Tags
A few years ago, I had a big snowcrash moment about the power of networks and the web, envisioning the amazing potential that could be unleashed if we could just build our networks and weave them all together.
Fast forward 18 months or so, and I find myself embedded within overlapping networks of networks…. and yet I still don’t see the magic happening that had appeared so clearly in my mind.
What’s the deal?
I chuckle now looking back at my own starry-eyed naivete, as if it were enough to just be connected. I’m reminded of something Stowe Boyd said when I interviewed him for the Future of Facebook Project:
There’s no natural reason that we’re all gonna come together and sing kumbaya just because we’re using the same social tools.
So, yeah. It’s not the technology, it’s about us.
We’ve been through the binding phase over the past few years, which was all about getting linked. We delighted in relatively low risk interaction and sharing, finding our tribes, forming communities of mutual interest and learning. And it’s been wonderful. The connection phase was great. It has transformed me.
But now we’re moving into the collaboration phase, and there are some different requirements.
The next few years are going to be defined by a culture of learning and interactivity that involves more trust, and so naturally, more risk. If we’re going to go beyond just sharing links with each other to actually *helping* each other, working together, experimenting, prototyping, and adapting to changing circumstances, *we* have to first change in order to make that possible.
I’m in the process of experimenting with this firsthand, bringing people togther into an online collaboratory space, and I’ll admit – it’s not easy. We’ve got a group of ‘change agents’ who want to do things together, to form ad-hoc teams around short-term projects, make something cool happen and improve our world and our lives — but how to begin?
Each of us is a free agent, delicately riding the edge of chaos and uncertainty as we try to pave our own path. Each of us likes the sound of a peer-to-peer culture, a transition from scarcity to abundance, a move from a transactional economy to a relational economy (ht jerry michalski), and a redefinition of value and wealth. Each of us sees the promise of a new way of working, living, and Being.
And yet there is still fear.
Are you gonna steal my idea? Are you gonna follow through with your commitments? Are you gonna take the credit? Am I gonna get screwed — yet again?
My question to you is: How do we transcend this, surrender, and take the next leap of faith?
(ponder it)
Assuming you are curious enough about the possibility to find out how it could work, what is the critical component that’ll inspire you to jump?
For me, it all comes down to trust.
Not just blind trust in everyone else, but trust in myself and a commitment to move past fear and into action. Lead by example and see who wants to come with me. Become aware of who I’m connected to and choosing carefully with whom I want to build things. Take small risks together so we can gain momentum. Start having some Collective Epic Wins.
It’s not a process I think can be done “safely.” Meaning, you can’t really half-ass it with one foot outside the door. Like Yoda said, “Do or do not. There is no try.”
I’ve been doing it. It’s scary. I’ve been let down and disappointed several times. I know I’ve let down and disappointed others as well.
But I’m learning, I’m growing and unfolding as a human being, and I’m building a depth in my relationships that is simply not possible when in a fear-based mentality. Without going too “woo” on you, I can say that there is a heart-opening that happens, a vulnerability that paradoxically unlocks tremendous power, and an energetic field that expands, calibrates, amplifies, and makes seemingly impossible things manifest.
It’s a process that’s filling my life with more richness, meaning, and happiness.
Have you experienced something similar?
And if not, what’s holding you back from the next leveling up?
emergent by design 
RE: There’s no natural reason that we’re all gonna come together and sing kumbaya just because we’re using the same social tools.
This is true.
However,
How your social tools are designed is absolutely critical for how much kumbaya you’re gonna sing.
I design social tools.
The political microtransaction (both the need and potential of which seems to have been missing so far from social theory)
acts as a catalyst for a more broadly capable donor network which utilizes the same technology…
which, in turn catalyzes a civic network with even more vitally needed characteristics.
Fortunately each stage is independently viable but if the third stage isn’t reached vital potentials may be lost.
HUH????
there are standards being worked on to make micropayment simple. check out OpenTransact (http://www.opentransact.org/) and Payswarm (http://payswarm.com/)
Yes, and this is one of the courage moments where you leap before you look at all the uncertainties and fears because holding the old belief in your system has brought you this far, safely, and here it ends, clearly.
As volunteers who trust each other through bits of shared virtual collaboration, I feel these principles would work for bigger collaboration.
Appreciative Inquiry Let’s thrive by sharing dreams and by co-creation. In many cases this means progress faster than fixing flaws.
Basic Improvisation How-to: Accept information, yes-and. Add history. If one of us contributes, it belongs here, it just may not have found a context in which it makes sense. One of the big benefits of a flexible collaboration platform is we can move what looks like distractions to a better place and keep its revision history. So it is transparent. Builds trust.
I am not so certain that trust is inherently instant; clear expectations and a common vision have to the first step of any collaboration.
Sabdra
You are correct. Trust builds via a willingness to be clear about expectations and a willingness to be up front about the vision in detail rather than grand wonderful utopian abstractions. I have noticed a pressure in many blogs for agreement, integration and inclusion as if division (difference) and exclusion (specificity) were not absolutely 100% essential. What is being created by a fuzzy unification is an illusion of trust.
The post is (not unreasonably) rather self-focused. Perhaps there is an “instant trust” in collaborating and it is the trust you need to have in yourself. Can I trust my ability to keep my eyes wide open and build trust? Or do I seize ‘instant trust’ and take a leap of faith because it is too risky to see?
You, like Vanessa, have surely spent time having/experiencing expectations of yourself so you can know what you can trust in yourself and where you are ragged. Illusions often hide or exaggerate these ragged edges: so disillusionment is the critical personal virtue here not trust.
I am less persuaded of the visions that people present for themselves and I would not trust my own vision of myself. Life has a way of generating surprises. Get a fix on that and disillusionment becomes less necessary. You will focus more on the future in the present than the future in the future. The vision that exists for you will then emerge out of what you choose to do and then do. There is no trying from that perspective. You can trust that.
Where trust has developed, and relationships are established around a common vision the potential for collaboration is increased.
A leap of faith in to a collaborative environment may seem counter intuitive if based in the model of interaction we have become accustomed to. However, when the felt necessity to protect ones self is overcome by the realisation that ‘we’ are all on the same “space ship” – which requires our co-operative efforts to stabilse in order that our continued evolution occur – then the motivation for self preservation is able to overcome the reticence it created in the “we are all separate entities in a meaningless existence” paradigm.
Hopefully, the act of engagement in such a collaboratory manner will encourage more interaction as the commitment and goodwill of the participants becomes apparent, and the process becomes more transparent.
The inner process of learning to trust oneself and allow the interdependence of human spheres of endeavor to impress itself on ones mind and heart is a great method of preparing to engage with each other in these new ways – for the long term benefit of us all.
Seth Godin’s Linchpin awakened me to a new definition of art: that which you can’t not do.
i think that helps with the whole trust issue.. if you’re involved with something you love so much – all you end up caring about is that it happens.. rather than who does it – or gets credit for it – etc.
in fact – as you all here have taught me.. turns out true value is in those connections and transparency, more than any credentialing or recognition.
three teds that really bring this home – if you haven’t seen them:
Bunker Roy’s – barefoot movement, credentialing through community:
Chimamanda Adichie – the danger of a single story: http://blog.ted.com/2009/10/07/the_danger_of_a/
Kathryn Schulz – on being wrong:
“if you’re involved with something you love so much – all you end up caring about is that it happens.. rather than who does it – or gets credit for it – etc.” very important point, thanks Monika; even after having this revelation, it is still distasteful to work with takers, maybe some day I’ll get over that as well.
“So, yeah. It’s not the technology, it’s about us.”
Exactly. Technology can augment our reality, augment our community, facilitate our communication. But without us, there’s no there there.
That’s why I value the sacredness of F2F encounters.
Big big question. Short tentative answer: respect, authenticity and intimacy are the way in; yes, trust is the predicate…but the goal is value co-creation. That’s what keeps everybody honest—not necessarily monetary co-creation (although profit is a highly sticky co-creation objective) but shared co-creativity, especially where collaboration frees up and aligns assets that expand networks, eg http://collaborativeconsumption.com/ and volunteerism.
I conceived and ran a microfinance campaign here in Ontario, Canada, which netted $400K in eight months. Based on that experience I’d add another precept (although I’m not sure I’ve used the right vocab)—the politics of collaboration. By that I mean how networked/shared values build value. Collaborative choices are political choices: choices around how we socialize, sustain, adjudicate and even enforce values.
Every successful collaboration campaign, from corporate cause marketing piece to hospital or library fundraising bake sale, has clear elements of a political campaign: constantly evolving narrative, feedback loops to test assumptions, and a clear methodology to vet exactly what that feedback means contextually.
Bruce Philp, the brilliant Canadian brand communications guru, once observed that the reason we value trust so highly is that we cannot commodify it. Nonetheless we can make trust sustainable by consciously building value ‘intersections’ that amplify it. (In my house we call this ‘parenting’. It’s a porous process, believe me.)
Contrariwise, trust networks die when perceived value intersections fall apart. We all know that scenario: ‘can I borrow your mower?’ ‘sure’…and it’s returned w/empty gas tank and crudded up with clippings. At the other extreme is divorce with children involved: the trust value-set fails and a family breaks apart. Or outright terrorism designed to achieve the deliberate deaths of innocent civilians.
Weak brands (needless to say) have the sustainable trust network problem in spades: they suffer ‘negative word of mouth.’ But the core issue is no different for nonprofits and arts organizations constantly ‘on the ask’ for funding. I spent a day shadowing a friend at a highly successful arts fundraising call centre: it was an instructive experience, believe me. I learnt, in the trenches, what building a sustainable trust network looks like up close. But then I’m also a husband and a dad of three. I get tested every day on my ability to live up to the trust precepts I’m advocating for—and all too frequently—fail to quite live up to.
But perhaps that’s a whole other story: compassion.
thanks brendan
This is the conversation for Collective Intelligence – Thank you Venessa for being the pulse and voice of relevance . . .
In Individuation of Ideas http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/08/the-individuation-of-ideas–jennifer-sertl/
I quote Virginia Woolf: “Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”
Perhaps this is why I think we need to do a better job of supporting, acknowledging and affirming one another. If more people feel “safer” in sharing their ideas, I think we will get a lot more brilliance from everyone around us.
Like we have a family lineage, perhaps it is time for ideas to have lineages – core with branches each twig a name for someone who took the idea to the next level.
Fingerprints of engagement perhaps to track and trace to ensure those who “touch” a concept are included in the affirmation, furthering, and extension of ideas etc.
Much to mull . . .
Jennifer
i love that – idea lineages. i wish we had a way to visually show the evolution of ideas and how we ‘build upon the shoulders of giants’…. although it would never be complete…. because how could you show that the shape of the bark on that tree or the smell of that woman’s perfume reminded me of that thing that happened so many years ago, forging just the connection i needed to spawn the next idea?
idea lineages — http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Bubbles-and-Beauty-Contests.jpg
A more accurate viz may be a network of drawings/paintings, each evolving slightly differently…
“i love that – idea lineages. i wish we had a way to visually show the evolution of ideas and how we ‘build upon the shoulders of giants’…. although it would never be complete…. ”
it doesn’t need to be complete to be a whole lot better than the current approach. traceability of value may not be able to ‘go back to the beginning’ but the sooner we start doing it the more we can avoid the need for trust in many situations that formerly required it. you can’t steal my idea if there is a transparent trail of attribution. therefore i do not need to trust you.
other remedies exist (see monika hardy above) but these require a new human being, or an enlightened one, much more difficult problem than intermediation and value tracing.
incidentally value tracing / idea lineages also mitigate the need for IP, in particular if you publish what you would expect from value antecedents.
“The next few years are going to be defined by a culture of learning and interactivity that involves more trust, and so naturally, more risk.”
I think, the risk comes before the trust. Might be a chicken/egg scenario, but maybe not. The next few hundred years are going to be defined by the risks we have already taken, by polluting our world with imbalances and extremes. Trust will form around those who work together and take on mitigating the negative results of risking so wildly. Also, the community will slowly be healed, by letting go of the exaggerated importance of the individual.
Trust grows from taking risks together, which you said, but there is also something about staying together and building momentum. Blind trust is faith, and it isn’t working, it doesn’t keep us together. The blindness eventually tears us apart. I took a risk that my partner would stay with me and support me. I took it on faith that she loved me and we would grow together. Even though we broke up, it has paid off for me, in emotional growth, and clarity around this topic. There was much about relationships I still did not understand. Now I feel better equipped to trust in a more meaningful and productive manner.
…
“Each of us sees the promise of a new way of working, living, and Being.”
Seeing a promise is a voyage through the realm of possibility, potential, and imagination. Discussing what the “new way” could be is an endless discussion with little action. I think this is what you might be referring to when it comes to the frustration of amazing people talking in groups, forever. Not that discussion doesn’t have value, it does. The trouble is taking the additional steps in silence together, which are more difficult to do. Who knows when we will step on someones toes, if you haven’t talked about it first. The key is to choose your dance partners and do the stepping and worry about toes and feelings later.
…
Regarding fear:
“My question to you is: How do we transcend this, surrender, and take the next leap of faith?”
A similar question is: How do we transcend fear? The answer is surrender. The resulting “leap” is not so big that it requires faith, but more a commitment to step in action together. Grow the trust, take more steps. Eventually we’ll be dancing fluidly from problem to problem, with as little discussion as necessary. Minimizing the imbalance between whatever factions have arisen in our divided world: individuality vs community; security vs freedom; etc. Then we can shift the world towards a dynamic balance, not without problems, but with the greatest potential for life to thrive.
…
Love this statement!!!
“I can say that there is a heart-opening that happens, a vulnerability that paradoxically unlocks tremendous power, and an energetic field that expands, calibrates, amplifies, and makes seemingly impossible things manifest.It’s a process that’s filling my life with more richness, meaning, and happiness.
Have you experienced something similar?”
Yes, but not all the time and it has been fleeting. I’m improving faster now and it feels great.
“And if not, what’s holding you back from the next leveling up?”
In the past few years, it was a thought I had about recognition, which I disguised as the need to acquire customers before building an idea. I thought I needed to attract that in order to take the next step. The lean startup movement reinforced this. But it was bull, not that I don’t need to verify my ideas, but that I need to be recognized for my ability to see the problem clearly. Anyways, I’ve let that go and am ready to “level up”. I hope we’ll do it together.
Thanks for writing! You are an inspiration and wonderfully clear example of growth. Keep it up!
“but there is also something about staying together and building momentum” this came up recently in another discussion, it is necessary, and probably in a power curve of the number of participants, to take time to be together, unproductive as it may seem, as it is the chasm you must cross to get to being able to be productive together as a group. there is no bridge. peter senge talks about this in the book Presence.
Trust is earned & therefore difficult to come by.
trust is also dependent on memory, and understanding of the causality of systems that are expressed over time, two weaknesses of human brains – an example, a friend of mine texted me he had thought of a fabulous idea, what did I think of it – I texted him back the chat discussion from last year where I told him the idea – no malice intended in either case – just the frailty of memory – this we can fix
Venessa, you nailed the reason that Connect.Me developed the Respect Trust Framework before we had a line of code. Because it’s all about trust.
It doesn’t solve the harder problems of building real sustainable trust relationships. But it provides a foundation layer for apps, services, and communities that will do that. So it’s a start.
Looking forward to all we can do together in 2012.
Thx, Venessa for this post.
I believe the trust you talk about is a trust that is about going beyond fear and going beyond the excuse of not having enough security in the group or community or team that you belong to. Going beyond the excuse and the planning/dreaming and just do-it (and finish it)
I had a recent post on my blog about “fear is not an option” http://petervan.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/fear-is-not-an-option/ and i consolidated some of this is my latest prezi “the soul of innovation” here http://prezi.com/qrx8wwm772ez/the-soul-of-innovation/
My doing this year is about “dancing” and “doing” http://petervan.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/2012-my-boss-wants-me-to-dance/ and the sticking out my neck and trusting will hopefully result in something exciting with “Corporate Rebels United”, starting with a curated scoop http://www.scoop.it/t/corporate-rebels-united , a sort of “collaborative” for the ones who want to create viral innovation and change in our companies.
Looking forward to staying in touch with your initiatives in 2012. Peter
I offer a few words from an article by my recently deceased colleague.
“So it is safe to say that all these players in the Information Revolution — the enterprises that created it — have engendered almost immeasurable social benefit by way of connecting people of the world together and giving us opportunity to communicate with each other, begin to understand each other, and if we want, try to help each other.
It is that last phrase — “try to help each other” — which is what the phrase “social enterprise” is getting at. As Bill Gates said in 2000, “poor people don’t need computers.” and rejected a business approach to alleviating poverty. That statement served to mark the clear distinction between what traditional capitalism did and did not do. Gates’ aim at that time was to profit from people who could afford his company’s products, while those who couldn’t were largely or completely ignored. That has been the accepted limit of traditional capitalism. It has been a marvelous means of social benefit and economic advancement for many people. Nevertheless, those excluded are just left out.
The term “social enterprise” in the various but similar forms in which it is being used today — 2008 — refers to enterprises created specifically to help those people that traditional capitalism and for profit enterprise don’t address for the simple reason that poor or insufficiently affluent people haven’t enough money to be of concern or interest. Put another way, social enterprise aims specifically to help and assist people who fall through the cracks. Allowing that some people do not matter, as things are turning out, allows that other people do not matter and those cracks are widening to swallow up more and more people. Social enterprise is the first concerted effort in the Information Age to at least attempt to rectify that problem, if only because letting it get worse and worse threatens more and more of us. Growing numbers of people are coming to understand that “them” might equal “me.” Call it compassion, or call it enlightened and increasingly impassioned self-interest. Either way, we are all in this together, and we will each have to decide for ourselves what it means to ignore someone to death, or not.”
We had our trust betrayed repeatedly. In the end he died knowing that the work he did for the cause of vulnerable children had been hijacked and with no money unable to pay for urgent medical attention.
Yet, as Lao Tzu taught “He who does not trust, cannot be trusted”
poignant
Now , since this is about Trust, I don’t mind going a little “woo” on you to talk about Tolstoy, and the Law of Love:
“Tolstoy writes somewhere about a peasant belief that a green stick had been buried in the earth and would one day be found, and then all our troubles would come to an end. I think he half believed it himself, and was always on the look out for the green stick, until at last he grew tired of looking. Never mind. The fact that a man like Tolstoy could exist amounts in itself to a green stick. It is true that today his hopes seem more remote even than when he entertained them. Yet underlying the disappointed hopes was his faith in a single infallible guide, a ‘Universal Spirit that lives in men as a whole, and in each one of us . . . that commands the tree to grow towards the sun, the flower to throw off its seed in autumn, and us to reach out towards God and by so doing become united to each other.’ Such was his last word, delivered to us, his brothers, who come after him”
http://tinyurl.com/6ab7zz4
What might this green stick be? .
Thanks Venessa for this post,
I think that this is an important dialogue. From my perspective it’s not just a question of trust. Besides trust ourselves and other I think that we need to accept conflict as part of the collaborative process.
In my experience it’s much easier to say that than to really do it an affront the conflicts that unavoidably emerge in any collaborative team, in a creative way, to expand the edges of this team.
Pingback: How Will We Collaborate if We Can’t Trust Each Other? « Canterbury Transition News
Hi Venessa,
Another deeply provocative post, thank you.
First off- I also love this:
“I can say that there is a heart-opening that happens, a vulnerability that paradoxically unlocks tremendous power, and an energetic field that expands, calibrates, amplifies, and makes seemingly impossible things manifest.It’s a process that’s filling my life with more richness, meaning, and happiness.
Have you experienced something similar?”
Sounds like you are growing in a really beautiful way! I’ve also had brief experiences of this and I’m working on clearing in my life anything that blocks more of this for me. I think these blocks for me are around trust/fear/vulnerability as you say. I’m only just learning to feel ‘safe’ to put my opinions and experiences ‘out there’ with people I’ve not met in person, and to make commitments on a deeper level to act together and invest time and energy is the ‘levelling up’ that you refer to.
I’ve been reading a bit around electromagnetic fields of the heart -a book The Hearts Code and the work of the Heart Math Insitute. I digresss, but the point I’m coming to is that there’s something that happens when we make these connections on the intellectual level IN PERSON, that is about more than shared ideas and is, for me, about energetic resonance. My feeling is that the bonding force of this resonance must be stronger in person because our hearts and electromagnetic fields synch up in a way that is pretty powerful- can you relate to this?
I think there are also elements of ownership of ideas that come into this trust, where our sense of self is tied up with our ideas and it feels like giving someone a part of ourselves to examine and dissect and maybe sell down the river. So establishing trust that the other will receive the gift, respect and value it (US) intrinsically regardless of whether or not they agree is an important part of this.
But here’s where risk comes in. Until I take the risk of rejection, and find that instead I am loved, I have nothing to counter the fear with. So the way out of fear, is through it- through risk.
Scott – Trust grows from taking risks together, which you said, but there is also something about staying together and building momentum.
I agree – the dopamine and adrenaline rush of ‘wow, we took a leap and here we are!’ wears off and the novelty goes away and then it’s time to commit and finish what you start, which is where I see things fall down or lose momentum. What is it that holds those collaborations together? I think a very real kind of love, valuing the other, commitment to supporting each others growth and mission, understanding that without the rest of the group, the work won’t happen as it should.
Scott, you also mentioned the frustration of amazing people talking together, but no doing getting done 🙂 In my project we have days and nights of amazing conversations with people, our frustration is with the number of times that those people fade out of the picture when it comes down to action. Others stay and spur us on and get involved and that’s amazing, but there’s a challenge around holding and facilitating a longer term group. I think that there needs to be someone(s) committed to the responsibilty of holding the group and drawing them back together for each stage of action, and that takes resources. In addition though, there’s lots of value in those conversations, inputs, dreamings, which underlies the later action- we just need doers as well as visionaries, and the working relationship between these two is very very rich but challenging!
Monika- if you’re involved with something you love so much – all you end up caring about is that it happens.. rather than who does it – or gets credit for it – etc.
I really agree with this also- if someone else is doing what I am doing, I’m usually delighted and I want to work with them, or just support them and connect. But not everyone feels this all the time, and again this willingness to not be attached to our ideas or missions to the extent that we exclude or compete with others comes down to security/fear/trust issues again. There’s also a big time factor- if I spent all day finding, connecting with and cheering on the myriad amazing people out there doing great work I’d never do anything more than that (not to detract from the value of tht support-see below)
Jennifer – Perhaps this is why I think we need to do a better job of supporting, acknowledging and affirming one another. If more people feel “safer” in sharing their ideas, I think we will get a lot more brilliance from everyone around us.
Yes! I love your ‘idea lineages’ idea- which allows for recognition of contributors so people can sign their name on the brick they put into the building. I think also that the emotional level of connection just needs quite alot of contact (in terms of the quality and power of that contact) and closed, focussed, intimate group meetings are the richest source of this I know. Can we come close to the energy of a group sat around together connecting in physical space, online?
Finally, as you say Venessa, it’s just about doing it. Keep trusting, keep taking risks, and trust intuition as a guide in this. I think the more we surrender to our intuition and reap the rewards the stronger it gets and the bigger leaps we can take. Opening to and attuning to intuition for me lies at the heart of this- and my experience is that I can hear the messages most clearly when I’m coming from a place of love, and they are most blocked in fear.
What inspires me to take the leap into more trust and less fear? Inspiring examples of others doing so, and my own experiences of the rewards of doing so. So I reckon if we all do it more, we’ll do it more. Simple?
“the other will receive the gift, respect and value it ” essential
thanks lucy, and thank you for the link to heartmath institute! very interesting
Hi –
“yet I still don’t see the magic happening that had appeared so clearly in my mind.”
Actually I have with the continuing evolution of ebdish that I think started in the comment stream of that amazing moment that was triggered by your blog.
Short story is ebdish evolved into Nemetics through the co creation by folks from your post. I think it’s fair to say that the original energy came from me and Spiros @spriospliadis and Mark Frazier @openworld. As it developed Daniel Durrant ( @ddrrnt ) and Sean Grainger @GraingerEd joined in.
On and on it went, a few days go I think we’ve come to an inflection point when @TheDesignKata based in Kalkuta joined in.
The most recent manifestation is his wonderful post entitled
Intro to Nemetics – The Infinitely Dynamic Play http://ilnk.me/cb93
I think I have a plausible story about why it worked, that I would be happy to share.
Having said all that I want to take just a moment to thank you again for what you doing. It’s been a wild ride.
thank you Venessa, SO so right…
i’ve finished watching Battlestar Galactica recently and can highly recommend it 🙂 it’s full of scenes that makes one think deeply about our very human nature… quite a few on trust as well.
Another good post revisiting the major questions about collectivity & connectivity or cooperation & collaboration, of course with the magic word : trust !
Somebody once helped me to frame trust in a simple formula, TRUST = (credibility * intimacy) / threat ; @sadra is right, “trust is not inherently instant” but I think that before going into any pioneering endeavours, people have this formula in their mind to quickly assess their level of engagement with anybody. Threat can also be considered as the risk you are taking, and the impact will depend on your own vulnerability or fear factor.
Thanks for sharing ! HNY
“TRUST = (credibility * intimacy) / threat ;” very interesting start!!!
Thanks for touching on the very human aspect of networking. Technology is, of course, necessary for connectivity on a world-scale, but it is not sufficient. Connectivity, cooperation, and collaboration require trust, and probably a few other human traits, that are difficult to quantify and sometimes difficult to justify.
Developing faith in the power of trust is easier for me if I consider it from a larger scale rather than a smaller. Over time and across enough people, trust always works to generate more value for all involved, including the one who trusted in the first place, but we are all familiar with specific instances when trust led to betrayal, damage, and destruction, a loss of value for all involved, usually including the one who violated the trust. It’s something like how Life functions in the universe: for the past 10 billion years, Life overall has inexorably striven toward greater complexity, elegance, beauty, and value, despite the specific instances of death and destruction.
For me, then, I can trust more when I think globally and act locally. Globally, trust works remarkably well. Locally, it can be a bitch.
Pingback: trust, collaboration
Pingback: Collaborating with a Student « Microblog
Venessa,
Here in Europe, there are some initiatives that try to ‘incorporate’ a group of ‘change agents’, whilst removing all the impediments such as the ones you mention : can we trust each other or what about the property issues (IP & Co). The one I am currently observing a lot is “New Shoes Today” that originated in The Netherlands : http://www.newshoestoday.com/site/concept/
You may find some interesting thoughts and food for reflection on their web site. Some documents are unfortunately in Dutch (my second language here in Belgium) …. If google is not good enough, give me a shout because I have translated some part in French already, German and English may follow if people are interested !
Phil
Pingback: Core Principles for the New Economy: Human Agency & Enlightened Self-Interest « emergent by design
We have to change our goal for social tools to transform our results. We grew up in the Age of the Corporation, where we were taught the goal of the Corporation is to return profit to shareholders. In the Age of Social, the goal is to return benefits to society. That could involve money, but more importantly happiness and satisfaction. As Monika said ” if you’re involved with something you love so much – all you end up caring about is that it happens.. rather than who does it – or gets credit for it – etc.” We have to change money from an end goal, to a tool to reach satisfaction. Our focus must be on the satisfaction, not on money. To put in one other way, to say the purpose of a company is profit is to say the purpose of life is beathing –just as you cannot survive without breath, a company cannot survive without profit, but to say that life is about breathing is a pretty shallow view of life. Focus on transforming the world, and if you do it right, your needs will be met along the way.
Pingback: Opening The Space Between: An Invitation to Contribute | The Place Between Stories
At Zegg and Tamera, they emphasize that “Trust is community task #1.” They use a process they call “Forum” to see one another emotionally.
have they published their forum methodology online?
Here is some good info on the ZEGG Forum. They are using it in the ecovillage 7Linden as well where i was living for 2 years.
Achim & Ina are amazing at leading it. Also Francois has mastery in it; he also did the Holacracy-training and organized a “Community Conference – the power of collective intelligence” in 2008 with Thomas Hübl and Kosha Joubert
Pingback: futur & Web... by noosquest - Pearltrees