A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 8.4.A

An organization that makes it to the FORGING rung (step five of six on Gartner’s analogical ladder) is in rarefied air. UCP shows signs of being close. As I hinted at earlier, though, I doubt that it’s actually there – in no small part because the deck's been stacked against it from the start. 

What do I mean?

Becoming a social organization isn’t easy. The authors of The Social Organization warn us of that in the Intro, and then re-warn readers in Chapter 3 that putting mass collaboration to work requires “a high degree of corporate skill that most companies will struggle to develop for many years to come.” It only stands to reason that UCP is probably struggling, too. 

Those same authors also researched community collaboration adoption across many fields. When it came time to rank the more active adopters, nonprofits didn’t make the cut. “The highest adoption tier comprises retail, government, media, IT, and consumer products.” Except maybe for the elite of the elite, I wouldn’t expect health nonprofits to be up to the same speed (as organizations in those other industries).*

Still...

In significant ways UCP looks to be bucking any low-to-moderate expectations and becoming a social organization:

• It has a history of having experimented with online communities over the years. (to which I’ve alluded before) 

• UCP has professed its belief in the strategic importance of community collaboration. From its most recent annual report: “UCP recognizes the power of social media to amplify the voices of people with disabilities and all who care about their civil rights struggle. UCP invests heavily in updating and refocusing its social media presence during fiscal years 2010 and 2011.” This tells me the requisite mindset is in place, i.e., the people pulling the strings there don’t think entirely in terms of hierarchy and traditional management. 

• As a parent of a child with CP, I’m thankful that there are multiple ways for me to communicate and collaborate – not only with UCP’s staff, but with its whole network of friends, beneficiaries, partners, and so on. UCP has advanced past the “broadcasting at people” to the “engaging with people” stage. 

To the last point, you could say UCP now manages its own portfolio of platforms. (something social organizations do) Some of them are limited-time-only. Others are ongoing. Next thing I want to do is arrange the ones I know about accordingly.

A ONE-SHOT DEAL?

In conjunction with World CP Day, UCP is one of several global sponsors of the Change my world in 1 minute initiative. How it works: “Throughout August and September [2012], people with cerebral palsy were given the opportunity to express what they needed to make their lives more independent or rewarding. Those ideas were posted…and participants were asked to vote for the ideas they liked the best.” Now in its second phase, this is a great example of a collaborative community charged with performing a variety of disparate tasks, including generating innovative ideas and locating experts (crowd sourcing) in a large community.  

CONTINUOUS

• “Why build your own social community if you can achieve your purpose on someone else’s?” UCP has joined some existing general social web communities (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) and maintains multiple accounts.** 

• The My Child Without Limits Support Community connects families, friends and caregivers for support and inspiration. It’s a powerful platform that enables people to connect and collaborate with others in a variety of ways, most notably via a discussion forum. Rather than build this community from scratch, UCP opted to join an existing specific social web community. More about this in part B.

• Life Labs is a home-grown UCP social community. (It’s “only” five clicks away from UCP's homepage if you know what you’re looking for! That’ll be my only jab. I personally think all of these communities are a little hard to get to.) One of the key objectives of the Life Without Limits initiative as it’s currently construed is to help improve the lives “of people with disabilities by harnessing the latest innovations in technology to increase their access to the wider world and marketplace.” Life Labs is dedicated to developing technology-based solutions for people with disabilities and partnering with others who are similarly interested in accessible and inclusive technology. Among other things, its site employs social technologies out the wazoo. There’s: a blog; an option to join Life Labs on Google Groups; a Twitter account; a wiki…

My Child and Life Labs are collaborative communities. It's through these, in particular, that UCP demonstrates that the foundation is there, the basics are in place, for becoming a social organization. 

The platforms show me that UCP knows [1.] what collaborative communities are, [2.] what the defining characteristics are, and [3.] how organizations are using mass collaboration to achieve bigger, faster and better results: 

1. Remember the three indispensable components for mass collaboration?  Life Labs has what I think is a compelling PURPOSE. There’s a very active COMMUNITY at My Child. Both sites use SOCIAL MEDIA extensively. UCP obviously does.
2. Both communities are run in accordance with Gartner's “fundamental principles or defining characteristics of mass collaboration.” Without going into detail, the six (6) principles are : participation, collective, transparency, independence, persistence, and emergence.
3. In both instances UCP's using social media in support of “collective intelligence”: the pooling of small and incremental contributions into a coherent and useful body of knowledge. (Via Life Labs, for example, people are generating innovative ideas, solving difficult challenges, and engineering products. At My Child, people are posting content, augmenting it, categorizing it, and so on.) This is a proven -- legit', if you will -- way of using mass collaboration advantageously. 

To repeat: the foundation is there. 

Now...

How far can UCP go? How are the communities built on that foundation actually doing? How much real value are they delivering? And, how well is UCP doing all the other things it needs to do to build collaboration competence up and down the organization? Well enough to garner a great Gartner grade?

My best guess in part B.

*especially in the absence of fierce and direct competition
**It has at least three different Facebook accounts, for example.