Small World Labs

OVERVIEW
We understand the call and need to be more open.  But… what exactly does that mean?  Openness is “having the confidence and humility to give up the need to be in control … while inspiring commitment from people to accomplish goals,” writes Charlene Li while proffering her opinion on the subject.  However, an abdication of control without acute focus on its impact towards goals leads to ineffectiveness.  While it may sound like a paradox, an organization that desires to be open and still accomplish its goals requires a set of controls to be in place.  This seeming paradox drives the organization of openness into two types, with ten elements between them.

OPEN INFORMATION SHARING

Explaining
Explaining is used to share information about and the logic behind decisions, direction, or strategy with the goal of gaining buy-in to the idea so everyone is aligned.   Mullen Communications shares quarterly financial information as well as the AAAA’s industry salary information with employees.  Sharing financial information builds trust and buy-in with employees.  Sharing industry salary information combined with a policy of paying within the inner-quartile removes distractions.
 
Updating
Updating is self-explanatory – all the little updates about what we are doing.  The key transformation here is that new social technologies, such as blogs, online communities, and micro-blogs are readily available and communicate information on a want-to-know or opt-in basis.  Inbox clogging emails with long cc: lines that create a productivity drain we all shrink at are no longer effective or necessary to convey updates to others.
 
Conversing
Conversing is engaging in a dialogue with others.  Social technologies have enabled organizations to put the community to work.  Employees can share best practices with customers on private social network platforms and customers can answer each other’s questions.  When done well, an organization’s online community can become a competitive advantage.  However, when working in public forums, such as Twitter and Facebook, companies need to get comfortable with discussing negative issues in a public setting.  The alternative:  watch a one-sided (not in your favor) conversation from the sideline simultaneously loosing an opportunity to resolve a matter.
 
Open Mic
Open Mic(rophone) is enabling the masses with the unfettered ability to contribute individual pieces of content.  iReport.com by CNN is a good example of Open Mic communication.  However, the challenge is filtering all of the content in order to find relevant and high quality information. Search combined with ratings and reviews capabilities become key in separating the wheat from the chaff.
 
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is giving a large audience the ability to contribute ideas to solve a specific problem together.  The goal is to “grow the sources of new ideas and gather fresh thinking to create or improve a new product or service.”  Doritos crowdsourced its 2009 Super Bowl ad and sites like crowdSPRING.com and 99designs.com provide a marketplace that opens up a multitude of creative types to those in with design needs.
 
Platforms
There are two types of open platforms:
1. Open Architectures - which provide a set of standards for working with them in a scalable manner (e.g., FireFox and it’s plugins like Firebug)
2. Open Data Access – which makes data available freely for other entities to use (e.g., Google Maps API and sites like housingmaps.com)
    

OPEN DECISION MAKING

TYPE	Description	Pros	Cons	Example
Centralized	Few decision maker(s) are involved	Can be decisive & quick Effective if the leader is trusted	Carries stigma of command & control	Navy
Democratic	Group vote on limited set of choices	People feel enfranchised	Cost of outreach Not suited to complex decisions Vulnerable to politicking vs. merit	Walkers
Self-Managing/ Consensus	Everyone involved & affected must agree	Tremendous buy-in	Can be chaotic & slow	Meetup
Distributed	Hybrid - pushes decisions out from center	Ability to tackle complex tasks Speed	Requires tremendous discipline & planning	Mozilla

 
Open information sharing is connected to open decision making but not on a 1-to-1 basis.  But… more open decision-making processes generally require more open information sharing.  “If you are going to involve more people in the process, they have to have the right information on which to base their decisions.”
 
Li concludes the chapter with an Openness Audit which includes a set 1-to-5 scale answers to Information Sharing questions and a grid to analyze your Decision-Making Process.   
 
ANALYSIS
This chapter primarily creates a consistent vocabulary and framework with which to further discuss the concept of openness.  As a former management consultant, I understand the need for frameworks when trying to communicate and educate new audiences.  It’s not fun, but it does create organization in which concepts can be named and referred to.  The section covering the Self-Managing/Consensus Open Decision Making type (Self-Managing and Consensus are provided as a single Open Decision Making type) which seemed a little odd as Self-Managing strikes me as an autonomous approach while Consensus is governed by unanimity (or some other approval bar). 
 
I was floored, I repeat FLOORED, when I learned that starting February 2008, MeetUp.com began making all decisions on what features the company would add to the website via self-determination by developers. “If someone could convince an engineer to spend time on the project, it would get done.”  Amazingly, CEO Scott Heiferman states, “[It’s] working to the point where we really can’t imagine it being another way.” Wow, I’d like to understand a little more about that.