Who This Book is For
The book–Yala: How to Manage Complex Relationships–is written for two kinds of people. Those who have been formally given the job of managing a complex relationship: for example, an international project, an outsourcing deal or an Internet marketplace. And those with no official role who nevertheless want to improve the performance of relationships in which they take part.
If the relationship is complex, both kinds of people will quickly discover that most of the behavior they want to control is beyond their control–at least in a conventional sense. Fortunately complex relationships have marvelous abilities to understand and to communicate, to contrive and invent ways to overcome their own difficulties. Rather than engineer a solution, we need to create a pool of possible approaches and a feedback mechanism that allows the more successful to emerge, letting isolated activities crystallize into new directions for the relationship.
We know just how hard it is to get those in complex relationships to work well together. There are real and important differences between people in different places. Different people make different assumptions and hold different beliefs. Different groups have different objectives and set different priorities. Conflict is sometimes unavoidable. This is a book for those who would rather anticipate and use diversity than fight it.
A key theme is that the most creative use of tools occurs where knowledge of the technology and knowledge of the application are in the same brain. Those familiar with extranets will find the first part of this book, which deals with the human factors, especially helpful. While those with prior experience of managing complex relationships may find the second part, which introduces new tools, particularly valuable.
What This Book Is Not
This book is not a manifesto for the overthrow of management. It does not claim that information technology will make people talk about things they do not want to. And it is not a sales pitch for consulting services.
This book does not deplore boundaries nor aim to subvert the hierarchies that create them. It argues instead that boundaries are important and need to be managed. A common hope of the 1990s was that the Internet would create a boundary-less world, undermining national and organizational hierarchies. But people expressed the same worries about other novel technologies–the telephone, telegram, telex and facsimile–and these fears never became reality. Instead governments and organizations have learnt how to exert better control over information networks. Sorry, this isn’t a book for Internet anarchists but for people who just want to help complex relationships perform better.
And this book doesn’t make extravagant claims for computer networks but treats them as one more communication channel. Telephones can’t make people talk to each other, nor can computers. But a telephone is a valuable tool for those who do want to talk, and so is a computer. Computers help people connect to one another, to understand how their conversations flow into a broader discourse and to recognize emerging views.
This book does not sell consulting services. Instead it provides a do-it-yourself guide to managing complex relationships. This includes the specifics of setting up extranets and installing and using Discourse Management (Yala) software. It does recommend consulting but only in the sense of listening to your employees, customers, suppliers, and all the other parties in your relationships. It is easy to invest in people when all is going well, but even more important to do so when times are hard. When we are under pressure is when we most need to build on the strengths and experience of our own people, rather than turn to outsiders.
How This Book Is Organized
Creativity, according to philosopher Arthur Koestler, is most likely to occur “at the intersection of planes of thought” (at interfaces, no less), and this book sits at the junction of thought on management and information technology.
Section 1: “Where to Start?” introduces the concept of a Yala and provides a step-by-step approach to the management of complex relationships. Chapter 1 gives an overview. Chapter 2 explains why interfaces are important and tells you how to recognize them. Chapter 3 shows how to clarify the aims of each interface, exploring the unknown or challenging the known to build a common sense of purpose. Chapter 4 describes how to set the stage for issues to be raised safely, discussed openly, and assessed correctly. Chapter 5 focuses on how to invite views, and make dialogue more frequent, more diverse, more ubiquitous, more forward looking, more practical and more action-oriented. Chapter 6 highlights the potential benefits of wise automation. Chapter 7 explores best practice in facilitation and moderation.
Section 2: “What to Do?” gets down to the nuts and bolts of an Internet application specially designed to help you create a safe place for dialogue by organizing who talks to whom, what they talk about, how they talk about it and who else knows. Chapter 8 tells you how to build a web-based private network (an “extranet”) using the open-source, Microsoft-backed, DotNetNuke software. Chapter 9 describes how to add Yala modules to the DotNetNuke framework, to specify interfaces and to develop trees of aims, issues and views. Chapter 10 spells out how to define roles, add users and assign users to roles. Chapter 11 shows how to set up the modules and pages to collect contributors’ views. Finally, Chapter 12 tells you how to use the software to find patterns.
Management books tend to gloss over technical difficulties while technical books tend to ignore the human ones. You will find the blend of management and technology in Yala: How to Manage Complex Relationships far more helpful.