This document discusses topsight, which is an overall understanding of the big picture in an organization, especially how information flows. It provides guidance on conducting a field study to develop topsight by collecting data through observations and interviews, analyzing it at the macro, meso, and micro levels using tools like resource maps and breakdown tables, and developing recommendations. The goal is to understand systemic issues and propose solutions to improve information flow.
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My slide deck from the workshop portion of the 2016 Dartmouth Institute. During this portion, respondents and I discussed my paper "What's Wrong with CHAT?" This deck encapsulates the argument, but also briefly introduces activity theory and discusses its development.
In this presentation, originally given at Syracuse University, I discuss three meanings of "network" used in social science and humanities research. These meanings imply different methodological assumptions. I compare them, discuss how they lead to different insights, and suggest how to cautiously use them together.
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I presented this talk to the Austin Chamber of Commerce in November 2013. How are new information and communication technologies enabling us to work together in new ways? I discuss some of the lessons from case studies I've conducted in Austin.
Introduction to Computational Social Science - Lecture 1Lauri Eloranta
First lecture of the course CSS01: Introduction to Computational Social Science at the University of Helsinki, Spring 2015. (http://blogs.helsinki.fi/computationalsocialscience/).
Lecturer: Lauri Eloranta
Questions & Comments: https://twitter.com/laurieloranta
This is a colloquium that I presented on 4/22/21: Stockholm University, Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (NORDITA), WINQ–AlbaNova Colloquium
Here is a video of my talk: http://video.albanova.se/ALBANOVA20210422/video.mp4
Simulation in Social Sciences - Lecture 6 in Introduction to Computational S...Lauri Eloranta
Sixth lecture of the course CSS01: Introduction to Computational Social Science at the University of Helsinki, Spring 2015.(http://blogs.helsinki.fi/computationalsocialscience/).
Lecturer: Lauri Eloranta
Questions & Comments: https://twitter.com/laurieloranta
Complex Social Systems - Lecture 5 in Introduction to Computational Social Sc...Lauri Eloranta
Fifth lecture of the course CSS01: Introduction to Computational Social Science at the University of Helsinki, Spring 2015.(http://blogs.helsinki.fi/computationalsocialscience/).
Lecturer: Lauri Eloranta
Questions & Comments: https://twitter.com/laurieloranta
Reputation Management for Early Career ResearchersMicah Altman
In the rapidly changing world of research and scholarly communications, researchers are faced with a fast growing range of options to publicly disseminate, review, and discuss research—options which will affect their long-term reputation. Early career scholars must be especially thoughtful in choosing how much effort to invest in dissemination and communication, and what strategies to use.
Dr. Micah Altman briefly reviews a number of bibliometric and scientometric studies of quantitative research impact, a sampling of influential qualitative writings advising this area, and an environmental scan of emerging researcher profile systems. Based on this review, and on professional experience on dozens of review panels, Dr. Altman suggests some steps early career researchers may consider when disseminating their research and participating in public reviews and discussion.
Dartmouth discussion: What's wrong with "What's wrong with CHAT?"?Clay Spinuzzi
My slide deck from the workshop portion of the 2016 Dartmouth Institute. During this portion, respondents and I discussed my paper "What's Wrong with CHAT?" This deck encapsulates the argument, but also briefly introduces activity theory and discusses its development.
In this presentation, originally given at Syracuse University, I discuss three meanings of "network" used in social science and humanities research. These meanings imply different methodological assumptions. I compare them, discuss how they lead to different insights, and suggest how to cautiously use them together.
All Edge: Understanding the New Workplace NetworksClay Spinuzzi
I presented this talk to the Austin Chamber of Commerce in November 2013. How are new information and communication technologies enabling us to work together in new ways? I discuss some of the lessons from case studies I've conducted in Austin.
Introduction to Computational Social Science - Lecture 1Lauri Eloranta
First lecture of the course CSS01: Introduction to Computational Social Science at the University of Helsinki, Spring 2015. (http://blogs.helsinki.fi/computationalsocialscience/).
Lecturer: Lauri Eloranta
Questions & Comments: https://twitter.com/laurieloranta
This is a colloquium that I presented on 4/22/21: Stockholm University, Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (NORDITA), WINQ–AlbaNova Colloquium
Here is a video of my talk: http://video.albanova.se/ALBANOVA20210422/video.mp4
Simulation in Social Sciences - Lecture 6 in Introduction to Computational S...Lauri Eloranta
Sixth lecture of the course CSS01: Introduction to Computational Social Science at the University of Helsinki, Spring 2015.(http://blogs.helsinki.fi/computationalsocialscience/).
Lecturer: Lauri Eloranta
Questions & Comments: https://twitter.com/laurieloranta
Complex Social Systems - Lecture 5 in Introduction to Computational Social Sc...Lauri Eloranta
Fifth lecture of the course CSS01: Introduction to Computational Social Science at the University of Helsinki, Spring 2015.(http://blogs.helsinki.fi/computationalsocialscience/).
Lecturer: Lauri Eloranta
Questions & Comments: https://twitter.com/laurieloranta
Reputation Management for Early Career ResearchersMicah Altman
In the rapidly changing world of research and scholarly communications, researchers are faced with a fast growing range of options to publicly disseminate, review, and discuss research—options which will affect their long-term reputation. Early career scholars must be especially thoughtful in choosing how much effort to invest in dissemination and communication, and what strategies to use.
Dr. Micah Altman briefly reviews a number of bibliometric and scientometric studies of quantitative research impact, a sampling of influential qualitative writings advising this area, and an environmental scan of emerging researcher profile systems. Based on this review, and on professional experience on dozens of review panels, Dr. Altman suggests some steps early career researchers may consider when disseminating their research and participating in public reviews and discussion.
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Congratulations, you have an online community! Odds are, you also have an offline community. Are you using one to strengthen the other?
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In this session, we'll talk about how communities form, the ingredients for engagement, the importance of culture, and tactics for bridging the gap.
Takeaways:
- An understanding of the different types and benefits of online and offline communities
- Tactics to kickstart their online and offline communities
- Ways to engage their communities both online and offline
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Organizations increasingly rely on groups of knowledge workers to make decisions, design products, manage projects, and develop strategy. Information is central to group task accomplishment. Typical models of information seeking have focused on the individual, or on social or collaborative seeking. Groups represent a unique level, with specific attributes (interaction, interdependence, awareness and shared understanding) that need to be better understood and supported. The objective of this research was to understand information needs, seeking and use in groups.
Group work was deconstructed to identify how groups, working on multiple tasks over time, identified their information needs, found and used information. Seven groups were observed as they spent 60 hours in 25 different sessions in a Group Work lab completing course assigned projects independent of this study. Group interactions were recorded on video, and computer-based activities were captured in log files. This method addressed a key methodological challenge of studying groups, allowing the complex details of group work to be captured as they unfolded naturally over time.
The first phase of analysis examined the procedural aspects of group work and found that groups shifted between three phases: Planning, Doing, and Monitoring. Within each phase the following elements of group information process were identified and described: the information tasks, information task goals, information activities, sources, tools, artefacts, roles and shifts in participation. Groups looked for information to satisfy eight different goals, requiring 19 different information activities, as well as specific sources and tools to generate new artefacts. Ten roles were observed within the groups to manage their information activities, and participation fluctuated from individual through to the group. The relationship between these elements was described.
Finally integrative analysis revealed that the groups did not have good mechanisms for managing information needs, and encountered the greatest difficulties trying to use information. Suggestions were made for tools and processes to facilitate more effective group work. Group information process was defined and conceptually modelled extending our understanding of information use by groups, and adding to theories and models in Information Science and Group Research. Additionally this research contributed a new method for studying groups.
Crowdsourcing for #internalcomms. Creating shared insight through curious met...Meaning Business
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This session of the 2013 Melcrum Summit was developed by Jonathan Champ in collaboration with Adrian Cropley ABC.
Presentation by Sean Larkin, Partner at ThinkShout, Inc., on how nonprofits should approach social media as a means to promote "behavioral changes" amongst their constituents.
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ONA (Organizational network analysis ) is a method for studying communication and social networks within an organization.
Method allows to create statistical and graphical models of the people, tasks, groups, knowledge and resources of organizational systems.
It is based on social network theory and dynamic network analysis.
Information experience design: improving library customers' experiences of in...Kate Davis
This is the slide deck for the information experience design workshop my colleague Elham Sayyad Abdi and I facilitated at Information Online 2017 on 13 February 2017. The content behind this workshop was developed in collaboration with our colleague Kathleen Smeaton.
Confetti background images are digital paper available on Etsy from DanaGarsonDesign at https://www.etsy.com/listing/160330622/confetti-polka-dots-digital-paper-set
Icons are from The Noun Project and used without citation in line with their terms of service for premium account holders.
A talk I presented at the 2016 Dartmouth Institute about cultural-historical activity theory: how it entered writing studies, how it developed, and what methodological challenges it faces.
Graduate students and faculty are perpetually busy—and they always seem to be behind. How can they effectively manage their time and projects? In this presentation, I discuss the principle of mediation, discussing how nine levels of strategies can help us manage the complex demands on our time.
Community Informatics for Community Informaticians (keynote at CIRN 2010, Pra...Douglas Schuler
This presentation, "Community Informatics for Community Informaticians: Making History in Historic Times" was a keynote presentation at CIRN 2010, Prato, Italy. It advocates for more formalization of both our technological and our organizational frameworks.
Congratulations, you have an online community! Odds are, you also have an offline community. Are you using one to strengthen the other?
Most of the organizations I work with in my practice already have all the ingredients in place for a real, vibrant community that lives on and off line. Too often though, on- and offline are treated as separate worlds, with little effort made to bridge the gap. Communities thrive when there is varied and ongoing interaction. Merging physical and non-physical conversations, events, and activities is one of the strongest tactics for building community in the real world.
In this session, we'll talk about how communities form, the ingredients for engagement, the importance of culture, and tactics for bridging the gap.
Takeaways:
- An understanding of the different types and benefits of online and offline communities
- Tactics to kickstart their online and offline communities
- Ways to engage their communities both online and offline
The Key Success Factor in Knowledge Management... What Else? Change ManagementPatti Anklam
Presented at SLA 2013, on a panel with Ethel Salonen of MITRE Corporation. Provides perspective on change management and how it is used in understanding and creating interventions in knowledge networks.
Organizations increasingly rely on groups of knowledge workers to make decisions, design products, manage projects, and develop strategy. Information is central to group task accomplishment. Typical models of information seeking have focused on the individual, or on social or collaborative seeking. Groups represent a unique level, with specific attributes (interaction, interdependence, awareness and shared understanding) that need to be better understood and supported. The objective of this research was to understand information needs, seeking and use in groups.
Group work was deconstructed to identify how groups, working on multiple tasks over time, identified their information needs, found and used information. Seven groups were observed as they spent 60 hours in 25 different sessions in a Group Work lab completing course assigned projects independent of this study. Group interactions were recorded on video, and computer-based activities were captured in log files. This method addressed a key methodological challenge of studying groups, allowing the complex details of group work to be captured as they unfolded naturally over time.
The first phase of analysis examined the procedural aspects of group work and found that groups shifted between three phases: Planning, Doing, and Monitoring. Within each phase the following elements of group information process were identified and described: the information tasks, information task goals, information activities, sources, tools, artefacts, roles and shifts in participation. Groups looked for information to satisfy eight different goals, requiring 19 different information activities, as well as specific sources and tools to generate new artefacts. Ten roles were observed within the groups to manage their information activities, and participation fluctuated from individual through to the group. The relationship between these elements was described.
Finally integrative analysis revealed that the groups did not have good mechanisms for managing information needs, and encountered the greatest difficulties trying to use information. Suggestions were made for tools and processes to facilitate more effective group work. Group information process was defined and conceptually modelled extending our understanding of information use by groups, and adding to theories and models in Information Science and Group Research. Additionally this research contributed a new method for studying groups.
Crowdsourcing for #internalcomms. Creating shared insight through curious met...Meaning Business
Great discoveries are driven by curiosity: capturing and applying insight takes a methodical approach. Collaborative approaches can provide communicators information from the front-line that drives greater business knowledge that can be turned into performance-driving insight. With employees accustomed to rating, sharing and peer-based recommendations outside work, crowd-sourcing is an important approach inside the company. This interactive session will explore methods that generate more than an employee wish list.
Two-way communication in a networked world: user experience (UX), appreciative inquiry and crowd sourcing
How to choose methods that build empowerment and create insight through ownership
Working agile – gathering, rating and 'iterating' ideas in environments where change is constant
This session of the 2013 Melcrum Summit was developed by Jonathan Champ in collaboration with Adrian Cropley ABC.
Presentation by Sean Larkin, Partner at ThinkShout, Inc., on how nonprofits should approach social media as a means to promote "behavioral changes" amongst their constituents.
Organizational network analysis RIGA COMM 2019Muntis Rudzitis
These slides were presented at RIGA COMM 2019 conference. I start with an explanation of the methodology and show real-world examples of how this can be used to improve communication, structure or throughput of a system of work.
ONA (Organizational network analysis ) is a method for studying communication and social networks within an organization.
Method allows to create statistical and graphical models of the people, tasks, groups, knowledge and resources of organizational systems.
It is based on social network theory and dynamic network analysis.
Information experience design: improving library customers' experiences of in...Kate Davis
This is the slide deck for the information experience design workshop my colleague Elham Sayyad Abdi and I facilitated at Information Online 2017 on 13 February 2017. The content behind this workshop was developed in collaboration with our colleague Kathleen Smeaton.
Confetti background images are digital paper available on Etsy from DanaGarsonDesign at https://www.etsy.com/listing/160330622/confetti-polka-dots-digital-paper-set
Icons are from The Noun Project and used without citation in line with their terms of service for premium account holders.
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Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) has been used in writing studies for the last twenty years. In the mid-1990s, it offered a solution to a methodological problem that the field faced. But 20 years later, the field faces new methodological challenges. Can CHAT keep up?
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Topsight (Austin UXPA)
1. Topsight
A Guide to Studying, Diagnosing, and Fixing
Information Flow in Organizations
Clay Spinuzzi
Clay.Spinuzzi@utexas.edu
1
2. Topsight is…
• An overall understanding of the big picture—
especially how that organization circulates
information
• Something that develops over time, like
insight
• Hard to achieve in organizations
• A “diagnosis”
2
11. Getting to topsight
• design a field study at your organization
• conduct the field study, collecting solid data
• navigate the data you collect
• analyze the data to uncover systemic issues
• write a solid recommendation report that
presents your findings and recommends ways
to solve those systemic issues
11
13. How can we understand an
organization?
Level Focus Characteristics Timescale Aware? Disruptions
(Symptoms)
Macro Activity Culture, history;
social action, social
memory
Year,
decades
No Contradiction
Meso Goal Tool-in-use; tactics Minutes,
hours
Yes Discoordination
Micro Operation Rules, habits Seconds No Breakdown
13
14. What goes into a field study?
• Observations: How are people circulating
information?
• Interviews: Why do they do what they do?
How do they interpret it?
• Artifacts: What texts and innovations are they
using?
• Other: System monitoring, prototyping, ???
14
Hi, everyone. I’m Clay Spinuzzi from the University of Texas at Austin. My research involves how people work in technologically mediated workplaces. And to study that work, I do several things. I gather copies of documents and other tools they use in their work. I typically take photos of their work layout. I interview them about what they do and what challenges they face. And finally, I shadow them—I follow them around as they work. And when I explain that last part, I always have to add that I’m not trying to be voyeuristic. In fact, I’m genuinely interested in the problems people encounter on a daily basis in their work and how they solve these problems. In fact, I admire how people are endlessly inventive and innovative as they work through the problems they face in the workplace—specifically problems involving understanding, circulating, and acting on information.So I’ve conducted several qualitative case studies studying how different people work: examples are software developers, traffic safety workers, telecommunications workers, office workers, freelancers, people at coworking spaces and people in an Internet startup. In each case, I try to achieve topsight into their work.
Topsight—the overall understanding of the big picture—is hard to achieve in organizations. There’s too much going on, too many moving pieces. But without topsight, we have a hard time figuring out how information circulates, where it gets stuck, and how we can get it unstuck.Topsight is hard to get—but you can get it. I know: I’ve been achieving topsight into various organizations for the last 15 years. Along the way, I’ve developed an approach in which I gather clues, confirm details, model social interactions, and use all of these to systematically achieve topsight. In this presentation, I'll overview the Topsight approach and discuss how UX practitioners can use it to better understand user requirements. In other words, what do they do, and what do they need in order to do it better?First, let’s talk about some complicating factors that make topsight more important to achieve than ever.
When I started conducting workplace studies, I sought out environments in which people used digital technologies. But lately I haven’t had to make that a criterion—because now EVERYONE uses digital technologies. In fact, work in general is changing, and in fairly radical ways. It’s not just the fact that we all have mobile phones in our pockets. It’s not just the fact that we’re all receiving email and most of us are on Facebook. It goes deeper than that.
First, literacy is changing: people produce and consume knowledge in all aspects of their lives.Writing is perhaps our most useful and flexible tool, making its way into nearly every aspect of our lives—saturating our lives to a degree that it has never done before. Nearly universal literacy means that the overwhelming majority of elementary school students learn a basic level of reading, writing, and textual problem solving. And that’s a big deal. In 1870, 20% of people at or above the age of 14 were illiterate—unable to read or write in any language. By 1979, that number dropped to only 0.6%.Source: http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.aspFurthermore, in 1870, the degree ratio for high school was 0.02%—only 2 of every 100 students graduated from high school. In 1970, the degree ratio was 77%. (By 2000 it was a relatively anemic 70%.)http://educationnext.org/tasselsonthecheap/So literacy is a big part of our toolkit. When we face a problem, we often reach for a textual solution. Even if we are in “low literacy” fields such as carpentry.Writing, which began as a hacked-together accounting system, developed many more uses as the population became more literate. The dropping costs of writing technology—including pencils, pens, and paper—made writing easier to spread, as did the burgeoning postal system. Writing became incorporated into more and more trades, fields, and disciplines.And as information and communication technologies (ICTs) came online, and as work changed, the number of genres multiplied. For instance, the business memo evolved from business letters which were deployed within an organization. Email evolved from business memos (and you can still see the traces of the older genre in email headers: to, from, date, subject). And so on.
http://www.creativeclass.com/_v3/creative_class/2011/05/05/building-america%E2%80%99s-third-great-job-machine/That increase in literacy is paired with other changes in how we work. In 1800, over 40% of US jobs were agricultural. In 1870, about 60% of US jobs were manufacturing jobs. Now both of those classes of work are trending downward, and we see a spike in knowledge-based and creative work (CC), and routine low-wage service work (LWS). Agriculture and manufacturing are still important, but they’ve been systematized to the point that they are remarkably productive without a large percentage of workers. Instead, high-paying jobs are concentrated in knowledge work, work that involves analyzing and transforming knowledge. That is, work that uses those important literacy skills.(But let’s note that even the LWS jobs require literacy—more literacy than the average farm worker had in 1870.)Alan Burton-Jones: "In 1900, less than 18 per cent of the total workforce in the USA were engaged in data- and information-handling tasks. By 1980 it had risen to over 50 percent. ... On present trends, over 80 percent of the workforce are likely to be involved in information-handling tasks by 2020, of whom a higher proportion than at present are likely to be engaged in knowledge-building and decision-making activities" (pp.8-9)Part of the reason knowledge work has spiked is that it has the infrastructure to do so—we are suffused with information and communication infrastructure wherever we go.
Last December there were 6.7 billion active mobile subscriptions; these reach 4.3 billion unique human beings, 61% of the planet's population; and 5.6 billion of these subscriptions use texting—more than use voice calls.http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/12/latest-mobile-numbers-for-end-of-year-2012-this-is-getting-humongous.htmlMobile subscriptions are on the rise across the globe, especially in China, India, and the rest of the Asian Pacific region. (see right)http://www.oafrica.com/mobile/ericsson-report-forecasts-majority-of-middle-eastafrica-mobile-subscriptions-wont-be-3g-or-lte-until-2018/Globally, by January 2013, 4/5 of these connections come from the developing world—subscribers in the developing world accumulate prepaid SIMs to cope with limited rural network coverage, while those in the developed world are accumulating multiple connected devices (smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks). https://wirelessintelligence.com/analysis/2013/03/dashboard-multiple-connections-versus-multiple-subscribers/375/The upshot? People can work from anywhere (home offices, coffee shops, coworking spaces, etc.)People are accessible 24/7 (sometimes to their chagrin)Virtual teams (collaborating across locations and time zones)And that means that people’s work and information requirements are changing. It’s easier to circulate information, but that information can cross more paths and contexts than ever, across more platforms and media.
Along those lines, social media are changing too.Social networking provides a social layer that connects people, both within their own organization and across organizations. Other publicly available online services such as Google Docs, Basecamp, and Facebook allow teams to collaborate, coordinate, and communicate easily—once again, both within an organization and across organizational barriers. In fact, we're seeing an increasing number of studies examining how these additional layers affect work. These change how we work, but also how we intuit each other's moods and availability, how we see each other's contextual activity, and how we manage collaborative complexity. They even change how we structure our organizations, making it feasible to make them smaller, nimbler, flatter, and more distributed. They provide an always-on switchboard for working groups.A social layer. Ambient awareness. That doesn't mean that this social layer is unproblematic. It can be very problematic. But it's pervasive, and it's going to continue to have a big impact on how we work and interact.http://www.projects2crowdfund.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/top5sm1.jpg
For all these reasons, work is changing. Here are just a few trends:Shedding noncore assets. Over the medium term, companies have been shedding noncore assets since the 1970s, externalizing and outsourcing the things that aren’t part of their core expertise. This trend started with outsourcing functions such as office cleaning, equipment maintenance, and security. But it’s moved into white-collar work: companies that may have once employed graphic designers, technical writers, and marketers are increasingly contracting this work to other organizations. Working across organizations. And that means that for specific projects, different organizations have to pull together, learn swiftly how to work together, and understand each other enough to collaborate on complex projects that span organizations and disciplines.Projectification. In other words, some of this work is increasingly “projectified”: the focus is on the shared project, not the department. The project is attacked by a transient team of specialists.Virtual organizations. And these specialists aren’t pushing a plow around, they’re pushing bits and bytes. So they can often work in different locations and perhaps even in different time zones. Work becomes “smeared” across time and space.Hyperconnectivity. That’s made possible when team members are connected to each other during all waking hours—say, via internet-enabled mobile phones and tablets.So we see changes in how we organize work, how we collaborate with other organizations, how we team up, how we focus our work, and in where and when we work. Those changes mean new user requirements, diffuse user requirements, and new challenges for addressing them.
I’ve been researching these trends for some time. My first two books describe them for academics. But my latest book, Topsight, outlines how professionals such as UX professionals and technical writers can investigate the context of work. A field methodology for obtaining topsight.
The methodology—and the book—has five major parts. We’ll discuss just a few of these today.
First, designing and conducting a field study. In a field study, rather than relying on interviews, surveys, or lab-based tasks, we systematically shadow people in their actual work—trying to capture their routines but also the contingencies and dynamics they encounter in their everyday work. There are plenty of field-based UX methodologies, such as contextual design and rapid ethnography, and Topsight is definitely in that tradition—but with some differences.
For instance, in Topsight, we examine work at three different levels. (discuss)
To get to these levels, we apply different methods. (discuss)
Once we systematically observe and interview enough people, we have to analyze what is happening. And we also do that at three different levels.
Let’s start at the meso level, the middle level, where we “live.” This is the level of tasks, the level of which we are the most conscious.Work at the meso level involves specific, conscious goals. When you see someone reading a report – and you ask them what they’re doing, they’ll probably respond on this level: “I’m reading a report.”The meso level is oriented to shorter timescales: minutes or hours. Think in terms of tasks or goals that they are using this tool to accomplish.Finally, at the meso level, people can encounter disruptions called “discoordinations.” Think in terms of day-to-day difficulties in relating two or more pieces of information together. I provide three ways to map out what’s happening at the meso level.
First, map the information resources people are using: the texts, conversations, videos, and other ways that they use to convey information. These can be as formal as printed reports and as informal as sticky notes. Notice that people typically relate these together—they often combine several different pieces of information to complete a particular task. When they are missing one of these, they have to figure out how to route around that damage.
Next, map the sequences in which people hand off (transfer) pieces of information. People don’t just use information, they convey it. And if you can map regular sequences, you can begin to detect parts of the sequence where they regularly encounter problems.
Third, you relate the resource maps and handoff chains together for each person and each unit. When you do this, you can start to see innovations that individuals or units have introduced—shortcuts, informal tools, hacks that substitute for more unwieldy or less effective solutions.
So much for the meso level. The macro level is generally unconscious. When you see someone using a piece of information– say, reading a report – and you ask them what they’re doing, they’ll probably tell you, “I’m reading a report.” They probably won’t say: I’m improving shareholder value. But at the macro level, that’s arguably what they’re doing.The macro level is oriented to long cycles of activity, typically on the order of months, years, or longer. Finally, at the macro level, people can encounter disruptions called “contradictions.” Think in terms of large-scale differences that build up across activities—differences that cause repeated problems.
To get to these large-scale contradictions, I suggest mapping out activity systems. An activity system is basically a way to dissect the context of the organization, to get to why they do things this particular way and how the parts of the activity work against each other. What are they trying to accomplish over time? What tools and rules do they use to do it? How do they divide the labor, and what stakeholders are interested in the process?
And more than that, any activity is linked to other activities—especially these days. For instance, we have all taken a piece of software (say, Excel) and used it for something for which it was not intended. When we do that, we set up potential contradictions between our activity and that of the software supplier. Activity networks help us to map out those differences.
So that’s the macro level. But we can also think of the micro level: the habits or reactions that we use second-by-second, without thinking about it. These are operations that people have learned well enough that they no longer think about them. Examples include touch typing, double clicking, and shifting gears. The micro level is generally unconscious. When you see someone using a piece of information– say, reading a report – and you ask them what they’re doing, they’ll probably tell you, “I’m reading a report.” They probably won’t say: scanning the letters from left to right, then using my finger to turn the page.The micro level happens on the order of seconds. Finally, at the micro level, genres can encounter disruptions called “breakdowns.” Think in terms of habits that almost always work, but that misfire in a particular instance, causing the person to stop focusing on their goal and start focusing on their operations.
Work at the micro level is hard to capture, simply because there’s so much of it. But we can look for breakdowns—points of the work at which people make small mistakes and have to repair them. Think in terms of typing the wrong letter, canceling out of a dialogue box, or shifting into the wrong gear. By looking for these sorts of mistakes and how people recover from them, we can map out where the breakdowns cluster—and begin to determine what parts of the work aren’t working.
As I said, Topsight involves understanding the big picture. So, now that we’ve looked at work across these three levels, we have to put it all together, relating these levels to each other.
That brings us to our last analytical model, the topsight table. Here, we look for disruptions we’ve detected at each level, then relate them to each other to better describe a single issue. Once we can do that, we can move toward recommending a solution.
That’s the whole point, right? Turning our insights into a written recommendation or a slide deck that can elegantly make the case for a new course of action, a new solution.
But I won’t cover that last step today. I encourage you to take a look at Topsight for that.Questions?