group mind blog

We've Started a Blog
We invite you to visit our new public blog. We intend this to be a place to publish ideas about collaboration and collective intelligence, both our own thoughts and those of our partner consultants. You'll find articles there already on:

* Issues in getting people to work online
* Consultant Partners' ideas on the Value Proposition for their clients in online collaboration
* References for Effective Decision Making
* Studying collective intelligence (a quick pitch for the new MIT site on this subject)
* A section we'll develop to Exchange ideas about how GroupMind tools can be used.

Take a look at http://blog.groupmindexpress.com

Point of View
We certainly have a point of view. It revolves around the power of group intelligence, the importance of group process and shared access to archived meeting or project data, the usefulness of visual cues for context in online work. These are design considerations in building out a collaborative space, but they also speak to the need for project leaders to think about group psychology when setting up online work. Here are some further viewpoints:

*
Role of simplicity (in building in usability and adoption)
*
Need to allow for change dynamics (group has to process information at head, heart and hands levels)
*
Importance of iteration (moving through repeated steps of divergent and convergent thinking)
*
Power of an accessible written record (transparency, shared context and urgency)

Here is an excerpt from one of the articles:

One of the biggest issues in getting your organization into online work is the mental shift. It isn't just a matter of "doing what we already do, but do it virtually." This shift is one of

* being clear about the process
* building steps backwards from your desired result
* intentionally simplifying what the group does
* building in feedback cycles.

Most people using collaboration, it seems to me, are doing one of these: running surveys, conducting ongoing disucssions, holding online meetings or making a list of tasks. Nothing wrong with this -- but what we advocate is setting up an ongoing workspace, and doing several of these things in context within an organized environment. When you do this, you are more likely to involve your constituents in interaction, and in getting the work completed.

If you are a consultant or a student of online collaboration, and would like to write a short article that would fit with our purpose of forwarding ideas about working together, please let us know.
Please email or call us if you have an issue to discuss. We will be happy to go over things with you. (jon@groupmindexpress.com or 831-465-0576)


|||||||||||||||||||| GroupMind GroupMail ||||||||||||||||||||