A Brave New World

This is a Brave New World.  The ability to talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, is unprecedented.  Albeit, there are some countries where censorship limits communication.  The truth is that, due to community standards, there will always be those things that cannot be “greenlighted” in the global community.  Around the world different cultures and communities have varying standards for what is acceptable.  China, the most populous nation on Earth, routinely censors the internet for its people.  Virtually the entire world is resolute that child pornography is wrong. 

Into this complex situation crowdsourcing comes.  Crowdsourcing permits disparate groups to find commonality.  Commonality is the key aspect of crowdsourcing.  People who share common ideas, beliefs, concerns, aspiration, knowledge, fears, loves, desires, interests, demographics, intellect, education, gender, race, age, geography, language, or any other commonality can use crowdsourcing to collaborate. 

The Brave New World aspect of crowdsourcing refers to how it is a worldwide phenomenon.  There are, in theory, no geographical limitations.  Everyone on Earth can participate.  The uses for crowdsourcing have shown themselves to be nearly unlimited. 

Reading Brave New World opened my eyes to possibilities that are staggering.  I read it as a high school student in 1971.  I learned about how people can be programmed by controlling governments with seemingly benevolent aims.  Crowdsourcing is also a seemingly benevolent way to achieve goals.  However, not all share the same goals.  We are seeing that terrorist, like Isis, are able to use the crowdsourcing capabilities of the internet to recruit, and train.  My point is that it seems that discussions of crowdsourcing only focus on the good that can be done while ignoring the evil that can also be unleashed. 

There is also the potential for time to be wasted by crowdsourcing.  While time wasting is not necessarily good or evil, it is a reality for most of us that our time can and will be wasted if we are not vigilant to prevent it.  Crowds by their nature create conditions conducive to time wasting.  The larger the crowd, the greater possibility that there will be time wasted  In our readings for this week we encountered some of this reasoning in regards to the number of people that can reasonably work together without the problem of time wasting.  This is why small groups are often preferred over large groups.  Less time is wasted on communication.

  

However, research has shown that the most important feature of a collaborative group is the group’s attitude: 

Collaborator Comments: Mitch Ditkoff:

“The main finding of the survey that resonates with my own experience is that attitude is one of the keys to successful collaborations. Indeed, the “right” kind of attitude (to be determined, of course, by each individual collaborator) is the glue. Since collaborations are often like marriages and go through various ups and downs, it is essential that the collaborators enter into the relationship with the kind of attitude that can weather the roller coaster ride of the sometimes chaotic and challenging creative process.”

Collaborator Comments: Carolyn Allen:

“The results of this survey showed that Attitude and Personality cornered the top 5 spots in what works well in a collaborative experience. These attributes ranked higher than Behaviours and Experience. That tells us that “soft” people skills that build community are vital to creativity and productivity.”

http://www.ideachampions.com/downloads/collaborationresults.pdf           

Title of the research survey:

A New Survey Suggests that Attitude is More Important than Experience in Collaborative Work

The Ideal Collaborative Team Mitch Ditkoff and Tim Moore of Idea Champions, Carolyn Allen of Innovation Solution Center and Dave Pollard of Meeting of Minds

What the above comments from a research survey indicate is that attitude matters. 

While not all crowdsourcing situations lend themselves to a focus on attitude when assembling a collaborative group, in some situations attitude is vitally important. 

For those situations when it does matter, a method of analyzing attitudes can make or break the success of a collaborative team.

For those putting together collaborative teams then the focus may best be a focus on the attitude of the group that makes the decisions. 

For example, the Arab Spring was made possible by the internet’s crowdsourcing technology.  Today, protests are routinely arranged using social media, making use of social media’s crowdsourcing capabilities.  However, it is nearly impossible to ascertain the attitudes of the people who come out for a protest.  Some will be hot heads, some will be violent extremists, others may be pacifists.  Filtering the people who come to a public meeting is almost impossible. 

Collaboration is not new.  During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s a high level of collaboration was necessary to pull together protestors.  However, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had a philosophy of non-violence.  Those who participated in their marches were instructed in the philosophy of non-violence and how to practice it when marching.  Today, groups of marchers are pulled together often without any such training.  This can lead to situations where there is unexpected violence.  We have all heard reports of violence at what were otherwise peaceful protests.  Without some way of screening attitudes toward violence during protests, it is difficult if not impossible to filter out those who might resort to violence to make their point.

Those who plan protests today, using the internet’s crowdsourcing capabilities to recruit nearly instantaneous crowds, might do well to go back and examine the procedures used during the Civil Rights Movement to learn how best to control the crowd that they are creating.  If a peaceful non-violent protest is desired, it must be sought after in a deliberate fashion, using strategic communication skills and methods to make sure the message of non-violence is disseminated and understood, if indeed that is the goal.

Attitudes are important.  The research shows that those who take attitude into account when assembling collaborative groups will achieve better results than those who fail to take attitude into account. 

Democracy is based on the idea that people have different views and those views reflect their choice of leadership, and consequently, the person or party that is voted for in an election.  Crowdsourcing in elections using the internet has become routine.  Huge crowds can be assembled in a short time using the power of collaboration enabled by the internet.  As the crowd forms, it becomes the responsibility of the person or group that called for the crowd to form to make sure that the crowd understands and has the right attitude toward law enforcement and counter protesters.  Those who call for the crowd, in other words, bear responsibility for the actions of the crowd.

In this Brave New World of virtual collaboration, attitudes count.  Strategic communicators must be sure that they take attitudes into account when formulating plans for crowdsourcing.