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Re: Amazon Ratings - One Thumb Down #ratings #prediction-markets

Jerry Ash <jash@...>

Hi All.

I have to be careful in relating this story because it may involve people you may know, even though they are not members of this group. But the story is significant to this discussion.

Member #1 has never written a book or earned recognition with the cadre of innovative, ground-breaking KM pioneers, but has earned a high popular profile in the field through prolific communication on the Internet. Though Member #1 has only a moderate record in KM practice, the member's understanding of KM practice is excellent. Because of Member #1's credible communications abilities, and the proliferation of documents on the Internet, Member #1 has a strong following.

Unfortunately, Member #1 doesn't like member #2 whose credentials go back to the beginning of modern KM and who is prolific in producing original thoughts, tactics, publications and writing and initiatives in the KM and related fields worldwide. Member #2 also has many supporters as well as a cluster of critics who often raise both professional and personal issues.

Professional conflict is inevitable in any field, but the problem is Member #1 uses review and rating opportunities to trash almost everything Member #2 does, including the panning of several books written by Member #2. In the latest episode, Member #1 has written a negative review of a book Member #2 has only now seen in the final printer's galley. The book is not yet published!

Now, I don't take sides in these professional soap operas, but my point is that 'peer review,' whether it takes place in the loose domains of Amazon, personal websites or blogs, must be suspect. Ratings, whether among professional groups or coworkers,  are fraught with unseen agendas. And in an arena of few contributors rating/review process are fertile ground for abuse.

Jerry Ash
Founder, AOK; Special Correspondent, Inside Kowledge Magazine

Re: Amazon Ratings - One Thumb Down #ratings #prediction-markets

Bettenhausen, Richard <richard.bettenhausen@...>

#22

We have employed a similar approach as Mark's.  Although perhaps for a different reason up front. Because our IC library may still be small in comparison to most of yours, we don't have the variety of similar postings to make a rating effective.  Our focus is on 'guilting' users into leveraging because so many others have found the value in doing so.  By tracking read/download and other metrics, we are able to determine the 'top picks' of the organization and use that to drive future behavior.
 
Richard Bettenhausen
Fidelity Information Services, Inc.

Show quoted text

-----Original Message----- 
	From: sikmleaders@... on behalf of Mark May 
	Sent: Fri 1/20/2006 6:42 PM 
	To: sikmleaders@... 
	Cc: 
	Subject: Re: [sikmleaders] Amazon Ratings - One Thumb Down
	
	

	I really enjoy this topic because it has great potential to benefit our practitioners in the field and because it is a concept that everyone can envision, given the ubiquity of the Amazon experience.
	
	My thinking starts with how one would propose to use rating/feedback data. I can see at least three possible uses - 1) Provide confidence or caution to people who are considering using an IC artifact; 2) Help order search results to put higher rated content above lower rated content; 3) Provide input to content managers either to promote well rated IC or improve or retire lower rated IC.
	
	These are all worthwhile and valuable uses of ratings/feedback data. However for many of the reasons that people have cited below, I don't think that a five star rating system provides data that really is of value to meet these ends. In addition, most content is not rated at all by anyone or is not rated by enough people or it takes too long to get enough ratings to represent a consensus opinion.
	
	Given these limitations of an Amazon-like system, the IBM team is trying something a bit different. First of all, we have deployed the standard five star system and allowed space for comments on all artifacts in the major repositories. We feel that users have become conditioned through other internet experiences to expect this kind of a feedback approach. However, we don't use that raw data by itself for KM purposes. We combine the rating with other data to impute a VALUE for that artifact. The other data includes number of times it was read, downloaded, forwarded to others and printed. These factors are weighted so that a download counts for 10 times the value as a read, for example. We also give significant extra weight to any comments since we think that the comments are much more valuable than the ratings.
	
	We have deployed this approach and are actively calculating imputed values now. However, we have not yet begun to use the data. One of our highest priorities is to help people find stuff faster, so we are eager to use these imputed values to order search results. We also plan to make it available to content managers so that they can see what is accessed and "valued" most (and least) among their inventory of content. The jury is still out on how much our practitioners will actually benefit from this imputed value approach. We have some pilots planned for later this year to see how if it works as well in practice as we think it should.
	
	Mark May
	IBM
	
	 "Tom" <tombarfield@...>
	
	
	

				"Tom" <tombarfield@...> 
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[sikmleaders] Re: Amazon Ratings - One Thumb Down	
	 	

	Bruce I found your comments on Tuesday and in this note insightful.  
	I also liked the insights I heard from Kent Greenes (I think).
	
	In the next couple months I am going to be asking my team at 
	Accenture to develop our strategy in this area.  Here are some off 
	the cuff thoughts based on Tuesday's discussion and what Bruce and 
	Ravi shared in this discussion.
	
	I wonder if we should consider moving away from trying to collect 
	feedback from everyone and instead try to get feedback form people 
	who feel very strongly about the content - either good or bad.  In 
	other words - if something warrants a 2,3 or 4 on a 5 point scale 
	then I don't really care as much about the feedback.
	
	If I download a piece of content that turns out to be a big help to 
	me (score of 5 on a 5 point scale) I am probably more willing to 
	provide feedback saying thank you and recognizing that.  It would be 
	like saying I only want a rating on 5 star stuff.  
	
	If I download something that I really find to be worthless (scale of 
	1 on a 5 point scale) I might be incented to provide feedback to 
	either improve it or get it out of the system so no one else has 
	deal with it.
	
	Tom Barfield
	Accenture
	
	
	--- In sikmleaders@..., "Bruce Karney" <bkarney@a...> 
	wrote:
	>
	> Hi all,
	> 
	> In Tuesday's call, I made a comment about why I don't 
	think "Amazon-
	> style ratings" are an effective KM strategy.  Let me explain 
	briefly 
	> why I believe that, and what I think is a better approach.
	> 
	> Let me contrast two kinds of reviews or rating schemes.  These are 
	> not the only two kinds, but they represent the opposite ends of a 
	> spectrum.
	> 
	> 1. Peer review, prior to publication: This is the standard used by 
	> scientists and academics.  In essence, drafts of articles are 
	> circulated to "experts" who offer advice and input prior to 
	> publication.  This input is used by the author (and perhaps the 
	> editor of the journal) to improve the work BEFORE it is exposed 
	> (published) to a wide audience.
	> 
	> 2. Consumer review, after publication: Amazon, ePinions, and many 
	> similar rating and awards systems use this approach.  Because 
	these 
	> post-publication reviews cannot affect the published work, they 
	> are "criticism" in the literary sense.  In Amazon's case, no 
	> credentials are required to post a review, so the reviewers are 
	not 
	> peers of the authors.  Nobel prize winners and your local pizza 
	> delivery guy have an equal voice in Amazon-land (and the pizza guy 
	> probably has more free time).
	> 
	> Being able to write one's own review is a satisfying thing for the 
	> reviewer, especially since it has only become possible to do this 
	in 
	> the last few years.  However, the only way Amazon reviews impact 
	the 
	> world at large is to pull more readers toward a book or push a few 
	> away.  Isn't it better, especially in a business context, to use 
	> techniques that IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF THE BOOK?
	> 
	> That's what Peer Review is designed to do.  If business KM systems 
	> can't support pre-publication Peer Review, they should at the very 
	> least focus on post-publication Peer Review and document 
	improvement.
	> 
	> I also mentioned that at HP, where I used to work, most document 
	> ratings were 4's or 5's on a scale of 1-5.  I have located a copy 
	of 
	> study I did on the topic earlier in the year, and would like to 
	> share my findings:
	> 
	> For a sample of 57 "Knowledge Briefs," which are 6-12 page 
	technical 
	> documents desighned to inform and enlighten, there were 12,295 
	> downloads and only 53 ratings/reviews.  This is a ratio of 1 
	review 
	> per 232 downloads, and slightly less than one review per 
	document.  
	> 
	> ALL ratings were either 4 or 5.  The 53 reviews were provided by 
	40 
	> different individuals, so the vast majority of people who 
	submitted 
	> a review submitted only one, meaning (perhaps) that they lacked a 
	> valid base for comparing the Knowledge Brief they were reviewing 
	to 
	> any other Brief.  The most reviews submitted by a single person 
	was 
	> 7, and the second-most was 3.
	> 
	> I contend that if you were perusing a listing of Knowledge Briefs 
	on 
	> a given subject, all of which were either unrated or had ratings 
	> between 4.0 and 5.0, you would not have information that would 
	steer 
	> you towards best documents or away from poor documents.  You would 
	> believe that any of the documents could be worthwhile, inasmuch as 
	> none of them had low scores.  Therefore, the rating scheme 
	provides 
	> NO value to the prospective reader.  Worse yet, if there were a 
	> documented rated 1, 2 or 3, that rating would probably be a single 
	> individual's opinion because of the infrequency with which 
	Knowledge 
	> Briefs are rated at all.
	> 
	> My conclusion: don't RATE documents, but create systems to provide 
	> detailed written feedback from readers to authors BEFORE 
	publication 
	> if possible, or AFTER publication if that's the best you can do.  
	> Encourage COLLABORATION, not CRITICISM.
	> 
	> Cheers,
	> Bruce Karney
	> http://km-experts.com
	>
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
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"Download me!" she moaned #metrics

Bruce Karney <bkarney@...>

#23

On the topic of inferring the value of a document from the number of
downloads, I would like to share this true story.

When I started my first online community, devoted to meeting the
needs of educators at HP, one of the more popular topics was reviews
of training videos and CBTs.  We even licensed and uploaded reviews
from Bill Ellet's newsletter "Training Media Review."

One article we got from TMR was a review of a training video on
sexual harrassment.  The article was titled "Sex at Work," so that's
the title we used when copying it to the online community.

The number of page views of that particular posting FAR surpassed
any other contribution to the community.

This led me to understand that "reads" and "downloads" in many
contexts are driven almost entirely by the item's TITLE, not the
quality of the content.

If you are looking for a very simple metric that correlates with the
quality of the CONTENT, I suggest that you might want to think about
counting the number of times the document is revised.  When a
posting goes from version 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 you know that it's still
alive and that someone cares about improving it.  (This can, of
course, be gamed, but I think the point is still valid.)

Another sign of aliveness is the number of replies to the base
posting.  This metric can be used to gauge the aliveness of the
community as a whole, in addition to the aliveness of a particular
posting.

Cheers,
Bruce Karney
http://km-experts.com

Amazon Ratings - One Thumb Down #ratings #prediction-markets

John Maloney <jtmalone@...>

#24

Hi --

Another issue to add to the many concerning rating and ranking is 
that the folks leading these initiatives often cannot articulate
what the business outcomes are. That's a problem.

Anecdotal evidence doesn't cut it anymore. Just tell executives or
shareholders, "...our goal is to create a repository of ranked
documents." You will be quickly reassigned, retired or dismissed
like so many KM people lately.

Often, current ranking schemes are no different the the Internet
bubble hysteria of eyeballs or 'hits'(how idiots track success).

Again, a rating system is simply making a market with numbers (1-5)
as currency. Implicitly, submitters `trade' for higher ratings, for
example. Again, this is not an end in itself. What is the purpose?
The goal? The advantage?

Simply, consider making it a real market. Submitters rcv a cash
micropayment for content that is retrieved, used. They also make a
micropayment to list, submit their offerings.

Also, rating/ranking systems must have a critical mass to be
legitimate. (Solves Jerry's vignette too.) Transparent knowledge
markets will quickly correct, ameliorate a lot of the problems with
gaming and politics, for example. Elance shows some of these
characteristic. http://www.elance.com/


Here is another, more elaborate view from some friends at USC
Marshall School.

http://www.kmcluster.com/knowledge.pdf



Cordially,

-jtm
http://kmblogs.com/

Re: Amazon Ratings - One Thumb Down #ratings #prediction-markets

Dave Snowden <snowded@...>

#25

You have a lot more confidence in markets than I do

____________________

Dave Snowden

Founder, The Cynefin Centre

snowded@...

www.cynefin.net

+44 7795 437 293

Rowan Cottage

51 Lockeridge

Marlborough

SN8 4EL

United Kingdom

Show quoted text

On 21 Jan 2006, at 21:36, J Maloney ((jheuristic)) wrote:

Hi Dave -- Brief response in caps. I agree that prediction markets are useful, GOOD. but (i) we do not know yet what will happen when people try to game THEY ARE INTENDED TO BE 'GAMED' AGGRESSIVELY. THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT. them and (ii) as the results are visible then they will change the predictions. YES, ABSOLUTELY. MARKETS MUST BE TRANSPARENT TO BE EFFECTIVE. THE CHANGES DETERMINE THE PRICES. LOOK AT THESE CONTRACTS FOR AN IDEA: http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/contractSearch/ My gut feel is that we should get rid of the"prediction" word for a bit and talk instead about "prevention" and "enablement" YEAH, MAKES SENSE. MARKETS ARE VERY USEFUL, ESSENTIAL REALLY, TO RISK MANAGEMENT (HEDGING). More to the story... "Thirty years ago, when Charles Schwab bucked Wall Street and founded the first ever discount brokerage, people were skeptical. It couldn't be done, they claimed. Wall Street was governed by the large financial giants which charged enormous fees, catered to the very rich or the institutional investors of the world, and largely paid lip service to the small investor. Despite being blackballed by Wall Street, Schwab changed all that, bringing the financial markets to the masses, reducing commissions to affordable levels such that the nation's significant middle class could invest for their own futures in the same way institutions had done for years. It was a watershed moment." {hedgestreet] The rest, as they say, is history. "Chuck" now has the biggest compound in Pebble Beach! It is roughly the same thing today. Only highly 'sophisticated' brokers and bankers trade derivatives, about 3% of very, high net worth investors and giant institutions. It make up a HUGE market, some say bigger than the stock market. "Retail hedge markets are coming. See: HedgeStreet's site www.hedgestreet.com enables members to trade small, inexpensive, easy-to-understand "event derivative" contracts (called HedgeletsR) in markets never before accessible to individual traders." {hedgestreet] Cheers, John John Maloney T: 415.902.9676 IM/Skype: jheuristic ID: http://public.2idi.com/=john.maloney Prediction Markets: http://www.kmcluster.com/nyc/PM/PM.htm KM Blogs: http://kmblogs.com/

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Amazon Ratings - One Thumb Down #ratings #prediction-markets

J Maloney \(jheuristic\) <jtmalone@...>

#26

Hi Dave -- 

It is not a matter of confidence, rather of outcomes. 

We've all been trained to listen to experts, pundits and highly credentialed
people. Oh, and there are those polls and polling that are so important. Not
to mention that enterprise standby, the survey. Having confidence in these
instruments is, well, not a very good approach. Markets consistently
outperform these methods. 

Here are some pop media: http://kmblogs.com/public/item/106758

Here is a great PM vortal: http://www.chrisfmasse.com/

Cheers,

John

Show quoted text

-----Original Message-----
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 1:52 PM
To: sikmleaders@...
Subject: [sikmleaders] Digest Number 21

There is 1 message in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

      1. Re: Digest Number 17
           From: Dave Snowden <snowded@...>


________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 1         
   Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 16:29:34 +0000
   From: Dave Snowden <snowded@...>
Subject: Re: Digest Number 17

You have a lot more confidence in markets than I do

____________________
Dave Snowden
Founder, The Cynefin Centre

Possible 5th Book for Stan's List #books

Bruce Karney <bkarney@...>

#27

Hi Stan,

I really liked your 2-pager on KM.  It really packs a lot of content
into a small space.

A book I read recently that I think is really quite good about
setting up and leading COPs is "Company Command" by Nancy Dixon.

It may overlap with Wenger's book (which I haven't read), but it is 
short, easy to read, and full of good examples.  The software package
used by Company Command and other U.S. Army COPs comes from a Canadian
(!) company called Tomoye.

My take-away from reading the book is that ENTHUSIASM and
PERSONALIZATION of communication between the facilitator and
contributors, especially new contributors, is a key success factor.
It also helps to know that material you share may actually save a
fellow soldier's life.  I don't know how "regular businesses" can
inject this kind of urgency and importance into participating in
their COPs, but I'd love to hear some stories from anyone who has
done it or seen it done.

Cheers,
Bruce

Re: Possible 5th Book for Stan's List #books

dianna.wiggins@...

#28

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Re: Possible 5th Book for Stan's List #books

Garfield, Stan <stanley.garfield@...>

#29

>I noticed when Stan sent out his note the other day that the link on the website to his material was not working. Has that been fixed?

The link on the posted version is still bad, but it will eventually be fixed by Nancy's webmaster. The correct link is:

Setting up a Knowledge Management Program: Guidelines, Resources and Tools

http://www.chrysalisinternational.com/KMprogram.pdf

One of our members, Jack Vinson, blogged about the article today:

Sharing Knowledge by Design

http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2006/02/03/sharing_knowledge_by_design.html

If anyone else would like to do the same, please feel free, and let me know so that I can thank you.

Regards,
Stan

Re: Possible 5th Book for Stan's List #books

StanGarfield <stanley.garfield@...>

#30

The link in the version posted by Chrysalis International has now been
fixed.

Also, I added more books, periodicals, blogs, and web sites to the
list, and the updated version has been posted at destinationKM
(http://www.destinationkm.com/ ) as "Setting up a KM Program"
(http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7317&TopicID=10 ).

Regards,
Stan

Employee-created Company Values #culture #vision

Bruce Karney <bkarney@...>

#31

During Raj's presentation today when he talked about the creation of
the CLASS company values, I was reminded of a similar process that
took place early in Intuit's history.

See http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/careers/why.jhtml for a brief
story of what their 10 values are and how they were developed.

As I recall, Intuit was also approximately a 400 person company when
they created their values in 1993.

Cheers,
Bruce Karney
Marsh
bruce.karney@...

Re: Employee-created Company Values #culture #vision

Raj Datta <rajd@...>

#32

Thanks Bruce -- you're right, there do appear to be similarities, including
headcount and approach.

Also, the comment from Steve Denning was interesting about moving towards
managing values.   I reflected a bit on that after the call.

The way I see it, core values define our belief systems and behavior(e.g.
what is right and wrong) which define our mental models (e.g. rationalizing,
categorizing, etc.)  So, if we wanted to impact behavior and have a shared
vision and common understanding, then we must start with core values.  If we
are a knowledge based organization, then the core values must stress KM.

However, core values would state the intent, and putting it on paper would
not be enough.  To put it into practice, the role of the support structure
becomes crucial, including the enabling technology, people (HR) policies,
communication, social networks etc.  This, overtime, helps us walk the talk
so to speak.  Communication through Storytelling (e.g. good & bad, compliance
and non-compliance) IMHO plays a crucial role in value clarification,
particularly in tricky areas like integrity.  Mechanisms like 360 degree
feedback on core values are opportunities for everyone to reflect upon what
the core values mean.  Thus overtime, we move from intent into practice.

Regards,
Raj Datta
General Manager, Knowledge Management
MindTree Consulting Pvt. Ltd.
Office:  +91-80-2671-1777 x1603
Mobile: +91-98451-97530

Show quoted text

-----Original Message-----
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...] On
Behalf Of Bruce Karney
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 9:59 PM
To: sikmleaders@...
Subject: [sikmleaders] Employee-created Company Values

During Raj's presentation today when he talked about the creation of
the CLASS company values, I was reminded of a similar process that
took place early in Intuit's history.

See http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/careers/why.jhtml for a brief
story of what their 10 values are and how they were developed.

As I recall, Intuit was also approximately a 400 person company when
they created their values in 1993.

Cheers,
Bruce Karney
Marsh
bruce.karney@...

Yahoo! Groups Links

February 2006 SIKM Call: Raj Datta - Building a Knowledge Culture #monthly-call #culture

Stan Garfield <stangarfield@...>

#33
Edited

On Tuesday we held our 9th monthly call. Here is a summary.

Attendees

Raj Datta, MindTree
Steve Denning
Stan Garfield, HP
Andrew Gent, HP
Bruce Karney, Marsh
Michael Koffman
Doug Madgic, Cisco
Mark May, IBM
Mark Neff, CSC
Sarah Oldrin, Solvay
Chris Riemer, Knowledge Street
Sanjay Swarup, Ford
Paul Rehmet, Unisys
Rick Wallace, SAIC
Peter West, Continuous Innovation

Raj Datta presented "Building a Knowledge Culture." His presentation is available at MindTreeKnowledgeCulture.pdf

Thanks to those of you who were on the call. I will send out a reminder for future calls on the business day prior to the call.

Future Calls

March 21: Reed Stuedemann - "Caterpillar's Knowledge Network"
April 18: Bill Ives - "What blogs and wikis bring to business and knowledge management"
May 16: Kent Greenes - "Making learning & performing routine"
June 20: Jack Vinson - "Knowledge communities, community building, and blogging"
July 18: Sanjay Swarup - "Seven Strategies for Maximizing the value of Knowledge Sharing"
August 15: Brian Gorman - "Virtual Collaboration in the Global Enterprise at Intel"
September 19: Steve Denning - "Leadership, Innovation, and Business Narrative"
October 17: Michael Koffman - "How to leverage public education by means of a collaboration strategy"
November 21: Peter West - "Nurturing Trust - Leveraging Knowledge"
December 19: Patti Anklam - "Models for creating different types of networks, inside and outside of organizations"

Re: Employee-created Company Values #culture #vision

David Snowden <snowded@...>

#35

Well just to be a disruptive element

The concept that you go from values, to beliefs to mental models to behaviour is linear, assumes cause and effect relationships and in no way reflects what we now know about how the brain makes decisions.

In practice we partially scan data (5% if we really work with it) and scan stored patterns of experience in our long term memory to make a first fit pattern match which we then act on.

The patterns come from personal experience (especially failure) and through stories.

Values and believes are emergent properties of the interaction between experience and our patterns, and in turn influence which stories get told but there is no linear causality.

Dave Snowden

Founder, The Cynefin Centre

www.cynefin.net

Show quoted text

On 22 Feb 2006, at 07:00, Raj Datta wrote:

Thanks Bruce -- you're right, there do appear to be similarities, including headcount and approach. Also, the comment from Steve Denning was interesting about moving towards managing values. I reflected a bit on that after the call. The way I see it, core values define our belief systems and behavior(e.g. what is right and wrong) which define our mental models (e.g. rationalizing, categorizing, etc.) So, if we wanted to impact behavior and have a shared vision and common understanding, then we must start with core values. If we are a knowledge based organization, then the core values must stress KM. However, core values would state the intent, and putting it on paper would not be enough. To put it into practice, the role of the support structure becomes crucial, including the enabling technology, people (HR) policies, communication, social networks etc. This, overtime, helps us walk the talk so to speak. Communication through Storytelling (e.g. good & bad, compliance and non-compliance) IMHO plays a crucial role in value clarification, particularly in tricky areas like integrity. Mechanisms like 360 degree feedback on core values are opportunities for everyone to reflect upon what the core values mean. Thus overtime, we move from intent into practice. Regards, Raj Datta General Manager, Knowledge Management MindTree Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Office: +91-80-2671-1777 x1603 Mobile: +91-98451-97530 -----Original Message----- From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...] On Behalf Of Bruce Karney Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 9:59 PM To: sikmleaders@... Subject: [sikmleaders] Employee-created Company Values During Raj's presentation today when he talked about the creation of the CLASS company values, I was reminded of a similar process that took place early in Intuit's history. See http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/careers/why.jhtml for a brief story of what their 10 values are and how they were developed. As I recall, Intuit was also approximately a 400 person company when they created their values in 1993. Cheers, Bruce Karney Marsh bruce.karney@... Yahoo! Groups Links

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SNA and "Clout Rank Algorithm" #SNA-ONA-VNA

Bruce Karney <bkarney@...>

#34

The recent post about SNA at Braintrust spurred this train of though.

Many of us have heard about Google's Page Rank Algorithm.  It has grown
in complexity over time, but the basic idea has been explained to me as:

The rank (or importance) of a web page is based on the NUMBER of other
pages that link to it, and the rank of those pages.

So, if I create a new web page and only one other page points to mine,
the rank of my page depends on how many OTHER pages link to the page
that points to mine.  That seems reasonable and straightforward.

This simple insight has created several hundred Google millionaires in
Silicon Valley.

My question: does anyone know of a Clout Rank Algorithm that measures a
person's ability to exercise "clout" through their social network?
Wouldn't such a measure work similarly to Page Ranking?

At an extreme, if you were to discover that you were on a subway train
suffering from amnesia, knowing no one, you would have zero clout.  But
if you were Jack Welch or Tony Blair, with thousands of friends and
acquaintances, many of them powerful, you would have vast amounts of
clout.

Has anyone ever managed to construct a quantitative model of this?
Would such models provide value to individuals or to businesses?

Could a conscious process of trying to acquire more clout be morally
positive, if one's intention was to use that clout to improve the
world, or are attempts to accumulate clout almost always simply social
climing?  (By the way, I get the impression from Bill and Melinda Gates
recent interest in medical philanthropy that he has been deploying his
enormous clout in VERY positive ways.)

I'd love to hear from anyone with thoughts to share on this topic.

Cheers,
Bruce Karney
bkarney@...
650-964-3567 (Pacific Time Zone home #)

Re: Employee-created Company Values #culture #vision

Raj Datta <rajd@...>

#36

Great disruption Dave -- thanks for pointing this out. I didn't mean to trivialize things and make them sound linear and mechanistic, and may have given that impression in the email, now that I look at it. In the call and in the slides, I did stress the emergent nature of the behavior that we seek, and am on board with your thinking.

However, this brings up another interesting question that I would like to raise. What is the best mechanism for communicating about emergent phenomena?

Stories, analogies, and metaphors clearly help, visualization may help. But if your audience is made up of left-brained rationalists who believe in cause and effect and linear deterministic relationships (which, let's face it, is dominant) , then how do you explain emergent phenomena to them. I have had discussions with people where they have asked whether culture comes first or process or technology in how you deploy a change program! I have used phrases like "interdependent, interlinked, inter-related" to describe culture, intellectual capital etc. But some people don't understand even that. As a change agent or salesperson, sometimes you have to be able to communicate with the stakeholders in terms that they understand. And sometimes that has to be reduced down to cause and effect or inputs and outputs which they may more easily relate to. But then you're not doing justice to the actual nature or complexity of the phenomena.

Look at the software development world -- we have managed it as if it were a set of linear deterministic activities historically. Recently of course, the Agile Software Development movement has brought attention to the interdependent collaborative and non-deterministic nature of that work. But the question still remains on how to communicate in a rational world about such phenomena -- it is challenge.

Any thoughts?

From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...] On Behalf Of David Snowden
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 10:58 PM
To: sikmleaders@...
Subject: Re: [sikmleaders] Employee-created Company Values

Well just to be a disruptive element

The concept that you go from values, to beliefs to mental models to behaviour is linear, assumes cause and effect relationships and in no way reflects what we now know about how the brain makes decisions.

In practice we partially scan data (5% if we really work with it) and scan stored patterns of experience in our long term memory to make a first fit pattern match which we then act on.

The patterns come from personal experience (especially failure) and through stories.

Values and believes are emergent properties of the interaction between experience and our patterns, and in turn influence which stories get told but there is no linear causality.

Dave Snowden

Founder, The Cynefin Centre

www.cynefin.net

On 22 Feb 2006, at 07:00, Raj Datta wrote:

Show quoted text

Thanks Bruce -- you're right, there do appear to be similarities, including headcount and approach. Also, the comment from Steve Denning was interesting about moving towards managing values. I reflected a bit on that after the call. The way I see it, core values define our belief systems and behavior(e.g. what is right and wrong) which define our mental models (e.g. rationalizing, categorizing, etc.) So, if we wanted to impact behavior and have a shared vision and common understanding, then we must start with core values. If we are a knowledge based organization, then the core values must stress KM. However, core values would state the intent, and putting it on paper would not be enough. To put it into practice, the role of the support structure becomes crucial, including the enabling technology, people (HR) policies, communication, social networks etc. This, overtime, helps us walk the talk so to speak. Communication through Storytelling (e.g. good & bad, compliance and non-compliance) IMHO plays a crucial role in value clarification, particularly in tricky areas like integrity. Mechanisms like 360 degree feedback on core values are opportunities for everyone to reflect upon what the core values mean. Thus overtime, we move from intent into practice. Regards, Raj Datta General Manager, Knowledge Management MindTree Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Office: +91-80-2671-1777 x1603 Mobile: +91-98451-97530 -----Original Message----- From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...] On Behalf Of Bruce Karney Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 9:59 PM To: sikmleaders@... Subject: [sikmleaders] Employee-created Company Values During Raj's presentation today when he talked about the creation of the CLASS company values, I was reminded of a similar process that took place early in Intuit's history. See http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/careers/why.jhtml for a brief story of what their 10 values are and how they were developed. As I recall, Intuit was also approximately a 400 person company when they created their values in 1993. Cheers, Bruce Karney Marsh bruce.karney@... Yahoo! Groups Links

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Re: Employee-created Company Values #culture #vision

Steve Denning

#37

Dave

While I would agree about the non-linearity of relationships involved, I'm less confident about the apparently sharp distinction you seem to draw between "stored patterns of experience" and "values", with values being "emergent properties from the interaction of experience and our stored patterns of experience."

Aren't values also stored patterns of experience, albeit of a particular kind? Aren't values among the stored patterns of experience that we scan along with the the rest of the data, so as to make a first fit pattern match that we act on?

If so, that might facilitate handling Raj's challenge of explaining to people unfamiliar with the concept of emergence as to what is going on here. It might also help us avoid falling into the trap of imagining a sequential process in which we act on data + (value-free) patterns of experience, with values only coming into the picture somewhat later as an emergent phenomenon.

Steve Denning

http://www.stevedenning.com

Email: steve@...

Phone: 202 966 9392
Fax: 202 686 0591

Re: Employee-created Company Values #culture #vision

David Snowden <snowded@...>

#38

interesting point, but I don't see how one can have an experience of a value, values I think arise from multiple interactions between experiences and are influenced strongly by stories (which themselves emerge from experience). As values establish themselves, they become filters through which we store expereince and thus are enforced ......

Dave Snowden

Founder, The Cynefin Centre

www.cynefin.net

Show quoted text

On 25 Feb 2006, at 16:09, Steve Denning wrote:

Dave

While I would agree about the non-linearity of relationships involved, I'm less confident about the apparently sharp distinction you seem to draw between "stored patterns of experience" and "values", with values being "emergent properties from the interaction of experience and our stored patterns of experience."

Aren't values also stored patterns of experience, albeit of a particular kind? Aren't values among the stored patterns of experience that we scan along with the the rest of the data, so as to make a first fit pattern match that we act on?

If so, that might facilitate handling Raj's challenge of explaining to people unfamiliar with the concept of emergence as to what is going on here. It might also help us avoid falling into the trap of imagining a sequential process in which we act on data + (value-free) patterns of experience, with values only coming into the picture somewhat later as an emergent phenomenon.

Steve Denning

http://www.stevedenning.com

Email: steve@...

Phone: 202 966 9392
Fax: 202 686 0591

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Re: Employee-created Company Values #culture #vision

David Snowden <snowded@...>

#39

I think communication through metaphor has great value (and use it). I also think its more valuable than examples. Examples lead to immitation, metaphor to applying a new concept to ones unique situation.

I don't buy the "people think its causal, so explain it in causal terms" - you just perpetuate bad thinking. Better to create a metaphor and engage them in action - the theory can wait until they have the experience to understand it and engaging in intractable or difficult problems is one way to get people to experiment - they know the old ways don't work. Of course some people just never get things, until half the market has already understood them - so if you want to sell to them OK, you would compromise, but as long as their are early adopters around I know where I prefer to work!

Software is fascinating in this respect (and I am working with some of the Agile people). Not many people have yet got the concept that these days you don't design an application, you allow the applications to emerge from the interaction of people and objects ....

Dave Snowden

Founder, The Cynefin Centre

www.cynefin.net

Show quoted text

On 25 Feb 2006, at 08:14, Raj Datta wrote:

Great disruption Dave -- thanks for pointing this out. I didn't mean to trivialize things and make them sound linear and mechanistic, and may have given that impression in the email, now that I look at it. In the call and in the slides, I did stress the emergent nature of the behavior that we seek, and am on board with your thinking.

However, this brings up another interesting question that I would like to raise. What is the best mechanism for communicating about emergent phenomena?

Stories, analogies, and metaphors clearly help, visualization may help. But if your audience is made up of left-brained rationalists who believe in cause and effect and linear deterministic relationships (which, let's face it, is dominant) , then how do you explain emergent phenomena to them. I have had discussions with people where they have asked whether culture comes first or process or technology in how you deploy a change program! I have used phrases like "interdependent, interlinked, inter-related" to describe culture, intellectual capital etc. But some people don't understand even that. As a change agent or salesperson, sometimes you have to be able to communicate with the stakeholders in terms that they understand. And sometimes that has to be reduced down to cause and effect or inputs and outputs which they may more easily relate to. But then you're not doing justice to the actual nature or complexity of the phenomena.

Look at the software development world -- we have managed it as if it were a set of linear deterministic activities historically. Recently of course, the Agile Software Development movement has brought attention to the interdependent collaborative and non-deterministic nature of that work. But the question still remains on how to communicate in a rational world about such phenomena -- it is challenge.

Any thoughts?

From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...] On Behalf Of David Snowden
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 10:58 PM
To: sikmleaders@...
Subject: Re: [sikmleaders] Employee-created Company Values

Well just to be a disruptive element
The concept that you go from values, to beliefs to mental models to behaviour is linear, assumes cause and effect relationships and in no way reflects what we now know about how the brain makes decisions.

In practice we partially scan data (5% if we really work with it) and scan stored patterns of experience in our long term memory to make a first fit pattern match which we then act on.

The patterns come from personal experience (especially failure) and through stories.

Values and believes are emergent properties of the interaction between experience and our patterns, and in turn influence which stories get told but there is no linear causality.

Dave Snowden

Founder, The Cynefin Centre

www.cynefin.net

On 22 Feb 2006, at 07:00, Raj Datta wrote:

Thanks Bruce -- you're right, there do appear to be similarities, including headcount and approach. Also, the comment from Steve Denning was interesting about moving towards managing values. I reflected a bit on that after the call. The way I see it, core values define our belief systems and behavior(e.g. what is right and wrong) which define our mental models (e.g. rationalizing, categorizing, etc.) So, if we wanted to impact behavior and have a shared vision and common understanding, then we must start with core values. If we are a knowledge based organization, then the core values must stress KM. However, core values would state the intent, and putting it on paper would not be enough. To put it into practice, the role of the support structure becomes crucial, including the enabling technology, people (HR) policies, communication, social networks etc. This, overtime, helps us walk the talk so to speak. Communication through Storytelling (e.g. good & bad, compliance and non-compliance) IMHO plays a crucial role in value clarification, particularly in tricky areas like integrity. Mechanisms like 360 degree feedback on core values are opportunities for everyone to reflect upon what the core values mean. Thus overtime, we move from intent into practice. Regards, Raj Datta General Manager, Knowledge Management MindTree Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Office: +91-80-2671-1777 x1603 Mobile: +91-98451-97530 -----Original Message----- From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...] On Behalf Of Bruce Karney Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 9:59 PM To: sikmleaders@... Subject: [sikmleaders] Employee-created Company Values During Raj's presentation today when he talked about the creation of the CLASS company values, I was reminded of a similar process that took place early in Intuit's history. See http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/careers/why.jhtml for a brief story of what their 10 values are and how they were developed. As I recall, Intuit was also approximately a 400 person company when they created their values in 1993. Cheers, Bruce Karney Marsh bruce.karney@... Yahoo! Groups Links

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Knowledge management Consulting firms System integration
Computer security Computer training Computer internet

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Visit your group "sikmleaders" on the web.
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: sikmleaders-unsubscribe@...
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Computer security Computer training Computer internet

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Visit your group "sikmleaders" on the web.
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Re: SNA and "Clout Rank Algorithm" #SNA-ONA-VNA

Jack Vinson <jackvinson@...>

#40

Is there a Clout Rank in SNA?  

Yes. Depending on which SNA camp you follow, it's viewed a few
different ways, but you can very quickly spot the highly connected
people (hubs).  This level of connectivity can be calculated as
degree centrality, but on first pass it is related to how many
direct connections a person has.  It's a number that says, on
average, how close are people in the network.  The lower the number,
the more direct connections a node has.

But you can quickly imagine that a highly-connected person isn't
terribly important if all the people in that network are also highly
interconnected amongst themselves.  (I believe this is something
that Google checks for as well - self-referential pages aren't as
highly ranked.)  So the next thing to look for are nodes that lie
between groups of nodes.  They may not have as many connections, but
they may create connections between important subnetworks.  There is
also a measure for this, "betweenness."  The higher it is, the more
brokering power that node has.

Finally, you could ask how close is a node to the entire network,
which is a similar measure to degree.  The results vary, depending
on the topography of the network.  Closeness looks at how quickly
one could communicate with the entire network, rather than the
average separation.  The result is that less heavily-connected nodes
might actually be closer overall.  

Regards,

Jack Vinson, Ph.D.
Knowledge Jolt, Inc.
http://www.jackvinson.com

Show quoted text

-----Original Message-----
From: sikmleaders@...
[mailto:sikmleaders@...] On Behalf Of Bruce Karney
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 10:39 PM
To: sikmleaders@...
Subject: [sikmleaders] SNA and "Clout Rank Algorithm"

The recent post about SNA at Braintrust spurred this train of
though.

Many of us have heard about Google's Page Rank Algorithm.  It has
grown in complexity over time, but the basic idea has been explained
to me as:

The rank (or importance) of a web page is based on the NUMBER of
other pages that link to it, and the rank of those pages.

So, if I create a new web page and only one other page points to
mine, the rank of my page depends on how many OTHER pages link to
the page that points to mine.  That seems reasonable and
straightforward.

This simple insight has created several hundred Google millionaires
in Silicon Valley.

My question: does anyone know of a Clout Rank Algorithm that
measures a person's ability to exercise "clout" through their social
network?  
Wouldn't such a measure work similarly to Page Ranking?

At an extreme, if you were to discover that you were on a subway
train suffering from amnesia, knowing no one, you would have zero
clout.  But if you were Jack Welch or Tony Blair, with thousands of
friends and acquaintances, many of them powerful, you would have
vast amounts of clout.

Has anyone ever managed to construct a quantitative model of this?  
Would such models provide value to individuals or to businesses?

Could a conscious process of trying to acquire more clout be morally
positive, if one's intention was to use that clout to improve the
world, or are attempts to accumulate clout almost always simply
social climing?  (By the way, I get the impression from Bill and
Melinda Gates recent interest in medical philanthropy that he has
been deploying his enormous clout in VERY positive ways.)

I'd love to hear from anyone with thoughts to share on this topic.

Cheers,
Bruce Karney
bkarney@...
650-964-3567 (Pacific Time Zone home #)

Yahoo! Groups Links