It can be intimidating going through your supervisor’s door for a performance appraisal. Most companies have some form of a periodic review for each employee’s work. Many times this is an opportunity to advance in the company, gain perspective, learn, and share your voice, but the process has its flaws. Would you like to hear you’ve been doing something wrong for the last six months.. and never knew? Even if you knew, did you know how to get better?
Rypple is a platform on your computer which enables live business communication. It has the feel of social networking platforms like Facebook, but it offers other social and performance management tools as well. Some features are that goal accomplishment can be recognized and members can thank or congratulate their peers. The utilities offered now may be few, but are versatile in their capability. As Daniel Debow, co-CEO and co-founder, puts it, “(it) helps Facebook, Gilt Groupe, and other innovative companies recognize great work, run fast, have efficient feedback loops, and coach employees to achieve their goal.” It delivers a real-time system which accomplishes the goals of performance appraisals, among other social-systems within typical business.
Despite how it may swing communication away from direct contact, the idea behind this is to bring the human element back into business. By utilizing a more natural flow of communication, Rypple is optimizing social efficiency. It is therefore making the way people behave in organizations more congruent with business needs. For example, standardization has done wonders for work processes, but standardization is congruent with neither the human condition nor how people define businesses.
People come to work with different attitudes, desires and needs which even change. This natural flow of communication fosters job satisfaction and commitment through person-environment fit and positive attitudes. The ability to build relationships not only helps attitudes and citizenship but also acts as a catalyst in learning and functioning as a group. It helps people be more motivated through satisfying their needs for affiliation and accomplishment. It acts as a motivator through the opportunity for recognition and growth. It may even be so evolutionary that it will be a hygiene factor of working conditions in the years to come. At the very least, it allows people to get detail on what to expect from their jobs or their efforts. This system reduces stress in so many ways, it would seem to save the day when you look at the impact businesses have on our daily lives, or even on that performance review day.
This platform sets a good example for how businesses can facilitate positive organizational behavior and employee satisfaction. In The World is Flat, a book discussed in chapter one, the speed of business is getting faster due to the access to information via the internet. As demands change, so too should our systems. Rypple is a microcosm in the sense that it is the kind of innovation seen from this flattening of the world and is also the kind of agent causing it.
In what ways do you see how Rypple could help in decision making, brainstorming, reinforcement etc? How does it relate to fault lines and schedules of reinforcement?
-Matthew Mimnaugh
3 comments:
Matt, I had never heard of Rypple before and I thought this was very interesting. It seems like it could reinvent the way brainstorming and decision making is conducted by tearing down the barriers of time, location, proximity, etc.
Michael Lorimer
What a fascinating article and concept. If I were a manager of a larger operation I would definitely look into using Rypple to provide feedback. I currently have a job where there is absolutely no positive feedback, and in fact I dislike seeing the managers because most of the time they only talk to me if I've done something they view as wrong.
I feel like the use of Rypple within an organization would promote brainstorming and decision making. When you have one idea or suggestion that is able to reach to multiple people at one time, the idea can go a lot farther than just telling your supervisor in a meeting. Using Rypple as a discussion board could help smooth out any faultlines that may be present in the organization by engaging multiple groups in the same activity simultaneously.
--Kaitlin Reichel
It seems like social networks are talking over as the main platform for communication. Rypple sounds like a great idea. Email is just becoming too slow for communication in the corporate world. I like the idea of coming into work and logging in to Rypple and instantly knowing whats going on in my workplace.
-Eddie Nemeth
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