What it was
Talks and breakout sessions on social collaboration in defence, with various speakers including knowledge management consultant Chris Collison, held at MOD on 24 October 2018.
What I learned
- Knowledge is key to the defence enterprise
- The need for additional logins is a barrier to adoption of social collaboration in defence
- Not everyone is happy to use a personal device for work
- We need processes and curation around wikis and similar tools.
Social Collaboration:
- Collaboration is the combination of:
- Authenticity
- Trust
- Passion
- Authenticity – being your own open self, known to yourself and to others – is key for successful social collaboration
- Trust requires vulnerability. It thrives under reciprocation.
- Tom Davenport’s “kindergarten rationale” posits on when and why
- Passion is enthusiasm, commitment, devotion, curiosity
- A simple model for online communities:
- Communities of interest
- Communities of practice
- Communities of purpose
- Learning communities can be thought of across various dimensions:
- Inside vs outside
- Formal vs informal
- Learning from, each other with
- The Met Office have a simple charter for their communities of practice: its purpose, membership, roles, ways of working and tools, behaviours, and its outcomes and measures
- Consumers, contributors, creators – the rule thumb ratio is
90:9:1. Defence connect is about 70:20:10 which is healthy. - Syngenta used “TREE” awards for their communities of practice; for Transfer of a good practice, Reuse of a good practice, Embedding a good practice, sharing a difficult Experience.
What I will aim to do differently as a result
- Explore whether we can get the app installed on official phones
- Export and explain the success that the Army has had.
- Explore how Defence Connect can formally support learning via the DLMC project
- Re-engage with the online defence and wider Government communities