Hi all

A big chunk of last year had me off under a metaphorical mushroom, putting together several days of courseware on the topic of SharePoint Governance and Information Architecture. My take on these topics are influenced from some odd places, and the course drew on a lot of the non IT work that I do, that involves collaboration on some very complex problems indeed.

In November and December of 2010, we took this “on the road”, so to speak, firstly in Dublin, then London and Sydney. The courses were sold out and feedback was terrific. Here are a few choice quotes (check out the hyperlinks for full reviews)

“Did it meet my expectations? Well I’d have to say that it far exceeded them. There had obviously been a large amount of effort in preparing the courseware and modules. They covered the important missing links currently absent from the Microsoft and traditional training courses” – Wes Hackett.

“I’ve just finished the second day of the SharePoint 2010 Governance and Information Architecture Master Class presented by Paul Culmsee with the support of Andrew Woodward . I can wholeheartedly say it was one of the best courses I’ve attended both in content and presentation style and they deserve a lot of credit for putting together a fantastic course. Paul in particular has put a huge amount of effort into the slidedeck, sample documents and enormous manual (almost 500 pages worth!) let alone all the great additional insight he could provide in person over both days” – Brendan Newell

“Finally …. after 12 years in the IT industry a course which covers some of the fundamental issues governing project success.   This course is a real eye opener and a must for any IT professional involved in project planning and delivery” -  Stephen McWilliams

“I just came back from the best technology training I have had in years: a world-first Microsoft SharePoint Elite Information Architecture course designed and delivered by Paul Culmsee. It has taught me a great deal across ALL facets of the day-to-day work that I do as a SharePoint architect” – Jess Kim

Based on this and similar feedback, we are going to do it again. Locations confirmed so far are London (#SPIAUK), Sydney (#SPIAAU) and Wellington (#SPIANZ) in February and March 2011 and in the pipeline is The Netherlands (#SPIANL) and at least a couple of US cities!

In addition to the unique content on these classes, I am honoured to announce that I am now authorised to teach the official Cognexus Issue Mapping courseware – the only non Cognexus Dialogue Mapping practitioner authorised to do so. As such, we will be running the inaugural Issue Mapping class in London in late February as well (wohoo!)

So, here are the details for each location:

Wondering what to expect in these classes? Read on!

 SharePoint Governance and Information Architecture Master Class. 2 full days of real world, examples knowledge and techniques

Most people understand that deploying SharePoint is much more than getting it installed. Despite this, current SharePoint governance documentation abounds in service delivery aspects. However, just because your system is rock solid, stable, well documented and governed through good process, there is absolutely no guarantee of success. Similarly, if Information Architecture for SharePoint was as easy as putting together lists, libraries and metadata the right way, then why doesn’t Microsoft publish the obvious best practices?

In fact, the secret to a successful SharePoint project is an area that the governance documentation barely touches.

This master class pinpoints the critical success factors for SharePoint governance and Information Architecture and rectifies this blind spot. Paul‘s style takes an ironic and subversive take on how SharePoint governance really works within organisations, while presenting a model and the tools necessary get it right.

Drawing on inspiration from many diverse sources, disciplines and case studies, Paul has distilled the “what” and “how” of governance down a simple and accessible, yet rigorous and comprehensive set of tools and methods that organisations large and small can utilise to achieve the level of commitment required to see SharePoint become successful.

Master class aims:

• Present SharePoint governance and Information Architecture in a new light – focus on the “blind spots” where the current published material is inadequate
• Cover lessons learned from Paul’s non IT work as a facilitator and sensemaker in complex large scale projects
• Examine the latest trends in the information landscape for industry and government and review studies that inform governance and Information Architecture efforts
• Present an alternative approach to business-as-usual SharePoint governance planning that focuses on real collaboration
• Provide quality information that is rigorous yet accessible, entertaining and interesting

Master class outcomes:

• Understand the SharePoint governance lens beyond an IT service delivery focus
• Develop your ‘wicked problem’ radar and apply appropriate governance practices, tools and techniques accordingly
• Learn how to align SharePoint projects to broad organisational goals, avoid chasing platitudes and ensure that the problem being solved is the right problem
• Learn how to account for cognitive bias and utilise tools and techniques that help stakeholders align to a common vision
• Understand the relationship between governance and assurance, why both are needed and how they affect innovation and user engagement
• Understand the underlying, often hidden forces of organisational chaos that underpins projects like SharePoint
• Understand the key challenges and opportunities that SharePoint presents for Information Architecture
• Learn how to document your information architecture
• Practical knowledge: Add lots more tools to your governance and IA toolkit!

Course Structure: The course is split into 7 modules, run across the two days.

Module 1: SharePoint Governance f-Laws 1-17:

Module 1 is all about setting context in the form of clearing some misconceptions about the often muddy topic of SharePoint governance. This module sheds some light onto these less visible SharePoint governance factors in the form of Governance f-Laws, which will also help to provide the context for the rest of this course

• Why users don’t know what they want
• The danger of platitudes
• Why IT doesn’t get it
• The adaptive challenge – how to govern SharePoint for the hidden organisation
• The true forces of organisational chaos
• Wicked problems and how to spot them
• The myth of best practices and how to determine when a “practice” is really best

Module 2: The Shared Understanding Toolkit – part 1:

Module 2 pinpoints the SharePoint governance blind spot and introduces the Seven Sigma Shared Understanding Toolkit to counter it. The toolkit is a suite of tools, patterns and practices that can be used to improve SharePoint outcomes. This module builds upon the f-laws of module 1 and specifically examines the “what” and “why” questions of SharePoint Governance. Areas covered include how to identify particular types of problems, how to align the diverse goals of stakeholders, leverage problem structuring methods and constructing a solid business case.

Module 3: The Shared Understanding Toolkit – part 2:

Module 3 continues the Seven Sigma Shared Understanding Toolkit, and focuses on the foundation of “what” and “why” by examining the “who” and “how”. Areas covered include aligning stakeholder expectations, priorities and focus areas and building this alignment into a governance structure and written governance plan that actually make sense and that people will read. We round off by examining user engagement/stakeholder communication and training strategy.

Module 4: Information Architecture trends, lessons learned and key SharePoint challenges

Module 4 examines the hidden costs of poor information management practices, as well as some of the trends that are impacting on Information Architecture and the strategic direction of Microsoft as it develops the SharePoint road map. We will also examine the results from what other organisations have attempted and their lessons learned. We then distil those lessons learned into some the fundamental tenants of modern information architecture and finish off by examining the key SharePoint challenges from a technical, strategic and organisational viewpoint.

Module 5: Information organisation and facets of collaboration

Module 5 dives deeper into the core Information Architecture topics of information structure and organisation. We explore the various facets of enterprise collaboration and identify common Information Architecture mistakes and the strategies to avoid making them.

Module 6: Information Seeking, Search and metadata.

Module 6 examines the factors that affect how users seek information and how they manifest in terms of patterns of use. Building upon the facets of collaboration of module 5, we examine several strategies to improving SharePoint search and navigation. We then turn our attention to taxonomy and metadata, and what SharePoint 2010 has to offer in terms of managed metadata

Module 7: Shared understanding and visual representation – documenting your Information Architecture

Module 7 returns to the theme of governance in the sense of communicating your information architecture through visual or written form. To achieve shared understanding among participants, we need to document our designs in various forms for various audiences.

Putting it all together: From vision to execution

As a take home, we will also supply a USB stick for attendees with a sample performance framework, governance plan, SharePoint ROI calculator (Spreadsheet), sample mind maps of Information Architecture. These tools are the result of years of continual development and refinement “out in the field” and until now have never been released to the public.

Note: The workshop sessions will be hands on, we provide all of the tools and samples needed but please bring your own laptop.

Issue Mapping Master Class. Your path towards shared understanding and shared commitment

“Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.” Laurence J. Peter

Presented by: Paul Culmsee

Courseware by: Cognexus Institute and Seven Sigma

“Not another $#%@*$ meeting!”

All of us have felt the frustration of walking from yet another unproductive meeting, wondering where the agenda went. Yet, as problems become more complex, meetings are still the place where critical strategic decisions are made.

What is Issue Mapping?

Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) is a sense-making framework used to support group discussions to assist all involved to come to a shared understanding. It visually maps participants’ points of views, problems voiced, the rationale and reasons leading up to decision(s). The maps can be easily read and understood by everyone, even by those not part of the discussion group.

Why Issue Mapping?

• Maps detailed rationale behind decision-making as well as the decision; maps the thinking process of the group
• Concentrates on pros and cons to an idea, encourages and explores all views, taking the sting out of differences
• Represents and clarifies diverse points of views, conflicting interpretations and goals, inconsistent information and other forms of complexity
• Everyone gets a chance to speak, if they want. People are heard and contributions are acknowledged. Interruptions, repetition and dominance of the loudest decreases
• Keeps participants on topic because they can visually see the progress of the discussion
• Keeps everyone’s attention
• Meeting progress/result can be seen
• Map helps participants come up with ideas/arguments
• Visual display of progress to review summary if need so the brain can absorb the bigger picture and appreciate the validity and value of a larger perspective
• Avoids jumping to easy answers or superficial conclusions
• Promotes deeper reasoning, rigor and even wisdom
• Everyone can visually see everything discussed- leaves no room for misunderstandings
• Documents can easily be attached to map to back up ideas
• Participants can see effectiveness of mapping and genuine will try to make it more productive

About Seven Sigma

Issue Mapping is a life skill that can be applied to many different problem domains and scenarios. Participants will gain proficiency in a craft that can be applied long into the future, to help them and others bring clarity and convergence to the management of complex problems. At Seven Sigma, we practice Issue and Dialogue Mapping routinely and this has brought us many satisfied clients. The Mapping in itself is part of the ‘secret sauce’ that makes Seven Sigma’s reputation renowned.

Seven Sigma Business Solutions is the only recognised designated partner of Cognexus Institute, founder of the art of Issue Mapping, in the world. We recognise that without reaching shared understanding, you will find yourself at yet another meeting, rehashing the same unresolved problems, listening to the same arguments month after month. Or, if a decision has been made, it has not been followed up to fruition due to lack of commitment/buy-in.

We are proud to be part of your journey towards shared understanding and shared commitment.

Master Class aims and outcomes:

• Be able to create great maps – issue maps that are clear, coherent, and inviting
• Immediately start using Issue Mapping effectively in your work and life; the class will focus on practical experience and map building
• Command a rich range of options for publishing and sharing maps
• Lead with maps: create direction, momentum, and energy with issue maps
• Quickly and effectively do critical analysis in dynamic situations
• Organize unstructured information and discover patterns and connections within it
• Make critical thinking visible for inspection and analysis
• Recognise early, the symptoms of wicked problems and the forces behind group divergence
• Recognise the importance of capturing the rationale behind decisions, as well as the decisions themselves
• Rethink the traditional approach to meetings and decision making
• Start capturing the rationale leading up to the decisions by using IBIS and Compendium software

It will also give you a deeper understanding of:

• The fundamentals of IBIS and Compendium
• The structural patterns that give clarity and power to issue maps
• How decision rationale is represented in a map

This master class will be hands on – please bring your own laptop with Compendium software (freeware) installed.

Duration: 2 days, with homework after the first day

Audience: For both IT and non-IT audience; those involved in highly complex projects including leaders, consultants, facilitators, organisational development professionals, change agents, managers and engineers.

Prerequisite: An open mind geared for shared understanding and shared commitment

Michal Pisarek wrote a nice write-up of what makes a good SharePoint Analyst. I feel I have something to offer here, given that I…

1. am a cynical old bastard
2. am an opinionated old bastard
3. have had some opportunities that not too many SharePoint people have had
4. wrote this post on a plane while suffering jetlag 🙂

I am going to argue that as a SharePoint ”analyst”, the worst thing you can do is act like an analyst.

I previously wrote about the identity crisis that Business Analysts have which became apparent to me when I spoke at a BA World Conference last year. The gist of my point in that post came from my observations of a panel discussion on role of a BA within Agile development. I noted that the whole discussion seemed based on an underlying presumption that the role of the BA was to translate between IT and “the business". Agile by its very nature, shifts the ground out from under this assumption which caused a bit of consternation on the part of the panel. My takeaway from this, was that a role does not define the person. The body of knowledge of your discipline (in this case BABOK) is not the one truth. When you think about it, the body of knowledge by definition, consists of the lowest common denominators of a discipline of knowledge – a starting point. This is because the skills that you have built are your skills. Sure, you can write about them, but that only conveys a small dimension of what your skills entail.

Essentially, if everybody followed the BOK as the source of the truth then all consultancies would look the same. (Thinking about it, now you know why all large and expensive management consulting firms tend to sound the same…hehehe 🙂 )

The point is that it is the knowledge that you have earned that makes you what you are and what customers want. Knowledge comes from making mistakes, not by confirming your rightness. Therefore, people who practise constant learning by trying things out, challenging their models of reality, always build a hugely valuable corpus of tacit knowledge that is locked up in their brain where knowledge is connected and related in ways that form insight. It is because of this unique insight, that customers rarely want a “Business Analyst”.  They want Joe or Bob because of what Joe or Bob, as individuals, bring to the table. (Kailash writes about this in more detail if I am leaving you scratching your head at this point. I am going to quote him in a reply to Richard Harbridge).

The point I would like to emphasise, however, is that best practices cannot capture tacit knowledge. Codified best practices (or standards) are therefore necessarily incomplete. One of the things standards don’t tell you is how you should “practice the practice”. Practices have to be customised or adapted to specific organisational contexts before they can be practiced. The process of customisation invariably involves the creation of tacit knowledge to fill in the missing bits. This is why I used the word “rediscover” to describe this process, rather than “customise” (or “adapt”) : the former gives a better sense for the magnitude and type of effort involved whereas the latter suggests that minor tinkering will do the job (which it won’t).

So, here is a tip. Don’t define your own wellbeing by a role title or adherence to a body of knowledge because, if you do, you will inevitable have an identity crisis. The world simply moves on and with it, the problems that people are trying to solve tend to wriggle out of the domain of any single BOK. Any attempts to resist this will eventually become dogma and then we have “memetic smackdowns” as I describe in this EUSP Post.

Okay, so now that I have finished a mini rant, I’d like to address the whole “analyst” thing. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not the title of the role I am going to talk about here, but the analyst paradigm itself. That is, the notion that my purpose in life is to take some requirements, go to a back room, spend time “processing” and “synthesising” those requirements, translating away between "IT and “the business”, before formulating a solution for the customer.

This does not work well with most SharePoint projects! Especially ones that seek to “improve collaboration”.

Many people fail to see why this is the case, yet given the huge gap between the SharePoint that Microsoft shows you versus what you see on the ground, you would think that it would be kind of obvious. For what it’s worth, understanding why the analyst paradigm is dangerous also neatly explains why IT is generically predisposed to struggling with SharePoint.

Consider the following projects:

• Implementing Microsoft Exchange for a global organisation
• Implementing Active Directory for unified and policy based user and resource management
• Replacing PBX with a Voice over IP system
• Upgrading your wide area network from site to site VPN’s to MPLS managed WAN
• Determining support and escalation procedures for a SharePoint deployment
• Replacing a Windows XP/Office 2003 desktop environment with Windows 7/Office 2010

In the above list, if you ask the question “Will users accept and adopt this?” the answer is a fairly clear yes. At the end of the day, no matter what version of Exchange is in, Microsoft Outlook is still Microsoft Outlook. What the user sees is an Inbox and so long as mail comes in and goes out – they are happy. All Active Directory is to a user is a username and password to get to their computer. Irrespective of how clever the routing is in a Voice over IP system or a WAN network, a phone is just a phone. You can plan for support and escalation procedures for SharePoint, but at the end of the day, people will use the SharePoint system because it is the right solution for them. Sure they might get pissed if they have bad technical support, but if the solution is crap then no amount of awesome support structure is going to change this.

This, my friends, is the realm of the analyst paradigm!

You see, if you ask me to deploy Active Directory or Exchange, I will ask you a bunch of questions about your number of sites, number of users, communications infrastructure and the like, and I know that users will use it. I actually don’t need to talk to them. Oh sure, someone might do some communications planning, but I don’t need to address user adoption because adoption is already there! People adapted to email, telephone and Microsoft Windows years ago.

Instead, I can go into a back room, read a bunch of whitepapers and design/deployment guides and blammo. Here is your solution and here is how much I think it will cost. Better still, I can use waterfall style of project methodology because as a specialist, I have done this before and have expertise. I can tell you what needs to be done in considerable detail and break it down into a plan.

What it all boils down to is that there is a clear relationship between cause and effect, characterised by answering YES to the “If I do this, will users accept and adopt this” test. But most IT departments (and most IT integrators) are going to default to the analyst paradigm because many of their other projects tend to be in the above category. This analysis based mode of project delivery is very much ingrained into the reptile brain of a lot of IT professionals through years of repetition of implementing these types of projects. After all, it’s just IT, right?

Also, note that many of these type of projects are characterised by being very technically complicated. Some are insanely so and require specialist technical expertise. This is the realm of the supremely skilled person who performs an analyst function with a body of knowledge behind them. The whole industry certification process is built on this fundamental underpinning and works really well with things like Cisco and Microsoft in areas like Exchange, Active Directory and the like.

Now, consider the following projects or initiatives (I am deliberately picking things where people may disagree with me so go with me, ok).

• Coming up with an navigational structure for a SharePoint collaborative portal
• Installing SharePoint to improve collaboration
• Replacing a folder based file share with a metadata based document repository
• Designing a new road layout for a local suburb
• Putting in a new intranet
• Putting in a records management system
• Installing a new time tracking system

In all of these problems, it is difficult to answer yes to the “Will users accept and adopt this” question. Sure, you can go all big stick and say “We will force them to” but that fails the “accept” part of the test. Therein lies the danger for the analyst paradigm. You can go off to the “back room” and use your body of knowledge, read best practices and “analyse” until the cows come home. Until you deliver the solution, you will not know if it will be accepted.  The cause and effect relationship is not clear until after an action has been taken!

The reason you can’t confidently answer yes is that all of these projects above require adaption on the part of the target audience. Adaption leading to adoption is a hit and miss affair. While we might like to think that we are all rational, clearly we are not. If you want rational, think Dr Spock from Star Trek – and even he got mad sometimes! Office politics and organisational inertia stems from the irrational world. Butt covering by positioning for “blame avoidance” for decisions made by fear and anxiety are commonplace. If you work in a large organisation and listen carefully to a typical meeting, the logic and facts that are spoken out loud are rarely what matters compared to the complex non spoken interplays that go on underneath the words.

For what it’s worth, I added a non IT example of designing a new road layout for a suburb. A rational analyst might think that residents have to accept the solution by definition because, after all, once a road is in, that’s it. But what typically happens is that residents of that neighbourhood see the plan, petition, form lobby groups and harass the hell out of their local political representatives. If this is enough to make the politician edgy then they will vote the plan down before it ever happens. Sure it might have been a good plan, but it’s gone now and the chances of further buy-in are greatly reduced.

The pure analyst is often taking a rational approach to an irrational problem space. Sorry folks – this is simply asking for trouble. Like the politician who does what they think will keep them in power versus what is logical shows the rational world does not always get a good look in. A good example in SharePoint land, is the “metadata is good and folders are bad” thing. Any metadata fanboy with this mantra often find the hidden organisation will beg to differ 🙂

So, what do we do then?

The facilitator paradigm instead aims to elicit resolution of problems using dialogue between stakeholders by achieving a greater degree of shared perception of the problem situation. Unlike the analyst paradigm, there is no back-room approach as such. By definition, we need to collaborate to do this. (Fancy that, eh? Collaborating to deliver a collaborative platform – who would have thought!)

Now, I am not talking about facilitation in the classic sense with everybody sitting in a room in a circle and plays team building games. Some of the best project managers and business analysts I have met are facilitators without necessarily knowing it. What I mean by facilitation is that our starting point is to leverage the wisdom of the crowd, by creating an environment conducive to participants being able to surface the irrational as well as the rational. Only in this way, can we come to a shared understanding of a problem and what should be done about it.

I previously termed this the holding environment, and it really is. A great business analyst or project manager knows this instinctively, and uses many tools (as well as some coercion and sometimes their own ego surrendering) to bring it about.

If you take anything away from this post, remember this. Anytime you cannot confidently answer the “Will users accept and adopt this” question, it is highly likely that not all users see that there is even a problem yet. Therefore, expecting people to magically buy-in and adapt when they don’t recognise the problem is never going to fly. Like trying to get a Darwinist to accept that intelligent design should be taught in schools, someone who does not believe in it to begin with, is not going to easily buy into a solution that requires them to change their beliefs and therefore behaviour. 

Conclusion

When you think about it (rationally!) we usually look at SharePoint as an enabling technology that can address a legacy of poor collaboration and information management. Yet, how can the world of the analyst work out if their solution will create the very same legacy without all stakeholders being on the same page?

So remember, in a project where the cause and effect relationship is not clear, use the facilitator paradigm and stop being such a bloody analyst!

Thanks for reading. Comments most welcomed .

Paul Culmsee

www.sevensigma.com.au

In 2011, I will be posting sections of my Governance and Information Master Class here. Much of the content consists of mental models, alternative frames of reference, pattern and practices as well as other tools and methods, specifically for the facilitator paradigm. This is my interest area and feel the analyst paradigm is already well represented in the SharePoint space.

The background

Over the last three years, my career trajectory had altered somewhat where I spent half my time as a SharePoint practitioner, doing all of the things that us SharePoint practitioners do, and the other half was spent in a role that I would call sensemaking. Essentially group facilitation work, on some highly complex, non IT problems. These ranged from areas such as city planning, (envisioning and community engagement) to infrastructure delivery (think freeways, schools and hospitals), to mental health, team and relationship building, performance management, board meetings and various other scenarios.

Imagine how much of a different world this is, where a group is coming together from often very different backgrounds and base positions, to come to grips with a complex set of interlocking problems and somehow try and align enough to move forward. We cannot simply throw a “SharePoint” at these problems and think it will all be better. By their very nature, we have to collaborate on them to move forward – true collaboration in all its messy, sometimes frustrating glory.

As a result of this experience, I’ve also learned many highly effective collaborative techniques and approaches that I have never seen used in my 20+ years of being an IT practitioner. Additionally, I’ve had the opportunity to work with (and still do), some highly skilled people who I learned a huge amount from. This is “standing on the shoulders of giants” stuff. As you can imagine, this new learning has had a significant effect on how Seven Sigma now diagnoses and approaches SharePoint projects and has altered the lens through which I view problem solving with SharePoint.

It also provided me the means to pinpoint a giant blind spot in the SharePoint governance material that’s out there, and what to do about it.

The first catalyst – back injury

In January this year, my family and I went on a short holiday, down to the wine country of Western Australia called the Margaret River region. On the very first day of that trip, I was at the beach, watching my kids run amok, when I totally put my back out (*sigh* such an old man). Needless to say, I could barely move for the next week or two after. My family, ever concerned for my welfare, promptly left me behind at the chalet and took off each day to sample wines, food and generally do the things that tourists do.

Left to my own devices, and not overly mobile I had little to do but ponder – and ponder I did (even more than my usual pondering – so this was an Olympic class ponder). Reflecting on all of my learning and experiences from sensemaking work, my use of it within SharePoint projects, as well as the subsequent voracious reading in a variety of topics, I came to realise that SharePoint governance is looked through a lens that clouds some of the most critical success factors. I knew exactly how to lift that fog, and had a vision for a holistic view of SharePoint governance that at the same time, simplifies it and makes it easy for people to collectively understand.

So I set to work, distilling all of this learning and experience and put it into something coherent, rigorous and accessible. After all, SharePoint is a tool that is an enabler for “improved collaboration”, and I had spent half of my time on deeply collaborative non IT scenarios where to my knowledge, no other SharePoint practitioner has done so. Since sensemaking lies in all that ‘softer’ stuff that traditionally IT is a bit weaker on, I thought I could add some dimensions to SharePoint governance in a way that could be made accessible, practical and useful.

By the end of that week I still had a sore back, but I had the core of what I wanted to do worked out, and I knew that it would be a rather large undertaking to finish it (if it ever could be finished).

The second catalyst – Beyond Best Practices

I also commenced writing a non SharePoint book on this topic area with Kailash Awati from the Eight to Late blog, called Beyond Best Practices. This book examines why most best practices don’t work and what can be done about them. The plethora of tools, systems and best practices that are generally used to tackle organisational problems rarely help and when people apply these methods, they often end up solving the wrong problem. After all, if best practices were best, then we would all follow them and projects would be delivered on time, on budget and with deliriously happy stakeholders right?

The work and research that has gone into this book has been significant. We studied the work of many people who have recognised and written about this, as well as many case studies. The problem these authors had is that these works challenged many widely accepted views, patterns and practices of various managerial disciplines. As a result these ideas have been rejected, ignored or considered outright heretical, and thus languish (largely unread) in journals. The recent emergence of anything x2.0 and a renewed focus on collaboration might seem radical or new for some, but these early authors were espousing very similar things many years ago.

The third catalyst – 3grow

Some time later in the year, 3grow asked me to develop a 4 day SharePoint 2010 Governance and Information Architecture course for Microsoft NZ’s Elite program. I agreed and used my “core” material, as well as some Beyond Best Practice ideas to develop the course. Information Architecture is a bloody tough course to write. It would be easy to cheat and just do a feature dump of every building block that SharePoint has to offer and call that Information Architecture. But that’s the science and not the art – and the science is easy to write about. From my experience, IA is not that much different to the sensemaking work that I do, so I had a very different foundation to base the entire course from.

The IA course took 450 man hours to write and produced an 800 page manual (and just about killed me in the process), but the feedback from attendees surpassed all expectations.  This motivated me to complete the vision I originally had for a better approach to SharePoint governance and this has now been completed as well (with another 200 pages and a CD full of samples and other goodies).

The result

I have distilled all of this work into a master class format, which ranges from 1 to 5 days, suited to Business Analysts, Project and Program Managers, Enterprise and Information Architects, IT Managers and those in strategic roles who have to bridge the gap between organisational aspirations and the effective delivery of SharePoint solutions. I speak the way I write, so if the cleverworkarounds writing style works for you, then you will probably enjoy the manner in which the material is presented. I like rigour, but I also like to keep people awake! 🙂

One of my pet hates is when the course manual is just a printout of the slide deck with space for notes. In this master class, the manual is a book in itself and covers additional topic areas in a deeper level of detail from the class. So you will have some nice bedtime reading after attending.

Andrew Woodward has been a long time collaborator on this work, before we formalised this collaboration with the SamePage Alliance, we had discussed running a master class session in the UK on this material. At the same time, thanks to Michael Sampson, an opportunity arose to conduct a workshop in Ireland. As a result, you have an opportunity to be a part of these events.

Dublin

The first event is terrific as it is a free event in Dublin on November 17, hosted by Storm Technology a Microsoft Gold Partner in Dublin. As a result of the event being free, it is by invitation only and numbers are limited. This is a one day event, focussing on the SharePoint Governance blind spots and what to do about them, but also wicked problems and Dialogue Mapping, as well as learning to look at SharePoint from outside the IT lens, and translate its benefits to a wider audience (ie “Learn to speak to your CFO”).

So if you are interested in learning how to view SharePoint governance in a new light, and are tired of the governance material that rehashes the same tired old approaches that give you a mountain of work to do that still doesn’t change results, then register your interest with Rosemary at the email address in the image above ASAP and she can reserve a spot for you. We will supply a 200 page manual, as well as a CD of sample material for attendees, including a detailed governance plan.

London

In London on November 22 and 23, I will be running a two day master class along side Andrew Woodward on SharePoint Governance and Information Architecture. The first day is similar to the Ireland event, where we focus on governance holistically, shattering a few misconceptions and seeing things in a different light, before switching focus to various facets of Information Architecture for SharePoint. In essence, I have taken the detail of the 4 days of the New Zealand Elite course and created a single day version (no mean feat by the way).

Participants on this course will receive a 400 page manual, chock full of SharePoint Governance and Information Architecture goodness, as well as a CD/USB of sample material such as a SharePoint governance plan, as well as IA maps of various types. Unlike Ireland, this is an open event, available to anyone, and you can find more detail and register at the eventbrite site http://spiamasterclass.eventbrite.com/. In case you are wondering, this event is non technical. Whether you have little hands on experience with SharePoint or a deep knowledge, you will find a lot of value in this event for the very reason that the blind spots I focus on are kind of universally applicable irrespective of your role.

Much of what you will learn is applicable for many projects, beyond SharePoint and you will come away with a slew of new approaches to handle complex projects in general.

So if you are in the UK or somewhere in Europe, look us up. It will be a unique event, and Andrew and I are very much looking forward to seeing you there!

Thanks for reading

Paul Culmsee

www.sevensigma.com.au

This is really great, and something that’s been a long time coming. On behalf of my partners at Seven Sigma, I’m announcing the formation of the SamePage Alliance. A strategic partnership with Seven Sigma and 21Apps, founded by Andrew Woodward, as founding members. SamePage is a commercial relationship where we will be pooling the respective talents of our organisations together and expanding our service offerings to clients.

I first met Andrew in San Diego in 2008, the SharePoint Best Practices Conference, where I was a very nervous first-time presenter, wondering if all of my wicked problem stuff would resonate with the US audience. Andrew was there, presenting on TDD and Scrum, and apart from having someone in the US I could talk about the cricket with, it was immediately clear that we had a hell of a lot in common. It was like he held a big piece to a puzzle, and I held another piece. The irony was that I never got to see his talk as, if I recall, we presented at the same time. But back then (Feb 08) I made a rather prophetic statement at the end of my report of that conference.

“I feel some future collaboration in the very near future.  Andrew Woodward will definitely be a part of it (although he doesn’t know it yet…Hehehe).”

Funny how things turn out. We have collaborated on a number of different things since then, both within the SharePoint realm and beyond it. The common interests run deep and between 21apps and Seven Sigma, there is a lot of experience there. During the SharePoint Evolutions conference, where a certain volcano prevented me attending, Andrew ran my wicked problems/SharePoint/IBIS talk for me and did a tremendous job (I watched all the tweets from Perth).

In terms of practicalities, we will be reselling each-others products and services. Seven Sigma entered the training space this year, writing the SharePoint 2010 Governance and Information Architecture course that 3Grow and Microsoft New Zealand use to certify gold partners for SharePoint prowess. Seven Sigma also developed a unique 1 and 2-day SharePoint Governance f-Laws course, with content drawn from our sensemaking work that we ran in the New Zealand and Sydney conferences. When it came to who could possibly teach Seven Sigma courseware, the obvious answer was Andrew Woodward, given our shared interests and his sterling job at Evolutions.

21apps released their first SharePoint product into the marketplace this year – 21scrum, and 21apps authors and teaches workshops and training for development teams looking to improve their quality of development around the SharePoint space.

Further to this, we will be co-developing products as well. Seven Sigma has been brewing some things in the cauldron for some time and 21apps will be part of this development effort.

In general terms, we offer great SharePoint competencies across training, governance, infrastructure, development and delivery. Our combined offerings means that we can offer:

The first output of this new arrangement is a two-day course to be run in London in mid November. Andrew will be there too, and we will cover my SharePoint Governance f-Laws course as well as material from the recent Information Architecture course in New Zealand. If you have SharePoint competencies and find yourself having to bridge the gap between organisational aspirations and SharePoint as the enabler to that aspiration, then this session is for you.

You can find out more about this event and register at the 21apps site.

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

www.samepage.co

www.21apps.co.uk

www.sevensigma.com.au

Having spoken at the odd SharePoint event over the last three years or so, I’ve always lamented on the lack of a purely business focused SharePoint conference. Whilst the conferences I attend do cater for non technology oriented topics – particularly the best practice conferences, there is usually an equal or greater proportion of content aimed at the nerdier aspects of SharePoint.

Sadly though, nerds don’t often sign the cheques. Those who do sign them, are rarely interested in deploying SharePoint via Powershell, or why sandboxed solutions are a good thing or not. They are looking for the ways and means to take SharePoint (the enabler) and work out what the hell SharePoint is enabling and to work out if it has done so properly.

Some time back, via a reference from Kristian Kalsing, I received a call from the organisers of the forthcoming Share2010 in Sydney, asking for feedback on what I would like to see in a good business focused SharePoint conference. In speaking to Steve from Eventful Management and his team, it was clear that something unique was in the making here.

Fast forward several months and after a whole lot of market research and round-table discussions from SharePoint customers (including a couple of our clients), we have a conference that puts many critical topics close to my heart, front and centre, namely governance, user engagement and adaption, business process automation and workflow; information architecture; collaboration; document and records management; resourcing and support; social networking; ROI; security and so on.

I am honoured that I was also asked to participate as a speaker at this conference, along side the likes of Dux Sy, Erica Toelle, Andrew Jolly and Michael Sampson. You will find that speakers from this group have one thing in common: Their focus on the softer areas of SharePoint. There are also speakers from some of Australia’s leading organisations (and some international ones too), who will share their trials, tribulations and lessons learned. This is real problem/real solution type stuff and I am seriously looking forward to being part of it.

I’ll be involved in the initial festivities on the Sunday evening, conducting a special interest kickoff session called SharePoint Governance Home Truths. This session aims to present a lot of my work in a more relaxed, entertaining manner and hopefully, set a good tone for the rest of the event.

I will also be running a special event on Wednesday called “Microsoft SharePoint Governance f-Laws: Handy Hints for Those Who Question Business as Usual”. I am really excited about this. Developing the content for this session has been a labour of love for me since November last year – and is a kind of magnum opus of everything I have learned in my IT and non IT work. I have been very fortunate to work on some very large and complex non IT projects and worked with some amazingly talented people in the areas of project management, cognitive science, facilitation and community engagement. I can absolutely guarantee you that there will be many aspects to this session that would not have been seen before in one place in this distilled form. I am super excited about delivering this in full at Share2010 – there simply could not be a better conference for this type of workshop.

By the way, I used elements of this material in the SharePoint 2010 Governance and Information Architecture course that was developed for the Microsoft NZ/3Grow Elite Program. The feedback from that course speaks for itself.

The outcomes to expect for attendee of this session are:

• Understand the SharePoint governance lens beyond an IT service delivery focus
• Develop your ‘wicked problem’ radar and apply appropriate governance practices, tools and techniques accordingly
• Learn how to align SharePoint projects to broad organisational goals, avoid chasing platitudes and ensure that the problem being solved is the right problem
• Understand the relationship between governance and assurance, why both are needed and how they affect innovation
• Understand the underlying, often hidden forces of organisational chaos that underpins projects like SharePoint

There is a large amount of content and activities in this session that has never graced CleverworkArounds. In fact, if I ever get around to posting some of the content, I could blog for months. But more importantly than the content, you will have a lot of practical tools to leverage as well. Attendees to my session will receive a CD containing end-to-end governance artefacts ranging from IBIS maps, goal alignment and performance framework outputs, envisioning workshop sample outputs, Information Architecture mind-maps, BPMN diagrams, wireframes, user engagement tools, ROI calculations and more.

As it happens, I collaborated on a lot of this stuff with Erica Toelle, so it is terrific that she is speaking at the event and her “Don’t reinvent the wheel” talk should not be missed, as well as her Tuesday keynote. If I ask her nicely, she might just pop a few of her goodies onto the CD as well!

You can register here, for this unique event, and let’s hope that there are many more to come. There is opportunity for one on one meetings with speakers like myself as part of the deal.

Thanks for reading

Paul Culmsee

www.sevensigma.com.au

I’m in an airport (again), typing this on my way back from my latest trip to New Zealand – a country I am loving more and more each time I go there. (Anywhere that I can go that uses the same power plugs as back home is a great place in my book).

A while back I posted about the book I am writing with Kailash Awati (Beyond Best Practices). If that project wasn’t taking enough time, dedication and brain cells, I have just finished an undertaking that has essentially consumed me for four months (some 450 man hours). This week it was delivered and the student responses far surpassed my expectations and made it all worthwhile.

I created a 4 day SharePoint 2010 Governance and Information Architecture training course as part of Microsoft New Zealand’s Elite initiative. (760 pages of SharePoint governance and IA goodness!) If you are not aware of the Elite initiative, it is a novel initiative by Microsoft in New Zealand to improve the quality of SharePoint practitioners in the Microsoft partner ecosystem. Now I tell you – Darryl Burling and his team down there at Microsoft have their ear to the ground – and really do listen to their customers. They initiated this program to allow local solution providers to take the next step beyond technical knowhow and turn it into deeper proficiency.

The SharePoint Elite Partner Initiative is designed to recognise those New Zealand Partners who have built skills excellence and a track record for success with SharePoint into their business. When it comes to SharePoint, these are the elite – the best of the best. If you are looking for a partner who can help you plan and deploy your SharePoint implementation, these are the best in the business.

This Elite program is unique in its focus and via the insight of those who conceived it, allowed me the flexibility to create a course that was a balance of technical labs, sensemaking, governance, critical thinking and user engagement. I was going through the course feedback just now and the key trend from it all was that the students really enjoyed the softer stuff that I teach, more so than the “here is a SharePoint feature and look at what it can do!” type material (they can get that sort of material anywhere).

So all in all it was a great week, which made all the effort, sweat and tears leading up to it worth it.

So thanks attendees, it was a great 4 days. For other readers, hopefully the course might come to a city near you in the not too distant future.

Thanks for reading

Paul Culmsee

www.sevensigma.com.au

As you may have noticed, this blog has been a bit of a dead zone lately. There are several very good reasons for this – one being that a lot of my creative energy has been going into co-writing a book – and I thought it was time to come clean on it.

So first up, just because I get asked this all the time, the book is definitely *not* “A humble tribute to the leave form – The Book”! In fact, it’s not about SharePoint per se, but rather the deeper dark arts of team collaboration in the face of really complex or novel problems.

It was late 2006 when my own career journey took an interesting trajectory, as I started getting into sensemaking and acquiring the skills necessary to help groups deal with really complex, wicked problems. My original intent was to reduce the chances of SharePoint project failure but in learning these skills, now find myself performing facilitation, goal alignment and sensemaking in areas miles away from IT. In the process I have been involved with projects of considerable complexity and uniqueness that make IT look pretty easy by comparison. The other fringe benefit is being able to sit in a room and listen to the wisdom of some top experts in their chosen disciplines as they work together.

Through this work and the professional and personal learning that came with it, I now have some really good case studies that use unique (and I mean, unique) approaches to tackling complex problems. I have a keen desire to showcase these and explain why our approaches worked.

My leanings towards sensemaking and strategic issues would be apparent to regular readers of CleverWorkarounds. It is therefore no secret that this blog is not really much of a technical SharePoint blog these days. The articles on branding, ROI, and capacity planning were written in 2007, just before the mega explosion of interest in SharePoint. This time around, there are legions of excellent bloggers who are doing a tremendous job on giving readers a leg-up onto this new beast known as SharePoint 2010.

So back to the book. Our tentative title is “Beyond Best Practices” and it’s an ambitious project, co-authored with Kailash Awati – the man behind the brilliant eight to late blog. I had been a fan of Kailash’s work for a long time now, and was always impressed at the depth of research and effort that he put into his writing. Kailash is a scarily smart guy with two PHD’s under his belt and to this day, I do not think I have ever mentioned a paper or author to him that he hasn’t read already. In fact, usually he has read it, checked out the citations and tells me to go and read three more books!

Kailash writes with the sort of rigour that I aspire to and will never achieve, thus when the opportunity of working with him on a book came up, I knew that I absolutely had to do it and that it would be a significant undertaking indeed.

To the left is a mock-up picture to try and convey where we are going with this book. See the guy on the right? Is he scratching his head in confusion, saluting or both? (note, this is our mockup and the real thing may look nothing like this)

This book dives into the seedy underbelly of organisational problem solving, and does so in a way that no other book has thus far attempted. We examine why the very notion of “best practices” often makes no sense and have such a high propensity to go wrong. We challenge some mainstream ideas by shining light on some obscure, but highly topical and interesting research that some may consider radical or heretical. To counter the somewhat dry nature of some of this research (the topics are really interesting but the style in which academics write can put insomniacs to sleep), we give it a bit of the cleverworkarounds style treatment and are writing in a conversational style that loses none of the rigour, but won’t have you nodding off on page 2. If you liked my posts where I use odd metaphors like boy bands to explain SharePoint site collections, the Simpsons to explain InfoPath or death metal to explain records versus collaborative document management, then you should enjoy our journey through the world of cognitive science, memetics, scientific management and Willy Wonka (yup – Willy Wonka!).

Rather than just bleat about what the problems with best-practices are, we will also tell you what you can do to address these issues. We back up this advice by presenting a series of practical case studies, each of which illustrates the techniques used to address the inadequacies of best practices in dealing with wicked problems. In the end, we hope to arm our readers with a bunch of tools and approaches that actually work when dealing with complex issues. Some of these case studies are world unique and I am very proud of them.

Now at this point in the writing, this is not just an idea with an outline and a catchy title. We have been at this for about six months, and the results thus far (some 60-70,000 words) have been very, very exciting. Initially, we really had no idea whether the combination of our writing styles would work – whether we could take the degree of depth and skill of Kailash with my low-brow humour and my quest for cheap laughs (I am just as likely to use a fart joke if it helps me get a key point across)…

… But signs so far are good so stay tuned 🙂

Thanks for reading

Paul Culmsee

www.sevensigma.com.au

Hi all

I am finding it increasingly difficult to find the time to post at the moment. Too many projects, too many initiatives and too many evil plans coming to fruition. It’s like every seed I planted last year suddenly sprouted this year and I can barely keep up. Whilst this is a good thing for a growing business, it is not a good thing when it comes to writing blog posts.

In April I’ll be jumping on a very long flight to London, to attend and speak at the SharePoint Evolutions conference, held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre.

This conference represents the evolution of the Best Practice conferences held over the last three years or so. It is one of the most unique and important SharePoint conferences of the year. SharePoint 2010 will be a key focus, yet unlike say a Tech-Ed, many of the topics have a heavy focus on the strategic side of the SharePoint challenge, in areas like Information Architecture, User Engagement and Planning and Deployment. There are five tracks in all, and over seventy speakers from all over the world.

• For the techie geeks who like to hang in datacenters and like to get paged late at night to fix things that have died, the IT Pro track (ITP) will push their buttons. ITP sessions will focus on topics such as Document Management, Database Sizing, SharePoint and SQL optimization or server farm deployments scenarios.
• For the developers and designers of the world, the DEV track is for you. DEV sessions will focus on topics in the areas of customization, development, and deployment best practices.
• For all of the cool people, we have the information worker track where I speak (IW). In fact the IW track is so damn cool that there are two IW tracks! Sessions here will focus around business strategy and adoption, information architecture, training your organization or developing a culture of collaboration.
• For the tech geeks who can code, who are therefore more elite than regular tech geeks and devs (looking at you Spence), there is a deep dive track to make you happy called level 400. In this track there will be IT Pro and Developer sessions that will be deep diving into the product and code. There will be very few slides, lots of source code and demonstrations.
• Finally, there is a community track. This track has sessions for all verticals and will include speakers from all types of companies who have implemented SharePoint and what they learnt by doing so. All speakers are actively engaged in the SharePoint community and user group and have a wealth of knowledge to share.

This conference is organised by Steve Smith of Combined Knowledge, who is renowned for putting together something special for all participants. The speaker list is pretty much a who’s-who of the SharePoint world, and I am very much looking forward to catching up with (Paul takes deep breath) Andrew Woodward, Ben Curry, Brett Lonsdale, Chandima Kulathilake, Dux Sy, Joel Oleson, Laura Rogers, Michel Noel, Mike Watson and Zlatan Dzinic to name a few.

Bob Fox will also be there, so we finally have that beer that apparently I am supposed to buy – according to Bob anyway :-).

So if you are going to attend a SharePoint conference this year, then my strong suggestion is to make it this one.

Thanks for reading

Paul Culmsee

www.sevensigma.com.au

Vulgarity warning. Its the silly season, I am winding down and being more low-brow than usual with this post

There is this wonderful way to look at the world, through a lens of something called “Complex adaptive systems”. Unfortunately with a name like that, it is automatically doomed to be only spoken of and understood by, a small subset of those sort of dishevelled looking nerdy guys who others take the piss out of when they are not around.

The notion of complex adaptive systems explains many things, including why salesman can unintentionally really be damaging to an organisation. I thought that I needed to write about this, and given that I am going to talk about sales guys, I had to write in a manner commiserate with their level of understanding of how the world works. Since the chances of a sales guy reading my blog is probably low, I should be safe 🙂

So here we go.

Here is a sales guy. Although us geeks think they are assholes, for this metaphor we have to change our context of what an asshole actually is. I think of him more of a guy who gathers food and brings it to you.

Here is the world for a sales guy. He finds work, and feeds that work into the mouth of the organisation. For performing such a feat, he gets to nibble off a small morsel of the meal to keep for himself. If he feeds the organisation enough and makes it grow, he will get enough morsels to grow rather nicely himself. This is a pretty sweet deal if you are good at finding food, because your reward is a percentage of what you push into the organisations mouth. Therefore it is in the sales guys interest to find as much food as he can for the organisational “body”. In fact his performance is directly attributed to doing exactly that in the form of quotas or sales targets

At the other end of the chain, the implementers have to digest what has been fed them from mouth and produce output that makes clients happy. Therefore it is the people in the organisation that actually implement a project who are actually the assholes, not the sales guys. As a result, I can say with some confidence that most people reading this post, like myself, are all assholes.

As this cycle perpetuates over time, the body in between these two ends grows. To continue to feed this body and keep it growing, we need to seek out more food. To do this we try and incentivise our sales people to supply more food by offering them larger morsels if they make more ambitious targets.

Never forget the assholes

Now we all know that we have to eat a balanced diet with healthy foods. But some people find it a pain to do all of that preparation and effort and instead go and grab some Chinese takeout instead. To a sales guy who is being rewarded for the amount of food being delivered to the organisation, fast food is great! Remember that the sales guy only takes just enough of the food for no lasting effects and is the furthest away from the assholes to feel the negative effects on the organisational as a whole.

Now our sales guy starts to look like the image below.

Therefore, this process of incentivising sales guys by the amount of food that they pass into the mouth is not without its risks and often can damage the long term health of the organisational body. Fast food can be tolerated now and again of course. For example, we all get the occasional hankering for Kentucky Fried Chicken every 6 months or so, and delude ourselves that this time, unlike all of the other times, it will actually not be oily enough to power a small town and leave you with that queasy feeling that you get when your heart labours against your cholesterol.

This can be a self perpetuating cycle. For example, the sales guy feeds the organisation a blisteringly hot spicy lamb vindaloo. Naturally is a very unpleasant experience for the assholes and as a result, what is delivered to the customer is (literally) crap and costs much more than anticipated. This cost bleed puts pressure on the sales guys to feed the body to make up for the wasted time, effort and cost. But the sales guy is so far away from the assholes, it does not occur to him that it was the spicy lamb vindaloo was the wrong meal. Nor too, does he receive any feedback to let him know that the burning sensation still lingers.

So what does he do? He feeds an even spicier lamb vindaloo to the mouth. Why? because he now has learned how to find spicy lamb vindaloos and is reaping the rewards of many tasty morsels – a perfectly reasonable practice given that he is now put under pressure to deliver more food.

Despite good intentions…

This cyclical phenomenon is called the “ring of fire” and afflicts many organisations who just can’t seem to deliver projects on time and budget. The customers of these organisations, fed up with getting nothing but crap, start to look elsewhere, thereby increasing pressure and starting the cycle again. Management get all flustered and usually blame the assholes.

The essence of the notion of the complex adaptive system is that the assholes and sales guys need each-other. Attempting to optimise the sales guys performance in isolation, ultimately has a negative impact on the assholes, which in turn has a negative impact on the organization as a whole.  The organisation is a system that comprises of many parts that interact in different ways. The system is perfectly capable of self organising and self optimising. For example, if the sales guy feeds the organisation sushi and next time it is fed a burrito, the assholes have a certain amount of tolerance to deal with that. But when you optimise one end (reward for food) without considering the assholes at the other end, you actually reduce that tolerance to deal with change!

The lesson that should be learned here is that the command and control methods of problem solving or project management that operate by optimising one part of the system, will usually work in the short term, but to the long term detriment to the system as a whole. The result that I have seen first hand for many IT organisations in particular, is that they have developed a certain reputation in the market for being a bit on the nose because of their seeming inability to get a project completed. Once this happens, it is very very difficult for them to regain the lost trust.

Microsoft for example, has taken years to win back the hearts and minds of geeks for their actions more than a decade ago.

What sort of fast food is SharePoint?

If SharePoint were a fast food, it would either be one of those giant steaks that you get your name on the wall if you finish, or the Guatemalan chilli that sent the normally invincible Homer into the spirit world. It is so seductive to the sales guys because it is in demand, but their distance to the assholes means that they will think it should be just like any other IT infrastructure oriented project to install. Therefore, some integrators will be doomed to repeatedly bite off more than they can chew and by the time they realise it, the long term damage will be done.

So what do you do?

If you accept that the organisation is a system and that optimising one part of it will likely impact the rest of the organisation, often in unpredictable ways, then incentivising has to be more strategically focussed. In other words, the true performance indicator on a good sales guy is actually the success of the project, because it is a much more reliable indicator of the sort of food being passed to the mouth and results in customer goodwill – social capital. If sales guys received their morsels based on the success of the project as a whole, then it would force them to interact more with the assholes to achieve that end and think a little more carefully about what they feed the organisation.

But self interest is a very strong force and there are very few sales guys that would be enthusiastic about that idea. This is of course the other big problem. The longer you leave it, the harder it is for an organisation to make the changes necessary to produce the outcomes that they aspire to.

If you want to see that in practice, look no further than the Copenhagen climate change conference.

Final note about thinking in terms of systems

Of course, if we are taking a complex adaptive systems view, then one could argue that the affect of all of this would be that your sales guys will leave and find organisations who feed them bigger morsels with much less effort of (heaven forbid) being judged on real outcomes. As a result, opportunities for sales may be lost to competitors and the organisation still suffers as a whole

This is the dilemma of systems thinking and what frustrates the hell out of the “command and control” world. You can just end up with a giant talkfest and never actually make a decision on anything because systems adapt in ways that can’t be predicted.

Is it any therefore wonder that command and control usually wins out? 

Thanks for reading

Paul Culmsee

Note: For those of you who do not wish to read my usual verbose writing, then skip to the last section where there is a free web part to download and try out.

Unless you are a complete SharePoint nerd and world events don’t interest you while you spend your hours in a darkened room playing with the SP2010 beta, you would no doubt be aware that one of the most significant collaborative events in the world is currently taking place.

The United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen this month is one of the most important world gatherings of our time. You might wonder why, as a SharePoint centric blog, I am writing about this. The simple answer is that this conference in which the world will come together to negotiate and agree on one of the toughest wicked problems of our time. How to tackle international climate change in a coordinated global way. As I write this, things do not seem to be going so well :-(.

Climate change cuts to the heart of the wellbeing expected by every one of us. Whether you live in an affluent country or a developing nation, the stakes are high and the issues at hand are incredibly complex and tightly intertwined. It might all seem far away and out of sight/out of mind, but it is clear that we will all be affected by the outcomes for better and worse. The spectre of the diminishing window of opportunity to deal with this issue means that an unprecedented scale of international cooperation will be required to produce an outcome that can satisfy all stakeholders in an environmentally, economically and social bottom line.

Can it be done? For readers who are practitioners of SharePoint solutions, you should have an appreciation of the difficulty that a supposedly “collaborative tool” actually is to improve collaboration. Therefore, I want you to imagine your most difficult, dysfunctional project that you have ever encountered and just try and now multiply it by a million, gazzilion times. If there are ever lessons to be learned about effective collaboration among a large, diverse group on a hugely difficult issue, then surely it is this issue and this event.

Our contribution

My colleagues and I became interested in sense-making and collaboration on wicked problems some time back, and through the craft of Dialogue Mapping, we have had the opportunity to help diverse groups successfully work through some very challenging local issues. I need to make it clear that much of what we do in this area is far beyond SharePoint in terms of project difficulty, and in fact we often deal with non IT projects and problems that have significant social complexity.

Working with people like city planners, organisational psychologists, environmental scientists and community leaders to name a few, has rubbed off on myself and my colleagues. Through the sense-making process that we practice with these groups, we have started to see a glimpse of the world through their eyes. For me in particular, it has challenged my values, social conscience and changed the entire trajectory of where I thought my career would go. I feel that the experience has made me a much better practitioner of collaborative tools like SharePoint and I am a textbook case of the the notion that the key to improving in your own discipline, is to learn from people outside of it.

We have now become part of a global sense-making community, much like the global SharePoint community in a way. A group of diverse people that come together via common interest. To that end, my colleague at Seven Sigma, Chris Tomich has embarked on a wonderful initiative that I hope you may find of interest. He has enlisted the help of several world renowned sense-makers, such as Jeff Conklin of Cognexus and David Price of Debategraph, and created a site, http://www.copenhagensummitmap.org/, where we will attempt to create a global issue map of the various sessions and talks at the Copenhagen summit. The aim of this exercise is to try and help interested people cut through the fog of issues and understand the points of view of the participants. We are utilising IBIS, the grammar behind dialogue mapping, and the DebateGraph tool for the shared display.

How you can help

If you feel that issue mapping is for you, then I encourage you to sign up to Debategraph and help contribute to the Copenhagen debate by mapping the dialogue of the online sessions (which you can view from the site).

Otherwise, Chris has written a simple, free web part, specifically for Copenhagen which can be downloaded “Mapping tools” section of the Copenhagen site. The idea is that if you or your organisation wish to keep up with the latest information from the conference, then installing this web part onto your site, will allow all of your staff to see the Copenhagen debate unfold live via your SharePoint portal. Given that SharePoint is particularly powerful at surfacing data for business intelligence, think of this web part as a means to display global intelligence (or lack thereof, depending on your political view 🙂 ).

Installing is the usual process for a SharePoint solution file. Add the solution to central admin, deploy it to your web application of choice and then activate the site collection scoped feature called “Seven Sigma Debategraph Components”. The web part will be then available to add to a page layout or web part page.

The properties of this web part allow you some fine grained control over how the Debategraph map renders inside SharePoint. The default is to show the Debategraph stream view, which is a twitter style view of the recent updates as shown in the example below.

Stream view is not the only view available. Detail view is also very useful for rationale that has supplementary information, as shown in the example below.

By the way, you can use this web part to display any Debategraph debate – not just Copenhagen. The Debategraph map to display is also controlled via the web part properties.

For information on how to change the default map, then check out this webcast I recorded for the previous version here.

I hope that some of you find this web part of use and look forward to any feedback.

Kind regards

Paul Culmsee

www.sevensigma.com.au