I just read Joel Spolsky’s blog entitled “A Little Less Conversation” which discusses something I’ve blogged about in the past here and here, communication overload.
After reading that post I began to consider my own personal experience in meetings over the last dozen or so years and decided to add an addendum to the communication node problem that was so eloquently detailed in the Mythical Man Month by Brooks.
The problem with Brooks’ theory of intercommunication is that it doesn’t take into account the “Number of Managers” in any given meeting. He assumes in his calculation that all nodes in a communication network are equal. This is a mistake. All nodes are not equal, as anyone who has sat through a meeting with more than one manager participating can attest to.
“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.”
–Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln may have understood trust and community better than anyone in the history of the United States. He knew that maintaining trust meant having the people’s confidence… and with confidence you can lead. I can’t imagine having to make the kind of decisions that he did, but I can imagine how important maintaining the people’s trust must have been to him through that period in history. Every leader must have his community’s trust to be effective.
Building and maintaining trust stems from two elements, transparency and action, one without the other will not work, but together they have proven to be a winning combination for instilling the necessary confidence to effectively lead.
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Community Building 101
3 Comments | Posted by mindby in Community, Leadership, Open Source, Reputation and Trust, Strategy, Tips and Tricks
Originally published in Open Source Business Resource January 2010
“…success comes entirely from people and the system within which they work. Results are not the point. Developing the people and the system so that together they are capable of achieving successful results is the point.”
Leading Lean Software Development
Recently, that quote stirred some controversy among my peers. The part about “results are not the point” was hard for some people to understand and come to grips with. Aren’t results always the point? Well, as with most things, “It depends”. The people and community that evolve around an open source software project will ultimately determine its success. Even if the core team launches the project with spectacular productivity and results, this phase of evolution will be fleeting if the necessary processes and community to make the project a long lasting success are not put into place.
This article presents some of the actions open source community leaders can take to ensure not only results, but a system that encourages productivity and longevity.
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It’s Not About Micro-Communication, It’s About Macro-Community
1 Comment | Posted by mindby in Collaboration, Community, Social Media, Technology Adoption
Twitter is the first communication mechanism I’ve been a part of that actually helps me build new relationships without any preexisting knowledge (or trust) with the other party. Much hoopla has been made about the micro-format of Twitter and how it enables new forms of communication, but the amazing power of Twitter comes from it’s ability to allow people to connect and develop new relationships seemingly out of nothing.
My Twitter relationships may lack the depth of trust that I have in the “Friend” model (in some cases 
of Facebook, LinkedIn, or email but they’re still relationships that I’ve come to value and that provide me with a sense of community.
How this happened surprised me. I had sporadically used Twitter for about a year, but wasn’t finding it very useful until I started using the search feature of Twitter to discover people that I shared a common interest with. I’ve talked about this in the past, but in a nutshell to get an action (or Twitter usage, in my case) requires the following… (more…)
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The Long Lost Art of Listening
0 Comments | Posted by mindby in Community, Reputation and Trust, Social Media
My how things have changed! Just a few years ago companies and organizations could buy multi-million dollar television ads and make a mediocre product successful. People trusted companies to produce great products and would rush out to buy the latest and greatest gizmo because they knew it was going to work as promised. Unfortunately, most companies violated that trust by producing crappy products or products that didn’t solve user needs. Fortunately for us this is changing thanks to inventive companies that are taking advantage of social media and it’s ability to let them talk directly to the customer. Companies that talk directly to their user communities and produce products using more customer focused agile methodologies are finding success through LISTENING. What a novel concept, talk to your customer and incorporate their feedback in everything you do.
This video epitomizes the current state of affairs at most companies + its pretty funny.
21st century marketing is about connecting people together around your product and creating Fans. In this new era of connectedness companies that understand this are going to be successful… very successful. It’s not about making a company’s products look good in some contrived tv or radio advertisement. (more…)
