Bridges To Knowledge: A Blog by Barry Camson

Actualizing The Network Within

I was speaking with leaders of an organization who would like to see their organization move towards greater cross-organizational collaboration. The organization in question has traditional vertical structures that we might consider silos. The organization has a reasonable degree of trust and goodwill among its members.

Another organization has been a bricks and mortar organization with regular convenings of leaders, offerings of workshops and trainings and with an email list of members and past participants. This organization talks about getting more people involved in doing the work of the organization and participating in events.

By utilizing more of a network approach both organizations can meet their goals for collaboration and greater participation. How could both organizations accomplish this?

Building Trust In A Network Environment

How critical is building trust in a network in achieving the purpose of the network. Here, I am referring to a network that interacts across web 2.0 platforms, through lower technology vehicles and in person. Can building trust be ignored? Is web 2.0 technology sufficient to obviate the need for trust?  If trust is important, then how do we build trust in a network.

Actualizing The Network Within

Recently, I was speaking with leaders of an organization who would like to see their organization move towards greater cross-organizational collaboration. The organization in question has traditional vertical structures that we might consider silos. The organization has a reasonable degree of trust and goodwill among its members.  

There are a variety of approaches that would help this organization become more collaborative. Some are more traditional than others. Most would require that the organization change from something which it is now to something else in the future. To varying degrees, this could involve changes in processes, behaviors, attitudes and mechanisms. If all of these approaches were used, we would say that the organization is being transformed.

As an alternative approach, how might our learning about networks apply to this organization to help it meet its need for greater cross-organizational collaboration?

How would such an organization become a networked organization? Would it require being transformed into something quite different from what it has been?

A Typology Of Networks

I am interested in networks through which work is performed within an organization. However, I thought it would be useful to come up with a typology of networks in general. Here are my thoughts on this. I am interested in how others might see this.

Getting To Seamless

In my last post, I set out a comment from a speaker at a recent event held at NASA. The quote was:

"The future of Open Government is allowing seamless conversations to occur between thousands of government employees and thousands of others."

I think this is what we are now calling a network. In this post, I would like to explore the ideas in the quote a bit further and also ask for your input.