Chapter 6 - The Flow of Information
In many traditional organization, information was kept under lock and key: an individual in need of information would need to discover who had it, and then would be required to prove that they had a need of it. This was clearly a method of controlling decisions, as it was presumed that "information is power" and by holding information, the holder had power over decisions.
(EN: In truth, this is merely the self-delusion of having power. People make decisions based on the information they have at their disposal -withholding information does not prevent them from making a decision, merely from making a decision that considers the information that is being withheld.)
The author notes that concerns about security and confidentially are often raised to prevent the dissemination of information that is neither sensitive nor confidential - these claims are sometimes valid, but less often than is commonly claimed.
An open network has far fewer restrictions and can disseminate and share information freely - there are neither access controls nor a central source, and it provides the community to access the information to make an informed decision without the delay required to seek its owner and ask permission to have it.
Traditional Barriers to Communication
The author mentions that lack of communication is often cited by workers as a major source of dissatisfaction - they simply are no given the informational resources they need to be effective in their work. It's also noted, with some irony, that it is not uncommon to get an announcement from an internal "communications" department that is days or weeks after the same information was available from other sources, particularly external ones.
In some instances, poor communication is the result of lacking the necessary infrastructure to disseminate information - but in many instances it is simply a disinterest in communicating. The "need to know" attitude is often a line of defense from those who wish to maintain control over information.
She also refers to the traditional "chain of command" which prevents people from talking to one another. A person with a question for a director must instead ask his supervisor, who asks another manager, who asks another, etc. Or if the question is even for a peer in another department, the request must be passed up the chain to where the silos interact, then back down. All of this is highly inefficient and seems more geared to preventing rather than facilitating communication.
Besides all of this, there are unwritten rules and cultural norms that discourage open communication within companies. Many companies announce an "open door" policy or suggest that any employee has the ability to propose an idea or call attention to a problem - but woe be to the individual who does so.
Physical location is often used to control communication access: the higher the position, the more removed a person is from the workers, which reinforces the status difference. In some companies access to the C-suite is often restricted - such that elevators may not even stop on the floors in which executives are housed. Even something as simple as an office door, or a receptionist stationed outside an office, are used to discourage open communication. Separate parking facilities and separate entrances and exits are in some instances used to create separation between groups of employees.
Day-to-Day Sharing: Network as Communication Infrastructure
Organizations whose business consists of routine tasks that change little from day to day have little need for people to communicate on a day-to-day basis: everyone will do the same thing today as they did yesterday, and will do the same thing tomorrow, and unless something unusual occurs they can get through their working day without speaking to anyone about anything.
Organizations that need to respond quickly to change have a need for constant daily communication among their employees, as duties are constantly changing and must be coordinated as the need arises. Any procedure that might be established would quickly become irrelevant and to wait for information to move up and down the chain of command would be detrimental to the ability to act promptly.
The author suggests that many organizations have made attempts to improve open communication in their organizations by changing the organizational; cultures and values to encourage open communication. (EN: The problem is that this is that encouragement alone does not get people to communicate - the firm must remove the functional barriers to communication as well.)
In a peer network, there would be day-to-day sharing with everyone: no barriers, no gatekeepers, no need to work through channels or ask permission to access information. The author mentions a few social media technologies that can help employees communicate across the existing channels (EN: actually, any social media technology can be helpful in this regard - but businesses are often very wary of them, and employees are often discouraged for using them for business purposes.)
Benefits of the Open Transfer of Information
Open transfer of information requires information to be made available by default, rather than safeguarded by default, and enables employees to act as "nodes" in communicating to one another freely, regardless of rank and status. Information can be created, updated, extended, revised, and published in real time.
The benefit of doing so is that information is quickly available wherever it is needed, and decisions can be fully informed by all the information that is considered to be relevant by the decision-maker, rather than by those who wish to control or influence the decisions of others.
The author also mentions availability and transparency, which are common problems even in organizations that mean to be collaborative -merely having information openly available would make it easier for people to find, and the information is maintained by the entire organization.
(EN: I'm not entirely in agreement here, as what typically results is information overload. There is so much data available that it's difficult to find anything - and there are often multiple conflicting versions of the same information in a myriad of places. There are various attempts at a technical solution - solutions for storing, organizing, and searching data - but none of the ones I have seen are very effective at all.)
Summary
The chapter summary provides little new information, except for the authors prediction that organizations that continue to implement boundaries to communication will be slower and less responsive than those that allow information to flow freely and quickly to where it's needed. (EN: This seems self-evident, but I would also suggest that not all organizations really need this, and if it is done badly it can become an impediment to success.)