Tagged with: clustering • essentials • group-association • richard florida • right people • social clues • social markers • social network • Teams • trust • virtual workspace • virtual-teams
People cluster together. We form groups for economic and social reasons. What if we could use our natural tendency for social clustering as a way to drive teams?
What if we could create conditions that would attract “the right people”? What if those “right people” would “trust” all other member in the group, just because they were attracted by the same social needs?
If you fill a sink with water and when it’s full you pull the plug, all the water will spiral towards one point. Automatically. Just because the proper conditions are created.
People Cluster
Humans form clusters. Work for example seems to be located around certain topological centers like a harbor, a place rich of natural resources or just cities. Work is not spread out evenly over the planet. There are concentrations of it. The same goes for the other current, that of talent moving around, as described by Richard Florida in “The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent”. The most incredible, creative talent is looking for great places to live. Places where tolerant stimulating locations provide company of like minded people. By creating the conditions of technology, tolerance and already available talent, other talent is automatically attracted. Both currents have as a net effect that people are clustering, one gets clusters because people have the need to satisfy their economic needs. opinions.
Social Clustering
Imagine the map of the earth doesn’t reflect countries, but it represent ideas. Or they would represent religions, world views, life styles and other concepts. Imagine a spatial representation of concepts. People will not be spread out evenly. What you will see is that people are cuddling up next to each other. As their social needs by definition can only be fulfilled in relationship to other people, the association needed with groups ensures the clustering will be a fact when using a conceptual map.
Reputation Space
The network that knows about you in a certain context is your Reputation Space. You can view this as your professional network, your community of practice or just your local office. Or the world, if you are incredible famous. If we go back to the metaphor of water in a sink, this would be the sink.
When I tell you that social media has a purpose for Project Managers, you basically have to trust me on this. I try to make a compelling case. I provide you argumentation that makes the case plausible. Or fail at it, for that matter. I provide you with my profile. I make video to make a deeper “connect”. I use some personal branding. I use my associations with professional organizations. I use the fact that I am a practitioner. I use the fact that I have a long history of writing on the web. I use the fact that I have spoken at conferences. I use the fact that I have written a book. I use the fact that I have a lot of people subscribed to my rss feed and newsletter.
Some people prefer statistical evidence. Some prefer anecdotal story telling. Some prefer case descriptions. To you this is all “second hand” information. Which at best is plausible.
The network that knows about you, knows about you due to information. The reputation space can also be regarded as a collection of information. The entire collection of “second hand” information makes up the reputation space, as it is primary judged on the basis of the reputation of its source.
Oasis Of Trust
Social conditions have an impact on trust. Peoples “trustworthiness” is determined by association and similarity. Association: is what I expect the other to be like. Similarity: is to be like me. So there exists a set of conditions that enhance the development of trust among a group of people. And because people prefer to work in an oasis of trust, these conditions have attraction. The creation of a quest, the pursuit of something worthwhile, is a social marker that serves as an attractor.
Language, running a pirate ship instead of a project, social markers and culture in general are conditions that for some people, “the right people” signal an oasis of trust. People from within your reputation space will move to this oasis.
In the upcoming months I will explore this idea of using our natural tendency for social clustering as a way to drive teams, further.
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The web is already moving towards that, see stackoverflow and its related sites, a quick example top of my head.
I think you approach reveals in an inclination towards the symantec web; the next generation web may be. But I see us moving towards that already.
A community of specialists. Then probably it would raise Inter-community concerns, for instance, those who really are concerned, are security, privacy, and even the actual private life. For instance a search would reveal all related information that you have been living the “communitized-life”. A web where everyone is a celebrity, and everyone is unknown. All you have to do it know the unknown.
Nice read though.
I recently attended the 2010 @task User Conference in Salt Lake City where @task announced the world’s first social project management platform. This new platform, titled Stream, combines the power of social networking with the structure of project management. More information can be found at http://www.attask.com/stream.
The new platform empowers teams, increasing their acceptance of, and participation in, the project management process. With Stream, front-line conversational information and commitments flow upward, enabling greater accuracy in projections and more well-informed decision making. Everybody at the conference was very excited about the announcement, as am I.
Hi Kman, I agree that the semantic web will be a huge accelerator for this concept. It would give more “meaning” to information that is lying around. But it’s not just just the semantic web, it is also the “real time web” and especially augmented web, where online and offline collide. Thanks for the comment.