A Firsthand Lesson in Participation

by Kent Aitken

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The public service has recently been experimenting with many exercises intended to engage employees and stakeholders, which have led to many questions and discussions about what drives people to participation.

I recently wrote on our internal platform, GCconnex, that the absence of technical barriers isn't sufficient - there may still be significant informational, social, and cultural barriers. That is, even if people can theoretically find and contribute to an exercise, doesn’t mean that they’ll necessarily know about it, believe that it’s intended for them, or see their role in it.

Lessons in Participation

There’s an amazing body of knowledge on why people participate*, and I won’t scratch the surface today. But I’d like to share a lesson I experienced firsthand.

I run a summer side project called Musical Underground Ottawa, setting up in public spaces around the city with a guitar and inviting people to play a song. We capture the results, and anyone that plays is entered in a raffle for said guitar.

Here’s what I thought would matter: I figured that the free guitar would give people either incentive or social justification to play. Something along the lines of “I don’t know if I should be on Youtube, but whatever, free guitar.”

Here’s what actually mattered: Looking people in the eyes and asking them. We had a 5” by 4” sign that read “Free Guitar in Exchange for Songs”. All the information was there, but very few people volunteered. We learned on day one that we had to ask passers-by if they played guitar, and if they’d be willing to play a song for us. It was actually amazing how much that changed the dynamic.

It says to people that their contribution is valued, without them having to decide that for themselves and impose their decision on others.

The Principle Stands

In retrospect, what we learned for Musical Underground Ottawa starts to sound similar to behavioural economics (see: How Nudges Work for Government), and Cass Sunstein's work on setting defaults and making the desired choice the easy one for people to make.

If you want engagement, consider how to absolve people of the duty to singlehandedly determine that they have a contribution to make, and impose that decision on others. Instead, make it your responsibility to demonstrate that their contribution is valuable.

*

People and Participation

Discuss. Decide. Do.

The Progress Principle

Rethinking Why People Participate

Drive

Public service renewal: the weekly round-up

For the week of September 19 - 23, 2011

If you’re involved in public service renewal – or just a curious bystander – here's the run down of stuff you'll want to read and do this week.

To do:

Sign up (as soon as possible!) for an inexpensive (read: $5) opportunity to scheme virtuously and network at: Beyond the Kool-Aid: Open Government? Space is limited and conversation promises to be dynamic. Join experts from Google, other levels of government and Mediastyle to talk Government 2.0; while the ideas have been discussed over and over, for many it feels as if little progress is being made. Where do we go from here?

Join us: Now that school has started we’re gearing up for yet another #w2p mixer, this time with a different twist. Mark your calendars for September 28 where the #w2p community will be mixing it up with the Advanced Leadership Program.

To read:

• The Future of the Federal Workforce: can we apply the cloud model to the PS workforce?

• On cuts: Federal unions launch petition drive to call on Clement to put critical services and the long-term social safety first.

• Junk the jargon, cut the clichés and use plain English – a new tone of voice would help so many public organizations

• The U.S. is having a national dialogue on improving government web sites - and there are loads of fabulous ideas to be found on the site.

Have a great week!

This post has been a collaborative effort from Lee-Anne Peluk and Nicholas Charney.You can check out Lee-Anne's blog "In the Shuffle" at www.leeannepeluk.wordpress.com

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Participation Inequality and Licensed Based Collaboration

Whenever I give advice to people about what to look for in a collaborative tool, I tell them to steer clear of anything that is based on a licensing model where the organization has to buy a license for every person in the organization, preferring instead to look at open source alternatives.

If you combine the 90-9-1 rule with a proprietary licensing arrangement (as I have in the info graphic above) you can see why: the return is only about ten cents on a dollar.


For Example

Let's consider the following:

• 500 person organization
• Enterprise wide solution at $130/license

Making the total cost to the organization $65,000

The participation breakdown within in a organization of 500 people is approximately:

• 5 heavy contributors
• 45 intermittent contributors
• 450 non contributors (lurkers)

Therefore the approximate cost breakdown under this model is:

• $650 spent to enable heavy contributors
• $5,850 spent to enable intermittent contributors
• $58,500 spent to enable lurkers

The production breakdown within this model is:

• 1% producing 90% of the outputs
• 9% producing 9% of the outputs
• 90% producing 1 % of the outputs

Overall licensing is cost neutral but with significant differences:

• Licensing heavy contributors is highly cost effective because they produce at a 1:9 ratio.
• Licensing intermittent contributors is cost neutral because they produce at a 1:1 ratio.
• Licensing lurkers is cost burden because they produce at a ratio of 9:1.

Looking over this example, it is no surprise why I recommend against engaging with vendors that use per user licenses as a distribution control. The model absolutely breaks down when you look at participation models. I personally think there are two caveats worth discussing from here: (1) what does this mean for vendors and in house resellers and (2) what is the value of lurking.

Thoughts?