Assyntk's List: #xplrpln

• a meaning seemed to evolve almost organically over time, thanks to contributions by a number of different people

• 1998 Daniel R. Tobin article Building Your Own Personal Learning Network as a source. In the article, Tobin defines a personal learning network like this:

   

  An important part of learning is to build your own personal learning network — a group of people who can guide your learning, point you to learning opportunities, answer your questions, and give you the benefit of their own knowledge and experience.
• a 1999 article written by Dori Digenti (Collaborative Learning: A Core Capability for Organizations in the New Economy. Reflections, 1(2), 45-57. doi: 10.1162/152417399570160) which uses the term “personal learning network” along with the acronym “PLN”.
• Digenti sets up a six phase model to build and develop collaborative learning competency in organizations. In phase six of the model (Enhancing Interdependence p. 53), Digenti speaks specifically to idea of personal learning network
• As technology and change gain momentum, no professionals can claim enough mental bandwidth to maintain learning in all the necessary endeavors they are engaged in. An organization can sustain its collaborative learning only by building interdependence among members. This is where the personal learning network (PLN), born of series of learning collaborations, can be a valuable tool for enhancing and building interdependence (Digenti, 1998a).
• It is based on reciprocity and a level of trust that each party is actively seeking value-added information for the other.
• If you are building a PLN, you will always be in a reciprocating relationship with the others in the network.
• To have a truly valuable PLN, investments in time and resources are essential. This requires an extension of the typical transactional business mind-set.

6 more annotations...

• Sherry Turkle famously argues technology has begun to overtake our attention and time, which has led to increased physical isolation and shallow online interaction.
• “We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true ... If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will know only how to be lonely”
• Turkle’s assessment of alienation creates a digital dualism.
• it may be more appropriate instead to consider our technique—how we use technology.
• What can lead to isolation is a lack of both technical skills and an understanding of the social elements of the Web, both of which are required for productive social networks—and Personal Learning Networks (PLNs)
• Shelly Terrell, a connected educator and co-founder of the Twitter stream #edchat describes a PLN as “the people you choose to connect with and learn from.”
• he term PLN first emerged as early as 1998 as part of Organizational Development specialist Dori Digenti’s vision for the extension of organizational collaborative learning online.
• According to Digenti:
  
  The PLN consists of relationships between individuals where the goal is   
  enhancement of mutual learning. The currency of the PLN is learning in the form of feedback, insights, documentation, new contacts, or new business opportunities. It is based on reciprocity and a level of trust that each party is actively seeking value-added information for the other.
• some debate over both the PLN’s relationship to earlier definitions of learning communities and the distinction between the network connections among individuals and the means by which they manage their own learning via the Web.
• the need for individual learners to be able to have the capacity for self-direction, which requires a higher level of learning maturity—a
• lso crucially important for networked learning is the level of development of individuals’ digital and web literacies in order for members to optimally filter out ‘noise’ and contribute to the health of the network.
• Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) that facilitate Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) play an important role in creating richness within a PLN, too. Learners who store important information in Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, blogs, microblogs, social bookmarking and on other platforms create quickly accessible resources.
• include a range of voices in a PLN
• voids the risk of the network becoming an ‘echo chamber’,
• onment. Although some suggest observation and trial and error may be the best way to learn how to do so, facilitated, networked learning appears to play a large role in developing broader capacity to learn in networks for those who require a supportive space. To that end, cMOOC models
• Howard Rheingold recently published a collaborative ‘peeragogy’ handbook for self-organized learning.
• Dave Cormier, Alexander McAuley, George Siemens and Bonnie Stewart developed very useful steps for achieving success in cMOOCs
• • Determine what you’d like to learn.
  • Find Twitter hashtags associated with the topic you’d like to learn. Seek out other Twitter users who have curated lists of others on that topic and follow them. Determine whether you see value in developing a relationship with those you’ve found (question to ask yourself: What role(s) can this person play in my learning?).
  • Read and comment on the blogs of those you follow, when possible, and promote their work to others when you really appreciate something they’ve done. Essentially, the idea is to help others when your interests intersect by sharing with them what you’re reading and learning.
  • Don’t forget to share a little about yourself, your thoughts and your life sometimes, too—it helps build trust when others feel they ‘know’ you.
  • Most of all, though, spend time watching those who navigate this space well and learn from what they do.

16 more annotations...

• Countering Turkle's argument that tech and continuous connection makes us lonely. It depends on HOW we use tech. Interactions online can be profound - especially if users are digitally literate and acknowledge that there is much to learn from others (and in the information age in fact it is IMPOSSIBLE to know it all so the real knowledge is DISTRIBUTED) - assyntk on 2013-10-15
• Outlines how internet economy/virtual workspace and knowledge economy require digital literacies of workers and how social media are being integrated into workscapes. - assyntk on 2013-10-15
• Online comms/social media have benefits for society - e.g. during hurricaine sandy, connecting introversts, business, young families, smartphones and the homeless - assyntk on 2013-10-15
• Digenti definition of PLN in the context of information age and PLNs the only way this could "be managed is by interdependent networks of learners or knowledge workers"
  Still current and mostly perceived to relate to networked learning online these days. - assyntk on 2013-10-15
• Requires mature learners (self-direction) and digital literacies.
  
  PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) and PKMs (Personal Knowledge Management) are helpful as they create easily accessible resources.
  Must prevent echo chamber effet by inclidng diverse voices.
  Best learned through trial and error and observation but cMOOC-type mentoring experience is v effective - assyntk on 2013-10-15
• Education may be a key in introducing ppl to PLN idea and good practice - assyntk on 2013-10-15

• Communities of Practice (CoP) and also heard of them referred to as Learning Communities or Personal Learning Communities (PLC
• So there it is – the big difference.  The word online. A community of practice does not require it’s location to be online – your CoP can be your neighborhood scrapbooking group, or the guys who meet once a week at the local coffee shop.
• a PLN, as I understand it, may not even have a  personal interaction (in the sense of a two-way conversation) attached to it.

1 more annotation...

• she calls "passionate learning networks" and defines simply as "the people you choose to connect with and learn from." You get to choose how you get that info -- webinars, podcasts, video, Tweets, face to face.
• Learning happens together. "Ask a question of the person next to you," she tells her students. "They find out that sometimes their question isn't answered," she explains, which gives her the opportunity to say, "Imagine asking the entire class." Usually someone knows the answer, she says.
• Winning Over Skeptics in Schools

  • important that ppl can work at their own pace an have a choice of tools - whatever they are comfortable with.

  • use your own PLN experience - get the ppl in the network to explain the benefits and how they came about.
  • 2 more sticky notes...

  • • show evidence do not talk about it. terminology can obscure the meaning.

    • Need to show them in action. Have a set of resources which can be used to get things going at the ready in your context. Basic intro to building network via twitter screencast.
• You have to participate to build community. Just as others bring their knowledge and experience to the table, you bring yours.
• As long as we're sharing, it doesn't have to be the most novel idea if it's something we're passionate about.
• It's an open conversation. As long as you are contributing and you are listening, then the conversation continues.

4 more annotations...

• “The basic unit of social business technology is personal knowledge management, not collaborative workspaces.” - Thierry de Baillon
• Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively
• the cumulative pieces of information, or knowledge artifacts, that we share can help us have better conversations and increase our understanding of things that cannot easily be codified
• Our individual sense-making can be shared, and from it can emerge better organizational knowledge
• This is not a linear process, as in from information we get knowledge, which over time becomes wisdom. Gaining knowledge is much messier than that.

  • Again making a point that it is not a simple transaction and it TAKES TIME.
• Merely being well read is not enough to be knowledgeable, as possibly first noted by Socrates. Plato wrote in Phaedrus that Socrates felt the written language would result in “men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, who will be a burden to their fellows“.
• Even today, we cannot become complacent with knowledge and just store it away. It has a shelf life and needs to be used, tested and experienced. It should be shared amongst people who understand that they are only seeing a fragment of others’ knowledge. Because it is so difficult to represent our knowledge to others, we have to make every effort to continuously share it. Once is not enough, as most parents know. Knowledge shared in flows over time can help us create better mental pictures than a single piece of knowledge stock, like a book, can ever do.
• PKM, or learning in networks, is a continuous process of seeking, sensing, and sharing
• Seeking is finding things out and keeping up to date. Building a network of colleagues is helpful in this regard. It not only allows us to “pull” information, but also have it “pushed” to us by trusted sources.
• Sensing is how we personalize information and use it. Sensing includes reflection and putting into practice what we have learned. Often it requires experimentation, as we learn best by doing.
• Sharing includes exchanging resources, ideas, and experiences with our networks as well as collaborating with our colleagues.
• It is quite likely that innovation in organizations can be improved with individuals practising PKM
• It is the process by which we can connect what we learn outside the organization with what need to do inside. Research shows that work teams that need to share complex knowledge need tighter social bonds. Work teams often share a unique language or vocabulary. However, they can become myopic and may lack a diversity of opinions. Social networks, on the other hand, encourage diversity and can sow the seeds of innovation. However, it is almost impossible to get work done in social networks due to their lack of structure. PKM is the active process of connecting the innovative ideas that can arise in our social networks with the deadline-driven work inside organizations.
• PKM is beneficial on both a personal and organizational level, but its real value is in increasing innovation
• Both collaborative behaviours (working together for a common goal) and cooperative behaviours (sharing freely without any quid pro quo) are needed in the network era
• Most organizations focus on shorter term collaborative behaviours, but networks thrive on cooperative behaviours, where people share without any direct benefit.

  • Again - org tend to focus short term - outcomes based. PLN stuff just takes time and builds potential!
• we need to become adept at filtering information as well as discerning when and with whom to share.
• Connecting social networks, communities of practice and work teams, becomes an important framework for integrating learning and working in the network era.
• Narrating one’s work does not get knowledge transferred, but it provides a better medium to gain more understanding. Working out loud is a concept that is very easy to understand, but not quite so easy to do.
• Free Your Bookmarks
• Aggregate
• Connect
• The mainstream application of knowledge management and learning management over the past few decades has had it all wrong. We over-managed information, knowledge and learning because it was easy. Our organizations remain enamoured with the next wave of enterprise software systems. But the ubiquity of information outside the organization is showing the weakness of centralized enterprise systems. As organizations begin to understand the Web, the principle of “small pieces loosely joined” is permeating some thick industrial age walls.

  • great point about organisations trying to overcontrol and centralise things
• Organizations should support the individual sharing of information and expertise between knowledge workers, on their terms, using PKM methods and tools. Simple standards like RSS can facilitate this sharing. Knowledge bases and traditional KM systems should focus on essential information, and what is necessary for inexperienced workers. Experienced workers should not be constrained by too much structure but rather be given the flexibility to contribute how and where they think they can best help the organization.
• Structure the essential 10% and leave the rest unstructured, but networked, so that workers can group as needed to get work done. Teams are too slow and hierarchical to be useful for the network era. Organizations structured around looser hierarchies and stronger networks are much more effective for increasingly complex work.
• 

24 more annotations...

• So PKM is a PROCESS of learning in networks - his model = "a continuous process of seeking, sensing, and sharing" - assyntk on 2013-10-17
• Definition: "Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively" - assyntk on 2013-10-17

• An effective suite of enterprise social tools can help organizations share knowledge, collaborate, and cooperate – connecting the work being done with the identification of new opportunities and ideas
• ndividual workers can develop sense-making skills, using frameworks like PKM, to continuously learn and put their learning to work. For example, they can seek new ideas from their social networks; make sense of these ideas by connecting with communities of practice; try new ideas out alone or with their work teams, and then share these ideas and practices.
• ut there is a major issue that gets ignored, by software vendors, managers, IT departments, and most everyone except the workers themselves. People will freely share their knowledge if they remain in control of it. Knowledge is a very personal thing. Most workers do not care about organizational knowledge bases. They care about what they need to get work done. However, if we are going to build organizational knowledge from individual knowledge-sharing, we have to connect the two.

  • This is exactly the issue - if the organisations try to get into ppls spaces with their boots you will get a shut down of autentic communication and shift to different tools. It's not just about trust among the ppl sharing but also trust btw institution and workers. And trust of institution in their workers!
• he knowledge sharing paradox is that enterprise social tools constrain what they are supposed to enhance.

  • YES!!! Example of messaging service at university - nobody is using this as it is being monitored by staff who end up inappropriately commenting and questioning workers actions. Similar - students do not want teachers in their fb or even leaving fb as too much of a public space these days and looking for other spaces for real communication.
• Why would someone share everything they know on an enterprise network, knowing that on the inevitable day that they leave, their knowledge artifacts will remain behind? I could not imagine having this blog (AKA my outboard brain) cut off from me. I would not put anywhere near the effort I do now if someone else controlled my access to this blog.

  • This is also a crucial point - parallels my (and others') thoughts on using portfolios and university spaces which then cannot be taken away. Students don't own it - they have no interest in putting in the effort. Also They may not have ability to share and show the world what they have done - and open it for comment from others. The double take guy and what they are doing in his institution by creating student spaces for them to keep forever. And ensuring their work is out there for everybody to see from very early stage - motivating and shows pride and care about students future (would this b applicable here?)
• Individuals who own their knowledge networks will invest more in them
• Whoever creates an organizational structure that bridges the individual-organizational knowledge sharing divide may have significant business advantages.
• The nature of our work structures, like corporations, as you show, is the problem. The corporate model, supported by existing employment laws, does not promote cooperation. That means that knowledge will not be shared as freely as it needs to flow to address complexity. The 20th century corporate model is sub-optimal for the network era. Hence the knowledge sharing paradox. We need to share our knowledge, but our work structures constrain sharing. Addressing the paradox by creating new structures may provide significant competitive advantages

6 more annotations...

• Culture is critical. Automattic has many policies designed to empower employees and remote work is just one of them. They believe individual workers know best how to be productive and that management’s job is to provide choices and get out of the way. If employees are self-motivated and empowered, remote work can accelerate productivity. However in autocratic or bureaucratic organizations the freedom of remote work runs against the culture. Of course remote workers will be less productive if they’re in environments that depend on centralized, rule-oriented, or committee heavy processes. But even then it can work if managers care more about results than pretense.
• Tools make a difference. Automattic employees rarely use email. Instead they use internal blogs, chat rooms, and Skype. A special kind of blog, called a P2, solves many of the annoyances of email, and simultaneously facilitates remote work. Conversations on P2s can be easily linked to via URL, are searchable and are visible to all, making it easy to catch up on what you’ve missed. At Automattic, even when employees meet in person they use the same tools as when working apart. This helps ensure no one feels left out or misses conversations, regardless of their time zone.

• Good points about organisational culture being key in succeeding with networked approach. Also the tools - email is not a collab tool. He lists the tools and methods used by Wordpress. Worker's choice! - assyntk on 2013-10-15

• we present a model of personal professional networking for creating a personal learning network, based on an investigation through a literature study, semi–structured interviews and a survey.
• We define the activity of professional networking as the act of making connections with other professionals, with or without the intention of making long–term ties with them (Compton, 2009; Tempest and Starkey, 2004). In our understanding, the skills at the centre of networking involve an ability to identify and understand other people’s work in relation to one’s own, and to assess the value of the connection with these others for potential future work. The result of networking is a personal professional network, i.e., an egocentric, personally and intentionally created network of people set up by an individual specifically in the context of her professional activities. This network gathers a heterogeneous circle of people, distributed across different groups and places, and connected to the individual with connections of varying degrees of strengths (Granovetter, 1983; Nardi, et al., 2000).
• From the organisation’s perspective, networking and networks are vital in innovation and crucial in linking to new trusted partners when dealing with changing business priorities (Birkinshaw, et al., 2007; Pulley and Wakefield, 2001; Vervest, et al., 2009)
• Professional networking can also be used as a means to continuously support professionals’ life–long learning in practice (Johnson, 2008).
• the ability to make conversations possible between people when needed is recognised as a key enabler of knowledge creation in organisational settings (Von Krogh, et al., 2000).
• Both strong and weak connections contribute to the individual’s learning: strong ties allow for active collaboration on knowledge creation, whereas weak ties are sources for new information, knowledge and ideas

  • Strong and weak connections - different functions
• For personal networks, Grabher and Ibert (2008) proposed a three–layered approach, consisting of a communality layer (strong ties), a sociality layer (weak ties) and a connectivity layer (very weak ties).
• An individual can therefore create and orchestrate ties to effectively support learning needs and potentially use technology to support this network, effectively making it a personal learning network (PLN).
• They need to perform three important (primary) tasks that form the basis for all other further activities within the network: building connections (adding new people to the network so that there are resources available when a learning need arises); maintaining connections (keeping in touch with relevant persons); and activating connections with selected persons for the purpose of learning
• specific attitude of a professional that lies at the root of this type of learning.
• A clear value for professionals emerged: they design and navigate their network to bring them the most professional and educational benefit at each stage of their career
• They undertake specific activities for networking, such as joining (online and face–to–face) professional associations, participating in conferences, workshops, seminars or networking events to meet new people or to reconfirm existing ties
• the key factor that emerged from the survey is the suitability of that person’s experience or expertise for the particular topic or need sought (cf., experts, zone of proximal development, etc.). The personal attachment between the individual and the person also plays an undeniable role. The location where new connections are created is also important: a trusted, known environment is often chosen to expand networks (P
• the results show that benevolence, like–mindedness and real potential for collaboration and learning play an important role in the building phase
• networking itself is linked to a deeper metacognitive level, namely, the attitude of the learner
• interviewees displayed clear differences in the way they interact with contacts in their personal networks and the way they learn from these interactions.
• Interviewees with a seemingly further evolved networking skill use the informational and knowledge building benefits of their personal learning network almost on a daily basis, affecting all aspects of their professional life. Each contact is seen as a potential person to learn from or to collaborate with. In this sense, networking can be viewed as an attitude to learning and working, i.e., the position taken towards learning and the role that their networks and networking plays in that learning.
• These two observations allow us to conclude that networking for networked learning is not only a skill to be developed, but also an attitude towards learning to be cultivated.

  • IMPORTANT POINT - skill AND attitude (i.e. culture!)
• Proficient networkers use dedicated events and environments where networking has the prime focus (such as professional conferences, seminars and, more recently, online social networking sites) to trigger their mind into making valuable associations.
• this attitude emerges with people who a) experience the value of their network at first hand (Hamm, 2007) and/or people who b) reflect on their work and learning in a broader perspective than their day–to–day practice (Margaryan, et al., 2009).

  • a key point - you cannot explain the benefits of PLN to people, they must experience it or at least hear and see examples from ppl who experienced it!
• A personal learning network (PLN) is a network set up by an individual specifically in the context of her professional activities through online platforms to support her professional non–formal learning needs. Therefore, a professional who intentionally builds, maintains and activates her strong, weak and very weak ties with contacts within her personal network for the purpose of improving her learning — and uses technology to support this activity — is creating a personal learning network. The learner at the centre orchestrates the whole environment, browsing, selecting and choosing the most relevant information resources (Conole, et al., 2008; Schaffert and Hilzensauer, 2008; Wilson, et al., 2006). To support orchestration, learners need to have a high level of control on tools they use and the way they use them.

  • how this relates to PLN i.e. online
• Although technological solutions facilitate many aspects of networking, it is unclear if technology supports or, indeed, affects the networking attitude of professionals and/or the related intention to build, maintain and activate the strong and weak ties in their personal network for the purpose of learning.
• 
• 

21 more annotations...

• Personal professional learning network here not confined to online - assyntk on 2013-10-15

• The guy outlines how 'sick' the military-based buisness model is - including the work(death)-life(play) balance dichotomy. Then he says that thanks to social media e.g. Linked in the workers and their professional worth/reputation are no longer trapped within the organisational structures (we have our own connections) - that's a relief you think! But he immmediately presents us with another horror - organisations should treat their wokers as customers, by which he really means they should piggyback on the workers' independent/personal social network connections to spread the good word about them! How is that making you more free or in control as a worker? Key point at 9:19 - assyntk on 2013-10-16
• 5 things you can do to deal with blending of your personal and professional spaces in the internet age:
  1. Own you whole story - you cannot hide anymore, world is very more pornographic. How do I frame this rather than should I tell them. This needs to be ONE story. Nobody is going to hire you if they only have50% of your brain space (OMAG - this is terrifying!!!!). If you have more than 1 thing you need to frame the additional ones so that they seem like an extension of the one thing that will get you the job. One hook - assyntk on 2013-10-16
• 2. Be flexible. Balance comes from flexibility not rigidity.
  3. Periodically review company you keep - you have the control over ppl you interact with. You have control over noise - maybe ruthless but realistic in the overload of information. We can only manage 100 of relationships (he is missing difference between weak links and deep links)
  
  Yes - this is theway to be a wanker in public. Well - being friends with your mother on fb may be holding you back in your career. Better put her down then... - assyntk on 2013-10-16
• He has a point that the cost of keeping things separate may be too great compared to the price - assyntk on 2013-10-16
• genuine is not always the best policy... - assyntk on 2013-10-16
• Hide things that impede you - e.g. political views - assyntk on 2013-10-16
• Well you cannot hide being a woman! - assyntk on 2013-10-16
• Life = play in his interpretation - no incling of family obligations or other things such as hobbies, religion, politics, activism.
  
  What he advocates is a bland convergence effect - as per Alex Krotovski's talk re Untangling the Web - assyntk on 2013-10-16
• In this way as a woman with children you would probably want to cut this out of your online prefersonal presence as it would prejuidice employres against you. This was not even on the radar in this discussion!! - assyntk on 2013-10-16

• What would it look like for an organization to somehow “adopt” PLNs (or some aspect of them) as part of its innovation, learning or knowledge sharing strategy? Would this be a good idea, or a bad idea? Would it even be possible given the barriers that we likely would encounter?
• how an organizational “implementation of PLNs” (not something we’ve yet seen or heard of happening) might be similar to other types of learning and development initiatives that have been used by organizations. For example, one can imagine such an intervention being similar to implementing an Enterprise 2.0/social technology platform within an organization, or an organizational redesign to facilitate sharing across networks, or introducing communities of practice, or rolling out formal mentoring or an individual development planning process.
• Our initial readings focus on learning from the organizational change lessons of “Enterprise 2.0″ and implementing social collaboration software in enterprises with the goal of inspiring beneficial sharing and networking.
• PLN is something of value that employees may want to think twice about relinquishing to employers. Consider this example described in a blog post by Prof. Terri Griffith [see Work as a Service--Is there a People Cloud?].
• can PLNs become a way for employees to maintain their value and secure working conditions that are consistent with their contributions to their organizations

3 more annotations...

• to allow businesses to thrive in a wirearchy.
• New technologies and emergent behaviors must make their way into our dominant top-down, production-based, model before being able to give birth to a model well-suited to complexity and to a knowledge-based era. Yet, most of the trends which shape the social business landscape seem to pull us back into a “déjà vu” draped in new clothes, like a jay dressed in peacock feather.
• In the midst of this marketing brilliance stands the key purpose of workplace collaboration: enabling better and faster problem solving, by facilitating access to knowledge, resources and expertise throughout organizations and beyond their boundaries, in order to foster better decision makin
• the virtual assembly line
• By making an activity stream the backbone of how work is done, whether in business applications or through personal interactions, “social” is tying us to a single place
• We are somehow inventing the virtual assembly line, neglecting the necessity for diversity and heterogeneous environments to support the divergent thinking needed when making complex decisions and that a certain level of distraction leverage creativity.
• In that sense, global activity streams are artifacts from an industrial past. What we need is true interoperability and diversity, not homogeneity and integration. We need to be able to work on different devices, chosen according to the context and our own mood, devices populated with straightforward apps which will not carry more information than we need at the time, while allowing us to bridge this information across time, space and context as needed.

  • Interesting point - the business pushing for a single 'place' while it is obvious that it is the diversity of places which is the way ppl actually 'work' online. Uncanny parallels with insistance on VLE as a single learning space in teaching and learning. ALSO - . The experiences whch I found least frutrating were the ones which encouraged us to find/create/share our own spaces and worked on ways to feed them into a common conversation. Interoperability or cross-talk can be tricky but should be more of a focus - at work and in learning! Interesting example of looking back is the attempt of FutureLearn to squeeze learners into a single language and single space (the motivation here is as per business which may want to capitalise on your PLN - data mining!)
• Departing from the activity stream paradigm, some vendors, historically involved in business applications, like Salesforce or more recently SAP, have chosen the other way around, and aim at introducing collaboration around business objects.
• the applications and processes around which conversation happens were designed for the industrial age, and collaboration in such a context is somehow like giving a crutch to a paralyzed man

7 more annotations...

• the simple truth, that organizations are places of divergent interests. 

   

  Where there are divergent, differing interests, there is conflict.

   

  And of course, power.

   

  Deciding how to act, what should be done in light of this fact, is the fundamental question of politics. What should we do? 
• f Manuel Castells
• book Communication Power.
• “Why, how, and by whom power relationships are constructed and exercised through the management of communication processes, and how these power relationships can be altered by social actors aiming for social change by influencing the public mind.
• the network society, the social structure that characterizes society in the early twenty first century, a social structure constructed around (but not determined by) digital networks of communication.
• Power is the relational capacity that enables a social actor to influence asymmetrically the decisions of other social actor(s) in ways that favour the empowered actor’s will, interests, and values.
• Power is exercised by means of coercion (or the possibility of it) and/or by the construction of meaning on the basis of the discourses through which social actors guide their action
• Max Weber vs. Michel Foucault
• The modern symbol of organizational domination, that is, the embedded relational power inside of the place where you work, is one of the favourite targets of the new-fangled social intranet: the organizational form of the hierarchy, best represented as organizational chart visualizations like this, and it’s evil cousin and byproduct (dum-dum-dum – dramatic reveal), the “SILO”.

  • The institutional hierarchies and silos (manifestations of i.e. organisational domination i.e. power relationships embedded in the institutions of society - NB MY NOTE institutions of society NOT THE SAME as organisations or businesses!) are a target of social intranet.

• “The empowerment of social actors cannot be separated from their empowerment against other social actors, unless we accept the naïve image of a reconciled human community, a normative utopia that is belied by historical observation.

   

  The power to do something … is always the power to do something against someone, or against the values and interests of this “someone”…“

  • Although this guy does not really explain who the empowerment of employees leads to being disempowered. Does not develop this argument and why it would be bad for employees, employers or the organisation.

  • empowerment not such a rosy concept - power is always against somebody. If we take it away from managers and CEOs by giving it to the workers no wonder they are upset.
• with the introduction of communications technologies, enabled by computers and common network protocols, our dominant image for understanding the organization has changed. The network is becoming or for many has become the pervasive organizational metaphor for our time.
• We’ve just started to pay closer attention to them in the last little while, as our ability to quantify them, measure them, visualize them, and comprehend them has become very good.

  • Visibility of online networks makes them of interest.
• networks became the most efficient organizational forms as a result of three major features of networks which benefited from the new technological environment: flexibility, scalability, and survivability.
• • networking power
   
  • network power
   
  • networked power
   
  • network making power
• Networking Power
• “the power of the actors and organizations included in the networks that constitute the core of the global network society over human collectives or individuals who are not included in these global networks.”
• Who is In and Who is Out of the network

• Those of us in a position to grapple with these decisions are gatekeepers, in the truest sense of the word. We decide who comes in, who stays out.

   

  And once in, you have power over those not included, especially when you belong to the same organization.
• 2. Network Power

• “the standards or protocols of communication that determine the rules to be accepted once in the network.”

   

  They are the rules of inclusion.
• • Coordinating standards, protocols of communication increase in value when more people use them (i.e. Zipf’s Law – read our post about the new laws of intranet ROI) – the old expression was it’s not much value if you’re the only one in the world with fax machine.
   
  • These standards and protocols, by the nature of becoming standards and protocols, can “lead to the progressive elimination of the alternatives over which otherwise free choice can be collectively exercised . . . “
• We trade convenience for choice. 
• What are the protocols about inter-divisional collaboration? How does it relate to the other, embodied form of power that probably exists side-by-side along with the intranet, even represented by the intranet, the existing organizational structure, your org chart.
• 3. Networked Power
• “once in the network, some actors have power over others.”
• the resort to coercion and violence on one hand, and the use of persuasive power, the construction of the meaning of action in the minds of people through communication, on the other.
• 4. Network Making Power
• the ability to form networks and to program and re-program networks.

• concept is the one of governance.

   

  Who decides on who is included or excluded?

   

  Who decides on what is acceptable?

   

  Who decides on what groups exist, don’t exist, and how their membership is negotiated?

• As Esko Kilpi so astutely observed, they are trying to shorten the distance between two randomly picked people inside the organization and to get more people who you know personally to know each other.

   

  This in turn works to enhance the value of a network organizational approach, as Rob Cross describes it, which is intended to recognize opportunities and challenges and coordinate appropriate responses, quickly and effectively.
• They are doing it to benefit from the network’s flexibility, scalability, and survivability.
• steer away from prescribing an ideal model that we’re all working towards, or the one “best practice” version of an organizational form, or a best practice social intranet, or even ideal relations amongst individuals and employees

• Instead, I think that when we contemplate power, we essentially ask ourselves

   

  What kind of political form do we want to belong to, in our organizations, to resolve the divergent interests that are bound to happen? 
• The social intranet then is the convenient object, the “MacGuffin” in that strategic design exercise associated with answering that question
• Our intranets have just as much likelihood of chance of re-enforcing the current modes of domination inside of an organization (further re-enforcing the power structures that are encoded and embedded in our institutions) as it does being an emancipatory force.
• We can put all of the affordances we want into our user interface, but if the exec want to turn off comments and limit page authorship and editorship to one lone employee in an organization of several hundred people… well….

34 more annotations...

• employees already have the skills for more collaboration. It's up to companies to take advantage of them
• Many companies have valid concerns about security breaches, privacy issues, bandwidth hogging and loss of productivity when employees use social-networking sites like Facebook at the office. But social networking for a business doesn't have to involve public sites
• These tools support social networking but let the company stay in control and maintain security
• Set clear guidelines for both external and internal social networking and collaboration
• And make sure everyone at the company is part of the network. Don't build barriers that might exclude people just because of their position in the organization. New ideas can come from unexpected places.
• They'll also need incentives to collaborate. Raises and promotions based solely on individual performance won't encourage workers to share new ideas or possible solutions.
• Not all companies wish to be as transparent and open to dialogue as the public social-networking environment is.
• "If social media can democratize a country, you had better believe it can democratize your company," Vijay Gurbaxan
• sidestep tensions by being ready with clear and thoughtful responses as to where employees can expect transparency and open dialogue and where they cannot

7 more annotations...