re: Enterprise 2.0 and Observable Work

Friday June 25, 2010: Observable Work discussion centered on Jim McGee's original blog post Managing the visibility of knowledge work, including a comment and blog post: Observable Work: The Taming of the Flow by @briantullis and a comment and analysis with several well sourced examples by @johnt, including this:

"Yes, the real learning is in all the nuances of how we work, not reading a manual, it’s a skill, a capacity to act….it’s experience. I agree that the digital era has allowed for invisible work to happen, but at the same time there is great opportunity for your work to be even more visible than it was in the pre-digital era. Now anyone (not just people involved on the task) can come across your work if you use social tools rather than email and attachments…indeed raw interactions are recorded (searchable).

I also think that the constraints of geography and time in virtual teams, kind of means that you have to pay more importance to working more visibly, but not just in a synchronous way like tele-cons…we can use other social tools for when we aren’t all in the same room…and I’m not talking email." - John Tropea

Here's a summary of Twitter chat using tag #OWork, including tweets that weren't shown using Twitter's built-in search - arghh!

@roundtrip is me.

? @VMaryAbraham: Open/Visible work? I need to be persuaded. See this morning's post. bit.ly/9VVSVE

@roundtrip: Several differences with Observable Work (#OWork) model:

1) It's discretionary. You don't *have* to watch or follow, you can look or search

? @VMaryAbraham: So it's an optional, discretionary source of additional info?

@roundtrip: More a discretionary way of working "with your door always open, and most of your desk browsable by (trusted) folk"

[That is] an way of working "with your door always open" without disturbing others. They can follow, search or see a link

Observable Work can be an individual or a group norm. At NRL it was the way our branch worked for years bit.ly/qXVyM pre-Web

2) You're opening up your working in progress and analysis process to people you know and trust for a valid business purpose

3) Observable Work - learn by observing - is aligned with traditions of legal, medical and other teaching and learning

4) People who become excellent models based on OWork gain reputation and recognition in a virtuous sense IMO

? @lehawes How does relate to Social Business? (Asking w/o reading/thinking; sorry!)

@roundtrip: We're using as a norm that may be a specific example (perhaps a best practice) for Social Business as a topic

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@TractionTeam: "People learn best by watching what you do." ~ @jobsworth bit.ly/qXVyM nice 2007 refed in trail on Observable Work

@roundtrip: Tom explains why who sits next to whom in your office can make a huge difference in this new video: is.gd/d3BlY @tom_peters !

@roundtrip: Strategy: Space Matters @TomPeters bit.ly/cSu63Q Who you sit next to @ work +++ With and , distance is not a barrier

Next Things Next: Observable Work: The Taming of the Flow @briantullis +++