ITS framework for collaboration
This week a group was charged with making recommendations about how ITS should move forward with a framework for collaboration (an intranet, but I don't really like that word - too much baggage). The group includes people from almost all across ITS, and they've been asked to make their initial recommendation in about a month from now. That's a short fuse and I'm thankful for the can-do attitude in the group. We've got lots of "local" success stories to talk about that relate to embracing new methods for collaborating and it is now time to "organize" these efforts with some coherence to help us all find expertise, knowledge, passion in our own organization. This group has fun challenge to take on in August. I mean it - fun.
While this group takes its inventory, makes lists and checks them twice, etc. - the most important part of these changes rests all of the rest of us. Each and every person in ITS has to start to think about contributing to a knowledge/experience/think space. It takes time to find your voice, for a group to find its voice - but these things are only found by trying, doing. You can get a head start on learning to how to contribute by starting a blog - today. You can get a head start on learning how to contribute by commenting on someone else's blog. You can even get a head start by "just" reading blogs. And it isn't just about blogs. Bottom line is, let's get started with the hard part - changing old habits.
I'll point to my past entry regarding Compute:Communicate ratios. Everyone has a responsibility to contribute. If someone tells you you can't contribute or suggests that you shouldn't - whether it is blogging, commenting on blogs, using wikis, etc. - print this out, take it to them and tell them it's the direction into which we are trying to head. If you have knowledge, value, experience - you are bound by duty to share it.
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Well, the best I can conjure at the moment is one big fat AMEN (with hands in air). Reading in between the lines, and simply from my perspective, I view this post as a way to also communicate that we're all vehicles for change. Whether it's a blog, a wiki, another collaborative space, or just a walk from your office, safety zone, whatever, to someone else's space, we're all - individually and collectively - responsible for actively fostering improvement by sharing what we do to get there. Nothing is being dictated - ideas and method are just simply suggested as a "try this to see how/if it works" to help get us all to where we need to go. Sure, it's a risk of sorts, but a low-stakes one, because, at the very least, the attempt/effort is being made. Change and wanting to improve the way things are done, in any context, doesn't happen by wondering about your situation or "complaining" about it, for that matter. Collectively sharing what we do is no easy task, but doing the work to get there, and leveraging some creative ways to do this *will* make a difference.