Facebook is a runaway success but I’ve never been much of a fan. It struck me as streams of trivia. Another intrusion into my time for reflection on loftier issues. This post by JP Rangaswami opened my eyes as to how Facebook can improve learning in the enterprise.
In large measure, we learn our jobs by watching and copying how other people do theirs. We mimic.
Facebook and similar tools make it easier to watch what others are doing. As JP writes,
It could be as simple as: What does my boss do? Whom does she talk to? What are her surfing habits like? Whom does she treat as high priority in terms of communications received? What applications does she use? Which ones does she not use? When she has a particular Ghost to deal with, which particular Ghostbuster does she call?
What makes her tick. That’s what they want to understand, that’s what they want to learn from.
In the past, the corporate learning function attempted to lift important lessons out of the flow and offer them up in concentrated form. In a well-functioning learnscape, workers can tap directly into the flow itself. They can drink the bouillon rather than choke on a diet of bouillon cubes. Think of it as cognitive apprenticeship based on peering over your mentor’s shoulder.
This type of learning is not just about subordinate-to-boss and succession-plan related, it is also about newbie-to-old-hand, mentored-to-mentor. A picture of the activities and relationships and paths followed, a “let me show you” session, is worth a thousand “let me tell you” sessions.
More and more, knowledge management is going to be about reducing the cost of, and simplifying the process for, letting someone watch what you do. Nonintrusively. Time-shifted. Place-shifted. Searchable. Archivable. Retrievable.
That’s how we are going to create the right learning environments. I think Facebook has the tools to capture much of this in the nonintrusive time-shifted place-shifted shareable way. Let the patterns emerge. Share the patterns. Get inside people’s heads
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The argument is nearly persuasive but I’m not convinced. Yes, transparency is good, though not always advisable and sometimes downright risky, for oneself and for the organization. But the real problem I see is that Facebook is more about self-promotion than transparency. And, of course, the medium is the message.
Corporate and professional culture is built out of operational-cum-social interaction and involves a heavy dose of usually unrecognized “deep psychology” in the form of unconscious identification processes (cf. Freud on the formation of the ego). Models that shape the professional ego within a corporate (i.e. social) context are and should be multiple, but the idea Rangaswami seems to have in mind is one’s boss as unique role model. My feeling is that Facebook or any similar social publishing platform is too narcissistic and individualistic in its focus to respond to the need of constructing a solid and creative organizational culture.
It’s one thing to open the door of one’s office (a traditional criterion for classifying corporate cultures) or mailbox; it’s another to organize a permanent “open door” event focused on a single personality, even if it’s theoretically part of a network. Apart the mere inefficiency of the availability of so much information with little effort to distinguish the essential and the trivial, it raises serious questions about behavioral expectations and managing their consequences. By that I mean expectations about producing and publishing information as well as keeping up with and processing the information that’s available. Culture can be be defined as the sum of mutually recognized expectations within a group. The impact on work habits and relationships of a Facebook defined professional culture needs to be analyzed before it should be recommended.
Jay, I’m reminded of an interview I heard (wish I knew where; time for Evernote?) where this guy talked about how he kept his team on track: his del.ico.us tags, using basecamp, IM, etc left a trail of what he was paying attention to, where everyone was at, letting them work in tight synchrony. Hadn’t linked them to Cognitive Apprenticeship; great insight!
Though I don’t think it’ll necessarily be the boss, or at least alone, but also your more experienced team mates, the whiz at X down the hall (and you’ve a predilection for X, whatever that might be), etc.
I think I disagree with Peter, it’s not “Look at me”, it’s “look at what I’m doing”! Facebook might not be the platform, but perhaps could be.
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It’s interesting how we can all be part of a culture that agrees on principles that include transparency, generosity and trust. I don’t think any of us would have a problem reaching a consensus on those ideals, their pragmatic interest and the necessity to promote them so that they become a part of the entire professional culture that surrounds us. But sometimes I have the feeling that our conversations resemble a political convention pushing candidates and platforms and engaging in massive self-justification. The risk is a lack of critical perspective.
The danger I see in this – as well as the explanation of the temptation itself – is that a different kind of command-and-control model is looming in the background. Could it be that having failed to establish control over subordinates and colleagues because of new lifestyles inaugurated and reinforced partly by technology within a culture that is, at bottom, both individualist and consumerist, we are seeking to create new norms of monitoring and surveillance built on the now trendy principle of gaining knowledge of everything everyone is “doing” in order to micromanage them? Knowledge is power. And the road to consolidating that power is the appeal to the narcissism of the few who set the standard for a newly idealized exhibitionism. The best way to do that is to create behavioral norms of self-revelation. Confession has always been the most efficient way of solving crimes!
When we began transforming corporate culture in the 1980s by getting people to learn how to use the PC, we had to struggle with the resistance of managers (IT managers being clearly the worst of the lot) to the idea of transferring power to lowly employees. This was a typical cultural problem… i.e. typical because it played out below the threshold of conscious awareness. But it was real. It helps explain the victory of MS-DOS over Mac in the corporate world: the austerity of DOS was a gauge of seriousness, ensuring a better focus on highly controlled work processes.
With the advent of the World Wide Web things got seriously out of hand after the only limited damage of Windows (tardily imitating Mac). With the Web, staff could do all sorts of things that had nothing to do with their programmed tasks: personal e-mail, games, pornography, blogging, etc. all of them considered to be absolute distractions from serious work.
So what’s the best cynical strategy for re-establishing order? Create a culture that makes spying the norm, not through clandestine operations and strict policing but through the provoked complicity of the spied-upon. Promoting the idea of self-promotion, encouraging exhibitionism as a basic value, one which will be perceived as a key to advancement, is by far the most efficient way of ultimately gaining control over behavior. Looked at from this perspective, Clark’s remark that it isn’t “look at me” but “look at what I’m doing” says it all. Command-and-control style management isn’t interested in the “me’s” that populate the workplace; they’re interested in controlling what those self-interested me’s are doing. And why not, if everyone agrees? It could be the solution to the problem. But I see it less as a question of learning than one of spying, controlling and “normalizing” behavior.
And are we sure everyone actually does agree with the permanent need for self-exposure? I’m not. Can we be sure that it truly will solve the problem of distraction? I’m not convinced of that either.
Is this a conscious strategy of subversion? Certainly not, but most of management and power culture isn’t conscious. My analysis may seem slightly paranoid, but I firmly believe society needs the milder forms of paranoia (conspiracy theories) as a ferment to help refine our analysis of innovation and the motives behind it. After all, it may be the only known antidote to the syndrome of the political convention!
[...] Cross has an interesting post about using Facebook in the organization, and makes a connection I hadn’t seen (and wish I [...]
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