More information to process, but thoroughly worth it!

The ultimate solution to collaboration overload? Choose your battles.

I say pick one focus (project, ecosystem, research topic, community) as your primary, perhaps one or two more as secondary, and allow ‘all others’ to get your attention on a passive ‘as available’ basis. That structure can change from time to time. But I find it introduces some sanity.

My favorite tool is the time-box. A time to collaborate. But even more time offline spent with family and friends and significant others, focusing on the most important relationships in your life.

Balance needs to remain in view.

In the end, nothing is more effective for that than finding the “off” switch.

So there were two questions: 1) Can they handle more collaboration? I would say, probably yes, in terms of number of projects per person. 2) Do they perform the same? Well, depends on how you measure performance. If you need someone to really dig into something and not get distracted, maybe they won’t do that as well, but maybe yes – Perhaps the Net Gen brain, in its more efficient switching, is able to allocate brain power (concentration) more effectively and will do just as good a job, even if they are instant messaging and watching YouTube throughout. Of course, regardless of their brain, Net Gen is junior. They lack experience, which may give them less to draw on in terms of providing value to the collaboration.

We run a number of collaborative projects. The main ethos we run across all is that no individual is a ‘Jack of all trades’. In this, everyone collaborates but individuals provide better insight and problem solving (and, in turn, reap rewards) where they focus on key projects (and issues within projects) keenly matched to their skillset and ambitions.

It is a tricky balance and your post is extremely relevant. Too many cook will always spoil the broth. Likewise, your answer can come straight out of leftfield from a consumer-gen perspective.

Regards Bretts comment – totally agreed. We too have looked into the physics of this. Largely, indicators point to the fact that our brains are optimised for networked and ’stormed’ processes and by harnessing this structure we are able to work more effectively and efficiently. When applied to the web, this cross-network and ‘click through digestion’ is much akin to the way our subconscious mind works. The problem then is perhaps in how preNetGens have been conditioned to think more laterally – a very counter productive training that goes against natural modes of thinking.

In essence, the NetGen have no negative training to overcome before adoption.

Related to Dunbar’s Number, I just read an article in BusinessWeek from last month’s issue (Learning and Profiting from Online Collaboration http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_22/b4133032573293.htm). Seems as though Zuckerberg’s Number is closer to 40:

“An average Facebook user with 500 friends actively follows the news on only 40 of them, communicates with 20, and keeps in close touch with about 10. Those with smaller networks follow even fewer.”

1) on the most important potential challenge of all, climate change, humans are doing very little. Self interest is way ahead of collaboration. I would be interested to hear how “zooming” can help than one

2) in soccer, the coach normally says “let the ball do the work”. So it is with social networks. Of course, no human can sustain endless relationships, though Bill Clinton had a lot of America turned on at one stage. What humans do is identify champions in other areas, who are then their way of influencing that group or way of life or neighbourhood. Then 150 champions does make a difference as that keeps on rolling, and multiplying.

3)Is not collaboration software also limited in its ability to generate value by the “blockers” and “can’t doers” in an organisation ? They can make projects go off the rails by not supporting, or actively ruining attempts to change.

4) the Freiburg way sounds good although the likelihood of most macho Western-style politicians doing this is zero

When most people think of tools for collaboration, they think of tools that allow collaboration, but not necessarily those that support the effective management of that collaboration. The former can be helpful, but people can easily get overwhelmed.

Our firm specializes in strategic management, and while the term is probably not the best from a general marketing perspective, we sometimes describe the approach as “Strategy-Aligned Mass Collaboration” and it includes the use of stategic management tools that most people don’t even know exist. One key concept that we advocate for successful mass collaboration is “zoomability.” If you see successful examples of mass collaboration, there is usually a natural zoomability. In Wikipedia, for example, you can zoom in to the topic of poodle dogs and you will see detailed work by people passionate about poodle dogs. You can also zoom into the topic of Mozilla Firefox and find details worked on by totally different people. The whole Wikipedia experience is made valuable by many different people working on “zoomed in” parts of the whole. Most collaborative projects are not naturally “zoomable” and most few organizations use tools that support zoomability. We have leveraged leading edge strategic management theory and new technologies to add zoomability to many different business and social challenges that require collaboration–from deploying electronic medical records in an academic medical center to helping a state work to end homelessness. If you would like to see some of our white papers and Webinars, contact me at bill.barberg@insightformation.com

Cheers,

Bill Barberg

I agree with your ideas around creating structures that enable self-regulation and/or allow us to dynamically allocate our time. And, I know that the design of those structures will likely provide the boundaries for our personal choices (e.g., around time allocation decisions).

So, a really big question for me is around corporate vision and culture – what does the organization value as “productive” time? For example; if an organization places minimal value on time spent “grooming” relationships, how will that play out in the (structured) choices available to the individual who places a higher value on time spent building interpersonal relationships prior to committing “hard” time to a project?

Seems like a call for incredibly flexible (”living”) structures, consistent with the organization/corporate vision. One tall order!