I am not a philosophy major, but I understand the differences between reason, will and desire. In a corporate setting, most published “content type” from top is just plain reasons viz. whys to do something, to approve a budget, to take up a new initiative, an ROI and more such. But the will and desire are left out mostly. When you hear “to lead by example or walk the talk”, it is an indication of will, and when you hear “did not feel like doing it” “ Yes, but…” it is an indication of desire (or the lack of). At this point, we depart from the simple system definition to one in the complex domain as the agents and actions are intertwined. Will and desire (or the lack of) spreads faster and influence actions more than the published reasons. To work only with reason and undermine will and desire is a forceful push from the complex domain to simple domain.
A simple framework for action/change thus in any reasonable sized system should handle all 3 (reason, will and desire). One may be more magnified than the other, and in fact, they should be. When this happens, a series of actions unfolds with no clear attribution possible. These are system responses and agents are playing part. Here is where stories that people tell each other and social objects come in, bringing players from all over the system for action willingly.
A simple metaphor for this framework is the simple head-hand-heart to reason-will-desire respectively. In action/change scenarios, all 3 operate simultaneously, but you can never determine outcomes. If boundary conditions are favorable, outcomes are impactful and always contextual.
Now to orient a bunch of leaders on this head-hand-heart framework is easy, make a list of past failed initiatives like below
| Head/Reason | Hand/Will | Heart/Desire | |
| Initiative 1 | <<Enter biz case/ROI/5W etc>> | ||
| Initiative 2 | <<Enter policy change, mobilized support, experiments done etc>> | ||
| Initiative 3 | <<Enter social objects, desires tapped, etc>> | ||
| Initiative n |
When you fill this up, you will notice that the last column will be the most sparsely filled or even empty.
Coming from an industry that runs on perennial initiative fatigue, I was not surprised when I filled one for myself.
Try it …
Making a process ‘social’ on your intranet
Consider a project plan, i.e. only the artifact and now you want to make the plan review process ‘social’ on a platform. How will it happen, say on your collaboration or other platform? My idea for this post is to enlist actions from various dimensions and possibly facet them for doing requirements to make a process ‘social’.
Content Responses:
Predominantly 2 types of responses depending on where
In-situ, in this case wherever the plan is located
While we are looking primarily at text, the responses could actually be a same content type e.g. idea on top of an idea or just a related idea, responding to an youtube video with another video, in this case responding to a plan with another plan that may be similar or related
Ex-situ, example as a link back from elsewhere or even back channels
These off site response could be within the intranet, or outside. I have not seen simple ping backs being implemented within intranets, so we are little far away from this future.
Giving some direction to content responses have been tried for example deBono’s 6 Thinking Hats or simple cost/risk/revenue comments
Emotional Responses:
We will only consider ‘like’ emotional response here, this will get overly complex when we add other emotions e.g. hope/fear, happy/sad, pride/shame
“Why only ‘like’, why not ‘dislike’?” is a fundamental question. Response to this comes from Max Weber "I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am; I am what I think that you think I am."
If you see too much of what I dislike, you may not like me, and I don’t like it.
So what if there are 20 ‘likes’ for the project plan in question, would you commission them for the project?
Would it affect adversely on recruitment for the project if many ‘dislike’ the plan
Social demand / Cost-benefit Actions:
In our example, Project has a plan > Project has a Manager > Plan has a reviewer > Reviewer is a volunteer > Reviewer spends time (cost) > Reviewer benefits from review > Manager benefits from review > Review costs the Manager > Review costs/benefits others (externality)
While these are not direct actions on the artifact, they provide an important basis for reasons to act. Specifically on the demand side i.e. desire to get the plan reviewed, ability to review, and willingness to review.
Network Actions:
These include share, tag, and follow type actions across a network. Every intranet worth its salt respects its users to subscribe on content, tags, person, groups, with almost no push to inbox actions. Negative action here would be removal from personal stream, reporting spam or abuse.
Another phenomenon that has to be taken into account is the back-channel of social. In the case of a plan, there may be a private email thread floating around or a twitter conversation that neither the PM nor others are even aware. But it happens socially anyways.
Here is the taxonomy for all actions from above