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Improving collaboration with social tools
Welcome to the Melcrum KM Newsletter, and our first edition of 2008.
In the latest issue of KM Review, Judy Payne, Henley KM Forum, writes about the relationship between knowledge sharing and social tools such as wikis.
“In the current emerging era of innovation, the key organizational capability is collaboration – which is needed to drive the knowledge creation and transfer that are at the heart of the innovation process,” says Payne.
And yet, “Developing the ability to collaborate effectively is difficult, because collaboration is voluntary. People won’t collaborate just because they are told to, so collaboration can't be managed in a traditional hierarchical, command-and-control environment,” she adds.
Meeting business needs
How can organizations meet the need for collaboration, while gaining natural participation and involvement?
“Organizations need to invest in creating conditions that will encourage collaboration: an environment of trust, self-management, behavioral protocols, shared intent and equitable sharing of returns,” says Payne. “This is a familiar message in KM, where it’s widely accepted that organizations can only influence knowledge creation and sharing, and the way to do this is to provide an appropriate environment and appropriate tools.”
“Social software increases the opportunities for people to collaborate, therefore increasing knowledge sharing and creation and generating value. It’s different from traditional collaborative software because people are more likely to want to use it – but from the bottom up, enabling features of social software that make it more attractive to some individuals, can make it less attractive to individuals and groups that want to preserve their position in the existing organizational hierarchy.”
Key points
According to Payne, the key things to remember with social software and KM are as follows:
- Social software allows people to collaborate peer-to-peer and from the bottom up, whether this fits with the organizational hierarchy or not.
- Using social software can build individuals’ motivation and capability to collaborate.
- The impact and value of social software for an organization is related to the nature of the organization’s hierarchy and bureaucracy and whether the software reflects or contradicts this.
- Individuals using social software (officially or otherwise) can be a catalyst for changing the bureaucracy of an organization.
- Understanding the relationships between social software, organizational bureaucracy and individual motivation is the key to using social software successfully.
Best regards,
Alex Manchester
Editor
alex.manchester@melcrum.com
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