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July 7, 2011 by Patti

Net Work Investment

Since my book came out four years ago, I have been increasingly connecting with groups in the nonprofit sector, consulting with nonprofits, and trying to navigate the differences between enterprises and nonprofits. I have been saying, working from my gut feel, that nonprofits somehow have been sooner to “get it” about networks. There is now emerging a good body of case studies and examples of how intentional, actively supported — and funded — network building within the nonprofit space achieves remarkable results.

A recent webinar sponsored by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO), “What is the role of Networks in creating scale?” highlighted  the work and thinking that is showing results (and is part of the ongoing learning dialogue). The panel for the webinar,  included Diana Scearce, of the Monitor Institute (co-author of Working Wikily and more recently, author of the awesome “Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril and Potential of Networks“); Roberto Cremonini of Cremonini Consulting Network (who led knowledge management and networking activities at the Barr Foundation in Boston for seven years); and Gayle Williams, Executive Director of the Mary Reynolds Babcock foundation, which is focused on alleviating poverty in the southern U.S.  Nancy Murphy, from GEO, facilitated the panel discussion and kept the remote audience engaged and interacting.

Diana set the stage by providing a framework for network thinking and development, an approach that blends traditional mechanisms for supporting social change initiatives with network-minded mechanisms:

 

Foundations like the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation and the Barr Foundation have been using the networked mindset, and these approaches, effectively, and are working through the challenges of working with multiple stakeholders and learning how to put structures in place that support networked action — and learning — that require giving up on linear thinking and working organically.

Roberto gave a terrific example of how the Barr Foundation managed its funding for Boston youth sports programs by showing, side-by-side, what Barr could accomplish using a traditional approach versus what it could (and did!) accomplish using networked thinking:

Both practitioners emphasized the emergent role of weaver, or facilitator, or “network officer” (as described in the linked document by the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, a good and detailed description of the nitty-gritty of the work required); the need to work with the entire ecosystem; and the importance of understanding accountability.   The RE-AMP Energy Network case study provides a good example of building a network by starting with a systemic analysis of the ecosystem and the use of a skilled network facilitator.

A key audience question was, “How do you measure the success of the network?” Gayle Williams talked about the network that MRBF is funding to push tax policy legislation in Alabama. I liked her answer a lot: you can look at the results, actual changes in the tax policy, but also you need to be sure that the network is always asking the questions, “who else needs to be involved?”  How are the relationships? How easy is it for people to come into the network?” The speakers all agreed that organizational/social network analysis is playing a key role in helping people “see” their networks and understand how to improve connections.

This excellent webinar is available for replay at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYudIfermUg

I have always said (and written) that a network produces value based on its purpose, and also provides value to those in it. One of the cases mentioned in this webinar is one I have some personal connections to, the Barr Fellows program which is also supported by the Barr Foundation and facilitated by colleagues at IISC. My friend and colleague Claire Reinelt recently published a case study on this program, which weaves cohorts of nonprofit leaders in the Boston area. Fellows are given 3-month sabbaticals, a shared learning experience somewhere in the global south, and the opportunity to develop “authentic, honest, and accountable relationships with each other.”  It’s not hard to imagine the value to the city of Boston of such inter-connectivity across the Fellows, nor the amazing fund of social capital that each of the Fellows has to draw on.

This work, this investment, in networks and communities is one of the areas of commonality between what we are seeing in Enterprise 2.0 and the nonprofit world. In E2.0, the focus is on communities (see my comments on Rachel Happe‘s talk at the E2.0 conference — and her talk itself, The Strategic Imperative of Communities) but I refuse to get into the semantic arguments about the differences between networks and communities. For the purposes of declaring that work gets gone, goals get accomplished, and visions achieved best through connected sets of people, it doesn’t matter. Nor does it matter what we call them when there are opportunities to learn. The big learning so far this week: E2.0 and nonprofits agree. If you want to work successfully, you have to invest in networks. Community managers/facilitators/network officers/network weavers. Whatever you call them, you need them, and you need to invest in them.

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June 16, 2010 by Patti

#e2conf Keynotes JP Rangaswami

JP Rangaswami, CIO and Chief scientist, BT Design was the first keynote speaker at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston Tuesday morning. Clearly aware of the high volume of tweeting, he acknowledeged that he knew he was talking at the “risk of being tweeted out of existence.”

He is a person profoundly aware of the ways that the Internet and our constant connectivity are changing us. We have gone from being silos to being the network, from stocks to flows. He illustrates an instance of the kinds of changes we are seeing by being onstage “playing the instrument that is his voice, while [a colleague]  plays an instrument called the screen.” (The screen images were distracting, but then it’s possible that it is I who is not yet fully capable of living in this new world.)

He characterized this new world, interestingly, as one of loss of control:

  • Loss of control of the perimeter of the firm. The environment of business has altered to the extent that it’s no longer possible to understand where the boundaries of the enterprise are. Yet, companies still try to put boundaries around units inside the company and between the company and its partners, customers. Such efforts are misguided, I think I heard him say; my interpretation is that everything that happens inside is relevant outside and potentially vice versa.
  • We have lost control of our tools; they are now mobile, location-sensitive. Employees want to bring their own devices into the workplace and want to use their workplace tools to connect to the outside.
  • Similarly, we have lost control of our data. It’s an ocean, now, once you let something (even one tiny thing out), it is swimming in that ocean and you cannot control it.

As we lose control over our tools, our data, our boundaries, we have to ask whether these tools are making us dumber? If we are getting dumber, are the organizations in which we work getting dumber? His answer is “perhaps,” then “no,” we may be individually getting dumber, but collectively our organizations are getting much, much smarter.

Worrying about loss of control is managing for scarcity. We need to do is to design for abundance, for the abundance of what is available to us outside the perimeters, outside the walled tools and data, and outside the limited view of the individual.

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October 8, 2008 by Patti

Generations

You know you’ve been touched by a powerful idea or theory when it keeps coming back to mind, and begging you to apply its perspective to other ideas you encounter or read about. I’ve been touched by the Strauss and Howe theory of generations.

Deb Gilburg, of the Gilburg Leadership Institute introduced the idea (first described in the 1991 book Generations) to a recent meeting of our local idea network Gennova. The theory has it that there is a cycle of generational patterns that repeats every four generations (approximately 22 to 26 years). Strauss and Howe have characterized the four patterns and have mapped these patterns to 350 years of American history. Each pattern both shapes and is shaped by the historical context of its time, but the underlying characteristics of each pattern remain the same.

We are now accustomed to thinking about our three primary current generations, Boomers (the first generation to actually identify and name itself), GenX, and GenY. There are, of course, still many members of the pre-boomer “GI” generation that took us through WWII and its immediate antecedent, the generation that Strauss and Howe call the “Silents.” The archetypes that typify these generations are the Hero, Artist, Visionary and Nomad. A “turning” occurs after each cycle of four generations. The 2007 HBR article, The Next 20 Years: How Customer and Workforce Attitudes Will Evolve, though a bit scarily prescient in that it lists both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin as exemplars of Generation X. There’s also a lot of free stuff on the web site linked above.

This intriguing theory shows up, of course, in my current work to understand how to implement social tools in the enterprise given the distinct differences between the Boomers who fill the top management ranks, the GenXers coming up to management, and the GenYers who we look at as group-oriented, network-and-tool-savvy, and eager to be assigned important work. The tool part is an instance of history (in this case, the march of technology) influencing the generation. But, the group-oriented nature of GenY as this generation gets down to work, in the same way that the previous “Hero” generation, the GIs, got to work to organize and defend the world against tyrannical and mad dictators.

Previous Hero generations came of age during wartime (Revolutionary, Civil, and WWI) and we are of course at war on many fronts. But the challenge that unites a Hero generation does not need to be war. It could, for instance, be a planetary threat — like global warming — that will need people to set aside politics to accomplish bold endeavor.

This notion of the generational styles shows up for me in many ways recently. In a blog over on theAppGap, for instance, I reflected on current criticism of why managers do not think deeply. I wonder if there is a generational aspect to this. Reading about Daniel Goleman in a recent strategy+business article, (perhaps a blog on this anon) I wonder if the organizational development movement is an aspect of self-introspective generational pattern coming of age.

And, in looking at notes provided to me by KMWorld speaker Peter Andrews of IBM, I see the the pattern anew as he distinguishes the current state and future state of workers, saying of the future state “Workers identify with peers” and “Work centers around the endeavor.” Take this out of Andrew’s organizational context, it’s not hard to see these terms being applied to the GI generation.

Last, this past weekend walking my visiting cousins around the Revolutionary battlegrounds and the homes of Transcendalist writers (who, like us Boomers were of the “Prophet” archetype) I thought again about generations seized by ideas. Later, around the kitchen table with my cousins I thought of our own GI-generation mothers and of our grandmother, Alma, who raised ten children and who’s laugh I can still hear. Alma, like many Americans (the work is decidedly US-specific) doesn’t quite fit her generation — the Lost Generation — as she was born to Danish farmers in Wisconsin and married an immigrant Dane who shod horses.

Generations is a long and fascinating read and I suspect that when I finish I might start all over again. Having some fresh perspective will do odd things to you. As long as you keep your perspective about it.

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August 19, 2008 by Patti

The Class of 2012

My alma mater, Beloit College, has been publishing a mindset list for the last eleven years. The mindset list is always an interesting reminder of the cultural touchstones that divide generations. The list contains reminders that the incoming class of Freshman, most of whom this year will be 18 years old, have never known or experienced. For example, for these students:

  • Martha Stewart Living has always been setting the style.
  • Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.
  • IBM has never made typewriters.
  • The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens.

I found it interesting, for example, to know that IBM actually did stop making typewriters in 1990 (the cutoff year for this mindset list). And that these kids won’t understand the transcendental accomplishment of the Hubble any more than those of my generation can understand how our grandparents felt when they first saw airplanes.

There is some trivia in the list as well: For these students,

  • The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.*
  • They have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about “nothing.”

The list provides guidance for the professors and instructors at the college, so they can understand how the world occurs for their new students. It’s always fun to read.

*At least that will change now. Having spent time with my cheese-head** family over the summer, I can attest to the wearying hourly updates on Brett Favre and the Packers decision processes.
**I am a cheese-head, I use the term only with great affection.

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