Category: blog

Kurtz and Snowden contribute to the insights and interdependence between organizational learning and networks, with this article called Bramble bushes in a thicket (2007).

A nice explanation of naturalistic approach (emphasizing the inherent un-knowability where people seek to understand a sufficiency of the present) and idealistic approach (privileging expert knowledge, where leaders set out an ideal future state). Details in this clarifying slidedeck stating:

Two of the most important elements of the naturalistic sense-making approach are: narrative and networks.

Especially the paragraph about Inter-organizational networks and productive conflict offers insights I correlate with. Here’s two quotes:

Inter-organisational networks help organisations improve productive conflict within their boundaries in two ways: first, by increasing the productive conflict experienced by groups and individuals of the organisation who are in contact with the outside network, and second, by making each internal group’s norms for conflict management more visible in comparison. It does not seem that much work has been done specifically on the types and natures of conflict in inter-organisational networks to date. Certainly there has been discussion of how conflicts of interest can arise between partners in business ventures, but there has not been strong attention to how inter- and intra-group conflict plays out in inter-organisational learning networks.

Holmquist (2003) makes the case that learning in intra-organisational and inter-organisational networks is intermingled and that conflict is a critical ingredient in this intermingling: “The explorative character of much interorganizational learning does not occur by itself; it occurs as a result of a confrontation and a combination of single organizations’ experiences.” He also makes the point that because inter-organisational networks typically have a less centralised structure than the organisations themselves, employees who participate in such networks are exposed to “conflicts and instability as a result of the lack of formal authority”, which can increase productive conflict within their own organisation. All of these signs point to the utility of inter-organisational networks as a source of not only new knowledge but also of productive conflict that improves the organisation’s ability to reinvent itself from within.

I love this metaphore of the bramble (desire-difficulty / cooperation-competition):

Organizations (and the individuals that make them up) are much like “bramble bushes in a thicket”, and the nature of their many interacting and co-evolving identities is self-similar as well as deeply contextual and ambiguous.

This article of Forsén, Lundin and Löwgren describes a conceptual design study towards a visual ‘front end’ of a knowledge system for large organisations. Explaining video here and interactive demo here (eat that, facebook & linkedin!).

Nice graphics. I like the idea of the ‘random people generator’ and I am courious about the impact. Nice touch that you can switch other/random people into the center of your search…

As pointed out on their website:

To summarize, all participants wanted the real system and claimed that they would use it if it was deployed.

I wonder how IKEA makes all employees fill in and update their profiles…

In this article about ‘Influence, stakeholder mapping and visualization’, Walker, Shelley and Bourne describe two methods for visualizing stakeholders. One metaphorical, one abstract, both aimed at (1) defining risks and (2) engagement with potentially supportive stakeholders. The more abstract tool basically helps identifying and describing (a) the scale, and scope of the influence and (b) the degree of the impact. The metaphorical tool basically helps identifying stereotypical charcteristics.

Most important lesson: these tools seem to help engage the group dialogue, although it stays a bit foggy exactly how and to what extent visualizing a stakeholder map makes an impact to group behavior.

Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight (TED) makes us experience a stroke from the perspective of a brain scientist

An eye opener: our left hemispher works like a serial processor, whereas our right hemishpere works as a parallel processor.

Very similar to one of my early proposals of group mapping and visualization …

original post

… I’ve found an visualization approach, called the Johari window. It uses a set of adjectives that all members of a group use to describe / score each other. I’ve used an online johari tool, filled in testdata about myself (pljvp) and let 2 ‘others’ (pljvp1 & pljvp2) score my data as well. Here’s the result

All Percentages
able (0%) accepting (0%) adaptable (0%) bold (0%) brave (0%) calm (0%) caring (0%) cheerful (0%) clever (0%) complex (50%) confident (0%) dependable (0%) dignified (0%) energetic (0%) extroverted (0%) friendly (50%) giving (50%) happy (50%) helpful (0%) idealistic (0%) independent (0%) ingenious (0%) intelligent (0%) introverted (0%) kind (0%) knowledgeable (0%) logical (0%) loving (0%) mature (0%) modest (0%) nervous (0%) observant (0%) organised (0%) patient (50%) powerful (0%) proud (0%) quiet (0%) reflective (0%) relaxed (50%) religious (0%) responsive (0%) searching (50%) self-assertive (50%) self-conscious (0%) sensible (0%) sentimental (0%) shy (0%) silly (0%) spontaneous (0%) sympathetic (50%) tense (0%) trustworthy (50%) warm (0%) wise (0%) witty (0%)

The johari window maps the attributes and shows how people think of me and how I think about others. As others judged me, I could judge others as well.

The first difference to my own approach is that I used a small set of words (from a 3Dimensional model) and let people map each others pictures on it, instead of using a big set of words to cluster these into a 2D grid. So Johari creates cluster attitudes per person whereas my own approach creates a stacked overview of a users, for a smaller set of attributes.
Second, Johari used datacollection through a selection of key words, whereas I used a slide on which pictures could be arranged. We can suggest that both tools could use interview techniques, combined with word counting or labeling methods as well.
Third, as this wiki article suggests, the Johari window indeed ‘seems closely related’ to Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, both enabling people to better understand themselves and their position, in order to make better decisions. However I am looking for a visualization that can create an impact on group behavior, focussing on expressing and debating (shifts in) perceived attributes like e.g. loyalty to a group level. A visualization that helps groups come straight to the point and does not necessarily need support from professional or time consuming interview techniques. The dialogue should come after the visualization, focussed on the problem and enabling people. Not before.

Of course, the Johari window  can also be used offline, i.e. like a classic board game with textcards. Althoigh I must say I’m really charmed by the simplicity of Kevan Davis’ online example and impressed with both his website and his twitter picture! Nice add on: a nogari version with failing orriented, negative attributions / keywords:

Tuckmann’s stages of forming-storming-norming-performing-adjourning are nicely explained through this re-cut of Remember the titans.

The stages in plain english: whoop there’s a group – we oversteer – we balance out – we do our stuff – we leave.

Looking forward to intergroup relations, I am trying to reset my thoughts about movies like Transformers (2007) and StarTrek (2009), recognizing the small groups now, together with re-priorizing loyalties and constant balancing of sovereignties. Loyalties and sovereignties seem to carefully switch between protagonists and antagonists,·between humans and even inanimate objects, within the dimensions of place, time and decision making unit (on individual, team, group and GROUP levels).
Of course, these are made up storylines and pre-fabricated group behavior. Nevertheless they’ve originated from a human perspective, assuming JJ Abrams and his colleages don’t use an army of typing monkeys when taking hold of us and trying to max out our attention spans.

Decety et al. wrote a very intersting article, comparing cooperation and competition using brain scans.

Cooperation and competition are two basic modes of social cognition that necessitate monitoring of both one’s own and others’ actions, as well as adopting a specific mental set.

They demonstrate that for both modes two identical parts are active: (1) a network serving executive functions which enables flexible behavior and (2) a part involved in the sense of agency, that is ‘the feeling that we are the cause of our actions and their consequences’. This latter part:

is shown to play a role in the integration of emotion and behavior.

Both parts play a crucial role during social relations:

… both cooperation and competition involve anticipating the behavior of one’s social partner, which relies heavily on ‘‘mentalizing,’’

Moreover, 

… distinct regions were found to be selectively associated with cooperation and competition…

They argue -within a context of 1 self and 1 other- that cooperation is a more socially rewarding process, backed by ample evidence from evolutionary and developmental psychology (no sources, but we get the point). Another difference is the suggestion that self-other merging is greater in cooperation conditions.
Further on Decety et al. state that:

Adopting a competitive stance requires a {stronger} mentalizing component to maintain both self and other perspectives of the game and therefore, we hypothesize, requires the computing resources of the medial prefrontal cortex.

What does this research mean to group behavior? It helps us to define group behavior.
First of all, without individual motivation, intention and behavior nor group competition nor group cooperation will exist. Or won’t it? Take some grass on a sand dune. They will ‘compete’ for space and water (with each other and other species), and they will ‘cooperate’ making the dune resistant to wind. They have not really a motivation, intention or individual behavior, although the physical nature of the tussocks of grass seems to imply ‘human’ charcteristics. We seem to descibe group behavior with the same attributes as we use to describe individual behavior. Not sure yet how to deal with this. Let’s park it for now.

Second, let’s look closer at the ‘sense of agency’. When I type these words using my fingers, knowing I move them is an example of sense of agency (SA). Knowing these are indeed my fingers, is a sense of ownership (SO). Normally these senses are intertwined. Schizoprenic people have no integrated SA & SO: 

… the schizophrenic patient has a sense of ownership, but not a sense of agency (source)

Knowing this and reading back on this previous post, we could hypothesize that all group cooperations are -in a way- schizophrenic.

Third, taking the social reward of cooperation into account, what does that mean to the concept of differentiation on time, place and decision making unit? In other words, what does it mean to loyalty within and between groups.

Apparently different cooperative relations at the same time result in competition between those cooperative relations. We can say there is lively rivalry between social rewards. Time for a break to try and become truely aware of this other level.

Reading the basics of attribution theory underlines the necessity of this research. It turns out that:

… as Fritz Heider says: “our perceptions of causality are often distorted by our needs and certain cogintive biases”… (wiki, Forsyth Donelson: Social psychology, 1987, Brooks/Cole publishing)

This reflects another quote, criticizing the phases of the transtheoretical model:

… “the model ‘assumes that individuals typically make coherent and stable plans,’ when in fact they are not” . (wiki, R. West: Time for a change – putting the transtheoretical model to a rest)

Amen.

According to Ajzen & Fishbein (Fishbein, M. and I. Ajzen (1981), “Acceptance, yielding, and impact: Cognitive processes in persuasion,” Cognitive processes in persuasion, R. E. Petty, T. M. Ostrom, and T. C. Brock; Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 339-359.:

… “different arguments have to be constructed for changing a belief or conclusion, an attitude, and an intention or behavior” …

Exactly why a multidimensional approach stays preferable instead a focus on just one or two. Humans are good in finding or creating arguments. We just need (some help) to learn and recognize which dimensions these arguments apply to. And whether we use the right amount of dimensions.

On an individual level, I did find one approach that might help shed some light: theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, I. , 1991, The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211).
The theory of planned behavior offers a model where behavioral, normative and control beliefs influence respectively a persons (1) attitude toward behavior, (2) subjective norm and (3) percieved behavioral control. Together this guides a persons intentions, which steers the behavior.

·source and explanation (image: copyright 2002 Icek Aizen)

…perceived behavioral control refer’s to people’s perception of the ease or difficulty of performing the behavior of interest. … perceived behavioral control can, and usually does, vary across situations and actions.

Again, so far no hard link to group behavior (or other external drivers, which is common in behavioral change theories). Although all boxes originate from an individual, cognitive self regulation point of view, there is no reason to neglect the fact that they can also act as interpersonal drivers within group behavior. To help make some constructive noise and help surface intentions an loyalty. According to Aizen, all intervision should target the beliefs, and through adjusted intention it will change behavior.

How long will it take before we can map the use of not only computer memory, but also our (working) storage / memory parts of our brains? That way we could be optimizing not only abstract algorithms, but also optimize our complex interactions, thoughts and what not.

…and true, we are not machines. Or are we, deep down inside?

Without it, we couldn’t enjoy watching a Margitte. Whether we can solve that puzzele from a theory of mind perspective or a philosophy of mind perspective, I don’t know…