The Progress Towards The Collective

The collective is simple to conceptualise. It is difficult to organize because people are so bent on pursuing their interest. The politician makes a living and enjoys power only because of her/his superior ability to organize and influence the collective.

Tom Peters reports 'In Search Of Excellence' that the excellent organizations identified by him took decades to develop the collective cultures that anchored their extraordinary performance.

After crunching three decades worth of data at Gallup, Marcus Buckingham reports in Fast Company (2001):
There is no such thing as a corporate culture. Companies are made up of many cultures, the strengths and weaknesses of which are a result of local conditions.

Buckingham goes on to give us the startling revelation:
US working people belong to one of three categories: engaged – 26%, not engaged – 55%, and actively disengaged – 19%, viz., three out of four people in any organization are not engaged in helping the company.

With such a record human nature appears quite unsuited to sustain constructive collaboration. Achieving collective thinking consistently over time or establishing communities of practice appears more remote, even inconceivable.

Conventional collaboration software may have failed to progress the collective mind but it did serve to demonstrate that the virtual space offered a real 24x7 accessible venue for diverse people to progress towards a consensus. The only hurdle left for forming the collective mind was the conventional wisdom articulated by Drucker that "In knowledge and service work, partnership with the responsible worker is the only way; nothing else will work at all.”

This wisdom is as old as mankind itself. Rewriting it by transforming IT into intelligent energy for organizing and driving the pursuit of excellence, from simply offering tools, viz., passive energy, should revolutionize administration over time. It is reasonable to expect that if we graduate the exploitation of collective ability from just 5% (the prevailing value) to well over 70% (the possible value with rewriting of the wisdom) then society can expect some tremors.

It is an exciting prospect to carry forward into 2007.

Solving The Problem Of Quality Collaboration

IT today only provides the virtual space for the collective mind to exist as an entity. It takes constructive dialogue to converge the Enterprise Virtual Space with the collective mind and impart it the ability to drive success. Any collaboration will not do.

Constructive dialogue and convergence demand a compelling universal process for focused and continuous knowledge flow on each decision event from its inception till its conclusion. The conventional wisdom articulated by Drucker in 1991 implies it is impossible to conceive a one-size-fit-all process to deliver a universal end-to-end workflow of collaboration. The IT and Knowledge Management community accept this as the gospel truth and are working within it with tools like Business Intelligence, Web 2.0, Presence sensitivity, etc., insisting there is no escape from dependence on a supportive culture for achieving the desired collaboration. This makes any collaboration acceptable whether or not it develops and applies the collective mind for superior ability. Thus the development of collective ability for better enterprise performance is today corrupted in translation.

The science of interactions delivers architecture to converge the Enterprise Virtual Space (EVS) with the collective mind for superior ability. Its primary features are:

• Focus on team worker, not process
• Team worker has evolved. Hence norms exist
• Grammar & vocabulary created to anticipate any knowledge process as it unfolds step by step
• They develop an IT driven language (infinite use of finite means) to assemble all interactions
• There is 100% adoption for the daily intra-enterprise communication
• Email is replaced as the communication backbone by smart use of replication technology.
• Capture and transformation of the knowledge into systematic dialogue in context.

In effect the science transforms IT from a tool or passive energy into inexhaustible intelligent energy for organizing, driving and channeling knowledge flows anytime/anywhere including offline. Its daily use for communication with by-product of corporate dialogue induces a collaborative culture and develops the collective mind. The collective cannot fail to act on the information surfaced by Web 2.0 tools. This bridges the Knowing-Doing gap, and enhances sensitivity and ability.

The means for constructive dialogue shall spare personnel the need to be pro-active as individuals - a cradle for mistakes. Instead, the collective intelligence fostered by IT drives the group to be pro-active. The creation of collective intelligence on call in the EVS is a breakthrough that rewrites the conventional wisdom articulated by Drucker in 1991. It provides means to overturn the centuries old dependence on personnel energy for superior knowledge work productivity and the pursuit of success.

Collective Ability Demands Quality Collaboration

It is appreciated that better collective thinking and working, viz., ability, offer the only means to cope with the rapid pace of change. In particular, the knowledge processes and practices that raise collective ability are well understood today:

• The pursuit of excellence. ‘In Search Of Excellence’ (1981) by Peters & Waterman and ‘The Fifth Discipline’ (1995) by Peter Senge provide handsome detail on best practices and the importance of trust and teamwork. They need channeled but free flow of knowledge.
• Superior execution: Converting Strategy Into Results. The acclaimed book ‘Execution–The Discipline Of Getting Things Done’ (2002) by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan is devoted to this topic. Needs robust dialogue in specific areas.
• Collective Intelligence. Delivers superior response to events. The turnaround of Microsoft in 1995 is an example. Needs extensive focused participation.
• Competent Culture. It arrests chain mistakes. ‘How to Avoid the Chain of Mistakes that Can Break Your Company’ by Robert E. Mittelstaedt Jr. states the case. Published 2004 by s+b. Needs a culture for listening internally.
• Preparation For Change. Peter Drucker has discussed it in depth in ‘Managing For The Future’ (1991). Needs flexibility in structure and mindset.

Studies by Tom Davenport have established that companies have no reliable strategy to improve the delivery of their knowledge work, viz., collective ability. The reason is revealed by an insight into the components of quality knowledge work:

• Organization of context and focusing of interaction content
• Free flow of knowledge with continuity of thought
• Knowledge of responses in similar situations
• An understanding of the opinion owner
• An understanding of the case history
• Clarity on goals, etc.
• Systematic and total capture of opinion
• Follow up by expectations, groups, role, etc.
• Means to define security
• Means to study the trend of emerging opinion, influence responses and work towards a consensus 24x7.

For reasons of time, energy, self-interest, etc., personnel rarely serve support systems to deliver quality knowledge work. The organization is required to instil culture to sustain discipline for the required investment of time and energy. However, collaboration per se does not deliver the required free flow of knowledge. Discussion does not fit the bill as the ego can intervene to switch off its free flow any time. Constructive dialogue or purposeful free flow of opinion across boundries is an established means for the required collective thinking or quality of knowledge work and interaction.

IT supports knowledge interactions in the virtual space. IT can conceivably supply the energy to conduct constructive dialogue in the Enterprise Virtual Space (EVS). In this sense the virtual space is a possible repository of the collective mind. The EVS that exists today is weak in its support of collective ability:

• Web tools with just 0.01% participation within the enterprise (% of internet users that impart meaning to Wikipedia) cannot establish any truth.
• Today IT at best offers tools for interactions and creating content. The ‘IT is a tool’ paradigm is unreliable because of inconsistent adoption, limited participation, poor query response and discontinuities created by time spent away from the network.
• It does not deliver most of the requirements for better collective ability.

Making IT indispensable for constructive dialogue, viz., focused, purposeful and free knowledge flow, on each decision event, can converge the virtual space with the collective mind to offer a powerful means for raising collective ability. It requires transformation of IT from a tool to intelligent energy.

Enterprise 2.0 And The Knowing-Doing Gap

The cases 'for' and 'against' Enterprise 2.0 need to be reconciled to achieve superior collective ability. Social software presents an excellent means to surface and access facts, and coordinate ad-hoc participation in developing and linking facts across space and time. However, it is not a means to define responsibility and accountability for executive action, promote the work environment, guide best practices, or inspire and channel the thinking of personnel, viz., not an enabler of the business administration that determines collective ability. It also does little to make life easier for personnel, e.g., manage their anxieties or observe the discipline essential for collective working.

The cases 'for' and 'against' Enterprise 2.0 can be simply reconciled by separating the infrastructure for information gathering and verification from that for business administration, viz., by acknowledging the Knowing-Doing gap. It is likely that superior business administration will foster adoption of the social software and hasten the required critical mass for its sustained and reliable operation. It will certainly raise collective ability.

While IT has succeeded in leveraging its virtual space to raise social interaction for better knowing, it has yet to succeed in investing intelligence in the virtual space for superior business administration. The abandonment by the FBI in 2006 of a new $170 million computer system, developed to upgrade its Case File System, demonstrates this. In a paper at my website I have identified the problems that must be resolved by any attempt to raise collective ability. It would be wishful thinking to believe that use of social software alone shall be enough to raise the level of collective ability.

The problem in improving knowledge work productivity for raising collective ability was identified by Peter Drucker in his ‘Managing For The Future’ published in 1991:
“Capital cannot be substituted for people in knowledge and service work. Nor does new technology by itself generate higher productivity in such work. In making and moving things, capital and technology are factors of production. In knowledge and service work they are tools of production. Whether they help productivity or harm it depends on what people do with them, on the purpose to which they are being put, for instance, or on the skill of the user.

Drucker, for all practical purposes, stated the conventional wisdom that applies even today. It implies that only personnel possess the intelligence to organize and drive superior collective ability. Personnel rarely have the time and energy to spare. Superior collective ability with any consistency is rare.

The Case Against Enterprise 2.0

"It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things ........ lukewarmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it. " - Machiavelli (The Prince, 1513)

Divining a pattern is not as simple as connecting dots - that could amount to wishful thinking. False starts will inevitably take place before missing pieces of evidence are identified, found and a genuine pattern emerges. A structure to surface dots only develops facts. It:

• Does not deliver a structure for connecting the dots or taking informed action.
• Fails to drive the evolution of opinion towards a consensus for concerted action.
• Is impervious to time deadlines.
• Does not encourage recording and submission of sensitive information.

On the internet a mere 0.01% of the over 1000 million population contributes to the English Language wikipedia. Yet over 100,000 individuals emerge to establish meaningful content. For any enterprise to benefit from “social software” it needs to persuade employees, who may number thousands, to begin blogging and creating wikis all at once. Else, the critical mass needed for meaningful data is unlikely. Consistent collaboration by a multitude today requires a supporting culture. The secret to achieve it has yet to be divined.

The New York Times article ‘Open-Source Spying’ has a telling report: “…. Clay Shirky of N.Y.U. points out, most wikis and blogs flop. A wiki might never reach a critical mass of contributors and remain anemic until eventually everyone drifts away; many bloggers never attract any attention and, discouraged, eventually stop posting. Wikipedia passed the critical-mass plateau a year ago, but it is a rarity. “The normal case for social software is failure,” Shirky said.”

The success of Enterprise 2.0 for raising collective ability requires not only a culture for adoption of Web 2.0 tools but also an effective means to invite sensitive information as well as take collective action on the intelligence that surfaces.

The Case For Enterprise 2.0

Note: ‘Open-Source Spying’, published on December 3 in The New York Times by Clive Thompson, describes a focused implementation of Web 2.0 within the enterprise.

All definitions of Enterprise 2.0 thus far describe it in terms of the potential released by Web 2.0 tools - Search/Link/Author/Tags/Extensions/Signals or SLATES or social software tools for short. Andrew McAfee has devoted his blog to development of its potential for raising collective ability. The US intelligence community is betting big on Enterprise 2.0 as it urgently needs to overcome its bureaucratic chain of command to combat an agile network like Al Qaeda. Its approach reflects the case for Enterprise 2.0 powering superior collective ability:

• If personnel were encouraged to post personal blogs and wikis on the community’s private network — linking to their favorite reports or the news bulletins or blogs they considered important — then mob intelligence would take over. The rapid self-organization would inexorably refine facts and draw together disconnected information, hard to sort through, for unearthing plots like 9/11.
• Far-flung personnel around the world could contribute day or night without the constraints of being in context.
• Once the community has a robust and mature wiki and blog knowledge-sharing Web space it shall achieve agility in responding to unforeseen demands.

The US intelligence community is putting in place the security structure needed to support the required shift from the prevailing ‘need to know’ culture to a ‘need to share’ philosophy.

Perspective: Latent Potential Of IT

Each of the great inventions of mankind – the steam engine, electricity, IC engines, telephones, etc. - transformed society’s productivity deeply and unambiguously. IT has so far transformed entertainment, communication, individual productivity but not the society’s productivity. It is in fact believed that the productivity increases since 2000 are not due to IT. The problem is not computing power. We already have computers that are fast enough for any task most of us want to perform.

Collective ability today represents the greatest if not the only source for the pursuit of extraordinary enterprise performance. While the potential for collective formation has risen steeply over the centuries, the collective ability exploited has more or less stagnated.

The practices and processes that develop the collective mind are well known. IT has all that is needed to raise collective ability and sensitivity – connectivity, programmability, speed, storage, access, mobility, productivity tools and social software – but has yet to make an impact across the enterprise. Achieving the transformation with IT demands a compelling business model to ensure IT is adopted for constructive team work by each member of the enterprise.