• Bill Gates, Jeff Raikes and Collaboration Microsoft-Style

    “The PBX is almost like the mainframe was,” Bill Gates told customers and business partners yesterday at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Gates was referring to the private branch exchange, the device that links businesses to the public switched telephone network. Gates added that the shift from the public switched telephone network to unified communications over Internet protocol is “as profound as the shift from typewriters to word processing software.” Later, Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, insisted that unified communications will transform business communications as much as email did in the 1990’s.

    Gates_and_raikes

    Gates and Raikes were speaking at a launch event for a suite of communication and collaboration products: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Roundtable. Microsoft Office Communications Server makes multiple collaboration and communication modes available right from business productivity applications. Collaborators can see instantly which colleagues are available and can connect on the fly through instant messaging, voice, web conferencing or videoconferencing. This capability is called presence. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 is the client software, while Microsoft Office Live Meeting is the latest version of Microsoft’s web conferencing software.

    Roundtable_2

    RoundTable (see image) is a table-top video and audio communications system that provides a 360-degree view of meeting participants plus tracks the speaker. The most compelling aspect of RoundTable is the ability to capture meeting audio and video and review key portions later.

    Microsoft and fifty partners participated in the event. And although “unified communications” is the label these companies are using for the new, merged approach to communications, this effort is as much about enhancing collaboration as about communication. And, in fact, Microsoft customers appearing in a video shown during the event and futurists presenting on Microsoft panels later in the day repeatedly referred to improved collaboration.

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  • Collaboration and the New York City Subway

    Collaboration enhances efficiency and innovation and keeps the equipment maintained and the trains running on time, literally, for the New York City subway system. New_york_subway_1979 In the 1970s, the New York subway system was in a shambles. I know, because I rode the subway to school in those years when I was growing up in New York. System delays and breakdowns were commonplace.

    (Above image: A New York subway car in 1979. Photo by Doug Grotjahn, collection of Joe Testagrose)

    Part of the problem was that the transit system rarely maintained subway cars and instead bought new ones when it had money, which was rare. This, according to a story by William Neuman headlined “After 45 Years, Subway Chief Has Reached His Stop” in the October 13 edition of The New York Times. You can read the story here. Neuman writes that in the 1960’s, a transit system mechanical engineer named Doug Tilton believed there was a better way and developed a plan to perform scheduled maintenance on subway cars, which was then a novel concept. In those days, according to the article, “most managers at the transit agency were not interested in new ideas from their employees.”

    In the 1970’s,Tilton gained traction for his proposal by collaborating with Michael Lombardi, an instructor and manager at the transit system. Lombardi saw an opportunity, because the transit system had hired a consultant to address subway breakdowns. Lombardi and the consultant promoted Tilton’s idea and gained the support of top transit officials.

    In 1981, the state of New York authorized a multibillion dollar plan to overhaul the city’s transit system. This helped institutionalize the program which is now known as the Scheduled Maintenance System. The transit authority has extended the program to the bus fleet, and transit agencies in other cities have adopted similar programs.

    Lombardi told the Times that in 1979, subway cars broke down on average every 4800 miles traveled. Today they break down every 149,000 miles. Collaboration certainly has created value for the New York City subways. Next month, Michael Lombardi will retire as the senior vice president for subways at New York City transit. By collaborating with Tilton and the consultant, he accomplished more than he ever could have alone.

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  • Qwaq 2.0

    I had a far-reaching discussion this morning with Greg Nuyens, CEO of Qwaq. When I first blogged about Qwaq on March 13 (you can read that post here), the start-up was, well, just starting up.

    Qwaq_forums

    But on stage at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco yesterday, there was Greg Nuyens alongside Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner. Greg was demonstrating Qwaq Forums, which is hybrid real-time and asynchronous 3D collaboration for the enterprise. You can check out the video of Greg’s demo here (scroll down to Justin Rattner’s September 20 keynote and launch the webcast. Greg’s demo begins at around time stamp 21:00.)

    Greg’s big news is that Intel, aside from being a user of Qwaq, is partnering with Qwaq. The two companies are integrating Intel’s Miramar technology, which discovers and defines relationships among desktop documents and other files, with Qwaq Forums. This will merge 2D enterprise applications into 3D collaborative work spaces.

    Greg and I hashed out an easy explanation of what the integration means to users. I said “content management meets collaboration.” And Greg made it better with “collaborative content management.”

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  • Collaboration Roundup: CEO private lives, Google collaboration, and Adobe CS3

    I’ve been on the road speaking on The Culture of Collaboration a lot recently. Meantime, material for this blog has been piling up, so I’ll share a few items:

    There was a fascinating story in The Wall Street Journal on September 5 headlined “Scholars Link Success of Firms to Lives of CEOs” by Mark Maremont. You can read the story for free here. The story describes new research involving how the personal lives of CEOs may impact stock prices of their companies. The theory is that a family death or a recent large house purchase are distractions that negatively affect shareholder value.

    Among the studies the story mentions is one by two Penn State professors called “It’s All About Me” which is to be published in Administrative Science Quarterly. The study concludes that narcissistic executives take greater risks, leading to bigger swings in profitability of their companies. You can read the paper by Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick here.

    The Wall Street Journal story hints that a CEO-centric star culture drives many companies. This is shortsighted leadership. It’s no surprise that narcissistic executives expose their companies to uncalculated risks. Too often, star cultures breed shoot-from-the-hip leadership rather than consensus building through broad input. As companies adopt more collaborative cultures, swagger and narcissism become less appropriate and one leader’s distractions are less likely to jeopardize the company.

    +++

    Google Docs let people collaborate on documents screen-to-screen. I’ve been checking out the tool recently. The drawback is that it’s not quite real time, but the potential is huge. Google hosts your documents for free, and you and your colleagues can log in and access them from anywhere.

    Google has just enhanced the service with the ability to create and collaborate on presentations from anywhere. The capability stems in part from Google’s acquisition in April, 2007 of Tonic Systems. For more on this, check out Clint Boulton’s September 18 story in eWeek headlined “Google Offers ‘Collaboration in the Cloud.’”

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    I’ve been meaning to write more about Adobe and its tools. Core customers for such Adobe products as Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver are highly creative—and creative people are often collaborative. I’ve been checking out some of Adobe’s products recently. Acrobat Connect is the web conferencing tool that enables screen-to-screen sharing and annotating of Adobe’s other products and other applications. You can read my June 18 post about Acrobat Connect here.

    I’ve also been checking out the new Adobe Creative Suite 3, which coupled with Acrobat Connect, lends itself to collaborative design. Using CS3, geographically-dispersed designers can create vector graphics, develop web sites, edit images and layout pages collaboratively. Marketing people can collaborate with designers in real time, annotating everything from brochures to web designs.

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  • Spiders Getting Collaboration Religion?

    Are spiders becoming more collaborative? Experts are debating how and why spiders have spun a giant “web site” in Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas.

    Spider_web The spiders created a “white fairyland” encompassing many trees. What perplexes experts is that spiders are not particularly collaborative creatures. Unlike other insects including bees and ants, spiders normally work alone in gathering food and building their homes.

    So what gives? One theory is that a rare social species of spider cooperated to build a large colony. Social spiders sometimes form colonies in tropical areas in the southern hemisphere, according to an expert quoted in The Dallas News. You can read the story here. Hmmm….social networking among spiders. What’s next? Spiderpedia or SlinkedIn?

    Another theory is that multiple species of spiders may have acted in concert.

    Perhaps spiders are beginning to understand the potential for collaboration. J

    One thing is clear. The web is a huge accomplishment that one spider could never have achieved working alone.

    And, yes, the giant Texas spider web is a reminder that we can create more value collaborating than competing.

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  • Interspecies Collaboration and New York Times letter

    Today The New York Times published my letter to the editor headlined “A Monkey With Good Taste.” The letter comments on the Times story on August 14 headlined “Will No Cage Hold Him? Monkey Again Escapes Zoo,” which describes the adventures of a 9-year old capuchin monkey named OliverOliver_the_monkey  who has escaped twice from the Tupelo Buffalo Park and Zoo in Mississippi. Here’s the text of my letter:

    Image: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

    To the Editor:

    Re "Will No Cage Hold Him? Monkey Again Escapes Zoo" (news article, Aug. 14):

    Oliver, the 9-year-old capuchin monkey who has escaped twice from the Tupelo Buffalo Park and Zoo in Mississippi, may be sending his captors a message about diet — and we’d all do well to take notice.

    Kirk Nemechek, the zoo manager, reportedly tried luring Oliver with "chips, candy, Fruit Loops, anything." However, Oliver was spotted looting a vegetable garden. Clearly, the monkey has more sensible food preferences than his human captors. It’s a reminder that the best ideas often come from beyond the usual sources.

    Evan Rosen, San Francisco, Aug. 15, 2007

    The last line ties in with The Culture of Collaboration. Great ideas come from all kinds of sources. For a collaborative culture to flourish, people on the front lines or the factory floor must feel comfortable contributing to key decisions. Too often, however, organizations become mired in silo syndrome, as I describe in The Culture of Collaboration book. The syndrome is that sales people rarely interact with marketing folks, marketing rarely works with R&D, and facilities almost never deals with public affairs, and so on.  

    Effective organizations ensure that decisions reflect broad input regardless of department, level, region, business unit, function—and, as Oliver the Mississippi monkey has taught us, species. J

    For more on Oliver and his fight for freedom, check out this excellent post on the blog called Baudrillard’s Bastard.

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  • Hierarchy Busters Enable Collaboration

    Hierarchy is a huge impediment to collaboration. In organizational cultures that emphasize hierarchy, people feel compelled to go through channels. This prevents front-line people from contributing to decisions and also discourages leaders from getting real-time, unfiltered information from the field. Smart organizations encourage collaboration across levels, functions, business units and regions.

    I was glad to read in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal that SK Telecom of Korea has taken fundamental steps to reduce the role of hierarchy. Evan Ramstad writes in his "Managing" column headlined “Pulling Rank Gets Harder At One Korean Company” that SK Telecom has replaced the five ranks that employees used to address each other with one rank, manager. You can read the article here (reg. required).

    I live in California, where people in business typically call each other by their first names. For somebody to call his or her boss “Director Jones” would seem absurd. But even in Silicon Valley companies with supposedly reduced hierarchies and relaxed environments, trappings of position exist such as triple-sized cubicles. In other regions, hierarchy is more pronounced. People address senior leaders as “Mr. or “Ms.” and they talk of vice presidents in hushed tones as if they might get in trouble for even uttering the names of big shots.

    As growth has slowed, SK Telecom has begun encouraging more debate and input from all levels. The idea is to spark more creativity and risk-taking, which are certainly important to collaborating. South Korea’s business culture has traditionally concentrated decision-making with senior executives “to protect their power” as Ramstad notes. Clearly, SK Telecom has realized that, in Bob Dylan’s words, the times they are a-changin’ and that a hierarchical culture was costing the company money.

    Other companies should take notice that reducing the role of hierarchy and instilling the culture of collaboration is in vogue—and will create value.

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  • Collaboration and Star Culture

    Collaboration requires collaborative culture. That’s the whole point of this blog. The opposite of collaborative culture is star culture, which our collective culture—particularly in the United States—perpetuates. The media is certainly complicit, because celebrity stories draw audiences. Therefore, the media has a vested interest in manufacturing stars—not just Hollywood people, but business leaders, athletes, entrepreneurs, surgeons, chefs and others. Food writers are particularly culpable, and we’ve certainly seen the celebrity craze spread to winemakers.

    Now, apparently, star culture is trying to envelop tequila makers. Last Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a short article by Camper English headlined “Next big thing: Tequila bottle signings.” You can read the article here. The story begins, “Further evidence that distillers are the new rock stars…” We learn from the article that Carlos Camarena, owner and third-generation master distiller of El Tesoro Tequila, will be in San Francisco to sign autographs on $185 bottles of tequila at a liquor store.

    Clearly, Mr. Camarena is not alone in contributing to the success of El Tesoro. According to El Tesoro’s web site, making tequila begins with the jimador, the person who hand picks perfectly-ripe agaves and separates the pina, the juicy blue core, from the rest of the plant. “Most other tequila producers use an automated system that processes the entire stem,” the web site notes. Next workers cut the pinas into quarters with a special ax. In the next stage, workers use the traditional method of baking the pina quarters for 36 hours and cooling them for another 36 hours. Next workers use a one-ton stone wheel called a tahona to crush the pinas, extracting their juices. There are three more steps.

    The point is that many people with a variety of expertise collaborate to make El Tesoro tequila. While I appreciate the marketing benefits of Mr. Camarena signing tequila bottles during his rock star-style tour, this feeds into star culture and sends the wrong message to the public and to El Tesoro team members. Promoting the CEO as a star may produce a momentary marketing bounce, but a collaborative culture sustains greater business value than a star culture.

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  • Why Ford Should Keep Volvo

    As Ford Motor Company refocuses on its core brand and operations, media reports indicate that the company wants to offload Jaguar and Land Rover and may be willing to sell Volvo Cars. These brands comprise Ford’s premier automotive group. For the record, Ford has denied that Volvo is on the block.

    Clearly, Ford faces challenges. So far in 2007, Ford’s sales are down more than 12 percent over the same period last year. And Ford has reportedly received initial bids for Jaguar and Land Rover. While Jaguar and Land Rover have been losing money, Volvo is another story. Volvo has been producing profits of $800 million to $1 billion per year, according to a July 17 story in The New York Times headlined “Ford Seeking a Future By Going Backward.” You can read the story here (registration required).

    But Volvo’s value to Ford goes beyond sales and even beyond the substantial expertise in safety that the Swedish company has provided to its American parent. The greatest value Ford stands to gain from keeping Volvo is the culture of collaboration. Volvo has a highly-collaborative organizational culture in which hierarchy takes a back seat to results. When they feel strongly about key decisions, junior people are quick to challenge senior leaders.

    As I mention in The Culture of Collaboration book, if Volvo’s CEO were to propose a new strategy during a meeting, a junior person would feel comfortable telling him that his ideas require further discussion. Volvo people spend considerable time reviewing, negotiating and discussing until they agree. Then the team proceeds with paced discipline. Some of Volvo’s culture is rubbing off on Ford’s other operations, particularly in Europe, as Ford “commonizes” certain parts and collaborates more across brands.

    Ford, which has been stymied in part by hierarchy and lack of collaboration, should keep Volvo and make a concerted effort to apply Volvo’s collaborative principles and culture across Ford’s operations. Volvo derives its culture in part from Swedish culture which is more collaborative than the dominant culture in the United States.

    While there are already efforts to integrate more collaborative tools into work styles, Ford needs to focus at least as much on culture as on tools. Meantime, Sweden is proud of Volvo and wants it back. The Swedish newspaper, Dagens Industri, reports that Volvo insiders are trying to arrange for Swedish institutional investors to buy Volvo, should Ford want to sell the unit. You can read the translated version of the story here.

    One advantage Ford has is that Alan Mulally has taken the helm as President and CEO. Mulally understands the value of collaboration from running Boeing Commercial Airplanes. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I write about how Boeing has reinvented itself as a large-scale systems integrator and has shifted away from designing and building airplanes by itself. Boeing now collaborates with design and manufacturing partners to produce the 787 Dreamliner and other planes. The term I use to describe Boeing’s new approach is global collaborative enterprise. Mulally should draw from his background at Boeing and from Volvo’s example to transform Ford’s culture into a collaborative one.

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  • Networking and Collaboration

    Networking with people who share your interests is often the first step to effective cross-organizational collaboration, but staying in touch with people after conferences and trade shows is by no means automatic. The first step is a system that makes contacting people easy. I have blogged extensively about presence, which is the ability of a person or device to communicate with others and display levels of availability. IM has introduced us to presence. But what about people we meet at conferences whose information is on business cards rather than in a database? Echoing the classic 1995 book Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte, it’s a challenge of turning atoms into usable bits.

    I attend many conferences, and I usually end up with a pocket full of business cards, some with notes on the back about conversations and follow-up items. While I make and receive calls and exchange email with some of these contacts, I rarely find the time to manually enter the information from every business card into my contact database. There is, however, an effective solution.

    Cardscan_team_with_laptop_reduced_c

    I’ve been using an incredibly-useful product that automates business card data entry. CardScan Team combines simple and intuitive contact management software and a sleek business card scanner with the ability to share the database with colleagues on a network. I scanned a stack of cards, one after the next, and processed the pile in a couple of minutes. CardScan Team efficiently recognized name, email, phone numbers, fax, address, URL and other information and placed it in the right fields instantly. The software is smart enough to know that there are many ways people indicate phone numbers on cards including “p” or “tel.”

    I assigned a customized category with the name of the conference so that I could easily query the database for all of the contacts I met at that venue. CardScan Team displays the front of each business card and provides the option of scanning the back. The software also enables users to export the data to Microsoft Outlook. CardScan Team had trouble with only one card in my stack that displayed some fiery red text, but the software let me easily make a couple of quick changes to the data. CardScan Team, which costs $399.99, synchronizes with mobile devices. The product also includes secure data back-up and password-protected access to that data via a browser.

    CardScan Team enhances collaboration by letting us share contact information with colleagues in real time and by dramatically decreasing the time and hassle factor involved in keeping in touch.

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