Over the last year I have given a version of this article as a presentation to many different groups explaining the role of collaboration tools in a corporate environment.  I hope that this model makes sense to readers. 

Introduction

Good collaboration is easy to spot.  Words that describe it are “rich, face to face, accurate, and real”  These words imply a certain quality of communication with good collaboration.  So what gets in the way of good collaboration?  Noise and cultural differences are the major medium problems.  In addition to these problems we have  artifact problems.  After a collaboration has taken place the artifacts left are messy and  temporary if we are lucky.  Many times a group of people will get together to work on a given deliverable and have nothing except memories to take away from the time spent. 

It is the role of Information Technology to narrow the mediation gap and leave memorable, permanent, and findable artifacts.  Let me repeat it again.  It is the role of Information Technology to narrow the mediation gap and leave memorable, permanent, and findable artifacts. 

John Udell wrote in Infoworld that “People are the exception handlers in all automated workflows.”  This is another way of saying that all points of collaboration are exceptions to an automated workflow.  The reason you are getting a people together to work on developing an artifact is that you have not taken the time to automate the problem or it is an exception.  What this means is that you can look at collaboration as series of midpoints in workflow.  Workflow moves from one collaboration point to another, creating artifacts that can’t be generated automatically.

In today’s modern organizations, the role of the employee is to generate knowledge artifacts as the exception handlers in process flows.  When the process of knowledge generation breaks down, it breaks down for certain reasons.  These reasons are finite.  The first is that the tools are not adequate for the job.  You have a hammer and a screw.  The second option is that the individual performing the work is not adequately trained to use the tool.  The only other option is that the tool doesn’t talk to the next tool in the workflow and the artifact generated by one individual must be translated and transferred to the next point of collaboration.  This final option was what took place before we had knowledge management systems such as the modern computer.

The effects of this breakdown are also finite.  The artifacts are not created and the whole process breaks down.  The second option is that the artifacts don’t get stored.  Perhaps they are stored, but they can’t be found.  Finally, the fourth problem is one where the artifacts are found, but there is no way to audit them against the purposes they were created. 

In the end, if you have this going on in your organization you will see people reverting to people and paper processes.  You see this with too many meetings and reliance on the “Good ol’ boy “ network.  You will see silos develop and a lot of people will complain because they are not a part of the silo or the network, or they don’t have enough time to process the paper and the meetings. 

I should note that if you do have tools in your environment and people are complaining about people using them incorrectly or too much, you probably have a problem with inadequate tools.  Email is the perfect example of this.  It becomes the way to avoid a paper process while still being a paper process.

The Model for Collaboration

I am going to categorize collaboration using three separate properties.  The first is Audience.  With audience I’m looking at the direction of the communication.  I’m not talking about the people listening, I’m talking about the person uttering.  The second property I’m going to look at is the actual artifact.  What is it exactly that we are leaving for those who were absent?  This leads to the final property; time.  How long do we need to keep the artifacts of the collaboration?

We are going to say that the audience property has only four separate variables.  The first is the conversation.  This is a one on one conversation between two people.  The second type of audience is the announcement.  This type of audience is that it starts with one person and goes to many.  The third type of audience is the Brainstorm.  This is a group of many people interacting together to generate an artifact.  Finally we have the feedback look.  This audience is identified as many individuals giving feedback to one individual. 

Taking a look at Artifacts, we will divide this into three categories.  Written, Verbal, and Visual.  Each of these artifacts build on one another into the next artifact.  A visual artifact has a verbal component.  Each verbal component, has a written component.

The final property to look at is time.  I will break up time into 4 separate categories.  The first category is Real time.  This type of collaboration leaves very little in terms of artifacts, however it is where most collaboration takes place.  The second category is Queued.  This type of collaboration is unique in that the artifacts are generally consumed by the recipient.  Think email or voice mail, after you have heard a voice mail, you no longer need it.  The third category is Long Term.  These are artifacts that are needed longer than queued, however they are not static or permanent.  The fourth as I have already mentioned is Static or permanent. The difference between the third and the fourth is that the third category has a sense of draft or work in progress where the fourth has a sense of artifact of record.  

Now that we have all our attributes on the table.  Lets look at the model. 

In my next post I will detail out each of the boxes in the model, and start looking at how the model can be used. 

In the last post I spoke about the three different types of people there are in the world in regards to conversations; the creators, the commenters, and the consumers.  I spoke about how each of these groups scale on logarithmic rates of 1, 9, 90.  I also mentioned that you will need to fill each of those roles at different times.  So what’s next?  Lets look at how we move people from one category to another.  What are the tools available to us. 

I’m going to start out by being honest.  I lied to you.  There are not three separate categories of people, there are four.  This last category is the people who don’t know about your conversation.  Lets call them the clueless.  These are the people who were not invited to the party.  The best way to increase the size of your entire pyramid is to increase the number of people involved.  This is the invitation.  

However, there is a problem with sending an invitation out to a party if the venue for the party isn’t ready.  You will not get that many people to show up to an empty lot, and those that do show up, few will stay.  You need a way to turn those clueless people into consumers, and to do this you need something for them to consume.  You need content.

This isn’t all you need.  You also need a way for those consumers to turn into commenters.  Are there any tools associated with your content that allows them to leave comments?  Are you inviting them to leave comments?  What are the barriers you are putting in a consumers way to make them into commenters?

But this also isn’t all you need.  You need a way to turn commenters into creators.  What are the tools you are giving people to allow them to create their own conversations?  Again, are you inviting them to create their own conversations?  What are the barriers, technological or philosophical, are you putting in the way of consumers to create their own conversations?

This also isn’t all you need.  If you have all the above you will have a great party, but you will not have all the pieces in place you need for a complete package.  You need to put something in place that will allow your content creators to invite their own friends to the party.  Ask yourself what barriers are you putting in place that don’t let your content creators to invite others.  Are you even helping them, or are you thinking that this is their problem to deal with?

Next time we will talk about the tools in each of these areas and the strategy you can use to create each of these tools for different media types.

So you have something to say, and you want others to join in the conversation; perhaps its a blog, or a message board, or a website.  How do you get people to participate in this new medium?  There are some very simple laws that you must observe to start this process.

The first is that there are three basic types of people.  There are people who start conversations.  There are people who participate in conversations.  Finally there are people who listen to conversations. 

Think about the last time you were at a party or with a large group.  How many people participated in the organization of the event?  Those are your conversation starters.  Think about all the websites you have been to.  The articles are created by someone.  Those are the conversation starters. 

Now at this party or family event think about all the people who are standing around in groups some start conversations.  “Who saw the game last Saturday?”  “Did anyone watch Transformers?”  Each of these questions are put out there by the conversation starters.  The people responding are in the people who are willing to take part in the conversation, but don’t feel like they can start the conversation.

Finally at this party we have people who hover from group to group to group, listening to what people are saying and taking it all in.  These people are your observers.  They want to hear what others are saying but, for various reasons, don’t want to participate in the conversation.

Now as I’m sure you are aware of, these roles change.  At some point in the evening you move from one category to another taking different roles as the conversation progresses. 

So what does this all mean to someone who is running a website?  You must first have a place where you can start conversations.  You then need a way to have people participate in the conversation, and finally you must have a way for people to just ‘lurk’ watching the conversation take place. 

Now lets say you have all these tools.  You have a blog which allows you to post.  You have a commenting system on that blog.  Finally, you don’t have any restrictions on people reading your blog.  What next?

You have to take first things first. You must first get your creators in place, and have them create content so people can comment on it.  Then you need to get the people who want to respond involved.  Finally, you need to encourage people to find value in just reading the content that is there.  The trick is that you might have to perform each of these roles at some point to prime the pump. 

So what numbers should you expect?  The Power Law applies; 1% of your population will be creators.  People who comment will make up 10% of your population.  What you are left with will make up your lurkers.