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New pattern: Hive Mind #579

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## Title

Hive Mind

## Patlet

TBD
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How about: Provide a safe space and encourage partial/unfinished ideas to change the company culture to encourage and nurture innovation.


## Problem

In many organizations, there's an inherent pressure to present finished or near-finished ideas, which reduces the opportunity for collaborative input from a wider community. How can we encourage individuals to open up their ideas or challenges early for feedback, leveraging the collective intelligence of the community?

## Context

* Organizations where sharing early-stage ideas is not the norm.
* Environments where there's a fear of criticism or judgment for unfinished ideas.
* Cultures that prioritize individual achievement over collective collaboration.

## Forces
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It's good, when possible, to express forces in terms of trade-offs; they are constraints that make the problem more challenging; trade-offs are possible at a cost. E.g., Inertia: employees often follow established cultural norms. Breaking the cultural norms and establishing new norms is difficult because of the same inertia.

This force isn't acting only on the employees who might have ideas to contribute, there is also the lever in the dimension of the force to change the norms.

I mention this because often with patterns, the solution involves expending effort/energy to use the levers to counteract the forces.

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We could add these instructions to our template. What do you think?

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@spier spier Sep 1, 2023

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@mishari your current version express forces in terms of trade-offs really clearly!
Is that something that you got ChatGPT to do, or did you write that on your own?

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Actually, after reading the forces again, I wonder if this is what @NewMexicoKid had in mind?

I thought that he meant trade-offs between two things that both have their benefits, so one must strike a balance that is right for the org, in order to address the specific problem.

The current Forces read more like <the bad thing> vs <the good thing>, so in that case it is clear that one would want to work more towards the good thing :)

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@spier, you're correct; however, even in the case where you have a "bad thing" vs a "good thing", the concept of the trade-off is important because you might not be able to attain the "good thing" except through a high cost (which may or may not be worthwhile). Further, because you're dealing with an assemblage of forces, moving the lever on one force could have unintended effects on the other forces.

The important bottom line is that the listing of forces should help the person who is thinking of using the pattern make adjustments to the proposed solution to fit their own context. E.g., the prospective pattern adopter may have a slightly different context or a slightly different set of forces. Seeing clearly which forces were present for the proposed solution in the pattern really can help them with adopting/adjusting this solution for a slightly different situation.

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Thank you, these are really helpful points.

As the Forces are one of the areas that I (and many others) are struggling with, I keep wondering how we might integrate some of this information into our template.

I could actually take your text above and integrate it "as is", and then see if it helps future pattern authors. That would be an easy test. Although getting feedback would take time, as brand new patterns are not submitted all that frequently.


* **Inertia:** Employees often follow established cultural norms.
* **Lack of Awareness:** Some might not be aware of the benefits of tapping into the collective intelligence.
* **Fear of Criticism:** Sharing an unfinished idea can be daunting.

## Solution

* Create a safe space (like a specific repo, brainstorming channel) where employees can share unfinished ideas.
* Encourage opening (WIP or draft) PRs that are not fully complete but provide a starting point for discussion.
* Cultivate a community culture that values and rewards collaboration and feedback.
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How to cultivate this? Any specific things that one can do to work towards this?

* Host regular "idea-sharing" sessions where team members can present their initial thoughts and get feedback.

## Resulting Context

* Enhanced collaboration and broader input on ideas.
* Reduction in duplicated efforts across the organization.
* Faster ideation to implementation timelines.
* Stronger sense of community and shared ownership of challenges and solutions.

## Known Instances

TBD

## Status

Initial

## Authors

* Mishari Muqbil
* Igor Zubiaurre