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SharePoint: The World's Most Impersonal Network

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What we value most about social networks isn't the number of friends, invites, reconnects, or diversions from the dullness of rote tasks. It's more basic that that.

It's that we know where they stand -- they're either vibrant and flowing or they die. There are no static forms of social media. They're either teeming with news and gossip or they lose their social life.

Not true in our ECM fortresses. Our firewalled networks have a forced look to them. The implicit agreement that we honor our employment contracts by showering our intranets with the nuggets from our C:\ stretches boundaries few are willing to cross -- if your ancestoral home is architected in SharePoint.

It only stands to reason:

The same software company that made personal computing possible would be responsible for the world's most impersonal network. That's because the actual interest stories are buried in the haste of a lumbering, kludgy, one-way conversation labeled "document uploads to SharePoint."

Now I'll admit that it's a stretch to mistaken missing metadata for the sizzle of some juicy details. But what passive knowledge transfers are captured in this no-questions-asked drop between the knowledge orphanage (document library) and the plateless get-away car (project team deliverables)?

For starters there's the time stamp called creation date. Next, the uploader stars as an understudy for the actual author/creator. The modifier co-stars as the surrogate babysitter who takes a swipe at a proper title and maybe an actual account code.

But the actual reasons behind why this disembodied document leads a double-life on the SharePoint server seems more relevant to the sleuth-work of knowledge forensics than ...

* to the details that divulge the context of the material
* to the larger objective it served in the life of the project
* to the deliberations of the team that drafted it.
 
Who created this artifact is not answered when the artifact's proper parents are too important to bother themselves with the indignity of document uploads. Why they at least bothered to author these files means we have to bridge the presenters to the receiving end of their presentation.

Another personal touch that goes begging is just how unique the material is: Is this boilerplate or is it an original statement made by a gifted group of innovators?

Sound a little precious -- Harvard Business Review-y? I'm talking about our user/colleagues. The rain-makers who slave over the blend of quality inputs and insightful connections that leads to the breakthrough thinking the competition is hankering to steal more than create for themselves. After all, we're talking about billable work product. We're staging IP that is commercially valued in some way!

So how do we work within the limits of SharePoint so that our users don't need knowledge forensics to figure out the burial plots, the missing credits, and the veiled motivations?

* One is to tell time according to the life of projects -- not according to the time stamps for upload events.

* Two is to ensure either from staffing records, embedded MS Office details, or crude email confirmation whose fingerprints are in the IP captured in the upload trail. You're likelier to pull a sincere confession around who-touched-it-last from a poker-faced extortionist than the session histories housed within the user logs.

* Three is the 80/20 rule -- This means ascribing a single piece of metadata to confirm the original senders and receivers of the material. Who did it on who's behalf is the kind of upfront interrogation we expect long before the confessions and plea bargaining. But that's 80% of the KM riddle in a nutshell.

Without it all documents are equal before the eyes of SharePoint and that's an injustice to our users. That's the kind of equality guaranteed to bring little understanding, participation, and even less personality to the world's most impersonal network.

Comments

SharePoint out of the box

Submitted by Christian Buckley February 16, 2011 - 12:09 PM

The scenario you've described fits the picture of SharePoint out of the box, but one of its main strengths is its extensibility. As you point out in your third suggestion, a single piece of metadata can be added to better assert ownership and accountability. Turning on MySites in SharePoint 2010 and allowing people to tag up theirs, and others, content with ratings, keywords, and comments will further break down the sterile environment you describe, and answer points one and two.

Documents ARE all equal...until someone takes the first step and applies themselves.

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Maturity and Butlers

Submitted by Sadalit Van Buren February 19, 2011 - 10:31 AM

Marc - I echo Christian's sentiment, that there is a maturity aspect to whether or not networks and communities will flourish in SharePoint. There needs to be investment and some degree of customization to reflect the company's culture, because the "who uploaded what" model is definitely not enough.

Your point about the social-computing challenges in a culture of the understudy-uploader is a great one, but I feel some hope here. I've been noticing, in the organizations I work with, a marked decrease in the number of administrative assistants that high-level folks have. And at the risk of lowering the high caliber of thought here with a pop-culture reference, I was watching the second episode of Downton Abbey last night, the one where the New Lawyer Hero enters the action and has no need for a gentleman's valet. He can put on his own coat and cufflinks! First-world society has shifted away from the reliance on household servants (although we still outsource plenty of household tasks, it's not the old model of having an attic full of attendants who rise before we do and turn in long after we're asleep). I have hope that the business world is heading the same way - that the lords of the office who are too important to upload their own materials are gradually giving way to a much more hands-on workforce. It will take time but we will get there.

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