It’s a plastic shovel sent by Intellipedia central to the boss of a particularly active contributor, along with a request to present it to the contributor. All members of the military, for example, have access to the secret-level version of Intellipedia, and periodically Intellipedia HQ notices that a low-ranking serviceman or -woman stationed in a hot spot far from home has been making a huge number of edits. HQ then sends a shovel, a citation, and a letter of explanation off to an officer as high up the chain of command as possible, requesting that the officer present the shovel to the prolific editor as a way of saying "job well done." It turns out that officers are usually more than happy to make a little ceremony out of the shovel presentation, that the whole affair is good marketing for Intellipedia and marketing of E2.0 within the intelligence and warfighting communities, and that it means a LOT to the recipient.
I told this story as an example of an E2.0 best practice, but one of the healthcare folk wasn’t so sure. "That wouldn’t work for our salespeople," he said. "They don’t care what the bosses think of them. But they care a lot what the rest of the salesforce thinks. If we put an idea like this in practice with them we’d make sure the positive feedback came from peers, not from above."
I thought this was very sharp thinking. It led me to an initial conjecture: if an organization is trying to get E2.0 in place among a bunch of free agents, free thinkers, renegades, or any other distinct and largely closed subculture, it might do well to concentrate on encouraging lateral communication, feedback, recognition, praise, etc. If instead it’s trying to get E2.0 adopted ‘in the mainstream’ it’s a good idea to include proportionally more vertical feedback recognition, etc.
So this is a conjecture about the edge vs. the center of the network. Is it correct, or useful, or at least on the right track? Or does it contain a meaningless or counterproductive distinction? If you have any experience in this area please leave a comment and let us know.
Who Cares What You Think?
I was talking about Enterprise 2.0 with a small group of senior healthcare executives a little while back, and one of them brought up a very interesting and insightful point. We were discussing the right way to encourage participation and contribution in emergent social software platforms, and I told the story of the Intellipedia shovel (which is described in some detail in Intellipedia’s Wikipedia article ).
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Rather than generalizing the lateral part, it might actually be a better idea to merge the iltellipedia idea with the idea you person came up with … its about who are the people who are seen as being influential, or superiors. For example, technical specialists would like to be seen getting awards from technical gurus, rather than someone who is simply up in the hierarchy. this, to my thinking, works different for different people, and must be looked at in that light.
Having been enlisted in the military, having worked in pharmaceuticals and now doing sales in my own company, I feel that maybe I can offer some insight.
There’s a huge difference between at military soldier and a sales rep, especially in healthcare sales where appearance is very important.
One of a s soldier’s major concerns is keeping his/hers’ brothers/sisters alive. If correct information increases the chances of doing this, they will do it. There is a lot the military can teach the rest of the world, especially when it comes to responsibility and camaraderie.
I’m not sure that a healthcare sales rep has the same motivations. The way the sales reps world is set up, they’re more concerned with their relative standing compared to their peers. If they can get a better commission/compensation package at another firm, they will go. Most likely that tip will come from a coworker. Their loyalty is much more to their coworkers than making some manager who will cut them in a heartbeat if they don’t make their quota. Why are they going to enter information to help that guy out?
It’s a little like comparing apples and oranges. Sometimes there’s tremendous insights to be made, other times, the worlds are too different.
I think it’s not about edge vs centre, but about organisational culture. The question to ask is “how do the people currently receive recognition?” and use a similar method.
Intellipedia actually encourages praise from colleagues as well, in a number of ways (featured articles, peer “kudos”, etc). However, from my experience, it often can be hard to get people to actually give them out. The only time that I’ve had success with encouraging peers to recognize their colleagues contributions was when there was a fairly tight knit group working together.
I think that your conjecture is actually quite solid, in that organizations should try to come up with strategies (and potentially processes) to encourage lateral communication. For some reason, what comes to my mind here is lateral rewards/recognition being a key component of horizontal leadership, but I can’t quite translate it into a cogent thought.
Hi Andrew,
I have a couple of clients in the pharma/healthcare sector and indeed these are very “sales driven” organizations where the “sales representative” is regarded as one of the drivers of the organization.
Sales teams in these kind of companies have their own subculture and do take peer review/appraisal/critique as a very serious thing.
So I would agree – in general – on the fact that under these circumstances employees would prefer “vertical feedback & recognition”.
The “corporate culture” of the military is of course hierarchical but I do believe that with small units & teams you could find similar situations.
I was in the Navy and although on board the commander stands “next to God”, group recognition of fellow sailors was as important as recognition from “God”…
I currently work on a project with a Telco and we will most likely combine the 2 approaches, vertical and from the top but with more emphasis on vertical… simply because of the corporate culture and the general dislike for the current CEO.
This isn’t an either or type situation. Back when I was a paid blogger there was no superior, but I lived on respect of my peers.
Then I started marketing, and again it wasn’t about what my boss thought, but what other people in the marketing department thought. If I was a popular marketeer then I could fail in one domain, yet start selling something else at a later time.
Now I work in strategy and my reputation as being respected helps in getting my conjectures across, and my boss values my insight, but honestly I’ll be looking for a new job by the end of my contract because I would rather be valuable to many than to simply one.
Some people want money, some want recognition, and others want a little peace and quiet. The ‘right way to encourage participation’ depends on the group.
A reward needs to be just that else you defeat the purpose. Understanding this concept is important to good leadership, and leadership is critical to the success of Enterprise 2.0 in the work place.
Andrew, As always, an interesting post. Thanks.
The question of engagement is probably the top question we’ve received about those looking to leverage e2.0 thinking.
Although encouraging participation is a good thing, participation rates themselves are not enough to measure the value of e2.0 in the workplace. I wrote an article that explains 5 hidden business benefits that are not understood through participation rates alone.
http://rexsthoughtspot.blogspot.com/2008/04/5-social-computing-benefits-that.html
Now having said that, we have been able to do a decent job at predicting engagement levels looking at 3 factors which vary situation by situation.
These are motivation, opportunity and capability. We ask several questions on each of these areas to understand the environment and situation and then determine what we need to do to improve engagement levels.
“Rewards/Recognition” are just one aspect of motivation. Providing recognition/reward based solely on the quantity of participation can have a negative impact on extending the benefits of the long-tail.
For example, if the only incentive one has is to achieve some reward based on volume of activity, one may not bother participating because they only have a single contribution. We minimize the value of the long-tail. Someone just might have only one contribution to make, but what if that one contribution turns out to be of enormous business value? If we don’t understand all the engagement factors, that person may not provide that single idea.
Rewards alone do not equate to high participation rates. And “low” participation rates do not equate to low business value.
Cheers,
Rex
As a caveat – you may be more interested in practitioner feedback and this post comes from an academic (albeit with a consulting background).
Can the “edge” you mention be central in a different network or possibly within a different identity frame of reference? In the informal network of healthcare personal (which is possibly a friendship, helping, or advice seeking network – or all of the above) the supervisors seem to be less central and thus their recognition is less important (simplistic reduction of a complex argument).
My second thought is regarding identity (overlaps with the network idea). I think the initial argument assumes the organization is the level of analysis and that supervisors are thus more central (formally). Among a community of practice or a functional group (say engineers, computer support personnel, or professors for that matter) the organizational boundary may be less salient than cross-functional boundaries to their identity and the network they consider important. In this case, since the E2.0 architecture is organizationally specific, they might be very interested in acceptance among their functional group within the organization (and possibly even more so acceptance among their community of practice outside the organization) – and much less concerned with supervisory recognition. I think maybe your concept of “mainsteam” may imply a cross-hierarchical within-organizational expansion / acceptance and thus the people that drive this adoption pattern seem to be highly formally, hierarchical, and organizational focused.
In summary, I think it is a matter of what is more salient to individuals (what are their primary motivators) – money, advance in the organization, career or professional development, friendship acceptance (you can also be friends with your boss), learning and problem solving, etc… and how this relates to the group you are trying to get acceptance with.
Anyway, sorry for the long post.
i think e2.0/social media/hyper-connectivity has a lot of potential for destroying enterprises.
business structures based on hierarchy, on closed system impersonal operating procedures where emotion and even informality are not allowed, may not be able to survive the inevitable power shift that comes from free(r) thinking elements becoming empowered through increased communication energy and visibility.
the edge does kill the center and it happens laterally. there has never been an authority structure that was not a vertical chain of command.
can you imagine a military organization surviving “e2.0″?
enjoy, gregory lent
Agree completely. To even get momentum with E2.0 a business needs E2.0 evangelists who drank the koolaid, skeptical business leaders turned champions, and most importantly grassroot viral marketing from within the business (the sales temas, engineers, bank tellers, etc.) We found that using peer recognition, top poster metrics and traditional leadership encouragement. Different individuals are driven by different incentives and the business needs enough tools to pull individualized levers.
Seems also to match higher ed in the sense that most college professors pay more attention to peer (and student) praise rather than praise from those they consider to be nominally in charge…
I had a positive experience managing adoption of collaboration system by sales professionals. We opted to rely on natural competitive spirit of sales people and published metrics, specifically designed to foster sales team cooperation and competition between teams. That worked very well.
I think it is less about “distinct and largely closed subculture” vs “mainstream” and more about understanding the culture of the group you are trying to get to adopt an idea. I have seen this dichotomy a number of times in my work. If you are trying to get adoption of any idea, you have to pay attention to these issues. Pushing acceptance through hierarchy doesn’t work at all in any area that places competence in a specialty above organizational standing.
Its less “Who cares what you think?” and more “Who’s opinion do you most care about?” Once you’ve answered that question, you know where to start.
I believe that Gregory Y hit it on the head. Our e2.0, cubeless, uses a numeral value called Karma to determine involvement and expertise. The higher the karma level, the more the user is viewed as a community leader.
Karma amount is basically the dependent variable of a model where usage as well as the quality of the content are the independent variables. Regarding “quality of content”, users that read questions can reward each other by classifying particular answers as “Helpful? Y or N” and the questioner can determine which answer is the “Best Answer”.
Not to make this into a sales pitch, but what we have found with our customers and our own internal system is that many in the community self govern. For instance, if a user asks a question that receives plenty of quality feedback, he or she is expected to reward some of those who help answer her question by using the “Helpful” and/or “Best Answer” features. If not, the person usually is notified of this by someone in the community.
Actually it is at a point that some of the users who answer my questions will actually send me thank you notes/emails for selecting them as the “Best Answer”. I know that it sounds odd receiving thanks from the people who answered my question, but hey, it happens.
I’d hesitate to generalize this as an either/or situation. The question, as David said, is “Whose opinion do you care the most about?”
This might be your peers, your partners, your bosses, your family… And each in its own context.
Have a look at what drives cooperative behavior in the Open Source movement. Typically it’s peer recognition that matters the most, and it’s the most powerful force in that industry. But that doesn’t mean the individuals don’t have bosses or customers – they do.
In the Intellipedia example, the message is that it is sponsored by the Hierarchy, and hence that form of recognition is powerful. The same approach for, say, Wikipedia would fall flat on its face.
I do not believe we should be motivated by what people will think. PeopleÂ’s opinions should not be the criteria for making a contribution.
It is more important that the suggestions and recommendations we make help business owners, peers,superiors and co workers achieve their business objectives and achieve success. Supporting and contributing to success is its own reward along with the coin of the realm.
It really depends on who we connect with. I believe that some people truly care about what you say but in the end, it comes down to whether they share a common ground with you.
Say you all work in the same company looking to move it to another level. Therefore those who do are caring for the message that allows for growth, while does who don’t care just don’t.
People absolutely care what you think. Think about it this way: How did I find your site? Because I cared about what other people think.
One persons garbage is another persons treasure. What one person says may be meaningless to you but to someone else it expands their minds or opens their eyes or to something they never could have experienced.
Enterprise 2.0 is social software and tools for business. It’s about using the web as a platform to do more with less: increasing agility and productivity while lowering costs. This conference is the largest gathering of people ready to use these tools to reinvent the way work is done.
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