I thought I might post a follow-on to my prior post on the role of trust and how it affects wiki adoption.

One of the most valuable lessons one learns when working with lawyers is to be your own biggest critic, especially when it comes to presenting an idea. I believe this comes from knowing that if you don’t break down your arguments, consider them from many angles and adjust them accordingly; other lawyers will tear your ideas to shreds.

Personally I find that approach leads one to be overly conservative when it comes to sharing thoughts. I prefer to throw ideas against the wall, see what sticks and adjust them over time given feedback & discussion. I much prefer a hypothesise, test, measure, adjust & repeat approach as the idea improves with each iteration.

Regardless, this blog doesn’t invite quite the level of debate capable of refining my idea, so I’ve had to do it myself.

First off, my representation of risk being flat was incomplete and requires amendment. Traditionally there are several different approaches to managing risk, some of which can change the level of risk:

• Reduction (methods which reduce the severity of the risk >> risk decreases)
• Avoidance (not engaging in the activity which carries risk >> risk remains flat)
• Retention (accepting the risk, a viable strategy where the costs of reducing the risk are greater than if something went wrong >> risk remains flat)
• Transference (transfer the cost of the risk to another party). This is irrelevant for this discussion.

Of course risk can also increase over time depending on the circumstances. My earlier model ignored changes in the level of risk.

So the trust-threshold model should consider risk & trust curves as capable of changing over time. The model below is not prescriptive; but demonstrates an example of how risk & trust might interact when a system update is deployed.

So, with the model updated, let’s look at some objections to the model.

Objection #1 > the value of wikis is self-evident; lawyers who know enough about wikis will use them. Trust thresholds have nothing to do with it.

While I have met very few lawyers willing to use wikis from first viewing, those lawyers do exist, and trust thresholds apply to them. The lawyers in question just started with a level of trust higher than the level of risk. Errors introduced into the system or uncovered during the course of everyday use could impact trust in a negative way.

The key here is that trust is not constant and is affected by the lawyers’ environment. Imagine a negative story about wikis in The Lawyer. Trust might well drop (as some unmanaged risk comes to light) followed by usage.

Objection #2 > this has nothing to do with trust, wikis are just a bad idea

Wikis being a “bad idea” is a purely emotive comment. My example of using wikis to track practice-group utilisation demonstrates their utility. One their utility is demonstrable; people need to decide whether they’re the most effective tools available.

I have seen several firms with gaps in their systems infrastructure where the read-write nature of wikis delivers a tool capable of supporting business needs. At any one time most IT departments will have more projects than they can delivery. In these circumstances wikis can deliver immediate value while a long-term solution is put in place.

An inexpensive, flexible tool capable of delivering value across the firm is not what I’d call a “bad idea”.

Objection #3 > no level of trust will get me using wikis at work.

Hey, I never said wikis were the right tool for everything. It’s entirely reasonable not to use a wiki if you believe the alternatives are better. Wikis would be a poor alternative to a proper practice management system.

Objection #4 > Your graph ignores cost-benefit analysis (feedback from Papa Richards)

Not really, for the same reasons as above. The Cost-benefit question is answered beforehand (like when your firm buys the technology). Risk might enter into the equation at that point, but that’s institutional risk.

I’d love to hear the thoughts of others on this.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 3:28 am and is filed under KM, Law firms, Social networking, web2.0, wikis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.