Why #4: Distributing Ownership

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WHY #4: Social Learning Distributes Ownership.

Think of a water cooler discussion you have had lately.  Or maybe an email you sent out where there was a string of responses.  Who owns those conversations?  That is actually a silly question to ask because we all know that no one owns the conversations – they just are and we all might be participants in them.  This is different from training and traditional organizational learning where someone or organization or department owns the learning and its delivery and content.  Here, in the social world, no one owns them.  There are exceptions, but for the most part they are not owned.

It is in our nature to own content – information.  If you create a document or PowerPoint or Excel spreadsheet, you own it.  If someone wants to change it you email it to them, they change it, email it back and you approve the changes.  That is a traditional model of content ownership.  If another comes along and changes it without the owner’s knowledge – well watch out!  I have seen too many people get upset about that.

But with social learning, if I put out information and it is changed by someone, I should only be thankful and not get upset.  I relenquish control and ownership to everyone. S ure, I may be very interested in the information and may be the most active one in the document, but It is not mine.  The more who are willing to contribute, the better.  More views/perspectives and the more we can all learn.

If we combine this principle with the “Focus on People” principle, you can see how we would look at content differently.

Oddly enough, this is a difficult point for many to overcome.  In my research I found that people still have a file mentality.  They created a file and it is theirs.  If someone wants to change it or add to it, they have to ask permission.  It isn’t the same here.

After I implemented my first social learning environment I did some ethnographic research on how it was being used. I wasn’t expecting it, but I found that people would still put information in a wiki and expect that the information was theirs. They didn’t want others changing it nor did they want to change others’ without their permission.  Over time this has disappeared, but it a ‘gotcha’ we all need to be aware of.

Spread the idea that it is GREAT to add to or change information.  This may catch people off guard, but be ethusiastic about this point.

In the end, we all own it.  Again, like BarCamp, no one person owns it.  They may have someone driving it, but they don’t own the conversations or organization.

The UK government did some research and found:

Pupils feel a sense of ownership and engagement when they publish their work online and this can encourage attention to detail and an overall improved quality of work. Some teachers reported using publication of work to encourage peer assessment.

Dawn Foster mentions:

The community “owns” the community, and the employees of an organization or other people hosting the community are an integral part of that community. If you think of yourselves as an equal member of the community, it might be more natural to have conversations about negative criticism and work to resolve them together. Maybe this is just semantics, but I think it can help people think about the community in a way that facilitates collaboration and cooperation.

Why is this important?  Because the more that anyone can add or clarify, the more information you have and the more accurate it becomes.  The ownership isn’t an exclusive ownership, it is an inclusive ownership. Everyone owns the community, thus everyone owns the content.

What does “Distributes Ownership” mean to you?

How have you seen this principle work?

Related articles

• Musing on Community Ownership
• UK Government Research on Web 2.0
• Ten Aspects of Web 2.0 Strategy That Every CTO and CIO Should Know
• Who “Owns” the Community?

Tagged as: ownership, why