Reflections on Priming

I was exposed to priming by Jodie Moule of Symplicit at this year’s Oz-IA. It’s essentially an exercise designed to engage people’s right-brain (creative) that allows examination of how people feel and their emotional experiences about a certain subject before engaging their left-brain (logical) and asking them to analyse an experience. Having a means of engaging with people and analysing their wants, needs, motivations, expectations and experiences in both ways ultimately means you get a richer understanding of their context.

I’ve been reviewing an organisation’s business analysis capability these last few weeks, so I felt that rather than do a standard interview, I would get people to do a priming exercise instead. I simply asked them to create a mind map — a collage of words and pictures — to describe themselves and their personal feelings and experiences in relation to their work environment.

Each person’s A4 page was quite different. Some approaching the task from a completely creative perspective, some logically setting out and categorising their thoughts and experiences. Some used colours. Some just used black pen on the white page. At the beginning of the interview we discussed their A4 page and they explained each of the different parts they had created. It was a surprising insight into their work context and revealed much of the emotion they feel — their pride in their job, their work conflicts with other areas, frustrations with process, and their relationships with their colleagues. After this discussion, we then went through the standard questions. Even through these I felt that the personal exercise had openned them up somewhat, their responses were a little more personal, a little more emotional, and a little more honest than I would have normally expected.

When undertaking any form of analysis of people and their context I can see priming as a tool I will continue to use — whether in order to create a good user-experience as an Information Architect or just as a consultant eliciting requirements and creating a business solution for a client. In the end, it’s all about helping people and if we can gain a more holistic understanding of them I’m all for that!

M

Building blocks for Enterprise 2.0

You might have noticed that I’ve been doing a fair bit of thinking since Stuart French posted his initial depiction of the patterns in the data in his research on wiki adoption in small to medium enterprises.

I like his depiction of culture as a factor that spans both the personal and the organisational. To me, the importance draws back to people’s social needs depicted by Maslow as well as the group-think behaviour exhibited by organisations at the whole as well as their smaller constituent parts including their silos, business divisions and teams.

While it is true that culture, as the organisational environment, is contributed toward by individual’s behaviour — that is, they create the culture — the combination of the actions of the many results in something that is greater than the input itself often called “group-think“. This results in a need to examine separately the motivations, attitudes, thinking and behaviour of the individual as well as how the group affects those factors, and what results from each as a whole.

And yes, there’s likely to be some “argey-bargey” chicken-and-egg issues about what motivator or action comes first, but rather than go into what would normally require a degree in psychology and a masters in knowledge management to fully and completely articulate, I figured that I’d take the advice of Matt Moore and just try to keep it as simple as possible.

So, here’s my latest attempt at reconciling some of these factors.

As with all meta models, you could drill down into each piece of the honeycomb and look at its constituent parts, but … well … maybe I’ll take James Breeze’s advice and write a book about it instead.

Using Stuart’s terms, a top-down strategy results in mandated interaction, whereas a bottom-up strategy results in spontaneous interaction. The more activity that occurs between the two-sides of objectives and influences the greater the impact on the culture and collaboration factors.

I figured that collaboration was likely to be the central concern for an organisation in introducing social computing tools into the enterprise, out of which would come sharing of knowledge within silos and across them. I decided that “esteem” was probably the most important to (many) individuals given it’s “whats-in-it-for-me” factor. Here, French and Raven’s referent power and expert power explicitly reinforces individuals collaboration behaviour.

Of course, I’m just thinking out loud. Maybe there’ll be more thoughts to come.

M

On culture, group dynamics, and adoption of Web 2.0 tools

Stuart French recently wrote an insightful post on culture and the enterprise, summarising a number of articles that examine whether or not Web 2.0 tools can change an organisation that embraces hierarchy, position power and process over flat, collaborative structures.

In my presentations to Web Directions Government, Oz-IA 2008 and ACTKM08, I discussed some of these issues at length, particularly in relation to the introduction of social computing tools and what factors lead to changes in thinking and then action.

When we make decisions about adoption of social computing tools, we balance up our own individual needs (as described by Maslow for example) with our social needs as articulated by our identification with various groups and what they expect of us.

Let’s take me as an example. Behavioural change from contemplation through to action means balancing numerous factors — me as “me”, me as an Aussie, me as a member of the wider geek community, and me as an employee of the company I work for.

All of these groups have their own expectations of me as a member. At different times, they have a greater or lesser influence on my behaviour. Their expectations of me also depend on the environment I’m in and how physically close a member of one of those groups is to me, as well as that person’s influence over me based on legitimate, expert, referent, information, reward, and/or coercive power [1].

For me, culture, therefore, is the description of the behavioural and cognitive norms we see emerging from the group dynamic, whether at the organisational or national level, that emerge as the group’s identity. The sheer force of numbers within the group adhering to those behavioural norms reinforce the status quo. Culture is, of course, therefore a bell curve of behaviour within a group. Statistically aberrant behaviour is certainly exhibited by some members, and even tolerated, but if it results in the group identity being challenged by this, then members are motivated to act in such a way as to bring others into line and normalise that behaviour.

There is, therefore, an eternal struggle within the group and its individuals for normalisation. There is also a struggle between groups to ensure that each maintains its distinct identity — an “us” versus “them” attitude. The truth of the matter, though, is that there is an immense amount of interaction, rather than isolation, between individuals within distinct groups that results, over time, in groups merging and breaking apart. The trick is to change the groups ‘norms’ to ensure successful change at the group level. Given all of the factors at play (and I’ve only described a few) this is no small task. While the right tools can help, they have to fit with the group norms in order to be effective.

All of these factors, cultural and individual, should be taken into consideration when looking to implement technology within a group like a workforce. If you understand the culture of the group you’re targeting, and ensure that you’re targeting the right group, and know that their behaviour is aligned closely to the tools you’re set to introduce then success is likely to be greater. If it runs counter to the way they work or the way the group works, then they are more likely to fail. And, lastly, if you know enough about the psychology of culture, when things are not aligned, you can create a change strategy that will be able to introduce technology successfully in just about any organisation.

M
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[1] French, J.R.P., & Raven, B. (1959). ‘The bases of social power,’ in D. Cartwright (ed.) Studies in Social Power. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.