Tag Archives: collaboration

Cumbersome processes

Just a quick thought.

Tomorrow the new Lord Mayor is getting installed and beforehand all 59 councillors have got the opportunity to press the flesh with the different directorates and service areas that make up Hull City Council in a marketplace event.

It’s a pretty good idea – councils are massive and it must be pretty daunting for any newly elected councillor to get a handle on what it is we do. And there’s value in taking a similar approach for communicating that breadth to the public (Walsall100 is a practical demonstration of that).

Anyway, in preparation for this event the different service areas and directorates have been pulling together briefing notes. In the Regeneration Directorate are two services: Economic Development & Regeneration and Physical Regeneration. And that covers a further 11 distinct areas of activity (BSF is part of Physical Regeneration). So putting together something brief that communicates everything from new schools to museums with European funding in between is not straight forward.

What we’ve ended up with is succinct and (hopefully) helpful in giving a nice overview of the directorate. It was the result of three different people working on it in their own spheres of influence – someone from the Economic Development & Regeneration wing, someone else from the Physical Regeneration arm and also the BSF team. In the end it’s come to us to wire the different bits together and produce a single document.

There’s no trouble in doing that but I yearn for a day when we might together, in our three separate offices, have been co-authoring a shared document and discussing the amends in real-time rather than the slightly delayed and cumbersome fashion that has seen slightly different versions of the same basic document flying about whilst different additions ping into inboxes; there is a better way to do this…

Remember Tom?

In 2003 Tom Anderson helped launch MySpace.  It wasn’t the first social network but it was the first to capture the world’s imagination.

Even for those of us who’d been using IRC and ICQ, or the Messengers of Yahoo and MSN Myspace represented something very different: a website, not something you installed.

You might have been invited, in which case you’d have a friend. Or you might know what you were doing and be confident. But neither of those were guaranteed, there was every chance you’d be joining this strange and alien world without any friends.

With nobody to hold your hand or guide you through it Myspace did something very clever. Everybody who signed up was welcomed, hosted and befriended by Tom. Continue reading Remember Tom?

>#cisforchurch (and everybody else)

>Earlier today I saw a tweet from @ShareCreative about CisFORchurch. Behind the link was some church research inspired by Seth Godin’s book ‘Tribes’. Through discussions with church leaders and members the authors consider what 21st century church community looks like and some of the common obstacles or concerns that exist.

The Conservative slogan of ‘Broken Britain’ gained traction because there is the perception that communities have fractured. Perhaps that’s supported by people not knowing their neighbours and 70% of us being selfish but the internet has seen them reborn. The social web exists because people want to share their lives with others, they desire more than simple individualism or quiet desperation. And while some of those social spaces remain entirely virtual the real value of everything web 2.0 is seen in the act of transition to the real world. It is word becoming flesh.

And it’s great to see some creative people recognising this and trying to help the church understand it. Christianity is all about relationships. The Trinity is a beautiful image of relational community. The Bible is the story of God’s desire for relationship with His creation. The church exists to encourage and support, to connect and transform, to be both home and sanctuary. We’re meant to be modelling community beyond just pitching up for a few songs and a prayer predicated on subscription to some specific beliefs.

So whilst C may stand for Church, what we discuss on a Sunday is not just for Church and Christians. The relevance and value remains without belief in God. There is a massive amount to say about the leadership of people, the management of performance and the very nature of organisations. In the last 7 years, at work and in study, it’s remarkable how much of what has been offered as good practice has characteristics or motivation that resonates with my theology.

The first page of text ends with this paragraph, it’s good stuff for everyone faith loaded or not:

when there is a thriving sense of community, there is a healthy degree of communication and an increase in communication leads to more collaboration. This type of environment is conducive to developing innovation, creative ideas and productivity

Take a look, have a think and let me know if you think I’m talking absolute rubbish 🙂