Does conversation scale (and implications for networks) - "Divide so you can multiply"

There is a very interesting post about this topic from Wired magazine here.  It suggests that there is an optimal size for an online conversation, where people feel that they are in fact contributing to a conversation. When the community around a topic (e.g., a blog and a specific post) is small, conversation is fairly slow. As the community grows (say the blog grows so now more people are reading each post), the pace of the conversation picks up.  But at a certain size, the conversation flags, as people begin to feel anonymous and unknown in the community.

I wonder if it's that people feel anonymous and disempowered to make a difference, or is it:

1. Too many comments going in too many directions -- so people can no longer really follow what's happening
2. A decrease in the frequency with which a person's comments are responded to by one of the people whose opinions they actually value (which might include the person who started the blog or network)
3. No more interest in actually knowing any more people -- because the human capacity for managing relationships is allegedly limited (see Dunbar's number).

I don't fully understand the causes of the phenomenon, but it does suggest that groups that actually want to achieve something need to limit their numbers. There appears a real trade-off based on interpersonal factors; scale brings diversity and breadth of experience and insight and connection to other networks, but it also brings (at some point) a decrease in engagement.

Organizations have of course wrestled with scale before, because scale brings an increase in complexity. Some organizations get bureaucratic. Others define a maximum size of their organization and then split the organization when it gets too big.  Examples of this are W.L. Gore (the Gore-Tex people) and at one time in the past, Dell Computers. Gore splits business units when they grow to 150-200 people working together. In this article, the current CEO of Gore quotes the founder's idea that it was necessary "to divide so that you can multiply."

Dell would split existing units of its salesforce into pieces.It would giving each of the new "child" units a portion of the target markets that the "parent" had had, and told the leaders of the "children" units to each fill out their teams and then achieve the revenue (in just a few years) of the former "parent". As I was told, this splitting process could be repeated over and over again.

Maybe as collaborative networks grow they reach a point where they need to split in order to remain effective. Something to think about.

What's your own personal experience with this in networks?  What have you seen? How do you feel as a network grows? Does your behavior match what you say/think you believe in or are trying to do?

Comments

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quite Cool read. Thanks