ARTICLE
Collaborative knowledge tree with sticky knowtes™
There is a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product. As you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there’s tremendous trade-offs. Designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain, these concepts, fitting them all together, continuing to push them to fit them together in new and different ways to get what you want. It's that process that is the magic. - Steve Jobs on the problem with thinking that a great idea is 90% of the work.
Fleshing out a new product idea, imagining a new business, developing a new policy, thinking through a new organizational design, shaping a sizable consulting proposal, preparing for a major legal case, or conducting a significant "After Action" review are examples of big ideas, big challenges, or big problems that require in-depth team thinking.
Teams working on these need support for organizing and building-out their ideas as part of the work that encompasses discovering, exploring, hypothesizing, researching, testing, debating, opining, and sense-making. This is where the collaborative knowledge tree can help.
COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE TREE
An artistic rendering of a collaborative knowledge tree is shown below. It is a hierarchal structure in digital form for a team to use for organizing and developing its knowledge on a specific topic. The trunk represents the team's main purpose, such as a developing a new business idea, determining a legal strategy, or creating a new policy. The bigger branches of the tree represent the most significant and broadest collections of knowledge on the topic with the smaller branches organizing narrow, detailed content.
STICKY KNOWTES™
The leaves on the tree are sticky knowtes™ (knowledge notes), which are digital containers for rich content, such as videos, images, structured data, file attachments, and threaded discussions among others. As illustrated below, it has a unique index number, such as "1.2.3", that indicates where the item "hangs", or is located, on the knowledge tree. It includes a brief title that reflects the main concept of the item. Each item may have a detailed narrative and include images, digital files (e.g., spreadsheet), or links to external information.
A significant capability of the sticky knowte™ is a threaded-discussion area for team members to add commentary, pose questions, provide responses, insights, or opinions associated with the item. The diagram below illustrates a conversation associated with this specific sticky knowte™. The top brown box contains a message, or thought, while the other two boxes indented below it are responses. In contrast to real-time posts, which are short, staccato, and made in the moment, these posts are made asynchronously. They are typically longer because they are more in-depth as members take time to reflect before composing them. Synthesizing these discussions assists the team in clarifying and further developing an idea, or concept.
Building on Jobs' observation, the collaborative knowledge tree is the digital team memory for those "5,000 things in your brain". It enables sharing, reflecting, and learning "as you get into the subtleties of it".
STAGES
The diagram below depicts the three collaborative knowledge tree stages: brainstorming; building & developing; and harvesting.
STAGE 1 - BRAINSTORMING
The team starts with a brainstorming session to collect and organize what will likely be a very large number of ideas.
A very common approach uses a large meeting room with butcher paper running the length of one or more walls. Team members are asked to write their ideas on sticky notes, or index cards. They cast a wide net. Thinking of everything that they can. Thinking-up as many ideas as they can. With sticky notes in hand, members walk up to the wall to affix them on the paper.
As ideas are posted, team members begin grouping them into clusters (affinity groups) of similar ones. When a cluster is formed, a cluster name is written on a sticky note and posted with it.
There are digital versions that mimic this approach. One of the advantages of these, of course, is that members don't need to be in the same physical space to create, view, or manipulate the digital wall, or canvass.
At the end of the brainstorming session, the wall, or digital canvass, is full of sticky notes reflecting the thoughts from all team members. Brainstorming, though, is just the beginning. This wall of ideas needs to be fleshed-out. There is significant work ahead. The challenge for the team at this point is to organize this large collection of ideas, so they can explore them in more detail. The collaborative knowledge tree provides the team with a medium to do so.
STAGE 2 - BUILDING & DEVELOPING
The first step is to build the initial tree, or hierarchical, outline. To illustrate, a team working on a new business opportunity is using a cordin8 TeamMachine™ to build and develop a collaborative knowledge tree. An administrative view used to organize the output (clusters of sticky notes) from the brainstorming session into the hierarchical structure as shown below.
"10.0 Messaging" (row 27) is a top-level branch for organizing items related to "messaging" prospective partners, which is further decomposed into three product categories, "10.1 HCM", "10.2 CRM", and "10.3 ERP". "10.1.1 SoftCo G" is a specific software company within "10.1 HCM". It is currently the lowest level in that branch of the tree.
The power of this outline is the mental index that forms in team members' minds as they work with it. When they think-up new things to add, they refer to this internal index to orient themselves to specific places in this evolving structure. For example, "I want to comment on SoftCo G, which I know is 10.1.1 in the tree structure," or "I want to add this new item which fits with those in the 10.1 HCM" branch of the tree. The structure and mental index facilitate a team member's ability to go directly to the area of interest.
Having built the initial tree outline, team members then interact with a view that is designed to direct them to newly added, or updated, content as well as guide them to areas in the tree where the energy is. In the screenshot below, "10.3.3 SoftCo C" has "24" discussion items (see discussion bubble icon) which indicates significant conversation occurring around this topic, and one in which the team member may want to engage. On that same item, "2" is displayed in a red font to indicate newly added content that hasn't been seen by the member.
The screenshot below is a sticky knowte™ with the index number and title of "10.3.3 SoftCo C". Team members are sharing information and debating how they might approach a prospective business partner, SoftCo C. The most recent comment is displayed at the top of the list. In it, Linda explains why she thinks SoftCo C is a "different animal" from the other partners under consideration. The next post down is by Leonard who has shared his draft of a 3-year financial forecast. He is projecting sizable revenue numbers that will result by partnering with them. Having reviewed and thought about his forecast, Susan responds by taking a "devil's advocate" position suggesting it's "too lofty" in her opinion.
Because the threaded-discussion capability supports asynchronous work, team members are able to read and, most importantly, reflect on fellow team members' observations, perspectives, thoughts, and draft models before responding with their own feedback. As they articulate their thinking and position, they are contributing to the team's base of knowledge. As they synthesize these conversations, they distill key points that clarify it.
By engaging in these asynchronous conversations, members are far better prepared when they meet, whether in-person or remotely. As such, they can better utilize their time together going deeper and working toward consensus. A significant by-product of the collaborative knowledge tree is a vast reservoir of refined team knowledge that has evolved over time.
STAGE 3 - HARVESTING
Team members draw upon this knowledge reservoir to produce any number of work products, such as proposals, presentations, articles, models, and so forth. They can use the collaborative knowledge tree as part of building the work product itself. As they create iterations, or drafts, of a work product, they post it, or make reference it, in a sticky knowte™.
Shown below is a sticky knowte™ (10.3.3 SoftCo C) with two file attachments that are work products (spreadsheet for a 3-year financial forecast, and a document containing a draft message) associated with "SoftCo C".
As fellow team members review the work product, such as the 3-year financial forecast draft, they use the threaded-discussion area to provide feedback and make suggestions to improve it. Those discussion also becomes part of the overall content in the collaborative knowledge tree.
CONCLUSION
Through a group of incredibly talented people...bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making noise. And working together, they polish each other. And, they polish the ideas and what comes out are these beautiful stones. - Steve Jobs using a rock tumbler that turns common rocks into polished, beautiful stones as a metaphor for a team working really hard on something they're passionate about.
The collaborative knowledge tree, as the rock tumbler in Jobs' metaphor, facilitates the clarification of the vision, scope, results, outcomes, definitions, and positions which come about as team members consider, explore, and debate new and different pathways. It sits between an initial brainstorming session and the production of work products. Its power is providing a structure to organize the team's ideas that can be expanded by adding rich content along with longer form narrative to explore and debate. Team members leverage the by-product, a knowledge reservoir, to create deliverables which themselves become part of the tree. It is a powerful capability to assist teams by bringing structure and order to the chaos associated with big ideas, big challenges, or big problems.