FRICTIONLESS SHARING - PERSPECTIVES

The concept "Frictionless sharing" is really something which makes your head spin. What could it be, what could it mean. For those who wish to look what that concept actually means the following wikipedia link is usefull: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frictionless_sharing

In this blog I wish to take that concept a bit further, I will sail freely to the theoretical waters. What could it meand if we could share everything frictionlessly. And although this text is highly hyphotetical it may also reveal something very practical and very concrete. It will offer something to consider when we wish to develop our organizations to the direction where people share more and where people make their work more and more transparent to others.

Whose life should we live

Taken to its extreme frictionless sharing would mean that we would all live one life. One person would share everything to the others and we rest would try to keep up. This is of course absolutely extreme proposition, and of course frictionless does not really mean anything like this. On the other hand this makes us think that who should share, what and in which different settings. Let us assume that CEO uses 5 hours of his day in meetings, should s/he share this experience to others? Should he share part of it to others? What part and to whom?

I believe these are relevant questions and we are all in the middle of this exercise. What should we share and to whom? Thanks to technological developments the question how to share does not seem to be the biggest challenge at all.

Do I have something to say, something to share

In our University we have lot of technical tools which we can use when we wish to share things (ideas, thoughts, observations, plans, etc.) with each other. For instance, we have University wide Yammer. So, in principle we have a platform where 2600 experts could think together.

It just occurred to me that have I ever seen something or thought an idea which would be worth sharing with all in our own organization? I would propose that this kind of question is a real epistemological and also very practical problem in our time.

I work as an Executive Education Director in our University. So in principle I should have some idea how organizations work and kind of information is relevant. Nevertheless, it is not so easy to think what kind of observation in practical terms would be such which I or anyone in our organization should share with others. Would kind of idea/thought/plan would be worth of sharing?

Have I never seen or thought anything worth sharing? Sounds bad. Or do I constantly have ideas and observations which would deserve sharing and which I fail to share because I do not understand the value of those ideas and observations to us all? It is a real pity if this is the case.

Let us develop our understanding - what to share and to who

The very idea of any organization is the capability to work together and thus produce more together than as compared to working as separate entities and individuals. Apparently the ability to think together will become more and more important all the time, gradually working means more and more thinking. One element in this working and thinking together is the ability to understand what to share. I suggest that in every organization we could pause to think what kind of principles and practices of sharing are such which we wish to develop in our particular organization. That would create a basis to start to proceed towards sharing culture and practice. The journey will be challenging but certainly quite necessary for successful organizations.