This post is a follow-up of a previous post on my french blog. One long-standing goal of this blog is to come up with concepts and tools to better understand the efficiency of communication channels within the enterprise. Here I focus on the "Enterprise 2.0" trend, seen as the introduction of Web 2.0 tools which support "new" forms of collaboration and communication. I actually believe that using these tools increas
es the overall efficiency (as do most blog writers – see Six Ways to make Web2.0 work to get a summary of the "big picture"), my focus is on sociometry, that is how to measure and demonstrate this increased efficiency. The first part is an English summary of these eight "communication 2.0 forms". The second part is a more detailed analysis, proposed as a table.
Here is the list of eight « communication forms » which I have associated to a variety of "Enterprise 2.0" usages. As mentioned earlier, this is a "work in progress" … The need to categorize comes from the desire to model, measure and simulate. This list only focuses on "2.0 innovations" and does not include the more common form of computer-supported forms of communication such as email, videoconferencing, etc.
- Concurrent Editing.
This is simply the kind of communication supported by the co-edition of a shared document (which is often coupled with another form of communication). It is a distinctive feature associated with "Enterprise 2.0 », with the flagship example of the Wiki. - Targeted Broadcasting.
Broadcasting (one-to-many) is an efficient technique for the broadcaster, but which may turn tiresome (and a waste of productive time) for the listener. With the support of "communities defined by a common interest", Web 2.0 tools bring the concept of targeted broadcasting. - Non-intrusive Synchronous Communication. Instant Messenging (IM) brings a number of distinctive features into one package: synchronous texting, presence, closed group of communication partners (so-called « buddies »). My intuition tells me that texting is not the specific feature of IM (shared for instance with SMS), but the combination of presence – sharing joinability information – and a closed group of participants, both of them making synchronous communication "less aggressive" for the receiving side. Joinability is a key concept when defining performance of communication (a topic that is covered with some depth in my book). The combination of text-based (which can be processed in a multi-tasking setup), joinability info and a closed communication network which prevents spamming, defines the concept of non-intrusive synchronous communication (which one may think of as an oxymoron).
- Personal Context Synchronisation.
This describes a « background » communication channel whose benefit (among others) is to eliminate the "transaction costs" of communication (the analogy with R. Coase's analysis is striking). We learn from sociology that a typical conversation follows a three-step pattern. The first is the introduction (with ritual questions such as "how are you" "what's up") that is necessary to "synchronize" both from a contextual and a biological perspective. It means both to establish a common frame of communication (context) and to synchronize the emotional states (with keys such as tone / rhythm / body posture / …). The second step is the exchange of information per se. The last is closure, another ritual step that is necessary for one of the participant to indicate to the other that it is time to move to other things. Removing the ritual step is seen as a lack of social skills and reduces the efficiency of the communication process (when repeated). Web 2.0 has introduced a number of micro-blogging tools (such as twitter). Sharing a continuous flow of micro-information creates a "sense of proximity" which makes "other form of communications" more efficient since introduction/closure become less necessary in an "always connected" world. - Targeted Stigmergy.
Stigmergy is communicating through messages with messages left in a location for future visitors (what ants do). It can be thought of as localized asynchronous communication. The « virtual » version of the ants depositing pheromone is, for instance, the wall-to-wall communication in Facebook. Only those who go and visit the wall may read the messages, so, once again, the 2.0 equivalent adds the benefit of a "target": those who share a common interest in the owner of the "wall". A more advanced version of digital stigmergy is offered with geo-tagging (adding tags to the « real world » - see for instance Sekai camera) and with geo-proximity services (see Aka-aki). - Elective Asynchronous Communication.
The novelty is in the « elective » (in the sense of Goethe), that is using a closed group where each recipient has explicitly accepted the sender into his "group". Elective email is a response against spam, and more generally a way to segment email usage along different communities. This is precisely why so many young Internet users moved away from email to use the Facebook equivalent (and NOT because asynchronous communication was "has-been"). We are back to a key idea which I have often developed in my blog: Web 1.0 communication tools make it too easy to burden the recipients with overload (saturate the "bandwidth"). - Weak Links Weaving.
This is a key benefit from 2.0 tools. Since the seminal work form Mark Granovetter, we separate links in social networks (such as the enterprise) into two categories: strong links (people that we see often, for geographical, organizational or functional reasons) and weak links (people that we see less often but who make a « second circle » which is key to information propagation). Strengthening the weak links is a way to promote efficient information propagation within the enterprise. It acts on two levels. First it reduces the length of the information diameter (a key topic of my other blog). This is actually a structural result, with equations that link the social net structure and the information propagation latency. Second, because weak links are « orthogonal » to enterprise organization, they prevent the usual « silo syndrome". They help different functions and different department better collaborate. The key equation associated to this seventh principle, which will require further investigation, may be formulated as follows: the efficiency gained from a better network of weak links is worth productive time that employees loose when they chat on Facebook or other similar tools (about non-company-business). - People-to-Function Communication.
A major difficulty in large organization is that one does not know who to talk to, for a given business topic, unless you are « one of the elders » and you have grown your own support network. Web 2.0 tools, which are built on top of « communities » which share a common interest, support both direct and indirect communication. Direct/explicit means that you designate the recipient as a person. Indirect means that you talk to a person or a group defined implicitly (as a community). Being able, especially for a newcomer, to reach the proper recipients through their domain of interests is a key benefit of Web 2.0 tools, one that has been identified for a long time by the "knowledge management" crowd. One may notice that, if the email exchange graph was publicly displayed, it would be of great help to find out "who knows what" in the company (an idea which is being exploited already). A benefit of the 2.0 tools is precisely to offer, in a visual and manageable form, this type of interaction map.
The following two tables illustrate these eight forms along the following criteria/principles:
- Active principle: how to describe these communication forms using a few abstract qualifiers (synchronous/ asynchronous, N-to-M, immersive/multi-tasking, explicit designation of the receivers / implicit, …)
- 2.0 examples: a few common 2.0 tools that capture (at least partially) this form of communication
- Non-Web examples: I offer a more classical example to give a different insight
- Cure for : a list of known communication problems that are partially resolved here
- Sociometry: what could be measured to prove an increase in efficiency
As mentioned earlier, my goal is to dive into a more analytic study of these communication forms and see how they can be added to my enterprise efficiency model. However, the first step is to see if this list is complete or if I missed another aspect of 2.0 communications. Comments are welcome J
