Comments on: Let’s talk about chickens and e2.0

By: SiliconANGLE — Blog — Social Business Software Is On The Move To Palo Alto California

Thu, 27 May 2010 15:41:32 +0000

[...] of software that companies need to enable collaboration and to avoid the problems I outlined in “Let’s talk chickens and e2.0.” The chicken story taught us that companies win or lose based on the performance of their teams, [...]

By: Human Capital x Social Capital = Productivity and Innovation — Competing on Execution

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:42:10 +0000

[...] individual motivation. So before your write “superstar wanted” in you next job tweet, read the chicken story one more time. Hopefully you will come to realize that “super collaborator” is what you really [...]

By: Gil Yehuda

Gil Yehuda — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:20:07 +0000

Meri —

Excellent message. Indeed groups are powerful forces. It’s odd to see when companies fail to leverage the fundamental qualities of groups and instead promote individual competition. It’s odd because the very idea of forming a company comes from the realization that you need many people to accomplish something big. And you hit the nail on the head — companies want to improve both individual and communal efficiency. So they have to think of both.

Perhaps the missing piece for many companies is that they don’t see that there is a difference between “group” and “community”. Some people call this “strong-tie” and “weak-tie” relationships. In a group, we have a common manager, mission, and set of activities. We are dependent upon each other’s success, and we regularly work together to achieve our common goal. Companies realize that we need to support the productivity of these groups (or teams). But many fail to realize that there are communities at work too — where people share common interest and even common fate, but they don’t work together. They might not even know about each other. But something connects them such that they would find mutual benefit to being aware of, and offering some help to their community members. Facilitating the productivity of these communities (people who report to different managers and don’t work together on a shared goal, but do share in common fate and faith) — that transforms the company into a much more productive environment overall.

BTW, I have one other connection between chickens and Enterprise 2.0: A few months ago I wrote a post discussing the vision of Enterprise 2.0 versus the reality of Department 2.0. Oliver Marks (Blogger on ZDNet) picked up on it and said that I was describing the “multi headed chicken syndrome”. Enjoy the read: http://olivermarks.com/blog/?p=7 and http://www.gilyehuda.com/2009/03/26/e2ord2/

By: Rachel Happe

Rachel Happe — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:07:18 +0000

This is fascinating… not only because I am a Indiana farmers’ granddaughter but because I made the exact same point referencing my experience rowing in college. To get swing – i.e. high group productivity – it’s more important that everyone be in synch then that everyone in the boat be ‘stars’ and in fact you must subvert your individual ego to that of the group in order to achieve swing. Post is here: http://www.thesocialorganization.com/2009/11/achieving-swing.html

Thanks for bringing this study up. I find this dynamic really, really fascinating – particularly when you start thinking about how to design organizations, software, process, and management approaches to effect this type of productivity.

By: James Folkestad

James Folkestad — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:28:20 +0000

Interesting. Chickens make and interesting and compelling connection. We have had group tools available for some time now… but it is not until we feel the squeeze of the shifting economy that we begin to say – we need to think about using them. Toyota comes to mind. It wasn’t until Toyota began to win that others started to think about their system seriously – and what they found was an entirely new culture… on based on system wide innovation and improvement.

I believe that one of the fundamental challenges is to teach people to engage in this new innovative culture. We need to shift assessment (measures) in our education, training, and performance systems to get people to leverage their networks and their ability to learn and innovate. We need to engage people in increasing their Edgility