For someone who hates conferences, I had a good time at Island Tech 2009 event last Friday, put on by VIATeC. The best talk I heard was Phillippe Taillefer‘s on “Leading the Crowd: How Web 2.0 Software Will Transform Management“.
Taillefer is a management consultant who’s interested in horizontal (that is, non-hierarchical) communication. He began by sketching out his framework, something I wish more speakers would do (because it clarifies what follows and is difficult to do unless you’ve really sorted out your ideas, which some speakers haven’t).
For brevity’s sake, I’ll present it axiom-style:
Decision-making = Cognition + Motivation
Wider participation → Better decision-making
Expertise x Diversity x Size = The collective intelligence of the group
Motivation = Understanding + Ownership
I’m not sure I understand that last one entirely! But I agree that we have to understand people’s motivations if we want to foster interaction.
Five collective-intelligence tools
The body of his talk was a discussion of five tools for improving decision-making in organizations.
- Meetings. Traditional, but excellent for certain purposes. Meetings focus people’s attention and can really get to the bottom of things. The drawbacks are that we have too many of them, and they are synchronous - only one person talks at a time – so they tend to be inefficient. (I’ll add that what the current speaker says is often of interest to only a few of the participants, which decreases efficiency further.)
- Email, etc. The “etc.” here means Twitter, instant-messaging and so on. For the most part, these are still pre-Web 2.0 modes. They are all asynchronous modes, so people can process them at their convenience. (I’ll note that these modes fit with a multitasking environment – but does multitasking facilitate good decision-making?) Taillefer’s caveat is that, like meetings, they tend to proliferate to the point of overwhelming users, who then spend their weekends clearing out their inboxes. What we need, he says, are aggregation tools that compile and synthesize diverse information sources without flooding users into data.
- Polling. Online polls are “like magic”, says Taillefer, as a means of eliciting feedback. Their main drawback is that they only handle multiple-choice questions, and so they aren’t good for open-ended explorations. The poll-maker chooses the possible answers and thereby constrains the users’ responses.
- Wikis. They’re simple and cheap, and “one of the most elegant inventions ever” (I agree). Essentially a wiki page creates an aggregated view of a group’s collective intelligence on a particular topic. They exemplify the insight that many-to-many communication unequals one-to-many communication times n. Wikis work best, however, in dealing with non-contentious facts; where there’s disagreement over facts or interpretations, they may fall down.
- Prediction markets. For me, prediction markets mean sites like Intrade, which deal with public opinion about politics or marketing. Taillefer suggests using them within organizations to reveal collective intelligence that would otherwise be filtered out. His example is a software release date. Top management wants it out on September 1, and no-one is willing to tell them it won’t happen. An internal prediction market, where users buy and sell options on various possible release dates, could tell them what the project team thinks will really happen. We assume users are competing anonymously, either for small sums of real money or some kind of perk or freebie.
Taillefer is big on prediction markets. As he points out, “markets are very good at aggregating information by price.” In networks characterized by hierarchy and internal politics, information doesn’t circulate freely – ‘cos no-one wants to get burned for speaking. Prediction markets can solve that problem. However, I have to wonder how many organizations have an internal information market large enough to work efficiently. And it’s easy to concoct Machiavellian scenarios where managers sabotage their rivals by bidding down on-time, on-budget outcomes down (or bidding up impossibly good outcomes that can’t be delivered on). Still, predication markets are a fascinating idea, worth exploring further.
The future
“Where’s it all going?” asks Taillefer. In his view, the spread of Web 2.0-style collective-intelligence tools will transform management:
- Managers will spend less time on routine data aggregation.
- They will lead, not coordinate
- They will ask, not tell
- Authoritarian hierarchies will give way to participatory hierarchies (no, we will not get rid of hierarchies!)
General Electric’s workout process models some of this new management style. Facing a particularly knotty challenge, GE will put the relevant group into a room for a quick orientation. Then they’re split up and told to come back in two days with an answer. Interesting. It does seem like a rather Web 2.0 approach, although it requires no Web 2.0 technology – or computers, even. (An audience member suggested Google Wave as an appropriate tool for this kind of horizontal team communication.)
There will be problems getting these tools into use, he admits. Management is reluctant to deploy Twitter and similar technologies, because they think they will waste employees’ time. Indeed, there are risks in unleashing horizontal communication within companies. “Someone will find the right way, but we’re not there yet.”
That’s a fair summary of the pros and cons, as we currently understand them. It’s an experimental area at the moment, but many of the organizations I deal with are getting ready to jump in to it.
Christopher Burd is a business analyst, writer, and information designer based in Victoria, British Columbia. His website is www.catchword.ca. You can follow him on Twitter.
