As processes become more intelligent, we will likely want to measure the level of intelligence, as I discussed in "How Smart Is your Business?"  Doing this will give organizations an idea where they are in a continuum of trying to become a smarter business over time.  This month I will cover the "S" portion of the "ISAA" [Intelligent, Social, Agile, Autonomous] framework described in that column.

I propose the following five levels of social intelligence that build on each other.

1.  Basic Collaboration

Leveraging the skills and knowledge of multiple knowledge workers on difficult cases/process instances is quite necessary when there are specialized skills, high-level knowledge gaps, and complex decisions that require a team effort.  Quite often there is shared content such as forms, images, and video to work with — and collaborate and comment on — in completing such a case/process instance.

2.  Skills-Driven Collaboration

Collaboration can become smarter when the best available resources are assigned dynamically to cases at certain milestones/steps.  This approach generally leverages a skills/knowledge inventory and the analytics that can measure the workload of a resource for the best outcome of a case.  This means that there is a fine balance between skills and availability that needs to be sorted out in the context of an overall existing or anticipated workload.

3.  Crowd Sourcing

When all of the resources may not be under the command of the process manager, then the notion of dynamically finding and putting activities up for bid is an intelligent way of managing dynamic and difficult work streams.  This may mean some of the resources may even work outside of your organization — in organizations that may be in your value/supply chain and can contribute.  This may require certain levels of certification over time, but in a pinch crowd sourcing allows for better results in terms of timing and quality.  This requires more intelligence to measure and manage.

4.  Social Network Analysis

When social interactions are wide and varied, analysis of these interactions is invaluable, especially when tied to goals and outcomes.  Interactions can be analyzed for compliance, efficiency, customer satisfaction, and various other desired business outcomes.  These can be analyzed in-flight or after the fact.

5.  Ranked Better Practices

When social interactions are analyzed for best airings and sequencing, additional intelligence can be applied to ranking best collaboration/interaction patterns.  This way in-flight case/process instances can be guided through choices between multiple successful best practices.  This way participants can pick from successful patterns and even evolve new approaches.  This is a great pairing of machine and human intelligence to achieve excellent outcomes in a rapidly-changing environment.

Net; Net

There are definite levels of social intelligence that processes can enable.  We will need to learn to utilize various levels of social interactions over the coming years.

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