People Focus vs. Document Focus
Mar 23, 2009 Social Learning SIG
People vs. Documents
Focusing on People, Not Documents:
- Information is not limited to ‘Documents’ but expanded to Discussions
- Everyone* owns
- Information is ‘pulled out’ of people instead of ‘put in’ to documents.
- At the same time, documentation increases
- More collaborative
- Flexibility increases
- Puts the focus back where it belongs: on people
- Discussions increase
- Learning increases
*Ownership – Everyone can own or the ownership may be given to a subset of people instead of one person owning the information.
We see the focus on documents (used generically) all too often: Presenting too heavily off a PowerPoint; Documents stifling discussion and slowing down collaboration; Focusing on ‘the way things are’ instead of ‘the possibility of what they can become.’ We are masters of documents, yet so often we hold up a document as the master and we should be a slave to it. Sure, it is there for insurance, but it also limits creativity and innovation and improvement and enhances mediocrity (see the TED talk by Barry Schwartz). None of which we can afford to do these days.
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