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October 30, 2006
Structuring your business interactions This last few weeks, most of my time has been devoted to running a pre-release trial program for the free humanedj software, just out in beta.  I have tried to make the interactions with beta testers as personal as possible, in order to engage better with those on the program (i.e., conversations rather than questionnaires), and it has been a fascinating experience from the perspective of Human Interaction Management (HIM).

For a start, there are multiple means by which I communicate with each beta tester - typically a combination of telephone, Skype talk, Skype chat, and email.  So the individual communications end up scattered about in various different places: my head, scribbled notes, Skype, and Thunderbird.  I try to record all interactions in a single repository, but this always means first having the conversation then writing it up (or pasting it in).  So inevitably some pieces of each conversation get lost, or collated out of sync.  If we were collaborating using a Human Interaction Management System (HIMS), such as humanedj itself, none of this would be an issue.  The technology underpinning each communication would be irrelevant, since all would be conducted via a HIMS that automatically recorded events.

Then there is the nature of each conversation.  Most people want to talk about two separate things:

1. Their experience of using the software - its strengths, weaknesses, what they would like to see added, and what they would like to see removed.
2. What sort of relationship they can expect with my company Role Modellers if they adopt the software - issues of licensing, support, partnering, and integration.

In HIM terms, these are separate "Interactions" (goal-directed communication channels) in a single "Story" (collaborative work process).  Keeping them separate has all sorts of advantages.  In particular, one can then involve different people in each Interaction: techies for the software discussions, business people for the relationship discussions.

Finally, collaborations tend to evolve over time.  Just to give one example, several of the beta testers have now decided they would like to collaborate amongst each other.  There are several such sub-groups forming - some in particular sectors, some organized geographically, some for the purposes of producing written material such as articles, some to investigate particular ways of jointly testing the software itself.  A few of these collaborations are being conducted via humanedj, though not all.  It would certainly simplify matters if the creation, merger and splitting of Stories was managed using humanedj - since otherwise those involved have only an informal idea of what is going on.  Using humanedj to conduct the Stories would not only facilitate the work itself and allow it to be automatically recorded (as described above), but make it amenable to management control - others in the organizations concerned would have visibility of the work, and a means both of controlling and of supporting it.

TAKE AWAY

Do the examples above sound familiar to you?   A software trial program is a typical example of what HIM calls a "human-driven" process.  Perhaps some of the tasks may be automated, but the work is quintessentially about people and their interactions.  With such work, you cannot say at the start how things will turn out - indeed, a fundamental part of the work itself is to establish how things will turn out.

With the rise of what author Daniel Pink calls "Asia, Automation and Abundance", such work is becoming more important than ever, as the only true competitive differentiator left.  Further, the new Internet-based communication tools have left us all drowning in a sea of messages from others - what I call network overload - that can be neither handled by individuals nor controlled by organizations, let alone leveraged properly for advantage.

We all need to structure our communications better - as collaborations, in which the individual Interactions are understood, separated out, and supported by a new generation of software tools.  Ask your software vendors what they are doing about HIM - and if their answer is unhelpful, ask yourself whether you are working with the right software vendors.

Posted by keithhb in Business Process Management • Internet • Knowledge Management • Management • Office Applications |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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