Toluu : Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks.

The more I immerse myself in the flow -- increase my addiction to the Internet, some would have it -- the harder it is to focus and collect my thoughts in a blog. I've always tried to use my posts to synthesize ideas that come from different places, so it's sometimes a long time before things gel into a coherent concept. Lilia Efimova's blog this morning brought my process into focus.

Her PhD thesis is on the blogger community and blogging. She has continued to blog throughout her research and now in her dissertation-writing phase. Here's how she divides the process of writing into phases:

Awareness and articulation -- starting to get ideas on the radar
Sense-making -- when the connections among the ideas and a possible meaning become clear
Turning the ideas into specific product -- the dissertation chapter

Here is her perceptive map of the process:

Here are the bits I am collecting (somewhere between the two left-side states):

Understanding what collection of Web 2.0 tools to use in different contexts (this w

Managerial Essays on Social NetworksOctober 26

A re-posting on the Value Networks blog of a list of research centers in social network analysis reminded me to take a look at what's happening at the University of Kentucky's International Research Center on Social Networks in Business which nabbed Steve Borgatti away from Boston a year and a half ago. I noticed a few "managerial essays" that I hadn't seen before that Steve has written and that are now posted.

Steve's essay on Facilitating Knowledge Flows provides definitions of centralization, density, core/periphery, and also a term new to me, multiplexity (the the extent to which one kind of tie between two people is accompanied by another kind of tie between the same two people).

Creating Knowledge: Network Structure and Innovation illustrates network structures for innovation, and
Selecting a Team Leader is a short and powerful reminder of how network position can be a predictor of a team's success.

I miss seeing Steve around Boston and here in my home town of Harvard.

Grace HappensOctober 12

We had an extraordinary theater experience last night at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA. Let Me Down Easy is an Anna Deavere Smith "play in evolution" that begs the audience to inquiry about the nature of grace. If you are not familiar with Deavere Smith's work, you can find her on Ted. Her solo performances are based on interviews with people she seeks out in order to learn how the world occurs to them. As she talks with them and records the conversations, she acquires these people as characters who then inhabit her play as she inhabits them. Barefoot, so as better to "walk in their words," she expresses their thoughts and emotions as she speaks their words verbatim.

It's the weaving. In Let Me Down Easy, she mixes the views of theologians (including a Buddhist monk and an Iranian imam) about the concept of grace (which is a uniquely Christian concept) with the actual experience of grace as it visits or people's lives. Reverends James Cone ("Grace is Power") and Peter Gomes (businessmen are disinclined to practice the golden rule until after are successful) provide glimpses into different worldviews and experiences, one following the other

GenerationsOctober 8

You know you've been touched by a powerful idea or theory when it keeps coming back to mind, and begging you to apply its perspective to other ideas you encounter or read about. I've been touched by the Strauss and Howe theory of generations.

Deb Gilburg, of the Gilburg Leadership Institute introduced the idea (first described in the 1991 book Generations) to a recent meeting of our local idea network Gennova. The theory has it that there is a cycle of generational patterns that repeats every four generations (approximately 22 to 26 years). Strauss and Howe have characterized the four patterns and have mapped these patterns to 350 years of American history. Each pattern both shapes and is shaped by the historical context of its time, but the underlying characteristics of each pattern remain the same.

We are now accustomed to thinking about our three primary current generations, Boomers (the first generation to actually identify and name itself), GenX, and GenY. There are, of course, still many members of the pre-boomer "GI" generation that took us through WWII and its immediate antecedent, the generation that Strauss and Howe call the "Silents." The archetypes that typify these generations are the Hero, Artist,

Powerful new tools for Value Network AnalysisAugust 27

Value Network Analysis (VNA) is one of the sense-making tools that I emphasize in my book, Net Work.
I have had the privilege of working with and learning from its inventor, Verna Allee, and have internalized the mapping of value exchanges into my consulting practice. Whether shared or created with the client or not, it's how I make sense of how a network of actors (inside an organization, or across multiple organizations) gets work done. The units of analysis in a VNA are (1) a role, for example, technical writer, software developer, or end user and (2) exchanges. Connections among roles represent exchanges of value that are either tangible deliverables (proposals, contracts, invoices, payments) or intangible (reputation, trust, well-being). In a VNA for an economic development engine for a Canadian province, we mapped the roles of the development engine, local ICT companies, schools, government agencies, and so on: