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| Feel the Power of Collaboration |
| Columns - Management Corner: Technology Trends | ||||||||
| Written by Jim Mays | ||||||||
| Friday, 13 April 2007 | ||||||||
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Who would read an encyclopedia whose contributors are unknown and whose information may be erroneous? Millions; at least that’s been the experience of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Wikipedia is phenomenally successful, but it didn’t look like such a sure thing back in 2001. The founders of Wikipedia started with an online encyclopedia they called Nupedia. It was to consist of articles carefully written and vetted by academics with credentials in their respective fields. It was meant to take on the Encyclopedia Britannica and it failed miserably. It turns out that the “publication” cycle for Nupedia was way too time consuming and didn’t generate sufficient interest from the online community. If you have never heard of Nupedia before, you are not alone.By contrast, Wikipedia was a radical experiment in collaboration among total strangers. It started on January 15, 2001. By the end of February 2001, it had 1,000 articles and by the end of that year it had amassed over 20,000 articles. If you’ve spent much time on the Internet you’ve seen Wikipedia come up in your search results. The articles are mostly well written with plenty of references and hyperlinks to allow for verification of the information. Wikipedia is based on a collaboration tool called a Wiki which allows for virtually anyone to submit or edit any article. Common sense dictates that such a tool would result in a haphazard array of inaccurate articles, but the freedom to contribute also means that there are millions of proofreaders ready to pounce on inaccuracies. Wikipedia information isn’t iron-clad but in my experience the depth of information it provides exceeds everything else on the web. Yet it’s written by a large group of strangers, most of whom have never met, and many of whom aren’t even considered “experts.” The power of the masses is spelled out in a recent book, The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki, who argues that groups of people are often able to make better decisions than individuals acting alone. Surowiecki acknowledges that crowds can also be irrational and make rash decisions. He theorizes that there are certain necessary conditions to the formation of “wise” crowds, including diversity of opinion, independence, decentralization (or the availability of local knowledge), and some mechanism for aggregating the myriad of private choices into a collective decision. This principle is demonstrated in so-called Prediction Markets. Established to resemble a stock market, investors purchase “stock” in the likelihood of a certain event occurring. Numerous markets like this exist but my current favorite is CrowdIQ (www.crowdiq.com). At CrowdIQ, I’ve “purchased” 100 shares in the likelihood that the current governor of Illinois will be re-elected. Participants at CrowdIQ do not use real money, only “virtual” dollars. If my position ends up coming true, the value of my portfolio at CrowdIQ will increase. When the various participants choose the likelihood of a particular decision, their collective wisdom often turns out to be even more accurate than traditional polls. In 2004, the Iowa Electronic Markets, run by the University of Iowa, predicted George W. Bush’s election victory within 1.1 percent of the actual outcome. These types of markets have likewise been fairly accurate in other elections. At least in these types of settings, the “crowd” turns out to be pretty good at predicting future outcomes. It would seem that the practice of counseling might have something to gain by becoming better predictors of success or failure. Clearly, there is some underlying principle to these examples of online collaboration that holds a great deal of power and can be applied to real-life settings. I’m not seriously suggesting that counselors buy “shares” in the likelihood of success or failure of a patient. Just for a moment though, let’s engage in a little thought experiment. Imagine that we set up our own little stock exchange where staff members were paid based on their successful “buying and/or selling” of “futures” for any given client. If it was your income on the line, what would help you to consider whether you should buy or sell your shares? In an imaginary market such as this, I would hope that the staff would do quite well. If not, then we should ask ourselves, “How can we help a client become successful if we aren’t sure what a successful client looks like?” Counselors are expected to collaborate on their clients’ cases. The level of collaboration differs based on the client’s level of care, but the idea is that reviewing client cases before a group of professionals will lead to better care. I believe this is true, yet too many times it seems that the group of professionals is more interested in getting all of the right forms signed and/or espousing their own particular theoretical biases rather than examining a case thoroughly and objectively. The power of collaboration can further be examined by looking at Wikipedia and other similar ideas. In the practice of counseling, you are the “expert” but if you aren’t working with other experts in your field, then you are cheating your clients out of getting the best care possible. Someday clients may turn the power of online collaboration around. They might go online and leave comments about you and your agency. They could describe the quality of care they received — all of the pluses and minuses of their treatment experience — in a venue where other prospective patients could look up your profile prior to making that first appointment. I’m not aware of any website that collects treatment information, but similar sites have sprung up for other customer related queries. Angie’s List allows people to post online their experiences with plumbers, mechanics and a large number of other services. I have not seen any categories for treatment-related experiences, but it makes me wonder how long it will be before this sort of thing is commonplace for all services people can receive. Information technology can bring enormous power to bear on problems, especially through the power of collaboration. There is no need to re-invent the practice of counseling but the field could use some creative thinking and some new ways of looking at patient care. Maybe Wikipedia can teach us something. Related Links: Iowa Electronic Markets, http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/ Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page CrowdIQ, www.crowdiq.com Angie’s List, www.angieslist.com
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