Open Work
= refers to the combined concepts of observable work, narrated workflow, open collaboration, and working out loud
Definition
From Gratipay:
"“Open work” means that your company or organization makes it easy for any individual to do your work for you without asking you first, and as a result to share in any revenue you generate. Basically you need to have a public issue tracker with documentation for self-onboarding, and be willing to use our payroll feature once we bring it back." (https://gratipay.com/about/)
Description
Dion Hinchcliffe:
"As with the Enterprise 2.0 naming discussion, most recently rekindled by Greg Lowe, there is some concern about the name of this approach to social media-powered work. Personally, I'm finding simple, self-descriptive names work the best. For now, I'm referring to the combined concepts of observable work, narrated workflow, open collaboration, and working out loud , in the most generic sense as open work.
Open work, like open source, open standards, or even the more prosaic scholastic open house for that matter, has at its core the ethic that hiding the work process in shadows is generally counterproductive. Collaboration and teamwork work best when there is abundant communication, transparency, and therefore most important of all, trust in the process. Open work is the most likely and most direct route to enabling this.
That's not to say there aren't issues with this. As has been said about democracy, it's the worst form of government, other than every other known type. Open work has its challenges too. The deluge of communication and conservation can be interrruptive when not managed well. Driving enough relevant participation for those unfamiliar with the discipline can be hard at first too. But as the sustained success of everything from open source software to Web 2.0 sites has shown, it's changing the world.
But like any new discipline, it will take time to learn and refine. While there are those that say that consumer models for work can't be applied effectively in the enterprise, I'd say that's already disproved. Those are those that opening business processes up early is too messy. To them I answer with John Hagel's trust paradox.
However, frankly, even this is quibbling. There are many success stories for open work, probably the best known being Alcoa's case study delivered at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference a while back. There are others. I urge you to read McGee's excellent Managing the Visibility of Knowledge Work for additional thinking."