Here you go… My talk from Inter­est­ing South 2008.
Unusu­ally, I was incred­i­bly ner­vous before and dur­ing this talk. I’m dread­ing see­ing the video, as I don’t think it’ll be at all flat­ter­ing or indica­tive of my usual style. I guess it was a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors — really want­ing to present at this event, being late in the sched­ule (which ran well over time), there being so many great talks on the night with me being third last and hav­ing so many peo­ple in the audi­ence that I respect highly and whose opin­ions I value (thanks for being there — Jodie, James, Mick, Mark, Brad, Annalie, Jed, Kate, Gavin, Hans , Alan, Seth — you made the night for me, despite pos­si­bly adding to my terror).

By now, many of you will have seen Clay Shirky’s great Web 2.0 Expo keynote, Gin, Tele­vi­sion and Social Sur­plus. The link is in the slides. If you’ve not seen it, you need to; it’s inspir­ing, trans­for­ma­tive stuff. I’m actu­ally a lit­tle cross at Clay. He obvi­ously sent aliens to steal my ideas for this talk.

When Clay speaks about the col­lec­tive soci­etal ben­der we’ve been on, he’s talk­ing about us fail­ing to make ade­quate use of the cog­ni­tive sur­plus we all have and are wast­ing by fail­ing to par­tic­i­pate actively. That said, it’s my view that some of the struc­ture busi­ness has imposed upon society’s activ­i­ties since it took the form it cur­rently has dur­ing the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion actively work to make it dif­fi­cult for groups of peo­ple through­out soci­ety to come together in a mean­ing­ful, pro­duc­tive way.

Bas­tard chil­dren of the Indus­trial Revolution

As humans, we’re social crea­tures. Beyond core phys­i­cal and safety require­ments, Maslow’s Hier­ar­chy of Needs is largely about inte­gra­tion into soci­ety; love, esteem and self-​​actualisation. We crave asso­ci­a­tion; a com­mu­nity of some form, with oth­ers through fam­ily, work, school, sport or other inter­ests. Yet the struc­tures that we’ve built into soci­ety post-​​Industrial Rev­o­lu­tion belit­tle those needs. At work in par­tic­u­lar and in groups of all sorts, the needs of peo­ple have been bas­tardised into a cor­rupt form that meets the sup­posed needs of the of group at the expense of individuals.

We’re dumped into cube farms, or onto fac­tory lines and told to work as a team. Yet it’s often the case that in work­ing this way, our abil­ity to con­verse and col­lab­o­rate effec­tively with our fel­low beings is removed from us. They’re removed through the impo­si­tion of bureau­cracy, through command-​​and-​​control struc­tures we’re forced to nav­i­gate and through being given work that fails to engage us.

Often, too, the tools we’re fur­nished with work as if some Infer­nal power glee­fully watches as we’re forced to work against logic and against the way humans are nat­u­rally inclined to func­tion. The sto­ry­teller in all of us is sub­ju­gated in favor of the need for us to be “pro­duc­tive” and our com­mu­nity stops being smart and becomes another dys­func­tional cog in some dark satanic mill. In this sit­u­a­tion, get­ting any­thing done becomes an issue. Our abil­ity to col­lab­o­rate and have a use­ful con­ver­sa­tion goes the way of the com­mit­tee. We get wrapped up in the Hell of email and Word doc­u­ments as track changes and minu­tia rule and we suf­fer the pain of never being able to know which ver­sion is the lat­est, or which deci­sion the group has made. We become mas­sively inef­fi­cient. We’ve had it ham­mered into us by our archaic, Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion func­tional model that the org chart rules and bureau­cracy is king.

I am not a num­ber — I am a free man!

Com­mu­ni­ties, by their very nature, engage in con­ver­sa­tion con­stantly. But com­mu­nity by com­mit­tee is a death by a thou­sand cuts. Under this model, your com­mu­nity becomes Des­per­ate House­wives; the cog­ni­tive heat-​​sink where con­ver­sa­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion go to die. Where inno­va­tion is con­sumed by the Cthulhu that is bureaucracy.

It need not be this way. Your com­mu­nity con­ver­sa­tions can be amaz­ingly fruit­ful if the DNA of your com­mu­nity is light­weight. By intro­duc­ing a cul­ture that facil­i­tates com­mu­ni­ca­tion, that flat­tens hier­ar­chy and breaks down organ­i­sa­tional silos so that any­one, any­where in your organ­i­sa­tion or busi­ness can eas­ily work with any­one else you can route around the dam­age inef­fi­cient tools and process impose.

By rock­ing the boat a lit­tle cul­tur­ally, engag­ing in a lit­tle organ­i­sa­tional entre­pre­neur­ship and using the tools of par­tic­i­pa­tory cul­ture; social net­works like Twit­ter, wikis and blogs for exam­ple, you can intro­duce an envi­ron­ment where indi­vid­u­als can con­verse, groups can col­lab­o­rate and an engaged, active and pro­duc­tive com­mu­nity can flourish.

Mak­ing the leap

Here’s a really sim­ple exam­ple of how this approach can work.

I’ve dri­ven this change this year at my daughter’s school. I was elected to the school board at the end of last year and went through a minor level of Hell as I was inun­dated with emails and processes that were almost glee­ful in their inef­fi­ciency. At the first meet­ing I attended, as the new Sec­re­tary, I sim­ply declared my oppo­si­tion to the inef­fi­cient, bureau­cratic processes being used and noted I was going to show every­one a new way — using a wiki for doc­u­ments and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and using Google cal­en­dar for keep­ing track of school events.

I got a few know­ing nods, a few “so show me’s” and three or four “what’s a wiki”. I asked for a week to show every­one and got agree­ment. In two days, they had full meet­ing notes — every mem­ber of the board had logged on, most had added com­ments or notes and in sub­se­quent months, we’re down from 20 to two emails a month — a “thanks for com­ing to the meet­ing last night” from Mark, the Chair­man and another from him the day before the next meet­ing remind­ing us to turn up.

By chang­ing the tools and focus of the group, we’ve now got near-​​instant con­ver­sa­tion. Much eas­ier col­lab­o­ra­tion and a stronger com­mu­nity. The staff and board mem­bers are so excited by the oppor­tu­ni­ties this sim­ple change has wrought that they are now seri­ously talk­ing about expand­ing wiki use into the class­room and between teacher groups for pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment. This from a group of peo­ple who pre­vi­ously largely used com­put­ers for email, doc­u­ment writ­ing and web brows­ing. Now, everyone’s involved and participating.

The Des­per­ate House­wives heat-​​sink is being mil­i­tated against by the intro­duc­tion of a tool set that makes it easy for peo­ple to have a con­ver­sa­tion; even though we all work in dif­fer­ent places we can access it from the Inter­net. We can col­lab­o­rate on action items and ideas and we have a stronger com­mu­nity as a result. And were mak­ing a dif­fer­ence for the school.

It’s just as easy to do this for the com­mu­ni­ties you’re involved in; whether they’re at work or some­where else. Imag­ine the gains in pro­duc­tiv­ity and engage­ment, in knowl­edge shar­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion and in the abil­ity to work together effec­tively with­out bureau­cracy if you did this.

The sooner you do it, the bet­ter off you’ll be.