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September 15 Organising social networks....Organising social networks is a practical challenge. Most people who attempt it do so with the tools they have on their workplace bench. Thus they try to create organisations where none can flourish - the best example is the fashion of creating 'online communities'. Communities flourish because the members have a shared purpose, set of values, or experiences. Appointing a Director/Manager of Communities to better organise these members is now a common practice. However the role of these managers of communities is never entirely clear. They are suppose to control these entities but how they intend to do that and why they would want to do that is not apparent, at least to me. I tried to perform this function in the early 1990s and I found that my efforts were totally counter-productive. Sure the technologies have moved a long way since BUT importantly the wants and needs of people have not. I have concluded that social networks are best left to their own devices because they are indeed self-organising entities. If these entities impact on you, your business, or your communal activities then you should seek constant feedback from them. Tap into both the negative and positive feedback you can access about you and your concerns from them. Change your behaviour. Monitor the feedback. Change your behaviour. Monitor the feedback. After a few iterations of this simple feedback loop, you will realise that the patterns of feedback you are getting is changing and it may well be changing in ways that flatter you. You will also recognise that you are not in control of these social networks at this point and neither are you organising them but you are organising your activities to better fit the communities you are monitoring. In turn, the patterns of behaviours from those communities are now changing to better fit your wants and needs. TrackbacksThe trackback URL for this entry is: http://richardlipscombe.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1FBE9E28B4A1A9F!1502.trak Weblogs that reference this entry
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