As an awesome example of a game-based science crowdsourcing project, the Foldit project in itself deserves special mention. They demonstrated that humans still have the edge on pure computing crunching power when it comes to solving complex problems.

However, I'm particularly interested what the project also reveals about the dynamic of involving 'normal' human players in this problem solving. Andrew McAfee provides an excellent summary:

1. We are particularly strong at spatial reasoning, or literally seeing solutions.
2. We have intuition. 
3. We have great adaptivity - McAfee notes that "technologies like wikis are a big step forward in facilitating collaboration within geographically dispersed groups." 
4. While collaborating, we exercise a high degree of self-organization (incidentally, we've since this before in immersive gaming - transitory leadership). 
5. We love competition.

This is all particularly relevant when we think about why and how we should apply Social Business Design thinking to problems faced by organisations.

A good follow on from my last post, this video is great on two levels. The animated sketching really enhances this great talk by Daniel Pink about what drives us to perform.

There are more sketch videos available from the RSA's Animate series. I also particularly enjoyed Jeremy Rifkin's talk on the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society.

Hat tip to Headshift and Channel N.

Last week I had a long talk with a mid-level executive about the rollout of a new employee engagement program in his organization.

(You know it’s gonna be bad when the words “rollout” and “program” appear together. “Rollout” alone is a dead giveaway.)

He told me that he was reluctant to throw his own enthusiasm behind the program, because he wasn’t sure if it was fair to ask the people who work with him to give any more than they were already giving. He just couldn’t get engaged in the engagement program.

This executive isn’t lazy, or lacking in ambition, or afraid of the challenge of employee engagement. He believes that, more often than not, employee engagement is usually a scam.

And he’s right. Employee engagement is a scam.

Hmm. If employee engagement is bad, what about employee engagement with with social computing tools?

Actually, as this post and the comments with it go on to discuss, employee engagement can actually cut both ways depending on the motivation and world view of those behind it. Having said that, I suspect it is actually harder to manipulate people through employee engagement that this article gives credit for. Certainly, its why I worry about the past history of change failure in the projects I'm involved with.

Bearing that in mind, employee engagement with social computing tools is probably no more or no less a scam that any particular employee engagement initiative might be. However, I do see some additional problems with using these technologies that might be perceived as being at the employees’ expense if not thought about with some care:

1. Not allowing people to be social - this means letting people go off topic some of the time;
2. Giving people tools that create more work for them to participate, instead of giving them technology that works so well it becomes part of how they work; and
3. Not being prepared to accept that some people won't want to participate, but also not expecting that some will use these tools to achieve personal career goals (which might mean moving up, but could also mean moving on).

Address these issues up front and I think social computing can contribute positively to an employee engagement initiative.

Q. What are your thoughts on collaborative versus top-down management?

A. Collaboration is one of the most difficult challenges in management. I think top-down organizations got started because the bosses either knew more or they had access to more information. None of that applies now. Everybody has access to identical amounts of information.

Q. Why did that shift occur?

A. I would say two things. One is just the massive information revolution. But equally important is the fact that before, while there were global companies, they were really just a collection of very local businesses operating independently from each other. Now a global company means a company composed of teams that are themselves dispersed. So every team can be global in many senses, not just the company.

But with the explosion of information, and flattening technologies starting with e-mail, I think that a C.E.O. needs to focus more on the platform that enables collaboration, because employees already have all the data. They have access to everything.

You have to work on the structure of collaboration. How do people get recognized? How do you establish a meritocracy in a highly dispersed environment?

The answer is to allow employees to develop a name for themselves that is irrespective of their organizational ranking or where they sit in the org chart. And it actually is not a question about monetary incentives. They do it because recognition from their peers is, I think, an extremely strong motivating factor, and something that is broadly unused in modern management.

Q. How do you create that culture?

A. One thing we use is a Twitter-like system on our intranet called Yammer.

Timely interview considering my comments about virtual teams just now, although there is more to this that just enterprise microblogging!

Hat tip to Andrew McAfee, who also highlights some key points if you want the abridged version of this interview.