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Ad Hoc Collaboration Is NOT Instantaneous Collaboration

 

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about many of the blogs and demos that I’ve seen over the years about ad hoc/unstructured collaboration. I’ve had to, because as we’ve moved from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to the Collaborative Web, we’re being bombarded by an increasing number of these concept videos—and some pretty interesting, early stage product offerings. While some ideas of the future of collaborative work are pretty powerful, in this post I’m going to have to splash some cold water into the hot space of collaboration so that we can have a chance at building tools that match the many different ways in which people and teams collaborate. I’ll also explain how our thinking has shaped the creation of Innovation Games® online, our own contribution to the Collaborative Web.

I’ll start with my memories of the Apple Knowledge Navigator, in which a handsome (of course) and unbelievably smart (naturally) actor plays a university professor who collaborates with a colleague to develop and share some critical new insights into global warming, to the plethora of tools that are being created that enable “instantaneous” collaboration with a group of people. As is common in these videos, the collaboration between the professor and his colleague:

• happens in real-time;

• with a colleague who is completely ready for the collaboration (was she psychic?);

• where both of them have all of the information they need, easily obtained available with powerful, context driven, natural language search.

Now, of course I can’t really fault Apple for creating a brilliant vision of the future of collaborative work. This video was, and still is, an amazing vision of the future, not unlike Doug Engelbart’s original demonstration of the collaborative work in 1968 (which, in many ways ways, we’ve only just begun to realize in our systems).

Variations of this notion of collaborative work can be seen in some of the visions about large scale collaborative work and crowdsourcing, including Wikipedia. Note though, that these collaborations don’t occur in real-time, and that the number of people involved in the collaboration are typically small even though the potential pool of collaborators is large (e.g, lots of editors at Wikipedia, but only a small fraction of them edit a given article). That’s OK, because the meaningful communication that is required for collaborative work breaks down after 8 people or so are involved in the work.

If we take a step back, I’m noticing a fairly large number of incorrect assumptions about ad hoc collaboration. The moment you identify the need to collaborate with others to solve a problem is rarely the moment you’re ready to collaborate with others about the “thing” that you want to collaborate about. When the task is complex, to effectively collaborate you need to create the right context and prepare yourself and your collaborators so that you can collaborate effectively. You also need to give some thought to who is going to be involved, the goals that you’ve established (e.g., why are you working as a group?) and the tools that you’re going to use. You’ve got to schedule time for people to prepare (research, reflect), collaborate, and then, as needed, continue to take action against the goals.

All of this taken together means that for many “ad hoc collaborative tasks” (aka, unstructured work flow), we’re simply not going to be running around with our PDAs, instantly ready to  join forces and collaborate. Instead, we’re going to see an increasingly powerful set of tools that enable us to collaborate more effectively, which is good. But not instantaneously.

Before you think I’m dissing your favorite collaborative tool, think again:  start with a user-centered design perspective of what’s happening in the moment of the collaborative process. When I’m collaborating, I really do enjoy the many tools that have been developed to help me, from simple white boards to much more sophisticated solutions. And, I fully expect that collaborative technologies will continue to evolve to make it really easy for me to select and use the right tool in the moment of collaboration, just like I expect scheduling systems to become increasingly smart about recommending the right participants and coordinating our busy schedules. But that’s a really, really different concept than ad hoc, instantaneous collaboration.

Here is how these concepts have influenced the design of Innovation Games online both now, and in the future.

• The most important influence is that we don’t provide just one game and expect it to solve all of your needs. We provide several different in-person and online games, each tuned to the problem you’re trying to solve. To help you select the right game we provide books, educational classes, a wonderfully supportive LinkedIn group, and other forums for discussion on planning, playing, and post-processing the results of the right game for your needs.

• Our system provides a specific scheduling mechanism where planners can schedule the games with participants. This is important because many times game participants simply can’t join a game on the fly. They need time to prepare for the game. And coordinating the schedules of players can be pretty demanding. And while this scheduling mechanism works well enough, we’ve also had requests for “in the moment” / “instantaneous” games. This is natural evolution of our offering, and we’ve got this on our roadmap.

• We also have been struck that planning for an Innovation Game is NOT a solitary activity. Instead, planning for a game is also a collaborative game. So, we’re going to improve our planning process to allow for collaboration.

• We already provide tools to help planners reflect and process the results of games. I’ve described our approach for this here.

• We enable facilitators to prepare a group for playing a game by assembling the group in a lobby before the game begins. This helps create a better result by providing the facilitator with a means to explain the goals of the game, answer any questions about the structure / goals of the game, and prepare the players.

As you consider how the Collaborative Web is going to affect your business, keep in mind that the future of work is NOT going to be based on interrupt driven, ad hoc, and semi-randomized collaboration. We’re still going to have to define goals and select tools that help us achieve these goals, schedule meetings, help people prepare for the act of collaborating, help them in performing the work, and so forth.

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