Radical Inclusion

This is the World Banana Forum, a multi stake holder network of people who are involved in different parts of the banana supply chain – from small Latin American farmers or unionists to the large retailers like Wall Mart, and also NGOs, Fair Trade organizations etc. The meeting was organized by a team working for the FAO who had already reserved the rooms and made an agenda, when they were sending out an urgent request for facilitators. A very tough assignment considering all the conditions: rooms were not at all suitable for collaborative work, a big group about 190 people- three languages, a very ambitious agenda and little time to get organized. Two facilitatours from Radical Inclusion (Holger Nauheimer und Juliane Neumann) accepted the challenge.

One of the main objectives of the gathering was to start a collaboration between the members of the forum who had met in the past only to present their statements, but felt that it was time to actually talk to each other. The key topics had been identitfied and heterogenous working groups were supposed to get started on the topics.

Our concern as facilitators was especially the sustainability of the event and therefore to produce a proper documentation that could be used and accessed also after the meeting. We set up a basic wiki (pbworks.com), created pages for each thematic group- one in english and one in “international”, what ended up to be in Spanish and we introduced the tool in the beginning of the conference. Each working group, sometimes 30-40, people had a person from the organizing team to support the group work and most of the time that person helped to get into the page, explained the basics and sometimes even provided the computer. However, major part of the break out spaces was self-organized, in a semi Open Space Technology format.

As its often with wikis, there is a small hurdle in the beginning, but at the end of the conference there were already over 50 active users. It shows that a wiki is a great tool enabling bottom-up documentation of semi-structured meetings.

(images: freshplaza.it)

At the recent Systems Thinking Conference in Seattle, Washington, I facilitated a concurrent session.  This was a unique blend of physical and virtual interaction.  Forty-two live conference participants engaged with Radical Inclusion(RI) colleagues beamed in from another continent using Adobe Connect.

The theme of this year’s conference was about Courageous Organizations.  It had participants wondering, “What does it mean to be a courageous organization? How does our courage show up in organizations?” Peter Senge, author of  The Fifth Discipline and founder of the Society for Organizational Learning reminded us in his keynote that change begins with individuals, rather than  a disembodied project or group . . . out there somewhere.  He also reminded us that what allows the life of any group or organization to continue can be found in what we choose conserve.

This got me thinking about the tremendous changes being brought about by new virtual media and its potential for change.  Most of the conference participants are experienced leaders of change, functioning as managers or consultants.  So when discussing the issues and possibilities of virtual collaboration, it was interesting to note how many people mentioned that they felt confused and overwhelmed by the number of technology choices as well as issues such as organizational silos, information hoarding and security.  If we are take full advantage of the potential of virtual collaboration we have to learn that the way most of us conduct ourselves on video and telephone conferences falls far short of collaboration.

Conference participants discuss virtual collaboration.

In our session,  I posed the question:

If the virtual world is here to stay and fraught with possibilities and perils, What do we want to conserve? What do we want to let go of?

The responses from our conversations (below) are both insightful and full of wisdom, because virtual collaboration goes well beyond the choice of technology. It is something much more human.  It is about how we behave toward one another and  how we engage to create and complete work that matters most to us and our organizations.

What do we want to conserve:

• An understanding that personal mastery is ongoing
• The richness of spontaneous leadership
• Taking time to develop quality relationships and communication
• The awareness to ask others, “what do you need?”
• Personal accountability and measures of progress
• Trust and courage to extend ourselves to others

What do we want to let go of:

• The belief that face-to-face is the only way to truly collaborate well
• That change is not the ‘new normal’
• The belief that “knowledge is power”
• That every person is the same and that there is just one right way to collaborate

What is true is that we can all learn how to collaborate more effectively in the real world and the virtual world.  It is also worth noting that the challenges in each domain are not the same.  The lesson is to be open to the opportunity to create something new that can transcend  the limits of physical space, time and even some forms of human interaction. Virtual collaboration won’t replace human interaction but it does call for different ways and methods of interacting that will continue to evolve.  The question becomes, what are you going to do about it?

Twitter notes for the entire Senge keynote are posted on Twitter:  hashtag #st09senge.

Radical Inclusion – Open Virtual Collaboration

Last August we embarked on research of organizations to better understand what is really happening with the adoption, and more importantly, use and human engagement in web 2.0/virtual  collaboration.

From our analysis thus far, one thing is clear – at  the root of any collaboration is a collection of human beings with boundless and unique ways of interacting.  In order to take advantage of the power of web 2.0 technologies and beyond to solve our most intractable issues, we all have much to learn.  Virtual collaboration is not about technology alone; it merely opens new doors.  How we use it and engage with each other will determine what we accomplish and the race is on!

Whatever your interest in web 2.0 – enterprise 2.0 – virtual collaboration, our research shows that knowledge of collaborating complemented by social media is nascent at best.  Those involved range from advocates to experimenters to dabblers, lurkers and the blissfully unaware.  More and more companies are providing tools, services, advice, yet we are all operating from fairly limited exposure to user needs.  Rather ironic considering we’re all talking about wisdom of crowds and collective intelligence.

Both users and service providers need to continually adapt to the ways in which people are interacting with technology and to the ever-increasing pace of change in the technology, economy and a range off global societies.

No one has all the answers.  Much of the expert research I’ve looked at is designed to promote a particular need for virtual interaction or focuses narrowly on questions of technology – all necessary conversations.

This learning group is hosted as the first and only open and transparent space we know of to share learning: our experiences, questions, concerns and a place to discover new practices.  Anyone who is interested learning experience is invited.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2350136&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

Radical Inclusion is a team that met virtually. Originally, we came together to prepare the first Real Time Virtual Collaboration workshop, which took place on May 9, 2009. Most of the team members didn’t know each other had never met physically. Yet, we were able to build trust by virtual means – through regular chat and voice meetings and joint projects. Now, eight months after we started our collaboration, we will meet in Berlin between November 6-11, 2009. If you want to meet us to see who are the people behind this incredible success story, or to discuss a joint project, send us a message through email, Twitter, or Facebook, and we’ll arrange a meeting.

You might also think of joining us at the Berlin Change Days (Nov. 9-10, 2009) in the Berlin Hub. This is a conference for practitioners, leaders and managers who would like to discuss aspects of change processes. CHANGE nowadays is a ‘buzz’ word, especially since President Obama has made it the focus of his campaign. Corperations, non-profit organizations, and administrations have all become aware that the complexity of change processes cannot be handled by single actors or small groups. This complexity exceeds both their decision as well as implementation capability of traditional management structures. There is a worldwide demand for internal and external support of change processes. The development of new tools and methods continues.

The programme of the 1st Berlin Change Days responds to the needs of practitioners who are involved in everyday change processes of organisations and social institutions, offering guidance for better results but also a longer term perspective for the development of human resources as well as internal and external structures. In two parallel streams, the programme entails events in English and German language. If you are passionate about change in business, government and society, the Berlin Change Days are the most important event this year – and hopefully in the future!

Radical Inclusion will host a workshop during the Berlin Change Days: New approaches to virtual meetings.

Radical Inclusion is conducting qualitative research to learn more about how organizations are adopting and implementing collaborative practices for addressing business issues  for work purposes using social media platforms such as discussion boards, chat, wikis, mind maps, community builders such as Ning, etc.

Purpose of research
The intent of the research is to learn what sorts of business issues are being addressed,  what approaches are working well and about approaches to adoption and use.

Interview participants will be invited to a briefing of results and receive a summary report of research findings.  Individual and organizational identities will not be shared.

Interview candidates are sought from  organizations who are:

1. are actively involved in online collaborations that go beyond web-meetings and the use of social media for marketing purposes.
2. are involved in decisions to use social media in order to find information, expertise and resources related to business or organizational issues outside traditional work group boundaries to
3. from established non-profits, foundations, universities, corporations, research facilities, government agencies of 50 or more employees.

Interviews are conducted by phone appointment  and will last approx 20-30 minutes.

We are developing the study primarily or internal education purposes.  Researchers have been doing this sort of work for more than 15 years, therefore, the  quality of analysis and summary will be professional and high value.

We are self-funded and not sponsored by vendors or any other business.

If you are interested in participation in this project, please email us hello [at] radical-inclusion [dot] com.  Tell us a little bit about who you represent and how you’re involved.

Thank you.