But whether or not they succeed will depend on the alignment of a very special trinity: leadership, culture and strategy. Collaborative organisations have leadership models that are open, conversational in style and flat. That’s certainly the style at Tangerine where everyone is a “leader” and everyone can expect to talk to anyone and be listened too.
These organisations also have cultures that are open, high on trust and low on fear of failure. The message isn’t: “What went wrong?” but “What did you learn?”. They have strategies that clearly articulate the benefits of new styles of working. And they create the structures that support, recognise and reward it.
Overall, there are eight ways to spot a collaborative organisation:
Leadership teams model collaborative behaviours
Resources are devoted to developing and sustaining this way of working
High levels of task interdependence
The default setting is sharing information
There are high levels of trust
Conflict seen as part of the creative process – everyone understands and can deal with it
The environment of the company and its technology support collaborative working
People don’t have to talk about it – it’s just the way things get done
Without trust there’s less innovation, collaboration, creative thinking, and productivity, and people spend their time protecting themselves and their interests – this is time that should be spent helping the group attain its goals.
nice blog post by Anna Carlson, NixonMcInnes (UK) a social media firm, 6/19/2014 on facilitating learning spaces. Endorses check ins and check outs to "land" the learning and drawing exercise for introductions.
Tagging content as licensable via Creative Commons
Ensuring content is easily downloadable for use in a variety of learning environments
Eliminating cost barriers to participating in a course
Eliminating technical barriers to participating in a course
Opening courses to the public, so users don’t have to log in
If you had to relocate to a place in which you knew virtually no one, how would you go about finding or creating a community of intelligent, creative, professional women (very much like yourself) who are interested in becoming their best self in order to do their best work – whatever that may be?
nice blog post by Jennifer Louden on finding your tribe nourished by women who wrote in examples of how they found their tribes (not necessarily online)
There is a growing demand for the ability to connect to others. It is with each other that we can make sense, and this is social. Organizations, in order to function, need to encourage social exchanges and social learning due to faster rates of business and technological changes. Social experience is adaptive by nature and a social learning mindset enables better feedback on environmental changes back to the organization.
the role of online community manager, a fast-growing field today, barely existed five years ago.
The web enables connections, or constant flow, as well as instant access to information, or infinite stock. Stock on the Internet is everywhere and the challenge is to make sense of it through flows of conversation
All organizational value is created by teams and networks.
Learning really spreads through social networks. Social networks are the primary conduit for effective organizational performance. Blocking, or circumventing, social networks slows learning, reduces effectiveness and may in the end kill the organization.
Social learning is how groups work and share knowledge to become better practitioners. Organizations should focus on enabling practitioners to produce results by supporting learning through social networks. The rest is just window dressing. Over a century ago, Charles Darwin helped us understand the importance of adaptation and the concept that those who survive are the ones who most accurately perceive their environment and successfully adapt to it. Cooperating in networks can increase our ability to perceive what is happening.
Wirearchies inherently require trust, and trusted relationships are powerful allies in getting things done in organizations.
Three of these (IOL, GDL, PDF) require self-direction, and that is the essence of social learning: becoming self-directed learners and workers, all within a two-way flow of power and authority.
rom Stocks to Flow
Knowledge: the capacity for effective action. “Know how” is the only aspect of knowledge that really matters in life.
Practitioner: someone who is accountable for producing results.
Learning may be an individual activity but if it remains within the individual it is of no value whatsoever to the organization. Acting on knowledge, as a practitioner (work performance) is all that matters. So why are organizations in the individual learning (training) business anyway? Individuals should be directing their own learning. Organizations should focus on results.
Because of this connectivity, the Web is an environment more suited to just-in-time learning than the outdated course model.
Organizing
our own learning is necessary for creative work.
Developing emergent practices, a necessity when there are no best practices in our changing work environments, requires constant personal directed learning.
Developing social learning practices, like keeping a work journal, may be an effort at first but later it’s just part of the work process. Bloggers have learned how powerful a learning medium they have only after blogging for an extended period.
we should extend knowledge gathering to the entire network of subject-matter expertise.
Building capabilities from serendipitous to personally-directed and then group-directed learning help to create strong networks for intra-organizational learning.
Our default action is to turn to our friends and trusted colleagues; those people with whom we’ve shared experiences. Therefore, we need to share more of our work experiences in order to grow those trusted networks. This is social learning and it is critical for networked organizational effectiveness.
excellent discussion of networks and social learning in organizations with references to Hart, Jennings, Cross, and Internet Time Alliance among others, 2010