Surepoint blog » participation

In collaboration we trust

Rowan Purdy — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 20:58:15 +0000

More than any other previous government policy this latest white paper has been developed through consultation, listening and providing people with opportunities to say what they wanted. Here I outline why factors such as these and most importantly collaboration and trust will be key to the successful translation of the policy into practice.

Organisations representing the views of 100,000 people were involved in the development of the Independence, community. A subsequent listening exercise called Your Health, Your Care, Your Say then sought the healthcare views of over 40,000 members of the public. This was done through an online survey and face-to-face regional debates with randomly selected participants.

The main outcome from two “listening exercises” was an overwhelming endorsement from those who took part for more choice, high-quality support and services personalised around their needs. When they access community services people said they wanted to do so in places and at times that fit in with the way they lead their lives. And they expect to see support for those in greatest need and care on offer closer to home, with services shifted from hospitals into local communities. These views are clearly represented in the recommendations in the white paper.

The willingness to engage with and listen to others and provide real opportunities for people to have their say was crucial in defining the white paper. Many believe that they will also be important as we work together to translate the policy into practice. The key words here are work together. For me the white paper could and should have placed more emphasis on working together.

But why should we work together? The hypothesis is simple but powerful, collaboration is more effective than working alone. Collaboration helps us to:

develop a better sense of belonging and ownership
understand one another and value our diversity
improve outcomes that would not otherwise be attained
improve performance and increase productivity
enhance capacity

Collaboration delivers collaborative advantage. That is something is achieved that could not have been achieved without the collaboration. Sounds straightforward enough. So how do we begin to collaborate successfully? Successful collaboration requires:

trust – critical to motivation
all partners need to want to try
committment – it takes effort
implementation requires work on mind sets, processes, structures, and skills
manage expectations
talking is good – just do it – communicate, communicate, communicate

But what about the barriers that might prevent us from working together. Put simply, they include:

mistrust
differences in status and culture
technical complexity
dynamics within and between groups

So how do we avoid these pitfalls. There are a plethora of techniques which can be used to facilitate successful collaboration. By far the most important is building trust. Trust is the basis for active participation and effective collaboration. Without trust people are unwilling to participate and cooperate with one another.

However, building trust is not a linear progression to a magic place. Building trust is cyclical and involves iterative development. To build and reinforce trust it is important to:

recognise that everyone has something to learn and everone has something to share
have enough trust and take a risk to initiate the collaboration
form expectations based on reputation, track record, agreements
set common and realistic objectives, start with something small and build on it
have and share common experiences
deliver and celebrate achievements however small as this can form the motivational basis for more ambitious collaboration

So how do you know when sufficient trust has been established so that collaboration can begin. From my experience you don’t. Sometimes it’s best to get started on some action without fully developing trust.

The challenge for organisations such as the CSIP, responsible for supporting local communities to implement the recommendations of the white paper, will be to motivate, mobilise and broker some action leading to improvements. We will achieve this by:

championing collaborative working
recognising the role of trust in successful collaboration
embracing diversity, complexity and conflict
empowering people to have a voice
encouraging inclusion and active participation

Finally, and in the spirit of the view that everyone has something to learn and everone has something to share, I think that we should take a step back and look to see if we can learn from elsewhere.

The European Social Research Council and the Nuffield Trust recently funded a research-based seminar series seeks to address some of these issues around the role of trust in public sector service organisation and delivery. For more information visit the JISC mail listing, entitled ‘trust’ http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/trust.html> or see this accessible paper, ‘Trust in the Public Sector’, by Professor Huw Davies and Dr Mark Dibden at the Centre for public policy and Management at the University of St Andrews.

Leading UK social software developers, Headshift, have sparked debate on the role of social technology in implementing the vision of Our Health, Our Care, Our Say? Read the fascinating article by Lee and Stuart here http://www.headshift.com/archives/002780.cfm>. Patient Opinion www.patientopinion.org.uk> is one small example of this new thinking – a website where patients can share their experiences and rate hospitals and services – and is very much in line with the white paper’s call for everyone to have the opportunity to share their views and experiences. It uses social software tools and techniques such as patient weblogs, location-based services, RSS and social tagging to create reliable patient-generated reputation information for individual departments and services, and the site shares these with prospective patients at the point when they are choosing a hospital.

Within CSIP we are actively using social software to support our work. The award winning knowledge community http://kc.csip.org.uk> is a great example. The kc is a shared space where people can exchange knowledge, information and experiences relating to any aspect of health and social care in order to contribute to the improvement of care services and the well-being of vulnerable people. It connects a wide range of people, groups, organisations and information in a way that is designed to make it easy for people to find who or what they are looking for, taking into account a variety of different perspectives and points of view.

As a personal advocate for the collaborative power of social software I wonder how long it will be before we see policy authored collaboratively using a wiki. For more information see wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki.

Interesting items on the white paper

Carers UK http://www.carersuk.org/Newsandcampaigns/Newsreleases/1138702234>
Healthcare Commission response http://www.healthcarecommission.org.uk/NewsAndEvents/PressReleases/PressReleaseDetail/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4022709&chk=s3U9T8>
Royal College of Physicians/Royal College of General Practitioners http://www.rcgp.org.uk/press/2006/0008.asp>
Sainsbury centre for mental health responsehttp://www.scmh.org.uk/80256FBD004F6342/vWeb/pcKHAL6LMDHG>
Kings Fund response http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/news/press_releases/government_plans.html>
British Medical Association response http://www.bma.org.uk/pressrel.nsf/wlu/SGOY-6LJJSN?OpenDocument&vw=wfmms>
Royal College of Nursing http://www.rcn.org.uk/news/display.php?ID=1860>
Headshift response http://www.headshift.com/archives/002780.cfm>
Transcript of the white paper webchat with No. 10 Downing Street http://www.csip.org.uk/whitepaper_webchat_transcript.html

Reflections on the white paper ‘Our Health, Our Care, Our Say’

Rowan Purdy — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:28:20 +0000

Some excellent thoughts from Headshift on the new white paper ‘Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: A New Direction for Community Services’ by Stuart Hall and Lee Bryant.

I think that this is a superb article. Truly stimulating stuff. I agree wholeheartedly that social technology provides the means by which social networks create the architecture of participation.

The other night as part of the white paper webchat with No. 10 Downing Street I posed a question as to how long it might be before we see policy authored collaboratively using a social technology such as wiki.

I am still struck by the cultural resistance many social networks I support show in colloaborating, especially when it comes to using social technology to support the collaboration. As I suggest in my own polemic on the debate surrounding the white paper perhaps this has a lot to do with the need to build trust. From my experience there’s no point hanging around for a sufficient level of trust to be established before collaboration can begin. Sometimes it’s best to get started on some action without fully developing trust. Chipping away delivering small changes and celebrating these achievements however small can form the motivational basis for more ambitious collaboration. As you say Patient Opinion is only the beginning.

Can social software enhance collaborative working?

Rowan Purdy — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 19:38:30 +0000

This article offers thoughts from Rowan Purdy (Website author) and Gareth Johnson (Warwick University) on whether social software can enhance collaborative working.

An assssment of the potential of blogs and wikis to build communities

Rowan Purdy
A year ago we launched our knowledge community. Intially the kc was an environment for people interested in forming communities to support improvement in mental health services and wellbeing.

To reflect our organisational change the scope of the kc will be broadened over the coming months to cater for people interested in forming communities to support improvement in care services and the wellbeing of vulnerable people. This includes vulnerability on the grounds of mental health, learning and physical disability, across all age ranges from children and young people, to adults and older people.

Membership is free. To date 6,500 people have joined. Non-members can still browse the system.

At its heart the KC provides members with informal, easy to use publishing tools. Blogs for individuals. Blogs and wikis for groups. Any two members can set up a group. To date we have over 365 groups with varying purpose, size of membership and activity.

People working within NIMHE / Rethink Early Intervention in Psychosis Programme are using their public kc group to support social networking across the country. David Shiers and Jo Smith, Joint National Programme Leads, say,

“We are a group of users of services, carers and practitioners with an enthusiastic passion for improving services for people with psychosis. The main challenge we faced was overcoming our geographic dispersal and the impracticality of physically meeting on a regular basis to share ideas and organise our work. We use our KC group to share ideas and news with each other. We debate, review and refine ideas together to solve problems and improve our everyday decisions at work.

“We regularly respond to the questions posed by others. We don’t always know the answers but am able to signpost people to someone who might. It’s rather like a group of gardeners growing things and weeding together in a communal garden. Every so often a seedling begins to sprout and we marvel as through our collective efforts new shoots and eventually flowers blossom or fruits form.”

Contrast this with private groups which are equally successful but for different reasons. Primary Care Graduate Workers use their group as a peer support tool where they share problems and concerns in confidence away from the eyes of their managers.

We have had less success with the open source wiki tool we provided for groups. However, we have recently piloted the use of confluence, a user friendly wiki tool, and find that it is really suited to supporting project teams in collaboratively delivering short focused pieces of work that have already been agreed. The project teams I support know that there is one place they need to go to find or contribute to up to date information about our work. In the past we had massive email chains and problems with multiple versions of documents flying around without anyone knowing which was the most up to date. Our new approach is helping us to deliver our work better together.

Gareth Johnson

Here at Warwick we are already seeing the emergence of multiple communities. Many are born of a mutual inter-dependence (say studying on a course or module), whilst others are springing up as might be expected between social society members and research teams.

One of the best examples seen of the professional potential of blogs being exploited is through the Learning Grid and their team blog. The Grid comprises an information commons environment staffed largely by student advisors with very limited managerial presence. Due to diverse scheduling of the assistants shifts there is no time when they are all on duty, and studying practicalities prevent the possibility of physical team meetings. To this end they have successfully employed blogs for the past year to help weld the virtual team together.

What started out as a simple mechanism for reporting issues or problems during a shift for the subsequent team members or management to pick up on has developed into a rich supporting community. Moving from a systematic reporting to a more informal structure has enabled a rapid interchange of information – far more rapidly and freely than within the formal approach. It has certainly helped develop a group of disparate individuals into a cohesive whole – who on the rare occasions they meet up socially are able to function on a variety of levels.

We’ve also seen evidence of hidden blogging communities formed of bloggers who support and comment to each other, but not to the outside world. For sensitive issues these are a way in which the blogs have provided a forum for discussion and expression.

What are the challenges associated with it?

Rowan Purdy

We face a number of challenges

keeing the system simple and social up front whilst being smart behind the scenes. We actively involve our key stakeholders in the development of the system: scoping requirements and usability testing. Even so, many users say that the complexity of the system presented through the interfaces is a barrier to their engagement and participation. We have begun a redesign effort to simplify the interface, providing advanced fgeatures only on demand
no matter how simple the interface, proactive community engagement and content development are key
corporate messaging vs individual voice. The kc is an open system, everyone can have their say subject to the terms and conditions – no abuse, offensive language etc. We use RSS technology to enable administrators to control which content can be broadcast onto corporate satellite sites.

Gareth Johnson

A major challenge in building any community or common practice with such tools is through the establishment of community boundaries and norms. In the early stages it is all too easy for a few individuals to dominate or tarnish the potential through actions that are perhaps distasteful to the wider community if to a degree inadvertent. At the same time there will always be script-kiddies who will attempt to not so much subvert the system but actively seek to disrupt, destroy and pervert.

The solution to the former problem can be found in the maturation of any online community and the self-regulation that comes with it. For the second problem it is only through the vigilance of the technical/development support individuals that we can prevent such ongoing abuses.

In terms of corporate blogging efforts there are the challenges of image. Whilst the academic community might be happy to give full flow and vent to their students’ discussions, and to a degree their own – when blogs are used more as a team or corporate tool it is a different matter. If a blog is well configured it should be relatively simple to ensure that postings intended for internal consumption only are only seen internally. On the other hand without some sort of guidance it is possible for this to be inadvertently misused. How you straddle the gap between a free and lively flow of information, and corporate censorship is not easy. (link), Warwick have ours.

Though in terms of blogs in the Library & Information Service context a preface has been added into our own rules to help better guide our colleagues Work team blogs (e.g. Science Team, RIU as opposed to personal ones) are considered semi-official representations of the Library, its services, activities and staff. As such any content should reflect, wherever possible, the Library and its staff members in the most suitable light to user and external community.

What proof is there that they are powerful tools for change?

Rowan Purdy

These tools are changing the way we work

Conversations about questions that matter – We have groups making use of on-line conference facilities to:
- spread the reach of their off-line conferences across national boundaries
- improve use of face to face time – making papers available in advance encourages people to begin to debate some of the issues via on-line conference facilities. People will come to the conference and already be up to speed with the issues so that we can concentrate our efforts on debating solutions and agreeing actions.
Improving our efficiency – my team has adopted a set of communications standards to change how and for what purpose the team use different forms of technology. This includes the teams use of:
- telephone
- SMS
- email
- instant messaging
- websites
- video conferencing
- blogs
- WIKI tools

The communications standards have transformed our team. There is good evidence to show that email overload significantly increase stress levels. Addressing this issue has not only helped us to work more efficiently but also helped us to be happier in our daily work. My colleague, Alison Kerins, national strategic communications leads and senior client manager, says,

“I used to use email for every type of communication. I often found myself tied to my email system reacting to emails as they arrived. This often interrupted my planned work. Now I use email at specific times in the day to send out formal communications only. I probably spend 1 hour per day less time producing and reacting to emails than I used to. I use other forms of technology for other communications. For example I use instant messaging and SMS for immediate questions and answers or updates.”

Using wikis to write together – people are currently drafting books and policy guidance together e.g. EI, commissioning, dementia

Gareth Johnson

Change agency is a role I see blogs supporting in the academic world, though I’ve yet to see evidence of those role as an instigator of it. They are currently the flavour of the month and it will be interesting to see what their real impact is over the next few years. Academics are hoping that through blogging about their courses that students will seek to engage with their subjects more closely.

However, e-learning tools allowing asynchronous chatting and message boards have been a feature at many educational establishments for the past decade with virtual learning environments. It is difficult to see what functionality blogs offer that these do not. Where the student mindset – dominated by an A-Level study/pass mentality rather than engaging with the wider scholastic process not to mention increasing time pressures – remains one in which the majority seek to complete the core of a course and no further, academics will struggle to truly use blogs to engage.

The future of collaboration tools: blogs, wikis, instant messaging, what next?

Rowan Purdy

Increasing time pressures and the need for greater efficiency will only fuel the appeal of collaborative working tools in the public sector. We want tools that work for us and not the other way around. Our goal is to shape the tools to meet our needs. For example, email is very useful but our use of email has to change.

My team has considered the following as an approach:

Email is good for formal approval and notification of actions
Face to face, telephone, video conference, IM, SMS are best for real-time
Blogs are good for ideas, opinions and debate – I can choose whether to engage and participate by deciding when I open my RSS reader and which channels to subscribe to
WIKIs are great for generating products collaboratively

Successful collaboration, whether online or in person, depends on good team dynamics and appropriate behaviours.

facilitators plays a key role
ground rules / rules of engagement
careful planning
rewards for sharing

Gareth Johnson

Censorship will always be a problem for some – whether it be governmental, organisational or from within community itself. Whilst blogs have thrived on the free-Web and in academic communities – where freedom of speech is a key given. In commercial organisations where there is much more concern over commercially sensitive information, the free-flowing, informal; style of the blog comes into question. What happens when someone gives away a multimillion pound idea to a major competitor?

In academic terms the pressures of time will always erode at the potential of any collaborative working functions to enhance the scholastic experience for all. At the same time whilst there will always be those students who leap to embrace new facilities the risk is that it will be their voices (spoken or otherwise) that will dominate blogging debate or wiki contributions. In the many cases this will see a diminution of contribution or self-worth from other, less vocal members of the community.

At the same time there is the ever present consideration of bias or uneven viewpoints. Perhaps acceptable as topics for debate in the arts or social sciences, but in the factually dominated science and engineering world the strident advocate for intelligent design or rounding the value of Pi to exactly 3 could have devastating consequences for the education process. The role of the academic to step in and mediate these potential errors begins to take away a large portion of the uniquely autonomous culture of the social media facilities and could potentially retard their use considerably.