Tools

  • Breaking Corporate Rules to Collaborate

    What happens when team members want to collaborate, but command-and-control approaches and internal competition prevail in culture and processes? New research indicates team members are starting to “spoof the system” by flouting organizational guidelines and creating work-arounds so they can collaborate. The global study conducted by InsightExpress and funded by Cisco surveyed more than two thousand end users and a thousand information technology decision makers from ten countries. The study found that 52 percent of organizations prohibit the use of social media applications and 50 percent of end users admit to ignoring company policies at least once a week. “End users have started to take things into their own hands,” says Alan Cohen, Cisco’s vice president of enterprise solutions.

     

    The study found that users most willing to break company policies are those in the United Kingdom and France. Respondents in China were least likely to violate corporate rules. Still, the survey found that companies in China and India had significantly higher adoption rates of collaborative tools than companies in the United States or the United Kingdom. This is likely because companies in these growing economies are relatively new, and therefore their infrastructures are by no means set in stone.

     

    Ironically, the study found that 77 percent of IT decision makers plan to increase spending on collaboration tools this year, while team members say corporate policies are constraining collaboration. Investing in collaborative tools makes little sense if an organization lacks the culture and processes to support the tools. The result is a schizophrenic organization in which some team members break rules, others operate by the book, and most team members get confused by mixed messages. Considering the study results, a prime opportunity exists for leaders to think and act collaboratively and for organizations to adopt collaborative culture.

     

    Cisco will gladly sell you any and all of its more than 60 collaboration products. But buying these products or those of any other collaboration tools vendor will produce limited results unless your organization makes a fundamental commitment to collaboration. This shift includes moving away from command-and-control, internally-competitive culture and processes and replacing the pass-along, serial approach to work and decision-making with spontaneous, real-time models. I address this in the introduction to The Culture of Collaboration book.

     

    Intercompany Collaboration: Focus on Culture and Processes

     

    On another note…outmoded culture and processes can curb collaboration and compromise value—whether we’re talking about within a company or “outside the firewall.”  As vendors and standards groups resolve intercompany collaboration technology issues, there’s a temptation to conclude that intercompany collaboration is “good to go.”

     

    About three weeks ago, I participated in a discussion via TelePresence with Cisco senior vice presidents Tony Bates and Barry O’Sullivan. The company was discussing details of its new Intercompany Media Engine, which extends unified communications among companies. So, a supplier can easily view the availability or “presence status” of a customer, connect via instant messaging, and easily escalate the interaction to a voice call, web conference, or telepresence. You can view video of a demo call here. Meantime, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is working on an open standard for telepresence and unified communications so that people can interact regardless of technology vendor. This has particular relevance for business partners with different installed telepresence brands. Ultimately, the challenge for intercompany collaborators goes well beyond the technology. Organizations must focus on adopting collaborative culture and processes and integrating them across organizational boundaries.

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  • Mayo Clinic Enhancing Collaboration

    The Mayo Clinic, founded on the principle of collaboration, is taking collaboration and innovation to the next level. With a mission nothing short of transforming how healthcare is experienced and delivered, Mayo’s Center for Innovation integrates emerging collaborative tools into processes and culture. The Center for Innovation includes Mayo’s innovative S.P.A.R.C. design lab.

     

    While writing The Culture of Collaboration book, I conducted on-site research at S.P.A.R.C. and throughout Mayo. Now it’s time for an update. The catalyst was a recent conversation with Chris Yeh of PBworks, which offers a hosted wiki-oriented business collaboration platform with newly-added integrated voice conferencing. Mayo is piloting PBworks along with other online collaborative spaces. “We call it a sandbox where people can figure things out,” Francesca Dickson of Mayo’s Center for Innovation told me yesterday during a Skype video call.

     

    Francesca and Beth Kreofsky of Mayo’s Center for Innovation provided an inside view of how Mayo is evolving, and we talked about the role of tools. Aside from PBworks, Mayo is also piloting “ideation” tools that let team members share ideas and build on them based on “focused questions.” One such tool is Jive.

     

    Besides asynchronous social tools, Mayo is now piloting instant messaging in several departments including nursing and radiology. Paging, a precursor to instant messaging, is deeply engrained in Mayo’s culture. Anybody can page the CEO and expect a prompt call back. Hierarchy is muted at Mayo, and the CEO is always a practicing physician. Mayo’s culture is ripe for IM and unified communications through which people can connect spontaneously through IM, voice or video regardless of level, role or region.

     

    Meantime, paging persists at Mayo. The Center for Innovation’s mission is to keep Mayo, well, innovating. So the Center is demonstrating to the organization that IM offers a clear advantage over paging.

     

    Video is another tool that’s part-and-parcel of Mayo’s culture. Mayo was an early user of videoconferencing to encourage collaboration among its three campuses. Mayo has already piloted Cisco TelePresence with a hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. And beginning in April, patients in Canon Falls, Minnesota will receive consultations from Mayo specialists via TelePresence.

     

    By integrating new collaborative tools into its already collaborative culture, Mayo will likely enhance healthcare delivery and create greater value.

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  • Telepresence Enhancing Travel?

    Videoconferencing and telepresence vendors have traditionally marketed their products as a replacement for travel. This is shortsighted in that real value creation comes from integrating real-time video into business processes. Using telepresence so that people can come together spontaneously and design an airplane or develop animation or create a 24-hour healthcare delivery service produces far greater value than travel savings.

     

    Considering the obsession with marketing real-time video as a travel replacement, you might think hotels would be lukewarm about videoconferencing and telepresence. But there was nothing tepid about Mary Casey and Bob Hermany’s view of Cisco TelePresence as they announced on Tuesday Starwood’s roll out of public TelePresence rooms. The first two Starwood properties to offer TelePresence are the Sheraton on the Park in Sydney, Australia and the W Chicago. You can view the announcement video here. Incidentally, Mary is Starwood’s vice president of global corporate sales and Bob is Starwood’s senior vice president of operations.

     

    Starwood will also install Cisco TelePresence at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers, the Westin Los Angeles Airport and the Sheraton Centre Toronto during 2010. Later, the hotel chain will adopt TelePresence at properties in San Francisco, Dallas, Brussels and Frankfurt, among others. In my October 15, 2008 post, I wrote that Cisco and its partner, Tata Communications, were introducing public TelePresence rooms and that the first hotel chain to participate was the Taj Hotels.

     

    During a TelePresence call linking several global locations, Sean Hunt, a Starwood executive who manages the Sheraton on the Park in Sydney positioned Australia’s first public TelePresence room as both a travel benefit and alternative. “The problem is we’re isolated from the rest of the world, so this is a great alternative to long-haul travel.” The point is that rather than replace travel, TelePresence lets somebody outside Australia who may never have taken the flight get face-to-face with colleagues and partners.

    Aside from marketing and public relations advantages, there are potentially tangible benefits for hotels that adopt TelePresence. Besides renting rooms at rates that can approach $500 a day, hotels can charge $500 an hour for TelePresence. That’s the rate at the Sheraton on the Park in Sydney. Australian dollars, of course.

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  • Collaborating with Salespeople Provides Unfiltered Information

    Hierarchy dies hard in many organizations, so breaking down barriers among levels can prove particularly challenging.

     

    Team members must feel it’s culturally acceptable to engage senior leaders on the fly, and likewise senior leaders must feel culturally comfortable reaching out across the organization to connect with front-line managers, factory workers and salespeople. This gives leaders access to real-time, unfiltered information. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I write about the Dow Chemical Company’s collaborative culture and the collaborative leadership approach of Dow CEO Andrew Liveris. In a compelling interview by Susan Daker  in the Monday, January 25 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Andrew describes how Dow taps its salespeople for real-time intelligence about customer needs.

     

    Wisely, Dow recognizes that the role of salespeople goes beyond addressing customer needs and closing deals.  Dow salespeople collaborate with Research & Development and senior leaders to ensure that products meet customer needs. This may sound like a no brainer, but countless salespeople from many companies have told me that marketing, R&D and senior leaders have little interest in their customer insights. In such organizations, an “us and them” attitude develops between salespeople and management. And therefore the organization loses opportunities to gain real-time intelligence that would otherwise create value.

     

    For years, salespeople have been underutilized. After all, they’re the eyes and ears of an organization. They can also be an early warning system for market shifts and product issues. Good salespeople understand their customers’ businesses, challenges, and industry trends. Isn’t that information important to R&D and senior leadership? Absolutely! In fact, companies pay dearly for similar intelligence and information from consultants and researchers.

     

    In a collaborative organization, senior leaders reach out to salespeople for unfiltered, real-time information and input into decisions.  Salespeople, in turn, engage and collaborate across leadership levels and across functions, business units and regions. Presence-enabled tools enhance this by letting people find each other and collaborate in real-time, enabling salespeople to share intelligence with senior leaders, R&D and others. But tools can only enhance and extend collaboration. For salespeople to contribute to product development and strategy, the organizational culture must support informal, spontaneous interactions regardless of level or title.

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  • Cisco’s John Chambers: the Hardest Part is the Culture

    I was watching Cisco CEO John Chambers do his trademark walk-and-talk style keynote yesterday at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square as Cisco was kicking off its Collaboration Summit when suddenly John interrupted his pitch for collaboration.

     

    “Do you know what the hardest change is in this?” he queried the audience rhetorically. “As any CEO will tell you, it’s the culture.”

     

    John’s observation resonated with me in that the fundamental premise of The Culture of Collaboration book is that “without a culture of collaboration, the best processes, systems, tools and leadership strategies fall flat.” In the book, I also note that “the overwhelming reason why collaboration eludes organizations involves culture.”

     

    Understanding the role of culture in creating a collaborative enterprise is paramount, particularly as Cisco introduces 61 collaboration products. Collaboration tools are key enablers, but they are far more effective in enabling collaboration in enterprises with collaborative cultures and processes.  Cisco has been focusing on collaboration more than any other initiative as an organizational imperitive and in product efforts. Now the company is fixated on persuading customers that it has reached a milestone in innovating collaboration. With that in mind, Cisco vice president of enterprise solutions Alan Cohen, a history buff and blogger, noted that Cisco was announcing its slew of products on the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall and observed that it was one of the “biggest transitions in our history.”

     

    As Tony Bates, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Group, highlighted Cisco’s major product introductions, he emphasized the increasing role of video in collaboration—from Flip Video camcorders to WebEx web conferencing to telepresence—and the interactivity of these tools. You can read details of the product announcements here.

     

    At a cocktail party following the keynotes, Tony and I had an engaging conversation about how the role of video has evolved. I mentioned that when I was researching my first book, Personal Videoconferencing, in the mid-1990’s, there was considerable push back against real-time video as a viable business tool. People were scared of the camera, and there was a pervasive view that one needed to have highly-honed presentation skills to use videoconferencing. Tony observed that people are increasingly accepting that the way they conduct themselves in meetings and in one-on-one workplace interactions is good enough for many video interactions.

     

    Currently, most telepresence and web conferencing interactions are scheduled. As organizational cultures evolve to support more real-time collaboration, video interaction will become more spontaneous. Then real-time video will transcend communications and become part-and-parcel of collaboration. 

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  • Replacing ROI with Return on Collaboration?

    Yesterday I had a compelling discussion with Alla Reznik, director of global voice and collaboration for Verizon. Alla is from Russia, and she’s the only U.S.-based marketing professional I know who can provide input on the Russian language edition of The Culture of Collaboration book published by Ecom of Moscow. Alla and I chatted about regional cultural differences in how people collaborate—and differences in how they respond to surveys.

     

    It was a timely discussion, because today Verizon and Cisco are releasing a new study tackling return on investment (ROI) for collaboration expenditures. ROI has long frustrated collaboration tools vendors, because of the difficulty in quantifying “soft” benefits such as corporate reputation. The research, conducted by Frost & Sullivan, identifies a model for measuring what it calls return on collaboration (ROC).

     

    ROC measures the impact of collaboration on key functional areas. These include research and development, human resources, sales, marketing, investor relations, and public relations. Traditional ROI measures money gained or lost on an investment. In contrast, ROC tracks the amount of “improvement” derived from a financial investment in collaboration. The study identified research and development, sales and marketing as the functional areas with the highest ROC.

     

    The study called “Meetings Around the World 2: Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration” is based on questionnaires completed by 3662 information technology and line-of-business decision makers in 10 countries. Respondents represented enterprises plus small and medium sized businesses. Nearly half the organizations are using unified communications and collaboration tools ranging from enterprise instant messaging to Cisco TelePresence. Among the study’s key findings is that collaboration is more than twice as important as strategic orientation and six times more important than market factors in determining business performance.

     

     

    “The world has changed quite a bit since 2006,” according to Alla, who was referring to the 2006 study dubbed “Meetings Around the World 1.” This earlier study determined that collaboration fuels business performance and that collaboration capability is based on technology, culture and structure. The new study indicates that culture and structure are even more important to collaboration than they were in the previous study conducted in 2006.  The point is that collaboration technology makes the most difference in organizations with collaborative cultures and structures. Similarly, the fundamental premise of The Culture of Collaboration book is that maximizing time, talent and tools to create value requires collaborative culture.

     

    The main purpose of the study is to convince business decision makers to invest in collaboration tools and technologies.  One conclusion is that a $1 million investment in collaboration tools and technologies will deliver a $4 million dollar “improvement.” However, this result apparently fails to consider whether the organization has adopted a collaborative culture. I would argue that a $1 million investment by an organization with a collaborative culture will produce greater results than the same investment by an organization with a command-and-control, internally-competitive culture. So while the study does highlight the role of culture and structure, more work is necessary in integrating these elements into measuring ROC.

     

    The big question for Verizon and Cisco is whether CFO’s, CIO’s and business decision makers will accept ROC. “We’re curious ourselves,” Alla told me. While there’s work to do in proving the value of collaboration, ROC is an important step towards evaluating the return on collaboration investment.

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  • Reflection Enhances Collaboration

    Recently, I’ve grown concerned about the lack of reflection that can compromise collaboration. I define reflection as “pausing to think.” Reflection is increasingly lost in our interrupt and interact-driven culture. It may seem counter-intuitive in that reflection suggests working alone or in a vacuum. But there’s a difference.

     

    Some people think they do their best work by going off in a corner and making their mistakes in private. They prefer to interact with others only after they feel they got their part right on their own. Once their part is complete, they prefer to toss their work over the fence to the next person to do their part. This assembly-line approach to decision making, problem solving and product and service development compromises value.  This behavior clearly undermines collaboration.

     

    The other extreme is that in this Twitter-twitching, Facebook feeding, blog-obsessed culture, we feel compelled to constantly interact. Some health experts insist the fallout from these potentially obsessive behaviors includes everything from repetitive strain injuries to heart attacks, not to mention neglect of loved ones or divorce. Like endless face-to-face meetings, much of this online interaction is falsely labeled collaboration.

     

    In The Culture of Collaboration book, I define collaboration as “working together to create value while sharing virtual or physical space.” Also, value is one of the Ten Cultural Elements of Collaboration that I identify in the book. Creating value is critical to collaboration. In fact, it’s a useful acid test.

     

    Social networking includes a portfolio of tools and behaviors that can lead to collaboration, but it takes  more than a tweet, post, text or instant message to collaborate. Social networking and social media output can be much like cable television chatter. The difference is that social networking lets us participate, and we tend to dip in and out all day long. It’s easy to devote big chunks of time to chatter. And there’s nothing wrong with chatter, but it’s not necessarily collaboration.

     

    Constant interaction without reflection can compromise collaboration and value creation. Brainstorming, sharing ideas, and co-creation produces incredible value. When we pause to think, however, we can contribute more effectively when we’re collaborating. Reflection enhances value creation for collaborators.

     

    Using collaborative tools for chatter and fun helps instill behavior that sparks collaboration, but it’s easy to just keep chattering and never get around to creating value. Use value creation as an acid test for collaboration, and we derive greater satisfaction and real results from social networking and other collaborative tools. And reflection is part of that equation.

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  • Managing Workflow through the Virtual Worlds of Qwaq Forums

    Some businesspeople are spending most of their day in 3D, immersive environments known as virtual worlds. This development emerged during a wide-ranging discussion last week with Greg Nuyens, CEO of Qwaq, which provides tools to create virtual worlds or “forums” optimized for business users.

     

    Greg, whose company is today releasing version 2.0 of Qwaq Forums at the 3D Learning, Training and Collaboration conference (3D TLC)  in Washington, D.C., observed that there are three types of Qwaq users. The first group spends about two thirds of the day in Qwaq and likely uses the software’s IP audio capability for most voice calls. The second group jumps in and out of the forums throughout the day, leaving the virtual “lobby” up all day long.  The third group uses Qwaq periodically through a browser, which is a new capability included in version 2.0.

     

    Qwaq combines the real-time collaboration functionality of web conferencing with the 3D immersive experience of virtual worlds. For background on Qwaq, see my March 13, 2007 post and my September 21, 2007 post.  Clearly, the Qwaq development team has invested significant time and thought into integrating the tool into enterprise workflow.  The version 2.0 interface is more geared to workplace collaboration with greater ability to move easily and gracefully around the virtual workplace– from the lobby to meeting rooms to cubicles to offices to auditoriums to command centers and around campuses. Meantime, users can share documents, slides, MPEG4 video, browsers, whiteboards, and other applications. Also, Qwaq supports real-time, interactive Webcam video and recording/capture of virtual meetings.

     

    Qwaq customers announced today include Chevron and the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center, two of the roughly one hundred enterprise customers that Qwaq has reportedly garnered.  The Navy is using Qwaq as part of its virtual Combat Systems Center to remotely train submarine operators. The software running in the Center’s Qwaq Forum is the same software running on the weapons console. So the boundaries between real and virtual are clearly fading.

     

    According to Greg, Qwaq’s goals include “bridging distance to make meetings in forums more efficient than in the same room.” As I noted in my book, The Culture of Collaboration, as collaborative tools get more advanced, the next frontier is making same-room collaboration as effective as collaborating at a distance.

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  • Telepresence and Formality

    Cisco’s use of TelePresence last Monday to announce its Unified Computing System sparked an interesting reaction on the New York Times Bits blog. The Times republished the blog post in today’s print edition.

     

    Cisco Unified Computing Launch The post by Ashlee Vance takes aim at Cisco for the “scripted” feel of the 14-site TelePresence session for reporters and analysts. You can read the story here. Some reporters who showed up at Cisco headquarters for a news conference were apparently frustrated that Cisco CEO John Chambers was in another suite upstairs rather than in the same room with the media. Vance also writes that the question-and-answer session that followed the two-hour event also felt scripted in that Cisco apparently muted microphones and prevented follow-up questions.

     

    OK. It’s time for a discussion of formality and telepresence. First, let’s separate the event from the technology. I did not attend the event, so I can’t comment about its execution. However, I did participate in a launch event and news conference last October for Cisco’s public TelePresence suites. You can read about it in my October 15, 2008 post.

     

    Like last Monday’s Cisco event, executives at the October 15, 2008 event were in a separate TelePresence suite from reporters and analysts who were in the same building. This worked well, because the local group was relatively small, and each participant had a seat at the TelePresence table. Also, the approach was particularly appropriate in that the subject of the event was TelePresence itself. During the event, which linked about six sites, I had no problem asking follow up questions and engaging in an extended dialogue with Cisco senior leaders.

     

    In contrast, holding a 14-site news conference like the one last Monday certainly can increase logistical issues and reduce the question time per reporter. The benefit, though, of using TelePresence for the event is that it significantly increased media participation globally, so that a reporter in Asia could gain the same access as a Silicon Valley-based reporter for The New York Times—access to Cisco CEO John Chambers and other participating CEO’s including Paul Otellini of Intel, Joe Tucci of EMC, Paul Maritz of VMware, and Bill Green of Accenture.  

     

    Despite increased access for geographically-dispersed journalists, there was clearly a disconnect between Cisco and at least some reporters who showed up at Cisco headquarters expecting a same-room news conference. Here lies the problem. Some reporters may have felt that Cisco was insensitive to their needs, and these reporters failed to grasp the benefits and potential of TelePresence. Consider the potential power of this tool…people coming together regardless of level, role or region and interacting in an immersive virtual environment that approximates across-the-table, same-room interaction. Some reporters missed this, in part because of formality.

     

    This disconnect highlights the need to ensure that the use of telepresence mirrors in-person interaction and preserves in-person etiquette.  Reporters on deadline get restless and frustrated if they must wait two hours before asking questions, and they always want the option to ask follow-up questions. Otherwise, they feel controlled at best and muzzled at worst.

      

    It would be unfortunate, though, if New York Times readers confused any concerns about event execution with the technology itself. The greatest potential for telepresence and TelePresence (the spelling with capital letters is Cisco’s brand of the technology) is for informal, spontaneous interactions. Currently, telepresence is used primarily for scheduled meetings and events. The most collaborative organizations use real-time, interactive video for on-the-fly encounters. I profile some of these organizations and describe specific ways companies can create value through informal, spontaneous interactions in my current book, The Culture of Collaboration.

     

    Since the publication of my first book, Personal Videoconferencing (1996), my team and I have been conducting research on—among other aspects of collaboration— using visual communications for spontaneous, informal interactions. Recently, I formalized this research effort by establishing The Culture of CollaborationÒ Institute. My future books and derivatives will leverage the Institute’s research. If your organization is interested in supporting our work, let me know.

     

    Organizational culture, environment and business processes are key to enabling spontaneity and informality. Tools including telepresence—used effectively—are critical enablers in extending and enhancing an informal, spontaneous culture. I highlighted the role of informality in collaboration during an interview with CNBC’s Donnie Deutsch on the “Collaboration Now” primetime special. You can view a video clip here.

     

    Telepresence is a key element in collaborative enterprises and will soon become available at much lower price points for consumer use. Without informal, spontaneous uses of the tool, vendors run the risk that people will view telepresence as a tool only for formal, scheduled events and meetings. The real value of telepresence is enabling on-the-fly encounters, sort of a virtual water cooler.

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  • @GoCollaboration Aggregates Collaboration Blogs on Twitter

    Micro-blogging is transforming how people connect and disseminate information. The most prevalent micro-blogging service is Twitter, but there are many other services that are focusing on micro-blogging within enterprises. Typically, a micro-blog is a sentence or two plus sometimes a link to a blog or other content.

     

    Sensing that micro-blogging has the potential to create value internally and externally, many companies are adopting the medium. Internally, micro-blogging can provide project, function, and subject updates throughout the day plus encourage DM, which is Twitter talk for “direct message” or private message exchange. Micro-blogging is another tool that may potentially enhance collaboration among colleagues. Externally, micro-blogging can enhance brands and create viral adoption of products and services.

     

    Micro-blogging can also be used to aggregate content from multiple blogs and sources. Considering that other bloggers have compelling thoughts and ideas about collaboration and realizing the potential for one-stop-shopping for collaboration blogs, Joe Solomon and I created @GoCollaboration on Twitter. I’ve worked with Joe on numerous projects, and he’s a collaborator extraordinaire.

     

    @GoCollaboration includes more than thirty collaboration blogs including The Culture of CollaborationÒ.  We’re aggregating everything from the Wikinomics blog and the Learning to Collaborate blog to the Cisco collaboration blog and the Intuit QuickBase blog. @GoCollaboration also includes blogs that are focused on key components of collaboration like Keith Sawyer’s informative Creativity and Innovation blog and the Enterprise 2.0 blog. Besides aggregating this and other blogs, I’m also including my own tweets and conversation on @GoCollaboration.

     

    If you have suggestions for non-technical collaboration blogs we should include on @GoCollaboration, let me know.

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