Kitchen Sink Game Theory

Every company has people who avoid responsibility. Just look at the kitchen sink. There are probably cups in there that should be in the washer. Some people think that their one cup won't bother anyone. But, then everyone follows suit and someone gets stuck with the responsibility of doing the dishes. 

Game Theory is Alive and Well in the Kitchen

It's a modified version of the prisoner's dilemma. For those not familiar with this experiment, let me explain by using a classic example.

Two criminals are caught and brought into a police station, where they are separated for questioning. The criminals are given two choices; rat out their accomplice, or remain silent.

• If both criminals work together and remain silent, they each get one year in jail.
• If criminal A rats out criminal B, and criminal B remains silent, criminal B goes to jail for 5 years and criminal A gets off free.
• If both criminals rat each other out, they both go to jail for 3 years.

Kitchen Sink Game Theory is as Follows

Employee A and employee B are separated by time and must decide whether to leave dishes in the sink or in the washer. Their decisions, together, decide who has to put in the most effort to keeping the sink clean.

• If both employees put their dishes in the washer, it's easy and you have a clean sink for all to enjoy.
• If employee A leaves dishes in the sink, and employee B does not, you have a messy sink and employee B is stuck doing the dishes.
• If both employees leave their dishes in the sink, you have a messy sink.

What's worse is that if employees see they're the only ones putting dishes in the sink, they'll stop, because they're sick of being the sucker.

Keeping a Clean Sink

Using the stick won't work. Fear is temporary, and the behavior you want to eliminate reappears as soon as people are left unobserved. Instead, you have to build a culture of working together. This is community building. And the kitchen sink can be a good indicator of the health of your group.

As a leader, you can;

• Lead by example. Put your dishes in the washer. Every now and then put all the dishes in the washer.
• Give positive feedback to those who take responsibility for their own dishes.
• Communicate your desired behavior through different mediums. Sometimes very responsible people simply aren't aware of the cultural norms you're trying to achieve. Educate them.
• Measure behavior and make results visible. It's amazing how much something changes as soon as it is measured.

Of course, you could always do what my friend's firms did, eliminate glass altogether and making people use styrofoam cups and paper plates.

Feel free to respond with your kitchen sink stories.

Why You Should Be Interested In Community Management

The Creation of a Community

A year ago I created The Leaky Wiki, a community-based, parody news site. Here's a quick way to describe it. Think “The Onion,” but with content created by a community of writers.

I co-developed the site with a guy in Omsk, Russia, through oDesk. He was 12 hours ahead of me, so when I was settling in for the night I was also passing on development requests. During the development phase I wrote all of the articles, learned social marketing the hard way, and got dumped by my girlfriend for lack of attention. 

The Creation of a Community Manager

My body and mind were crumbling under the weight of doing everything alone. Thankfully there was a point where I had three other people writing for the site. I kept writing, but I started putting energy into encouraging the other writers. Without them, I would be back writing everything myself. That’s when I shifted from being the community creator to being a community manager.

Now, eight months later, The Leaky Wiki is getting 15k unique user visits a month. There is a small, dedicated group of people doing most of the writing, voting, and editing. If someone wants to take on responsibility, I give him or her a chance. If it doesn’t work out, we talk about it and make adjustments. If there is turbulence in the forum, I watch to make sure it is resolved diplomatically.  Amazingly, the less I intervene, the more people step up as leaders.

My role now is to I make sure every-day community tasks are being taken care of. I work with the community to improve the site’s features. And I facilitate personal growth through delegating important tasks and coaching from a distance.

Why Community Management?

• People depend on you.
• It’s a challenging role.
• You are in the position to facilitate personal growth.
• Your community will amaze and surprise you.
• You are always learning from people in the community.
• You co-create products with end-users.
• You’re right in the middle of emergent behavior in the new, massively networked world.
• If you enjoy social technology, this is the place to be. (see what Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks, has to say in this blog post)

 

Online communities are the centerpiece of social media. When you think about the goals of social media (or social business as a whole, for that matter), building relationships among people is critical. Online communities are the ultimate manifestation of relationship-building activities. They are the best way to build deep online relationships with the people and organizations that matter to your company – customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, and others.