Category Archives: mass collaboration

We Are Building A Village And Its Name Is Kaleel Village

Posted by Corey Jamison on October 1, 2007 None comments

jamison_corey_web.jpgWe are building a village. Its name is Kaleel Village and when I close my eyes I can see it. In time it may have roads, buildings, streets and subways, but still I stand here today with tools in my hands because when I close my eyes it is already built. There is hustle and bustle, great conversations of all kinds and the sparks of innovation cascading from every word, thought, and idea; and though we have yet to put our shovel in the ground when I close my eyes I can see Kaleel Village.

Kaleel Village will be many things to many people, but above all Kaleel Village will be about community; an inclusive community that unites and connects people in new and engaging ideas for organizational and community change. A village that will develop into what community means to you, to me, and to others who will join and connect with us. Kaleel Village may start small, but it will grow; the village will grow. When I close my eyes I can see the community; every person, thousands of them. People who want to show up completely, people who want to be present in life, people who want to start a new conversation about organizations and their culture, people who want to make a difference in the world and people who want to give back.

I want to build a village where the source of wisdom comes not from a select few but from the whole and where the spirit of problem solving and creation is collaborative; a place where everyone contributes and everyone is valued. In Kaleel Village members will communicate and share ideas with each other. Its members will explore new angles and generate new ideas. Members will evaluate new perspectives and begin new conversations.

The foundation of Kaleel Village will be social media architecture. That will be the primary tool to integrate, create, build, construct and develop Kaleel Village. We believe social networking, a virtual village, is central to the vision of what Kaleel Village can accomplish, and how it will bring people, ideas and collective action together to make a difference in people’s individual lives, their communities and their organizations.

Kaleel Village will be a different kind of community; a community of effort. One that will be a portal to connecting the dots between people, ideas, projects, groups, organizations and what we all care about the most; Inclusion, being seen, valued and respected for who we are. A village where people can come to contribute in many ways and then take action.

Kaleel Village is not a complex model. Remove the technology aspect from the equation and what you have left is community. Kaleel Village is about community. I want to build a village so here I am entreating you, each of you, to put your shovel in the ground next to mine. Together we will build Kaleel Village.

Wikinomics: A Key Factor in the Inclusion 3.5 Equation

Posted by Frederick Miller on August 20, 2007 None comments

Fred MillerNot only is the book “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” one of the three most profound books on business in the last 25 years (as I championed in an earlier post), it is, in fact, a key factor in our Inclusion 3.5 Equation which we introduced in May at the Linkage Summit on Leading Diversity in Atlanta.

Wikinomics and the new mass collaboration are based on four powerful competencies:
• openness
• peering
• sharing
• acting globally

But as we talk about key competencies that will be critical for organizational success in the 21st century, it is clear that Inclusion is the cornerstone.

This new science of mass collaboration through Web 2.0 social networking tools creates the possibility of an organizational culture in which the ideas of everyone are as available as those of the CEO, but that will not happen without Inclusion. Organizational hierarchies and politics, top-down decision making, cultures non-supportive of people doing their best work and exclusive cliques in organizations can be addressed and changed with technology being a key component to the change, but not without Inclusion. Collaborative technology can enable effective co-creation, meaningful work and communities of cooperation inside and outside the firewall of an organization, but not without Inclusion.

Companies that make their boundaries porous to external ideas and human capital outperform companies that rely solely on their internal resources and capabilities (Wikinomics, p.21). However, in flat and open organization comes the reality of increased cultural and generational diversity and with that comes an exponential transformation in the ways we interact with each other.

Embracing platforms of participation, social networking and technology that encourage collaboration is not enough to ensure organizational success. These tools must be used to break down internal silos, create meaningful work for people and initiate a change in cultural, generational and hierarchical interactions. Otherwise, what will happen is that opportunities will be missed, people’s talents under-leveraged and ideas excluded, and power, influence and voice in organizations as the privilege of a few based on hierarchy will continue their be the common practice in many organizations.. Without an inclusive mindset and accompanying behaviors, organizations simply will not have the 360-degree vision to solve complex problems and the “old” behaviors will just form in this new technology container.

Three Profound Books

Posted by Frederick Miller on July 24, 2007 None comments

Fred MillerOver the last 25 years there have been three books that have profoundly changed the way organizations operate, the way they engage people inside the organization and how they collaborate with the global community.

Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson in The One Minute Manager (1981) discussed the traits and behaviors of successful managers, which include talking to your people, establishing challenging, but attainable expectations and rewarding individuals when they achieve those expectations. The aspect we tried to introduce to that thinking was diversity. It was, and still is, important to recognize that the people with whom managers speak will not always look like them, act like them or even come from the same cultural background. Managers not only need to communicate with their people, but they also must recognize the diversity of these individuals and appreciate how that diversity can influence the interaction and the individual’s success.

Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman in In Search of Excellence (1982) redefined the characteristics of organizational excellence. Based on a study of some of America’s best-run companies, it established the basic principles that when implemented would almost guarantee a higher probability of success. The fundamental message I took from the book, though, was the concept of zero defects and achieving higher levels of performance. At the time quality and excellence, to American companies, meant “good, but with acceptable defects.” The book challenged that norm and insisted that excellence meant “zero defects,” even pointing to Japanese manufacturers who were achieving this goal as an example. The sea change caused by this book resulted in “zero defects” being the only measure of organizational quality and a new standard for operational performance excellence in organizations. They established a new operational performance bar for organizations.

A monumental shift in how we as humans will interact differently than we have in the past and how this will change the way we do business was predicted in 2006’s Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. Knowledge is no longer exclusively internal and organizations that do not tap the global knowledge existing outside their four walls will not survive in the 21st century, according to the authors. In this new era of innovation the concepts of open-sourcing, mass collaboration and co-creation are inseparable and can establish every business as a global business. In the past, the giants of industry could make it difficult and expensive for a start-up to establish itself, essentially blocking competition. However, the Internet has flattened the world and has become the key tool of globalization. It has so decreased the price of entry for businesses establishing themselves in the global marketplace that every organization must now operate as if competitors are being born every day.

The messages in The One Minute Manager and In Search of Excellence are as relevant today as they were 25 years ago while the projections in Wikinomics are as revolutionary and groundbreaking as any I have seen. If you are part of an organization that is ready to learn about the necessary mindsets, skill sets and competencies that will prepare you for the demands of business in the 21st Century, then I encourage you to pick up a copy each of these books.

Building community one network at a time

Posted by Corey Jamison on May 23, 2007 1 comments

jamison_corey_web.jpgFor months we have been engaged in a continuously evolving conversation about how social networking and other emerging technologies provides an opportunity for organizations to think differently about how they connect with their people, but it was moving from the theoretical to the practical that kept halting the conversation. Those roadblocks have now begun to disappear.

We recently attended the Virtual Worlds Conference in NYC to learn more about how Virtual Realities could help us add value to the services we provide our clients. We met speaker Ron Burns, president of ProtonMedia, who spoke of “macro-communities within an organization,” “crossing cultural divides” and “bringing cultures together where there are inherent differences in how people communicate” and it was then we knew that this was the reason we had attended the conference. Ron spoke our language.

We recently invited Ron to our offices where he demonstrated his Protosphere Platform and some other custom courseware. What impressed us about Ron was the human element with which he approached his technology and how he balanced it with the importance of collaborative and social virtual environments in providing a competitive advantage to organizations in the 21st century.

Ron said at one point. “You can’t put a technology band-aid on a social injury” and for me that said it all; more than any demonstration or PowerPoint presentation, more than any numbers, more than any well-written white paper copy. Though virtual world technologies can create new spaces to connect, dialogue and co-create, the endeavor of transcending cultural, hierarchical and generational divides without establishing inclusive mindsets and behaviors within organizations will only result in the “old” behaviors forming in a new technology container.

At least that’s how we see it.

Read more about how we see Web 2.0 technologies creating new possibilities for achieving inclusive work environments.

Read about KJCG’s  recent strategic partnership with ProtonMedia.

Inclusion 3.5

Posted by The KJCG Team on April 30, 2007 2 comments

by Judith H. Katz & Frederick A. Miller

fred_judith_web.jpg

Inclusion 3.5 = Web 2.0 + Diverse Multigenerational Organization + End of Industrial Revolution

The need has long existed for organizations to be more inclusive of people—to create cultures where people feel valued, respected and seen for who they are. The advent of social networking and other emerging technologies provides an opportunity for organizations to think differently about how they connect with their people—and how people connect to each other; about the opportunities of having a diverse, high performing organization; and about moving the conversation to a new level based on the always-changing realities of today and tomorrow.

As Web 2.0 does not suggest a new version of the Internet, Inclusion 3.5 does not suggest a new version of Inclusion, but instead offers new possibilities for how creating an inclusive work environment can be achieved.

More than 100 years after the Industrial Revolution began, many organizations are still struggling with fully making the transition to a new age where people are more than hands and feet. But given the ever-increasing pace of change of the global marketplace, simply achieving a workplace where all people are encouraged to contribute and feel valued won’t be enough. As we begin the 21st Century we are entering a time when organizations will need to recognize the operational benefits and higher organizational success enabled by mass collaboration, global co-creation of knowledge and a diverse community problem-solving; an organization including as many people as possible, inside and outside the organization, in achieving its results.

Most 20th Century organizations are not ready for the degree of change that is predicted over the next 25 years. Some say it will be a factor of 4 to 7 faster compared with the last 25 years. For organizations that want to survive and thrive as 21st Century organizations, they will not be able to get there through incremental change. To create highly inclusive work environments, organizations will need to act quickly over the next 36 months. One organizational competence that will need to be developed is inclusive mindsets and behaviors that will enable local and global diverse ad hoc teams to quickly perform at high levels in order to address complex problems.

Too many organizations still operate with a linear mindset, a linear communication model, a linear diversity model and other linear approaches that simply cannot work in a non-linear world. Organizations will need to be more nimble and fluid, relying on networks rather than hierarchies, moving from command and control to transparency and open knowledge windows. Teams built for constant and unpredictable transformation will become the norm while collaboration and knowledge sharing will become the new currency for influence and results.

Web 2.0 alone will not bring down the walls blocking co-creation to the degree necessary for 21st Century success. Whereas collaborative software and approaches, peer-to-peer platforms and social networking tools can create new spaces to dialogue and co-create, and the possibilities of being able to cross cultural, hierarchical and generational divides without inclusive mindsets and behaviors, the “old” behaviors will just form in this new technology container.

Inclusion 3.5 is a radical change wherein communities of effort are diverse and global, a change wherein how we operate changes from a two-way street to a global network of interconnected paths that form an unlimited knowledge base, and a change wherein leveraging others’ differences, similarities and value-added talents results in an unsurpassed level of performance. As Inclusion 3.5 becomes a way of life in organizations, we will see the traditional walls and barriers break down as people both inside and outside of the organization join together to solve problems and bring sustainable solutions. In many ways, just as we could not imagine the explosion and impact of Web 2.0, we are embarking on a new journey ahead for what Inclusion 3.5 can bring to our organizations.


 

Linkage Summit on Leading Diversity Presentation