Technology in the workplace supports rich communication in many forms. This has had both positive and negative effects on business performance. On the positive side, information can flow more quickly and reliably. This allows the use of diverse information sources, rapid iteration, and easy dissemination of decisions and work product.

1. Title: Social Task Networks for Active Knowledge Sharing
Scenario
Technology in the workplace supports rich communication in many forms. This has
had both positive and negative effects on business performance.
On the positive side, information can flow more quickly and reliably. This allows the
use of diverse information sources, rapid iteration, and easy dissemination of
decisions and work product.
On the negative side, individuals can become overloaded and find it difficult to focus
on key activities. A further consequence is the difficulty of getting others to focus
even small amounts of attention on an item.
These negative effects create frictional drag that cancels out much of the potential
benefit of advanced communication and collaboration tools. Optimizing the effective
use of knowledge in an organization requires reliable management of attention. What
can be done?
Insight
In situations where content of the work is dynamic and the patterns of
communication are fluid, it is not enough to provide rich communication tools.
Coordination problems are inherently systemic and demand a new cycle of innovation
in social protocols - human conventions and behaviors, coupled with tools designed
with these protocols in mind.
Application
Business-oriented social media are helping organizations perform better, but further
innovation is needed to make the human action and update cycle more consistent
and reliable.
Examples of current trends that emphasize methodical protocols that have gained
some traction in the business community include:
- David Allen, Getting Things Done
- Atul Gawande, Checklists
- Various software-engineering models, Issue-Tracking
- Etc.
Next-generation social protocols must provide clear models for coordinating multi-
person activity and must be designed from the start to take full advantage of social-
networking technology.
Tools should support the new social protocols through interface design (affordances)
and automation.
- Promote clear, concise statement of commitments, especially short-term
- Clarify roles and expected behaviors of owner and stakeholders on tasks
- Support easy or automatic movement of items requiring attention between
foreground and background
- Simplify the creation of dedicated communication paths for streamlined updates

2. - Create multiple touch points for deeper integration into work environment
Stan Rosenschein
Quindi Corporation
stan.rosenschein@stanford.edu
karla Phlypo-Price <karla.s.phlypo@gmail.com>
date
Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 3:33 PM
subject
Images
Important mainly because of the people in the conversation.
hide details 3:33 PM (18 hours ago)