Leading Collective Intelligence

It’s been a long time since I wrote my last post. The end of the last year and beginning of this one were very busy and exciting. I was participating in several industry conferences, meeting new people, getting new ideas from them and picking up some interesting topics. One of them is leadership in project management. The development of collective intelligence and collaborative Web 2.0 solutions gives this topic a whole new angle. I thought of writing a couple of posts, reflecting on my perception of leadership in the age of collective intelligence. So here’s the first one.

Every now and then I come across articles on the power of the collective brain. Analysts, bloggers, business consultants, and professors in business schools keep talking about the value of empowering your team and unleashing collective intelligence. A growing number of people are discovering through their own experience that wholes are indeed far more than the sum of their parts. If individuals are coming together with a shared intention in a conducive environment, then the result of their collective work will far transcend the work of the individuals involved. I support Andrew McAfee’s view that leveraging this collective brain can help an organization to deal with many financial challenges. McAfee suggests that the answers to a company's challenges reside in the minds of the employees dispersed across the organization. Each particular individual may not have the best answer, but technology can be used to pull together the bits and pieces of employees' knowledge to find the right solutions. In one of its reports, Forrester indicated that Web 2.0 is being broadly and rapidly brought into enterprises to enhance performance in different spheres. In this respect, project management is perhaps the most popular field for adopting a new technology. Indeed, various Project Management 2.0 technologies do a great job in giving team members more opportunities to communicate, share files, update each other on the latest project news, and work together in real time despite time differences and vast distances. Project Management 2.0 tools become a system that lets members contribute and modify content in a ‘freeform’ manner—with a minimum of imposed structure in the form of workflows, decision right allocations, interdependencies and data formats. The best tools in this field contain mechanisms to let the structure emerge over time. Such mechanisms include linking, tagging, building views and hierarchies. Using a project management system as an emergent social information environment, the team becomes more powerful. However, there are many concerns on the project managers’ side that this freeform team collaboration can turn into chaos. Does the growth of the collective power of a team decrease the power of a project manager? To find an answer to this question, we need to take a look at the team itself. With the next-generation technologies, people have more freedom of collaboration and access to more information. Yet, having more information, more new ideas and more choices can puzzle people. So people start looking for somebody to guide their actions and decisions. They are looking for project leaders. In the contemporary reality of growing collective power, teams need leaders more than ever. So collective intelligence and adoption of Project Management 2.0 tools and practices do not eliminate the need for project leaders. However, it looks like project leaders of the collaborative age cannot follow the old-fashioned command-and-control pattern anymore. Many experts agree that, project leadership is undergoing a radical redefinition. For example, Edward Marshall, president of The Marshall Group, Inc., writes: “We are at a turning point in organizational and leadership history. The 20th century command-and-control approach, which worked quite well in the manufacturing age, no longer works in the 21st century information age, which is global, high-tech and incredibly competitive. It’s time to catch up to current realities.” I couldn’t agree more. Project Management 2.0 transforms traditional perception of leadership. Well, what does the new Project 2.0 leader look like? Seth Godin addresses this question in his latest book “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.” “Tribes”, according to Seth, are groups of people with a shared interest and a way to communicate. Web 2.0 technologies facilitate the formation of such tribes. However, to be really effective, tribes need leaders. Leadership, as Seth puts it, “is about creating change you believe in.” What I like about this rather laconic definition is that it highlights the two important things. Leaders should: 1. “create change”, i.e. improve the existing state of things 2. “believe in” this change, i.e. they should join accountability with passion. And what’s the leader’s main role? According to Seth, it’s to “increase the effectiveness of the tribe and its members” by: • transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change, • providing tools to allow members to tighten their communications, and • leveraging the tribe to allow it to grow and gain new members Seth speaks about tribes that are formed on the web, not in the corporate environment. Still I think that this leadership concept can be applied to Project Management 2.0. Indeed, the Project 2.0 leader’s role is to motivate his team and make the team members more productive, in order to complete the project on time and on budget. He can do it by: • setting a goal that his team will be aspiring to and make this goal clear to every team member • providing the tools that will make the team’s collaboration most efficient, and • leveraging his team’s collective brain and capabilities Let me underline that this type of leadership is more about empowering a team by helping it to collaborate than about telling people what they should do. Also, the emphasis is more about the effectiveness of the people on the team level in achieving the goal. While the leader is the one who has accountability and personal commitment, it’s really the team that is the focus. In many ways, this echoes the concepts of “Level 5 Leadership” as described in the book, "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. In addition, the point about setting a goal is very much aligned with Collins’ BHAG concept. In my next post, I’ll explore this concept in more detail and will try to present it from Project Management 2.0 point of view.

Project Management 3 min read

Project Management 2.0: New Definition

Project Management 2.0 is an approach to managing projects that is brought to life by the use of Web-based, emergent, collaborative project management software and that focuses on collective intelligence, productivity and project leadership as the basic factors of project success. Here’s what I mean by some of the specific words in this definition. “Emergent” means that the software contains mechanisms to let all people involved in a project contribute to project plans and knowledge, so that the plans become more realistic and true-to-life, and project knowledge evolves over time. “Collaborative” means that the software is designed for groups of people or whole organizations to work together in an intersection of common goals by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. “Collaborative” also does not mean “excluding leadership.” “Project management software” covers many types of software, including programs for scheduling, cost control and budget management, resource allocation, collaboration, communication, quality management and documentation or administration systems, which are used to organize processes and operations on a project. “Collective intelligence” refers to the joint capacities of a group of people to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language and to learn. You are welcome to compare this to the Wikipedia definition. Examples of Project Management 2.0: Use of Web-based project management and collaboration platforms by Capgemini, Chicago Transit Authority, Australia's Defense Force and millions of other organizations. Fedora Project Wiki -- a place for end users and developers of the Linux-based operating system called Fedora to collaborate. What a Project! blog, which serves as a home to many projects at once. Use of other project blogs (Plogs). A project blog is a blog that is customized to record a project, or a deliverable task, with its goal, procedures and status changes. It includes a "completed" status, which puts an intended end to the blog when a project is completed. Not Examples of Project Management 2.0: Use of personal blogs written by people involved in the project. These are for individuals, and although these blogs may contain opinions and information on project management, collaboration and the nature of projects, blogs like these do not imply teamwork and the achievement of common goals. Use of most traditional software systems, like Microsoft Project. As discussed earlier, they’re not emergent and are not focused on collaboration. Use of email and “classic” instant messaging for communications on a project. These applications do not allow interactions between people to be visible to the whole project team. You may, of course, argue that this definition is too tool-centric. Well, when trying to elaborate on my old definition of Project Management 2.0, I was thinking about the role of technologies in this emerging trend, and I came to the conclusion that we should not underestimate the influence of technological innovations on the way we do business, communicate and live. Following Manuel Castells, who wrote many scientific works on the IT Revolution, I’d say that “information technology is not the cause of the changes we are living through. But without new information and communication technologies, none of what is changing our lives would be possible.” This, in turn, brings me to the idea of a balanced project triangle: “people- processes-tools.” Tools are only a part of this chain, and this part is neither most important, nor insignificant. In order for a project to run smoothly, all three parts should be in balance. Now I’d like to find out what you think about this updated definition. I’m looking forward to reading your comments.

Project Management 5 min read

Project 2.0 Teams: Creating Project Communities

In my two latest posts (about Level 5 Leadership with Project Management 2.0 here and about Leading Collective Intelligence) I wrote about leaders and leadership aspects in Project Management 2.0. Now, it’s time to discuss project teams and their transformations in the PM 2.0 reality. I came across a very interesting blog discussion lately. Social media evangelists Dennis D. McDonald and Lee White discuss the introduction of Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, social networks, etc., to project management. I believe that their thoughts can also be applied to the collaborative features of Project Management 2.0 tools. For me, the most intriguing idea brought up in their discussion was the idea that these tools help people create project communities from their project teams. Traditionally, a team is a group of people linked by a common purpose. For a project team this common purpose is achieving a project goal, set by a project manager. However, wise project managers know that setting a goal does not guarantee a project’s success. Motivation plays an important part here. You need to reach people on the emotional level and make them passionate about a project for the simple reason that the more committed one is to a project’s success, the more likely the project will be a success. The next important thing is to make this passion common to all the members of your team. Experts say, that to make this happen, you need to strengthen the social bonds between the team members. Here’s where blogs, wikis and social networks and can be of great assistance. They, as I pointed out in one of my previous posts, create a collaborative environment that lets everyone on the team share knowledge and relevant information. Thus, everyone on the team can be heard and can introduce ideas about the development of the project. While they are constantly interacting, introducing their own ideas, and getting feedback and help from other team members, people on the team level become socially connected to each other. Dennis McDonald and Lee White refer to this social connection as a “community.” In his post, Dennis mentions the phrase “sense of community”, saying that “it refers to a sharing of common beliefs that involves a connection at a more personal or emotional level.” In this regard, the concept of community brings to mind notions like passion, devotion, and commitment. Many project managers would agree that commitment, along with passion and devotion are very important for a project’s success. Emphasis on collaboration that is introduced by social media, blogs, wikis and Project Management 2.0 tools and practices helps to build the sense of community in a team. Yet, each team is unique, just like each project is unique. Some teams sit in the same office and have successfully completed several projects together; others are separated by vast distances and have never met each other before. If this is the case the role of the social media will be especially important. When a project brings together people who may not know each other or who may not have worked together before, social technologies can help to greatly enhance collaboration and communication. There can be numerous examples for such a case: a large corporate project, a project to unify the operations of two merging companies, an outsourced project, or an international project, members of which are located in different parts of the world. In his post, Dennis writes: “In the context of a temporary time-bounded project this is not at all unusual, especially when projects are large and involve multiple teams that span organizational or departmental boundaries. Making it easy for people to communicate and to establish both professional and social relationships can make eminently good sense.” I couldn’t agree more. Blogs, wikis, and Project Management 2.0 tools help to create teams that share not just a common purpose, but common interests. These tools and practices help to build project communities that are committed to a project and are passionate about successful project completion. A project community is very close to another notion that’s very popular today - “collective intelligence” or “collective brain,” which is one of the essential practices that Project Management 2.0 takes from the Enterprise 2.0 movement. These two (project community and collective intelligence for a project team) are interconnected, as effective collective intelligence relies on the team’s collaboration and interactions, as well as team members’ sense of community and common interests. So we may say that the next-generation technologies can stimulate the two sides of your project team involvement: emotional (by building communities) and rational (by developing collective intelligence). Stimulation of these two sides will inevitably result in the increase of a team’s productivity. At the end of the day, the multiplied team morale and intelligence is to the whole organizations benefit. Maximized productivity of a team will lead to more projects completed successfully in a shorter period of time. These results may be able to justify investing your precious budget money into the new technology, to say the least. But justification of money spending and validation of ROI is a topic for another post. Meanwhile, I’d be pleased to see your thoughts about project communities in the comments to this post.

Project Management 3 min read

The Rules of the Project: Two Strategies for Aligning Means

Aligning the means between individuals, project and organization is a Herculean task for any Project Leader. The means are the rules of the project. The way things are done. Following are two strategies that can be used to align means. To provide you with some ideas on the project baseline. To start the discussion. Patterning – Going Through The Motions In essence, with this strategy the project team is told what the means are; the larger organization knows best. This idea originates from Jeff Sutherland in “Shock Therapy: Bootstrapping Hyperproductive Scrum”. If you have a new team that has no experience with Scrum, you will put a very experienced Scum Master in charge and he will set the rules. Relentlessly. Only a few rules, that make up the basics of Scrum, but they have to be followed with strong discipline. The Scrum Master will make sure this happens. Set the rules first, than, after a while, let go when it becomes natural. This is called “patterning”. Continuous Transparent Feedback A human system always communicates with its environment and based upon the feedback it gets from it, alters its behavior. If a group of animals will drink water from a well and one of the groups dies because of it, they entire group may search for a different well. If a company introduces a new product, and sees its stock plummeting because of it, it might change its strategy. It is therefore essential that the project members get continuous feedback on their own performance and the environment. This is where the use of analytics, metrics, “in-your-face” information visualization and plain old coaching comes in. By providing feedback to the team on how well they perform under the current project rule set, they will adapt to more effective means if needed.

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Leading Collective Intelligence

Andrew Filev

Leading Collective Intelligence

Andrew Filev

Related articles

Project Management 2.0: New Definition

Project 2.0 Teams: Creating Project Communities

The Rules of the Project: Two Strategies for Aligning Means

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