I believe this very strongly, and I think it’s one of the most critical cultural changes that will determine which organizations thrive and which ones lose relevance.

Bill Ives echoes this point in his summary of J.P. Rangaswami’s presentation at the FASTForward ’08 conference. Rengaswami talked of the “new polarization” in organizations, or how the customer gains control.

The fights have traditionally been within the IT departments. Now they have moved outside.

The first polarization is expertise. People of his and my generation believe experience is necessary for real innovation. We need to stop rejecting youth.

The second is participation. Now people can participate in much more than possible. He gave as an example, the numerous donations in small amounts that Obama has raised for the US primary campaign through the web on his way to a record month for total contributions ever.

The third dimension is time. He quoted Rupert Murdoch that fast is the new good. Now we have stuff in Beta all the time. JP said that IT has to get over these three concepts to succeed. Now the users have already breached the IT wall and running around inside the fort. It is too late to keep them out.

Sixth in a series by guest author Vincenzo Cammarata.

A common element between Wiki philosophy and innovation successful case histories, is the partial or total absence of structure or, saying better, of hierarchy. The possibility, in fact, to contribute in the same way, indifferently at which level you are involved in the organization, is one of the first steps towards the reduction of barriers to collaboration, participation and involvement in the organizational life.

Peering is to intend in the two ways of organizational commitment: from both the perspective, the access to common information and the possibility to contribute to corporate knowledge.

Related WIOWA Questions:

6.a Supporting people (support to effectiveness)

Is everybody able to update useful information like telephone numbers or scheduled meetings?

6.b Resource Allocation (organizational services)

Is everybody able to book meeting room or, in general, common resources?

6.c Flexibility on process design (knowledge/collaborative support)

Is everybody able to recombine documents and then publish it?

6.d Communication (communication and socialization)

Is everybody free to publish (in the intranet or wiki) information useful for your colleagues?

Fourth in a series by guest author Vincenzo Cammarata.

The true collaboration occurs when people have the possibility to co-work on the same sub-task, activating a mechanism of new knowledge creation. Collaboration is not so obvious if is not clearly supported: the risk is to exchange this “together” learning process with a simple cooperation process, producing not new knowledge but only a simple addition of individual regress knowledge.

In this sense, collaboration has to be helped in order to avoid isolation in job and supported with a compatible scheduling of daily activities. Is also important to create “collaboration bridges” across teams and groups, involving people to participate in each other’s activities or involve experts on other areas to collaborate together.

Related WIOWA Questions:

4.a Support to People (support to effectiveness)

Do you know which people are involved in your same projects?

4.b Teaming (organizational services)

In your team, are individuals plans often compatible with the group activity?

4.c Collaboration (knowledge and collaborative support)

Is it usual to participate to other group projects?

4.d Communication (communication and socialization)

Is it usual to discuss with others about their work, solving problems together?

Whenever Apple unveils a new product, Steve Jobs often mentions “Apple Design” alongside all the other new features. And for good reason – the company takes design very seriously – so seriously that it’s a major selling point and the company has won numerous design awards including eight just this month alone.

Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple and author of Rands in Repose and the best-selling Managing Humans, shared some insights into Apple’s approach to design as a panelist at this year’s SXSW conference.

Pixel Perfect Mockups

From Businessweek’s Helen Walters:

This, Lopp admitted, causes a huge amount of work and takes an enormous amount of time. But, he added, “it removes all ambiguity.” That might add time up front, but it removes the need to correct mistakes later on.

10 to 3 to 1

Apple designers come up with 10 entirely different mock ups of any new feature. Not, Lopp said, “seven in order to make three look good”, which seems to be a fairly standard practice elsewhere.

Designers have complete creative freedom with those initial 10 designs, then choose to three to refine further until they reach the ultimate design.

Paired Design Meetings

Designers have two regular meetings a week. In the first, they explore any idea without constraints – it’s a chance to push their creativity as far as they can – and then some.

In the second, they try to work out all the details for a crazy idea and see how viable it is in reality.

This process and organization continues throughout the development of any app, though of course the balance shifts as the app progresses. But keeping an option for creative thought even at a late stage is really smart.

Too often, organizations constrain themselves by what they think they can get done, and don’t explore seemingly harebrained ideas. Apple does, and in an ingenious way that transforms what could be boundaries into opportunities that result in the unequaled products they seem to produce with amazing consistency.

The paired meetings, Lopp said, give designers a variety of ideas to present to senior management. Designers:

…take the best ideas from the paired design meetings and present those to leadership, who might just decide that some of those ideas are, in fact, their longed-for ponies. In this way, the ponies morph into deliverables. And the C-suite, who are quite reasonable in wanting to know what designers are up to, and absolutely entitled to want to have a say in what’s going on, are involved and included. And that helps to ensure that there are no nasty mistakes down the line.

It’s amazing to see an organization that’s truly postmodern in its ability to transcend ageless stereotypes. Apple’s designers and management seem to recognize that, above all else, both have value in designing, producing, and selling a smash-hit product – not just once, but with consistency. Isn’t that the secret to success?

(via Infinite Loop)

Second in a series by guest author Vincenzo Cammarata.

A flexible workplace is characterized by the capability of individuals to manage not only their work, time or resources, but also the possibility to influence and operate in an active way inside the community (from team to organizational level) and for these reasons to be part of the operational process.

Flexibility influences the way of allocating time creating moments for personal insights development; it gives the possibility to own a picture of the whole process in order to decide the way to set personal objectives. Exploiting one of the main Wiki functionalities, it permits as well to handle other contents and the possibility to be active – following personal expertise – in different teams (community of practice).

Related WIOWA Questions:

2.a Time Allocation (support to effectiveness)

Are you free to dedicate a percentage of your time to your own projects?

2.b Decision Making Agility (organizational services)

Is it possible to get information about the whole project work progress and direction?

2.c Flexibility on Process Design (knowledge/collaborative support)

Is it possible to re-configure and handle others’ contributions?

2.d Teaming (communication and socialization)

Are you active in different teams?

Stewart asked me to present to ikiw.org community the insights contained in my master’s thesis (MSc in Corporate Communication) titled “Wikibility of Innovation Oriented Workplaces – The CERN Case”.

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In this dissertation I focus my attention on the Organizational Cultural aspect of the wiki introduction inside organization, supposing that the main reason – and scope – of this change of Culture (=way in which things are done) is to increase Innovation.

Doing that, as you can see from the presentation here embedded, I pointed out eight Cultural Key Drivers that try to answer to my research questions:

• Which are the attitudes that make an innovation oriented organization a “wikible” workplace or – in other words – a workplace where Wiki really works in an effective way?
• Is possible to audit these attitudes in order to furnish a tool to support management in the roll out phase of the wiki adoption in an Organization?

Starting with tomorrow - for eight days – I’ll describe each of the cultural key drivers, and furnish the relative questions of the Wikibility of Innovation Workplaces Audit (WIOWA) that I propose into my work.

Enjoy to test it in your organization and let me know your opinions.

Vincenzo Cammarata

Sandy Kemsley summarizes Andrew McAfee’s and Don Tapscott’s presentations at the FASTForward ’08 conference earlier this week. McAfee, who coined the term “Enterprise 2.0” and is therefore eligible to use it , looked at the state of tools and technologies, how to foster adoption, and cultural necessities for success. Here are a few selected points, with my comments in italics:

1. Tools are intuitive and easy to use — a key to acceptance of the technology, but something that’s also difficult to achieve. Building a quality tool isn’t easy, but it is worth it. Truly good tools will stand the test of time and be flexible enough to adapt to changing needs.
2. Tools are egalitarian and freeform, Freeform is critical. Specific workflows and procedures inherently limit the range of uses of a tool, and the wider the range of uses, the more people will use it.
3. Borders seem appropriate to users, so that it’s obvious how far specific information should be shared, and how easy it is to find other people and information. Whenever you add something new to your wiki, think about whether it needs to be secured or can be shared. You’ll give others a wealth of information about what you do that will help build interaction and cut down on low-level work, like responding to emails requesting information.
4. Patient and dedicated evangelists exist: those spending their time popularizing the tools and techniques because they believe that they can make a difference. Hear, hear. In every organization I’ve worked for, I have done this. I know you are too, and your work is critical to the future of your organization.
5. Effort has official and unofficial support from the top: both funding and blessings from senior levels to allow evangelists and others to work their magic, but also a mindset that that enterprise is serious about being engaged in the initiatives, such as executive-level blogging. This is the essential balance that supports growth of wikis. Day to day growth needs to be pushed by grassroots buzz, and long term acceptance comes from the confidence of knowing that people in senior leadership are being shown the value and encouraging growth.
6. Slack exists in the workweek; recognizing this gives people the latitude to blog or create wiki content within the organization rather than appear to be busy when they’re not. Do you have slack in your workweek? Well, there you go – perfect time to work on next week’s meeting agenda on the wiki, or help edit and refine project documents with someone else on your team.
7. Top management accepts lateralization, which facilitates public content being created by any level within an organization as well as its customers and partners, not just through a sanitized corporate communications process. It’s like a Niagara Falls of free, high-quality, high-value PR. Who wouldn’t want that?
8. There are lots of young people. This one isn’t so much an indictment of older people, but an indication of how well an organization is doing with its use of social media. People my age are going to work for the organizations that demonstrate they get it, so if an organization has a lot of young people, it must be doing something right.

You can still start or grow a wiki in your organization.

Gartner has published a press release advising businesses to start planning for cost cutting and prepare two budgets: one that takes into account the current economic situation, and one that identifies potential further cost cuts should the need arise.

This is where the low-cost, resource-conscious, simplicity, and freeform nature of Enterprise 2.0 tools like wikis and blogs really shines.

Large, traditional enteprise software projects with six- or seven-figure budgets are often the ones that run into trouble during an economic downturn.

But you can spend in the neighborhood of $5,000 on a wiki (pocket change, even in an uncertain economy), run a pilot, and help groups get started and find the best uses for their needs.

Do this now, stick with it, and by the time the economy is roaring again, you’ll be running an efficient, agile organization that can take advantage of that strength to surge ahead.

That’s what Stephen Baker asks after a colleague brings up the subject:

A colleague who came into my office (to give me yet another math book) talked about how he used to cheat in high school math. He described networks of collaborators playing a daring game. It sounded much like the current ideals of education: People forming spontaneous teams and turning work into games.

Cheating is all too often used as a blanket term to discredit activity that teachers don’t understand. What some teachers label as cheating is really an attempt by students to make their work more exciting, social, and engaging.

People naturally self-organize in groups, divide work amongst themselves, and collaboratively assemble and refine the results of that work. That is more authentic than being assigned to groups, or working in artificial isolation.

Really, where’s the benefit in giving 30 students the identical assignment and telling them each to complete it individually? They will find ways to make that approach less mundane and unnatural, and the experience they get from working together is much more applicable to the way they’ll work in the real world.

Dennis McDonald on the role of social media in innovation and creativity:

Innovation can be thought of as a process…A practical example is how to manage the introduction of certain types of blogging into an organization as a tool for internal communications…you need to strike the right balance between concepts of structure and process on the one hand, and freedom and spontaneity on the other. [Read more]