity to flow (and perhaps control over a range of their IP) which is probably counter-intuitive for many organisations.

Whilst managers may have long known that ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’, what does that maxim mean in the context of a wiki implementation? In other words, when evaluating a wiki implementation what can be measured and how should it be done? In an earlier post I indicated that:

“Measuring users’ progress through adoption stages and how often people are using wikis will provide some elementary figures on wiki diffusion and infusion in the organisation, and may provide grounds for investigating any barriers to the implementation process. However, more difficult issues relate to evaluation of wikis’ impact on bottom-line performance and development of organisational learning practices. Measurements focusing solely on bottom-line performance improvement in terms of accelerated project cycle times, reduced email overload and search costs may provide some hard data to support ROI, but they do not consider more important effects of wiki management/usage on organisational learning and collaborative capability development. Not only is it more difficult to establish direct causal connections between wiki management/use and improvements here, any evidence would be in the form of people’s opinions/perceptions.”

During my discussion with Euan Semple regarding the issue of wiki evaluation, he highlighted how the emergent nature of wiki usage and the wiki itself requires “conversations and actions, not pre-planning and control”. Consequently, in his experience ‘evaluation’ has been a continuous process requiring managers to be (i) awake to how people are working/using the wiki by engaging with and being open to user feedback and (ii) prepared to amend original ideas about the implementation and allow/encourage users to take responsibility for ensuring the wiki meets their needs.

Contrasting that ‘emergent’ approach to evaluation, Ross Mayfield described a more directed/planned approach where initial goals, milestones and indicators/measurements are identified at the outset and later used to establish progress and/or reassess plans. However, he did highlight the difficulties of measuring benefits associated with fostering transparency, innovation and culture change, or establishing whether any improvement in a targeted work process is directly attributable to the wiki, which tends to rely on soft data.

To investigate what is actually happening in practice, I asked interviewees and survey respondents whether and how they evaluate their wikis. Whilst most interviewees indicated that no formal evaluation takes place, when asked whether their companies have learnt to better manage/use wikis, they identified a range of initiatives to improve wikis including change of the wiki-structure to reflect active communities of practice, improved training mechanisms, and seeking out of best practices (e.g. from WikiPatterns).

Likewise, the majority of survey responses (30% of responses) indicated that no feedback was sought/given regarding the wiki. However, where evaluation had been undertaken it focused largely on the wiki itself (e.g. content maintenance, the ability to locate information and ease of use) rather than the implementation process (e.g. identifying collaboration and training needs)

So despite the above maxim, and the key theme espoused throughout ‘learning organisation’ literature (i.e the need for continual and live attention to ensure processes, skills and structures encourage the best possible feedback from outside the organisation, and between all elements within the organisation), it appears that evaluations tend to be ad-hoc rather than formal assessments of the wiki and the implementation process, with many organisations not actively seek feedback, and instead relying on more subtle forms of evaluation that occur seamlessly as people use the wiki and adapt it to their needs accordingly. Furthermore, where feedback has been sought, it has focused on wikis’ utility rather than internal usage patterns, transition mechanisms and user commitment/drop-out levels (i.e. the implementation process and barriers thereto).

Such approaches overlook the value of evaluating the implementation process and fail to view evaluation as central to that process. In other words, evaluation must be a continuous process providing opportunities to engage in dialogue, discover barriers to wiki use/growth and possible solutions thereto, not an activity which is tacked on at the end. That approach reflects the importance of understanding the needs wiki use/management is endeavouring to satisfy, which can aid in setting flexible goals to guide development of capabilities at all organisational levels, changes to organisational systems, and subsequent assess thereof.

During my research I found that the majority of wiki implementations have resulted from grass-roots initiatives (67.65% of businesses surveyed), which relied heavily on high levels of grass-roots facilitation and self-learning and motivation to use the wiki. However, 17.82% of survey responses reported no significant wiki growth, with key barriers to use being content maintenance, wikis being too unstructured and appearing chaotic, and lack of integration with other tools. Interestingly, the survey responses also indicated that no content maintenance occured in 18% of cases - a direct reflection of the figure regarding no significant wiki growth.

Given that 47% of the wiki implementations survey were under a year-old, the responses may suggest that people are still discovering their uses, how to integrate them into work processes and existing systems, and how to cope with issues regarding content maintenance. More particularly, whilst the user community in the majority of cases indicated content maintenance was being undertaken, in light of the key barriers noted above, its skill/diligence in doing so may be inadequate, suggesting that even ‘technical users’ may not yet have effectively learnt how to adapt their behaviours and the wiki to best suit their needs. In other words, even people who are highly motivated to self-learn and adopt wikis struggle to maintain the wiki and overcome barriers to its use. Consequently, to overcome these issues and to encourage the spread of best practice in wiki usage throughout the different stages of wiki adoption by different adopter categories, grassroots activity should be balanced with directed usage/active managerial promotion and support.

During my discussion with Ross Mayfield, he considered that a key determinant of wiki’s success is the investment made in up-front ‘training’ of the wiki community, not just regarding technical wiki features but also in the generation of a shared understanding of the practices required to support the collaboration goal (including distributed responsibility for content maintenance) and imbuing those practices in the community. He went on to describe how wiki’s growth and maintenance is inextricably linked to its incremental roll-out to an initial core group, who through such ‘training’ establish how the wiki can be used to best suit their needs and build the community to support that use. That group should then be encouraged to ‘invite’ others to undertake the same process, and so continue the cycle, growing the wiki across the organisation with each group establishing their routines/norms to suit their needs.

Apparent in that process are:

• elements of grass-roots determinism regarding the wiki’s use so that it best suits people’s everyday needs, and the community practices to be developed to support such needs, coupled with
• managerial facilitation to assist people’s learning and the spread of such learning.

Euan Semple highlighted another factor to be aware of during that process, namely the importance of engaging a broad cross-section of people who will (voluntarily) fulfill different roles in the wiki “since some people are naturally drawn to create ideas, others to write and some to refactor/garden”.

In summary, managers should be more involved in the adoption and growth of wikis by giving people time to become accustomed to, experiment with, contribute to and maintain the wiki, being responsive/alert to how the wiki should be integrated with work processes and new areas for its use, and leading by example and reminding (e.g. placing information and tasks on the wiki). Consideration should also be given to the benefit of providing initial adaptable structures to guide users and the support/training necessary to encourage people to be responsible for the wiki. In that way, people will be encouraged to capture tacit knowledge (which could be otherwise lost in casual/social problem-solving encounters) that is valuable to them in their everyday tasks and which they care enough about to make it worthwhile maintaining.

In an earlier post I indicated that wiki ‘adoption’ refers to the stages through which users typically progress before committing to a new technology, with different adopter ‘types’ (e.g. innovators, early and late adopters) progressing through the stages at different times and speeds. Perhaps an even simpler (although less scientific) way of categorising users lies in the distinction between those who are technical (e.g. technologically familiar or curious) or non-technical, with ‘technical-users’ more readily adopting wikis and associated concepts of teamwork, knowledge capture and sharing, and learning therefrom. ‘Technical users’ tend to be ‘innovators’ and ‘early adopters’ often comprising people from technical companies and engineers. In fact, my survey of 102 companies corroborates this generalisation, with the greatest proportion (37.26%) of participants coming from the IT sector followed by the professional services sector, and 22.55% being IT engineers and 15.69 being consultants.

The survey results indicated that high levels of self-learning (69.93% of responses) have been supported by peer-to-peer learning (18.18%) with very little targeted/tailored training (1.40%) or issue of best practice/usage guidelines (10.49%). Popular mechanisms used to supplement self-motivated usage and ‘unlearning’ of older inefficient yet familiar habits include information being placed on to the wiki, people being involved in projects using a wiki and emailing links to the wiki. Those mechanisms moved users rapidly through the first adoption stages of becoming aware of the wiki, to understanding through trial/experimentation with the wiki.

The Wiki Adoption Spiral depicts how ‘technical-users’ move through adoption stages and spread wiki usage virally to later adopters. It reflects that:

• adoption stages for ‘technical users’ (constituting the first adopter categories) are shorter and converge as they proceed quickly through initial (awareness, understanding and trial) stages, creating their own ‘transition mechanisms’ involving self-learning and experimentation with wiki use.

• adoption categories and processes are fluid, as different users can be drawn into the process without early categories having completed the ‘typical’ cycle. For example, due to organic growth other categories maybe made aware of the wiki prior to its ‘adoption’ (e.g. through involvement in projects wikis), and commence their adoption process.

• progress through stages can be halted (i.e. no growth through abandonment or rejection) if there is no perceived ‘need’ to use the wiki and/or barriers are not overcome.

Whilst early adopters more readily enter the adoption process because they are more technically competent/inquisitive, the implication from the above points is that top-down support /facilitation is equally important for developing good ‘wiki’ practices within the initial adopter group as for later adopters. Such facilitation involves generation of a shared understanding about collaboration goals, wiki purpose, responsibilities and ‘gardening’ practices. The experience/knowledge of those adopters can then be coupled with other transition mechanisms (e.g. more ‘technical training’, involvement in projects using a wiki and information being made available on the wiki) to accelerate the diffusion process to other adopter categories.

The high level of ‘learning by doing’ and peer-to-peer support illustrates an opportunity for users to participate in a collaborative learning experience, which provides an ideal platform for encouraging communication and collaborative behaviours in general (e.g. helping transfer knowledge/ideas throughout the company, working across organizational boundaries and learning from past experience/best practices of others).

Although reliance on email and familiarity of other tools may illustrate a reluctance to ‘unlearn’ habitual less effective work practices, there needs to be a balance between directive wiki usage and support for different communication styles as people become accustomed to using wikis and the different capabilities they can provide. That also requires responsiveness to feedback and anlyses of ways in which existing tools can be integrated with wikis to best support people in their work.

Since a wiki does not replace discrete pieces of software or processes whose use may be highly structured and/or obligatory, thought needs to be given to:

• the wiki’s purpose;
• its relationship with existing work processes;
• how the wiki should be designed (e.g. should be unstructured or should some basic structure/templates be provided to guide users);
• the level of openness, and whether permissions should be used to restrict access to certain pages/areas;
• how users will be encouraged to use the wiki and move away from more familiar less efficient tools;
• how people will learn how to use the wiki - not just the technical features but the practices required to support their collaboration goals; and
• how and who will maintain the content,

all of which can help ensure the wiki provides a substantial positive impact on people’s ability to work efficiently/effectively, and thereby facilitate its uptake.

However, to what extent does such ‘thought’ equate to ‘planning’ and how much latitude should be given to allow the wiki’s use to emerge? In other words, can the wiki implementation be ‘managed’?

I discussed this issue with several consultants advising on the introduction of Web 2.0 technology. Euan Semple indicated that a different mindset is required for the implementation of wikis in organisations, where implementers encourage and repond to emergent uses and users with different expectations, rather than trying to preconceive/control how the wiki should be used. Ross Mayfield indicated that clearly defined goals/targets can help guide emergent behaviour and provide parameters for later evaluation. Jeff Weinberger indicated that in his experience during grassroots implementations people were making good use of the wiki from the outset, despite their being unplanned. However, he noted that the lack of planning may have stymied the wiki’s adoption in other parts of the company and the spreading of best practice in respect of its use.

In practice, I found that the majority of current wiki implementations have resulted from grass-roots initiatives (67.65% of businesses surveyed), so it was perhaps unsurprising that people also characterised the ‘management’ of the wiki as more emergent than planned (38.24%) or indicated that no wiki management activities were apparent (19.61%). These implementations relied heavily on high levels of grass-roots facilitation and self-learning and motivation to use the wiki.

However, such approaches have resulted in a myriad of barriers hindering wikis’ use and growth, including lack of clear purpose in using the wiki, reliance on email and chaotic/badly maintained content. Consequently, to sustain wikis’ use by these early adopters and grow it to other groups, emergence should be balanced with more up-front direction to ensure those barriers are circumvented from the outset.

Such ‘direction’ does not refer to ‘management’ in the traditional sense of ‘command-and-control’. Because wikis are different from other IT implementations, and represent a reaction to existing technology shortcomings, their management requires a different mindset, which actively engages and supports people in their use, structuring and maintenance so as to best suit people’s work needs.

Interestingly, Jim Highsmith has recently shared his thoughts on this type of ‘management’ style (which he coins ‘light-touch’ leadership) in the context of self-organising teams and the agile community. He indicates that:

“Light-Touch Leadership means that decision making is delegated to the lowest level possible and as many decisions as possible are delegated to the team. However, delegating decisions in an organization isn’t a simple task; it requires tremendous thought and some experimentation. To me, Light-Touch conveys the right mix of delegation of decision making to teams while retaining appropriate decision-making authority with the leader or in other parts of the organization.

While Light-Touch Leadership may be “light” in terms of decision making, it is heavy in articulating goals, facilitating interactions, improving team dynamics, supporting collaboration, and encouraging experimentation and innovation. These characteristics of a leader are more critical to success than delegation of decision-making authority, but decision making is still an important piece of the leader’s role. When a good Light-Touch Leader is working, she or he is nearly invisible. Things seem to happen smoothly and the teams operate seemingly without a leader.”

Whatever label is placed in the ‘management’ needed during a wiki implementation (or development of an agile community or self-organising teams), the themes are clear - the leadership style needs to embrace both planning and emergence to encourage and direct a deep broad set of people in their consideration of how they currently work, what their needs are, how things can be improved, setting goals and making decisions to those ends, and supporting them throughout the process.