Collaboration (Hansen): Part 5

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.

This will be the fifth (and last) part of an overview of the book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results ©  2009 by Morten T. Hansen.  This post focuses on Chapter 6 Lever 3: Build Nimble Networks.

By way of review, leaders follow three steps to accomplish disciplined collaboration:

1. Evaluate Opportunities for Collaboration

2. Spot Barriers to Collaboration

3. Tailor Collaboration Solutions

The three levers used by leaders to tailor collaboration solutions are:

1. Unify People

2. Cultivate T-Shaped Management

3. Build Nimble Networks

Lever 3: Build Nimble Networks

Collaborative organizations run on networks, those informal working relationships among people that cut across formal lines of reporting. If the formal org chart shows how work is divided into pieces, networks reveal the informal organization- how people actually work together.

However, networks- or wrong ideas about them- often get in the way of disciplined collaboration. To better understand how networks can help collaboration, these myths must first be dispensed with:

- Networking is always a good thing: The idea that networking is necessarily a good thing can cause us to overlook the fact that networks can sometimes undermine performance.
- The more the merrier: Research shows that "the more, the merrier" does not necessarily yield the best results, at least not when it comes to networking in business, because networking is costly.
- Success goes to the socially gifted: Research shows that personal traits related to being socially gifted, such as being extroverts, do not determine whether people are effective networkers. Good networkers can be found everywhere. They can be introverts or extroverts, shy or gregarious, insecure or cocky.
- Networking is an art: People believe that networks belong to the realm of company life that cannot be pinned down, but recent advances in the social science of networks have changed that premise. With the help of this social science networks can not only be measured but also better managed.

For the leader demanding disciplined collaboration, the first thing to ask is "What are networks good for?" First, they help people identify opportunities- a technology, an idea, an expert, a collaboration partner. Second, networks help people capture value; people realize benefits from the resources they have identified.

These network benefits reduce barriers to collaboration. Networks reduce all four barriers outlined earlier, although to different degrees:

The not-invented-here barrier: Networks can help reduce a reluctance to communicate outside the organization, because people who interact with others tend to be more open to input from the outside world.
The search barrier: Networks can have a huge impact by helping people search better.
The hoarding barrier: Networks can help people overcome the hoarding barrier somewhat, because people are more willing to help those they know.
The transfer barrier: Good networks can lower transfer problems. Good relationships among colleagues help overcome the difficulty of passing along complicated knowledge people need to do their work.

Six Network Rules

Six network rules help people identify opportunities and capture value. Here are the four rules for identifying opportunities:

- Build outward, not inward
- Build diversity, not size
- Build weak ties, not strong ones
- Use bridges, not familiar faces

Here are two rules for capturing value:

- Swarm the target: do not go it alone
- Switch to strong ties; do not rely on weak ones

Pursuing the six network rules allows leaders to build nimble networks that are effective and do not waste people's time. Such networks follow the principle of disciplined collaboration. The rules help people identify opportunities and capture value from those opportunities. Leaders can apply these rules to their organizations; three steps help:

- Map the network
- Evaluate the network
- Tailor the intervention

Managing company networks has evolved from an art to a science: we know a lot about what makes networks work and how they can help disciplined collaboration. Networks are manageable: managers can collect network data, assess it based on network rules, and implement specific remedies. Leaders who pursue disciplined collaboration retire aimless networking luncheons and annual networking retreats and apply the six network rules in a scientific way.

I highly recommend this book for any KM professional or leader. The insights that Hansen puts forth should benefit any organization that implements them using the methods outlined.

Collaboration (Hansen): Part 4

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.


This will be the third part of an overview of the book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results © 2009 by Morten T. Hansen. This post focuses on Chapter 4- Lever 1: Unify People and Chapter 5- Lever 2: Cultivate T-Shaped Management.

By way of review, leaders follow three steps to accomplish disciplined collaboration:

1. Evaluate Opportunities for Collaboration

2. Spot Barriers to Collaboration

3. Tailor Collaboration Solutions

The three levers used by leaders to tailor collaboration solutions are:


1. Unify People

2. Cultivate T-Shaped Management

3. Build Nimble Networks


Lever 1: Unify People

Hansen outlines three unification mechanisms:

1. Creating a unifying goal: In order to be a compelling unifying goal, it should meet 4 criteria:
- The goal must create a common fate
- The goal must be simple and concrete
- The goal must stir passion
- The goal must put competition on the outside

2. Inciting a core value of teamwork: Leaders need to give voice to the value of teamwork, put it in a values statement, and include it in a list of leadership competencies. But as they preach teamwork, they need to beware of three sins:
- Small teamwork kills collaboration
- Everybody do teamwork now (Except those of us at the top)
- Teamwork becomes the point of it all


3. Speaking a language of collaboration: The language a leader chooses matters a great deal in shaping behavior. They can use language as a powerful tool for cultivating collaboration.

There is a dark side to all of this. Unification runs the risk of absolving the individual of responsibility. To combat this danger, leaders practicing disciplined collaboration complement unification mechanisms with individual accountability mechanisms. They need to match unifying goals with individual goals, a value of teamwork with a value of individual responsibility, and the language of accountability. That's disciplined collaboration.

Lever 2: Cultivate T-Shaped Management

T-Shaped Management involves both delivering results in their own organization (the vertical part of the T) and deliver results by collaborating across the organization (the horizontal part of the T). They are willing to reach out to ask for input and also help others when asked. However, they are also disciplined enough to say "no" to collaboration when it doesn't produce value.

Two fundamental ways of growing the pool of T-shaped managers exist: selection and change. Some organizations don't believe that people can change, so they focus on selecting the personnel that exhibit T-Shaped behaviors. Others work on developing these attitudes.

Promote T-Shaped, Not Other Behaviors:
Disciplined collaboration requires that organizations promote people who practice T-shaped management, not others. Leaders must create a new mechanism that sets new criteria, collects data, evaluates performance, and rewards T-shaped management with promotions.

Pay for performance is a powerful lever, whether it is in the form of salary hikes, bonuses, or stock options, but it is plagued with problems. Two popular schemes often undermine cross-unit collaboration: -Unit Performance Only and Corporatewide Incentives. One produces sub-optimal results as each unit strives to maximize its own results, and the other can cause individuals to underperform as they feel their contribution to organizational performance does not matter. A good incentive, on the other hand, links money directly to collaboration. This can be done if data on collaboration is collected and can be evaluated (see above).

Transitioning an existing team to T-shaped behaviors requires dedication, and includes these four steps:
1. Fire laggards
2. Promote and recruit for T-shaped behaviors
3. Pay for T-shaped behaviors
4. Coach for T-shaped behaviors

These two levers have more to do with providing an incentive for people and organizations to practice disciplined collaboration. In a military context, the incentive (or directive) is there. The barrier that is more prevalent is the barrier to conducting effective collaboration. That will be addressed in the next post.

Collaboration (Hansen): Part 3

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.


This will be the third part of an overview of the book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results © 2009 by Morten T. Hansen. This post focuses on Chapter 3: Spot the Four Barriers to Collaboration.

By way of review, leaders follow three steps to accomplish disciplined collaboration:

1. Evaluate Opportunities for Collaboration

2. Spot Barriers to Collaboration

3. Tailor Collaboration Solutions

Hansen explains that while people naturally tend to collaborate, decentralization can work against this. The essence of modern management is a decentralized system where there are clear lines of responsibility, a great deal of accountability, and rewards for those who perform. This system works well as it encourages good performance, but leaders become more focused on maximizing their unit, and disinterested in how the other units are performing. This creates a series of silos or fiefdoms and encourages sub-optimal solutions at an enterprise level. This paradigm is also present in the military.

The solution to this is not to change to a rigid centralized model- extreme centralization- but instead to come up with a better model. Hansen stresses that disciplined collaboration requires that organizations be decentralized and yet coordinated. To build this model, leaders must detect the barriers to collaboration and overcome them without sacrificing a decentralized structure.

There are Four Barriers to Collaboration:

1. The Not-Invented-Here Barrier

2. The Hoarding Barrier

3. The Search Barrier

4. The Transfer Barrier

Here are reasons each of these barriers happen:

1. The Not-Invented-Here Barrier
The not-invented-here barrier has four underlying reasons:

a. Insular Culture: People who work together closely they tend to restrict the influx of new viewpoints and reinforce their own beliefs. The more this happens, the more the group members turn inward and shut themselves off from the rest of the world.

b. Status Gap: If individuals think they are of a higher status than others, they will be less likely to reach out to collaborate with that group. Trying to collaborate with high-status groups is one of the last things a low-status group wants to do. These status gaps thus run both ways: high-status people don't want to sully their image of themselves, and low-status people do not want to let high-status people make them regret their circumstances. Both attitudes create a barrier to collaboration.

c. Self-Reliance: While some amount of self-reliance is important, the tendency to fix all of their own issues keeps people from reaching out for input. This usually comes from a deep-seated belief that people need to solve their problems on their own instead of asking for help. When this attitude crops up in a unit, chances are that the not-invented-here barrier will set in.

d. Fear of Revealing Shortcomings: Reaching out to someone and saying, "We're not doing well in this area and need help", can be interpreted by others as failure- "these guys are not very good". People generally fear exposing their weaknesses to others, especially to experts. This can be very pronounced in the military environment. In asking for input, people make themselves vulnerable and allow others to stand in judgment. As a result, people decide not to reach out at all, or only to people they know and trust (even if they are not the most knowledgeable). Fear of revealing shortcomings then becomes a barrier to collaboration.

2. The Hoarding Barrier
There are four reasons for the hoarding barrier:

a. Competition: Competition inside an organization undermines people's willingness to collaborate. When different parts of an organization perceive that they may be competing with others for resources, they are more likely to hoard information

b. Narrow Incentives: When individuals are rewarded only for how well they do their jobs, they tend to focus exclusively on their jobs. This incentive structure creates hoarding behaviors, because people pay attention to their own targets to the exclusion of helping people outside their unit.

c. Too Busy: As people are pressured to perform, and with operational tempo being what it is these days, they feel that they don't have the time to help others; reasonable requests for help are seen as burdens that could put them behind in their own work. So people are faced with a trade-off - to do their own work (but not help others), or to help others (but get less work done).

d. Fear of Losing Power: It is said "Knowledge is power" implying that a person is more powerful in an organization the more he or she knows about something and the less others know. So why share that knowledge with others and thereby make oneself less powerful and ultimately redundant? If people fear that they will become less powerful and less valuable to the organization by spreading their wisdom, they will be inclined to hoard it.

3. The Search Barrier
Search becomes a barrier for four reasons:

a. Company Size: The bigger the organization, the greater the search problems. The military is a very large and geographically dispersed organization with multiple networks, many units, posts, camps, and stations. Search is an ongoing issue. This spread of information across many different areas makes finding pertinent information in a timely manner a real challenge.

b. Physical Distance: The spread of physical distance is another factor in creating search issues. As mentioned above the military is a very physically distributed organization, and this inhibits the exchange of information. People prefer to interact with others who are close by. While networks have enabled remote knowledge sharing to an unprecedented degree, it is still inconvenient to look for knowledge and people in units far away.

c. Information Overload: The sheer volume of information made available by networks, databases, and knowledge management systems has created a condition where there is too much information and it is hard to sort the noise from the useful information. Information overload makes search harder because of information noise- the ratio of the total amount of information available to the amount of useful information. Information systems, including knowledge management systems, increase the noise ratio by making too much information available, and that complicates the search for the right
information or person.

d. Poverty of Networks: There is a myth in our society that we live in a small world. While this is sometimes true, there are still instances where there are many degrees of separation between people. That there is a small world should give us great comfort for search. But again, the world is not always small. In even fairly small global organizations there can be many degrees of separation, and that separation is not consistent from individual to individual. It may be a small world for a few well-connected people, but it's a big world for many others and that's a formidable barrier to search.

4. The Transfer Barrier
There are three reasons that transfer becomes a barrier:

a. Tacit Knowledge: This type of knowledge makes transfer hard. Tacit knowledge refers to information that is hard to articulate orally - in writing, in manuals, in equations, and in software code. Explicit knowledge on the other hand, can be easily articulated. Whereas equations and formulas can be written down and are explicit knowledge, how to effectively counsel a subordinate is more tacit knowledge. It is easier to collaborate when people deal in straightforward, well-documented, technical knowledge or clean and reliable environmental data. It is much harder to collaborate when people have to share novel technologies that are poorly understood, ambiguous situational data, or intuitions about what an enemy may be planning.

b. No Common Frame: People who do not know each other have no common frame- an understanding of each other's working habits, subtle ways of articulating something, a liking of each other, and an appreciation of each other's moods. Lack of a common frame might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Consider the flip side- situations where people who collaborate have a strong common frame. Have you considered why there are such long-lasting duos in sports, science, and music? These collaborations happen because there is a strong common frame. Without it, people become strangers in the sense of lacking a deep understanding of how to work well together.

c. Weak Ties: People find it hard to transfer knowledge when they don't know each other well (a weak tie). They need strong ties- relationships where people talk often and have a close working association. Weak ties create havoc when people need to transfer tacit knowledge. Hansen cites an example where weak ties caused teams of engineers to take over 30 percent longer to transfer information than those with strong ties. Weak ties are very common in the military due to the size and dispersion of the organization.

From Barriers to Solutions:
The first step in overcoming barriers is to accurately assess which ones occur in a situation. The second step is tailor management solutions to each barrier. These barriers may occur in different degrees from organization to organization. Hansen has a short subjective survey in the text that helps to identify which barriers exist for an organization, and to what extent. Once the barriers are known, then the tailored solution can be applied to overcome these barriers. Hansen has a barrier-to-solution map in the text that shows which of the three tailored solutions are most effective when applied to which barriers.

The three solutions:
1. Unify People: Craft a unifying goal, state a core value of teamwork, and use the leadership pulpit to signal collaboration.

2. Cultivate T-Shaped Management: Use recruitment, promotion, firing, and rewards to cultivate collaboration.

3. Build Nimble Networks: Encourage formation of the right kinds of cross-unit personal relationships to help search and reduce transfers problems.

These solutions will be addressed in more details in subsequent posts.

Collaboration (Hansen): Part 2

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.

This will be the second part of an overview of the book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results © 2009 by Morten T. Hansen. This post focuses on Chapter 2: Know When to Collaborate, and When Not To.

By way of review, leaders follow three steps to accomplish disciplined collaboration:

1. Evaluate Opportunities for Collaboration

2. Spot Barriers to Collaboration

3. Tailor Collaboration Solutions

The following will deal with the first of the three steps - Evaluate Opportunities for Collaboration. There are three guidelines for being disciplined about when to collaborate:

- The first task is to understand the case for collaboration and appreciate how collaboration can increase performance.

- The second task is to evaluate the upside and to consider the potential for the organization overall.

- The final task is to understand when to say no to a collaboration effort - to articulate a rule or set of rules for when to go ahead, and when not to, at a project level.


The Case for Collaboration
There are three areas of potential upside in business: better innovation, better sales, and better operations. In a non-business context, Hansen suggests these could be thought of as new services, greater client satisfaction, and better-run organizations. I would add that in a military environment that these would be innovative ways to resolve issues or win battles, better situational awareness, and more efficient and effective organizations.

- Innovative ways to resolve issues or win battles: Hansen refers to this when he talks about recombining existing resources in order to create something new out of something old. The military example would be using existing units, capabilities, and environments but instead of using established doctrine an organization could find new ways to defeat an enemy or provide nation building support that hadn't previously been tried. Another component of this would be to disseminate the new best practice so that other units could utilize the new knowledge to positively affect their battlespace.

- Better Situational Awareness: This is a more standard reason for collaboration, and has been perfected over the last few years in different theaters of operations. Here collaboration allows the real-time flow of information between echelons of command, between geographically dispersed units, and from deployed units back to the supporting base. This collaboration allows commanders at all levels to see faster, react better, and to finish decisively.

- More Efficient and Effective Organizations: Better operations is what Hansen calls this phenomenon, in that collaboration is used to lower costs and improve efficiency and effectiveness. This would refer more specifically to the non-combat functions of units and activities as opposed to what was referred to above. This would also apply to collaboration of non-unit parts of the military such as the various agencies, schools, and related organizations that support the combat units.


What's the Upside of Collaboration?
A leader needs to be disciplined in evaluating the potential upside from collaboration. Hansen uses two ways to approach this evaluation:

- Overall Calibration: One way is to look across the entire organization and ask, "What is the potential for improvement in innovation, situational awareness, and efficiency/ effectiveness based on collaboration, assuming that we could do it well?" This quick assessment can produce a shared understanding of the upside. However, taking such a broad sweep overlooks differences within an organization. There might be different types of opportunities in different areas. This reality means you need a nuanced approach to evaluating the upside, as discussed next.

- The Collaboration Matrix: One way to gain a nuanced evaluation of your organization's upside is to use a collaboration matrix. The idea here is to divide the evaluation into pairs of units within the organization and systematically evaluating pair-by-pair where the opportunities for collaboration exist. Generally, when leaders use this approach they engage in a disciplined and fine-grained evaluation of where the upsides really exist and where they don't. Hansen provides a detailed example in the text (pages 36-38).

Another key to determining this upside is to make sure that the leaders doesn't overshoot or undershoot. This involves overstating or understating the benefits of collaboration to the organization. This can skew the overall evaluation one way or another and give an incorrect indication of whether collaboration is the right course of action.


When Do You Say "No!" to Collaboration?
Should you start a collaboration project or not? Leaders need a rule to help them decide when to collaborate and when to say, "No there is no business case. Let's not collaborate." This rule needs to be different from the usual go, no-go rule for projects. Leaders need to take into account two additional costs: opportunity costs and collaboration costs. People should launch a collaboration project only if the net value of collaboration is greater than the return minus both the opportunity costs and collaboration costs.

Hansen calls this net value the collaboration premium, and the principle can be expressed as a simple equation:

collaboration premium = return on project - opportunity costs - collaboration costs

Opportunity cost is the answer to the questions, "What else could we do with the time, effort, and resources going into the collaboration project?" There may be better uses of people's time and effort - projects with better returns altogether.

Collaboration costs refer to the cost of working across organizational boundaries, efforts to solve conflicts, and other costs associated with a collaboration project. There could also be a cost associated with collaboration technologies as well. Hansen has a detailed example of this computation on pages 41-44 of the text.

However, this computation may be very hard to quantify in a military context. There are no sales figures to refer to, and sometimes cost savings are difficult to identify. However, leaders must make some effort to subject a collaboration project to a collaboration premium test before giving it a go.

Leaders can drive collaboration costs down to nearly zero by tearing down barriers to collaboration. "Collaborate for Results" becomes much easier if people know how to collaborate. Spotting those barriers to collaboration will be the subject of the next post.

Collaboration (Hansen): Part 1

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.


This will be the first part of an overview of the book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results © 2009 by Morten T. Hansen.

While there is usually an upside to collaboration in an organization, there are often traps that prevent collaboration from occurring. The organization cannot then realize these benefits. Here are a list of some of these traps:

Collaborating in Hostile Territory: Some organizations are not set up to collaborate, and collaboration projects soon hit a wall. It is no surprise that collaboration fails in in environments that are designed for the opposite practice- competition and independence.


Overcollaborating: There is also a tendency to overcollaborate. This manifests itself in too many meetings, and not enough results. Sometimes when leaders promote collaboration in their organizations, they get more than they bargained for; people often overdo it.


Overshooting the Potential Value: It is easy to get carried away by the belief that there are huge synergy benefits to be gained by collaborating, only to find out the benefits are actually quite small. Hansen quotes an analyst: "Synergy: big wind, loud thunder, no rain. It's great to talk about conceptually ... but at the end of the day it's minimal".


Underestimating the Costs: Often cost (and benefit) projections are based on incorrect assumptions. When it comes to collaboration, sometimes leaders hope things will go well but do not fully appreciate the costs of working across the organization and resolving conflict.


Misdiagnosing the Problem: Many leaders fall into the trap of misdiagnosing the reasons people don't collaborate. Leaders must understand which barriers to collaboration are at plan in their organization and which are not.


Implementing the Wrong Solution: The misdiagnosis trap is often followed by the wrong-solution trap. Many leaders assume that a solution- an IT system, an incentive system, a common goal - will promote collaboration in any circumstance. However, different barriers to collaboration require different solutions.

All these traps lead to bad collaboration- characterized by high friction and a poor focus on results. Leaders don't fall into these traps because they are not smart. Smart leaders fall into them because they don't have a framework that helps them clearly see the difference between good and bad collaboration.

The way to avoid these traps is this: Disciplined Collaboration can be summed up in one phrase: The leadership practice of properly assessing when to collaborate (and when not to) and instilling in people both the willingness and the ability to collaborate when required.

To accomplish disciplined collaboration, leaders follow these three steps:

1. Evaluate Opportunities for Collaboration: The key here is to determine the business value of collaboration, and whether this value outweighs the costs of collaboration. Leaders who pursue disciplined collaboration never lose sight of this dictum: collaboration is a means to an end, and that end is great performance. Leaders need to be rigorous in deciding whether to prioritize collaboration, in which areas to collaborate (innovation, customers, costs), ands which specific projects to pursue.

2. Spot Barriers to Collaboration: Once the decision is made to pursue collaboration, then the leader must answer the question "What are the barriers blocking people from collaborating well?" Disciplined collaboration targets these four barriers:
- The not-invented-here barrier (people are unwilling to reach out to others)
- The hoarding barrier (people are unwilling to provide help)
- The search barrier (people are not able to find what they are looking for)
- The transfer barrier (people are not able to work with people they don't know well)

3. Tailor Collaboration Solutions: When the barriers to collaboration are identified, a leader can now tailor solutions that overcome these barriers. Different barriers require different solutions. Motivational barriers require leaders pull levers to make people willing to collaborate while leaders pull ability levers to enable motivated people to collaborate across the organization. These levers fall into three general areas:
- Unification Lever - leaders craft compelling common goals, articulate the value of cross-organization teamwork, and send strong signals that lift people's sights beyond narrow interests and toward a common goal.
- People Lever - The solution is not to get people to necessarily to collaborate more, but instead to get the right people to collaborate on the right projects. Hansen uses the term "T-Shaped Management" to focus on those individuals that simultaneously focus on the performance of their unit (the vertical part of the T) and across boundaries (the horizontal part of the T). They are willing as well as able to collaborate when needed but disciplined enough to say no when it is wrong.
- Network Lever - This is where the leader build nimble interpersonal networks across the organization so individuals are more able to collaborate. Collaboration runs more on interpersonal networks and less through formal hierarchies. However, networks can get out of control, which is when people spend more time networking than getting things done. After all, the objective of disciplined collaboration is to engender great performance, and this great performance should enable the organization to achieve its goals.

Each of these steps will be the subject of subsequent posts.

Disciplined collaboration affords an opportunity for an organization to have performance from decentralized work and performance from collaborative work. This is opposed to the commonly held view that a collaborative enterprise is very centralized with information flows from the top of the pyramid to the bottom. Instead, disciplined collaboration maintains the benefit of decentralization - giving people the freedom to be entrepreneurs building something exceptional while being coordinated with the rest of the organization. Again, it is important for leaders to know when to conduct the collaboration projects that enable this, and when not to.

While Hansen's book deals with the business context for collaboration, there is much applicability to military organizations in these areas. Business value is sometimes hard to quantify in any organization, but with the military it can be much more subjective. The key here is that the leaders must understand what their organization's objectives are, and make sure to evaluate collaboration opportunities, identify barriers, and tailor solutions that best fit the group that they are responsible for. This is really much more of an art than a science, and requires discernment and a clear vision of the future.

There is a video of Hansen giving an overview of the book here.

SharePoint Overview

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.

In this post I will provide a very brief overview of a major online collaboration system, Microsoft SharePoint, and in particular Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 07) which is in widespread use particularly in the Army.

As usual, I gathered up many definitions for SharePoint, and then used them to derive my own:


Microsoft SharePoint is a product that connects information with people in each level of the organization. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is the full version of this portal-based platform for collaboratively creating, managing and sharing documents and Web services. MOSS enables users to create "Sharepoint Portals" that include shared workspaces, applications, blogs, wikis and other documents accessible through a Web browser. Users can manipulate proprietary controls called "web parts" or interact with pieces of content such as lists and document libraries.



There are a multitude of sites, blogs, and other online resources for all things SharePoint. I found that this site on SearchWinIT.com had a good brief overview of the system:

MOSS is used by many enterprises as a content management system (CMS). Partially as a result of the tight integration with Microsoft productivity applications included in Office, such as Word, many administrators have found MOSS useful in organizing and aggregating an enterprise's data into Web-based portal with defined taxonomies that structure the information. MOSS includes additional features as an inducement for system administrators to upgrade from WSS, including knowledge management, organization of business processes and enterprise search. Both versions include support for many Web 2.0 technologies and third-party Web browsers like Firefox.

Fundamentally, MOSS provides an integrated platform for building customized Web-based applications and portals in Windows Server environments. To address the needs of remote workers and telecommuters, as well as system administrator concerns for data security, MOSS can be configured to return separate content depending on whether access is gained from intranet, extranet or Internet locations. Active Directory groups or HTML forms authentication can also be added to MOSS, granting multiple permissions to multiple parties or through alternate providers.

Users log on to Web portals to edit and create shared documents. These "SharePoint portals" are ASP.NET applications that are hosted on a server and use a SQL Server database. MOSS provides Web browser-based management and administration tools that allow users to create and edit a document or document library independently. Collaborative editing of this kind is aided by integrated access and revision controls, allowing administrators to freeze certain documents or restrict user privileges where required. MOSS also uses embeddable widgets in shared Web pages to add additional functionality. Widgets include:

• shared workspaces and personal dashboards
• navigation tools
• lists
• automatic alerts, including email and integrated RSS
• shared calendar and contacts
• discussion boards

Users build SharePoint pages is by combining selected widgets into a Web page. Any Web editor that supports ASP.NET can be used for this purpose, though Microsoft has released a WYSIWYG HTML editor, Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (MOSD), that was specifically designed for this purpose.

Critics of SharePoint point out that certain features of MOSS 2007 only work with the newest version of Microsoft Office, thereby forcing IT managers to upgrade their software. SharePoint's lack of support for non-Microsoft formats, like files saved using quark or Adobe Acrobat (.PDF), is also a cause of concern for some administrators evaluating the suite as a potential enterprise-wide CMS.

The previous versions of SharePoint are SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server 2001. There is a new version of SharePoint due out this year (SharePoint 2010).

Here is a diagram I obtained here that offers a more detailed rundown of MOSS 07 capabilities:



This is merely a high level overview of a large, complex, and rapidly changing subject area. There is a wealth of information out on the Web, and here is the list of sources I used to prepare this post:



Microsoft Office Online (Product Overview)

PCMag.com Encyclopedia

SearchWinIT.com Definitions

SharePoint Experience Blog

Wikipedia

ZDNet

As always, I welcome your comments.

Introduction to Google Wave

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook, and also from a response to a discussion thread on the topic of Knowledge Management enablers.

I have seen many collaborative technologies over the years, but there is one that was introduced a few months ago that may provide a lot of the capabilities required for an online collaboration system: Google Wave.

My definition: Google Wave is a product that could replace email, instant messaging, and threaded discussion using a collaborative platform and an open-source protocol.

There is a wealth of information on this system, starting with the Google Wave Users Group on milBook and also on the Google Wave site. I will just throw out a few things that I have learned:

Google Wave is three things: Product, Platform, and Protocol.

Currently, the product is available in pre-beta form from Google. It will be provided by Google in a manner similar to Gmail, Google Maps, etc.

The platform is open source, and while I am not sure that the code is available yet, but when it is, you could stand up a Wave server and start using it with Google's blessing.

The protocol is the most promising part of Wave. It is set up so that multiple Wave servers can be federated (over a single port) so that there could be easily configured Joint, Interagency, Intergovernment, and Multinational (and .com) (JIIM+) collaboration. There is already a large group of Government Wave users, called FedWave, that is exploring the use of Wave in the Federal Government.

Below is a partial list all the features of Wave, but the key idea is that all waves are hosted on a server, can have multiple participants, and can have a lot of functionality embedded in them. This allows you to bring someone in and get them up to speed in a hurry, instead of trying to figure out which of the 20 emails in multiple threads to forward to them. Wave allows you to playback the evolution of the interaction, so a newcomer can see how the conversation came to be. There are multiple extensions to the protocol already, including collaborative map viewing, online polling, and many more. There is extensive search and tagging capabilities as well (it is a Google product after all...).

• Real-Time information
• Live transmission of any type
• Used as faster conversation
• Wave is used as new way of creating dialogue among group of users
• Google Wave contains gadgets and tools
• In Google wave there are gadgets like Wikify which can brings Wikipedia to your Google Wave account.
• It include tools for checking spelling and grammar
• It has a great futures like translating between 40 different languages by using Rosy Extension. • It has TWaves extension that allows the user to incorporate their tweet stream.
• It has drag and drop sharing of digital assets like photos, sound and video.
• Playback facility
• Open Source
• Easy embedding facility
• eBayBot - Search eBay in Google Wave
• Google Wave has a Public Timeline, like Twitter ( “with:public” )
• Webcam Video Chat and Much More on Google Wave with 6rounds
• Adding new people to the conversation easy
• Bloggy extension can Embeds the Wave into a blog
• Polly the Pollster : Creates any poll you can imagine I found this here.

This is a diagram of the components of a wave:
















I will cover this in more detail in subsequent posts. I have a few invitations left if anyone is interested. I have been kicking the tires for a few weeks now, and I think the Google team may have created a game-changer. Now we just need to make sure our People, Processes, Organization, and Culture are ready.

Social Media

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook. The purpose of this post is to provide a brief overview of Social Media.

Social media, online collaboration, and Knowledge Management are all interrelated, with Social Media the newest of the three. I researched several definitions of Social Media and Social Networking, and used them to derive my own definition:

Social networking is the practice of increasing the number of one's business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals. Social media is the use of technology combined with this social interaction targeted at forming and enabling a potentially massive community of participants to productively collaborate. Social media technologies enable this collaboration and support tapping the power of the collective in ways previously unachievable, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many to many).

In my research, I found a Gartner Blog by Anthony Bradley that outlined six core principles that underlie the value of social-media solutions, and, in combination, serve as the defining characteristics that set social media apart from other forms of communication and collaboration.

1. Participation
2. Collective
3. Transparency
4. Independence
5. Persistence
6. Emergence

Participation: Successful social-media solutions tap into the power of mass collaboration through user participation. The only way to achieve substantial benefits from social media is by mobilizing the community to contribute. You can’t capture the “wisdom of the crowds” if the crowds don’t participate.

Collective: Varied definitions and applications of the term “collective” abound and cover a wide spectrum of meanings. Here, as a core principle of social media, the use of the term “collective” is tightly aligned with its root origins “to collect.” With social media, participants “collect” around a unifying entity. People collect around the Facebook social graph to contribute their profile information. People collect on Wikipedia to add encyclopedia articles. People collect on YouTube to share videos. In these examples, as in all social media, people collect around the content to contribute rather than individually create the content and distribute it.

Transparency: With social media, it is not enough to collect participant contributions. A social-media solution also provides transparency in that participants are privy to each other’s participation. They get to see, use, reuse, augment, validate, critique and rate each other’s contributions. Without transparency, there is no participant collaboration on content. It is in this transparency that the community improves content, unifies information, self-governs, self-corrects, evolves, creates emergence and otherwise propels its own advancement.

Independence: The principle of independence means that any participant can contribute completely independent of any other participant. This is also called anytime, anyplace collaboration. Participants can collaborate no matter where they are or whoever else may be posting content at that time. Generally, there is no workflow or document check-in/check-out that can bottleneck collaboration and impact the scalability required for mass collaboration. No coordination between collaborators is required.

Persistence: With social media, the fruits of participant contributions are captured in a persistent state for others to view, share and augment. This is one of the more obvious principles. It differentiates social media from synchronous conversational interactions, where much of the information exchanged is either lost or captured, most often only in part, as an additional scribing activity.

Emergence: The emergence principle embodies the recognition that you can’t predict, model, design and control all human collaborative interactions and optimize them as you would a fixed business process. It is the recognition that one benefit of social media is as an environment for social structures to emerge. These structures may be latent or hidden organizational structures, expertise, work processes, content organization, information taxonomies, and more.

Here is a partial list of capabilities provided by Social Media technologies. Not all examples of Social Media have all of these capabilities, but a system must provide most of these to be considered a Social Media platform.

These capabilities are more oriented toward the individual users:

• Customizable Look/Feel
• Profile Information
• Networking (Connections, Friends, etc.)
• Activity Feeds
• Private/Direct Messaging
• File/Photo Upload Abilities
• Search

While these capabilities are more for interacting with other users:

• Blogs
• Wikis
• Discussion Forums
• Chat
• Calendars
• Tagging
• Groups (Open or Closed)
• Rating Systems

This is merely a quick overview of a large, complex, and rapidly changing subject area. There is a wealth of information out on the Web, and here is the list of sources I used to prepare this post:

Duct Tape Marketing

Social Media Vision

Social Networking Definition from Whatis.com
Wikipedia

WebProNews

And especially Anthony Bradley Gartner Blog cited above. The principles shown above are a summary of a Gartner published work: “The Six Core Principles of Social-Media-Based Collaboration” that is available to Gartner clients or for a fee.

This content is strictly my opinions on the subject. Please comment as you are so moved.

Collaboration

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook. This post will provide a general overview of some of the aspects of Online Collaboration. I have been working in the field since 2002, and have done a lot of research on the topic. Online collaboration is an enabling technology for KM. While in the past the areas of KM and collaboration were developed separately, in the future these disciplines are now closely linked. From this point forward, consider any discussion of online collaboration to include the technology side of KM as well.


Online collaboration utilizes the organization's technology infrastructure to provide a wide array of capabilities that can be used in a synchronous or asynchronous manner. Synchronous collaboration is where the participants are communicating in real-time, either by text, voice, or video. Asynchronous collaboration is where information is shared by posting artifacts or text online for other users to access at another time. Asynchronous is generally the most common form of collaboration.

Collaboration can be grouped into three major areas: Virtual Presence, Virtual Spaces and Virtual Services.

Virtual Presence allows for users to locate and determine the status of others using the network. This allows users to select the most effective means of communication (phone, email, instant messaging, etc.) depending on the intended recipient's online status.

Virtual Spaces are any network location (workspaces, web portals, or chat spaces) where users can meet virtually and share information. They can be either persistent or temporary. Persistent spaces are generally used for asynchronous collaboration in that the information will be there for other users to access for a given amount of time in the future. Temporary spaces are synchronous collaborative sessions that only exist for the duration of the event, and then are closed. Sometimes there is an option to save or record the session, and this would become an artifact for asynchronous collaboration.

Virtual Services encompass all the different collaborative capabilities that are afforded by the enabling technology. How these services are provided vary from system to system, and not all capabilities are needed by all users or organizations. Here is a partial list of virtual services:

• Text Chat
• Audio (Voice over IP- VOIP)
• Whiteboard
• Video
• Threaded Discussion
• Shared Applications
• Voting/ Polling/ Surveys
• Automated Event Log
• Data Management
• Bulletins/Alerts
• Calendar
• User Display and Customization
• Security

While securing the online collaboration system can be considered a service, it is a vital piece of any collaborative solution. These applications tend to force organizations into trade-offs between security and accessibility which can seriously inhibit the functionality of the system. Here are some considerations when securing online collaboration:

• Authentication
• Confidentiality
• Integrity
• Availability
• Reliability
• Maintainability
• Non-repudiation
• Protection
• Detection
• Reaction capabilities
• Auditing
• Software Assurance

This is just an overview of the technology aspect of KM, which is just one component of the overall Knowledge Architecture. All of these components (People, Process, Organization/ Culture, and Technology) must fit together well in order to realize the benefits of enhanced organizational effectiveness, improved decision quality, and increased innovation.

As always, I look forward to your comments and questions.