Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams Report (January 24, 2008)

The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Paul outlines a process for talking to your CFO about the use of SharePoint for collaboration scenarios; the main idea is how to talk to him or her in their language. "Now I have to make a big warning here! This is a bit of a dry read unfortunately. Its kind of hard to make accounting into a funny and entertaining read. Maybe that explains why accountants never laugh at my jokes! So .. go and get a real BIG coffee mug with an extra shot ok? Just remember this: These sorts of feasability study type documents tend to be 50-100 pages and companies charge lots and lots for them! This is a very simple version."


• Sue shares her notes from a recent panel discussion on how to increase collaboration and communication. Key ideas: collaboration is everyone's responsibility, let others share ownership, establish credibility with others, and allow people to share their ideas, among others.

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Ian argues that the economic situation means that now is not the time to be considering a shift to a new messaging and collaboration platform. "CIOs, this is not a time to be rainbow chasing! This is not a time to be investing in the latest leading edge operating systems, leading edge new platforms, unless you can prove higher ROIs. It is a time to be squeezing the benefits of your existing skills sets, tools, processes. Thinking smarter. Seeking to use proven technology, proven RAD environments like Notes. Don’t come to me with a migration to another platform Board Paper please! "


• Chris argues that social media tools have a lot to offer traditional businesses, and calls out three themes: velocity, flexibility and economy.

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

• Matt posts the notes from his interview with Mark Hurst, author of Bit Literacy. One insight: "Because of its contribution to quality of life, Mark says there's a bit of paradox; if you want to focus on things outside of work, then you really need to first focus on work itself - how effectively you're doing it. This leads to important feelings of liberation, his readers claim, from the "shackles of email," endless to-do lists, or whatever was dragging them down. This being able to be free to live life in a more meaningful way is ultimately what Bit Literacy is aiming at."


• If you write on paper, your productivity and clarity of thought will increase significantly. Angela outlines a writing process to make writing a whole lot easier.


• You need to do a Weekly Review as often or as infrequently as your life and world changes. "If you've been in the same role for a long period of time and keep your system in pristine shape all the time, you can probably use your weekly review time almost exclusively for looking at the big picture. On the other hand, if your world feels out of control you may need to focus almost exclusively on your next action and project lists. During times of great change, it may be counter-productive to think about anything other than those urgent lists."


• Do you measure activities or results?


• The three questions of productivity: (1) what are you holding yourself accountable for?, (2) what is it that you think you need to be doing more or less of?, and (3) what are you not engaged in that is pulling your focus, distracting you, and making it difficult for you to get things done?

Other Noteworthy Insights

• Tim finds the new Zimbra client for the iPhone to be excellent. Eg, "The calendar on the iPhone is even better than the built-in one. It respects the colour choices of each calendar so that it is easier at a glance to see if the event is home-related (blue) or work-related (green). In iPhone’s default calendar everything is steely-blue. Stylish but not as informative."

Comments

[Chris Brogan...]

I'm curious how your report posts end up getting used. Does your current team tend to read them? Does your readership find the passthrough information useful? I ask because I was recently asked to do this kind of thing for my company blog (to be built) and think your way is probably the best way. I've always gotten something new out of them.

Tell us, Michael: how are they being used and who's your audience?

[Matthew Cornell]

Thanks for the link, Michael. I really liked Mark's summary too.

[Michael Sampson]

Chris ... what I understand from the people that I have spoken to and heard from is that the daily summaries keep them up with what's going on. Each takes 45-60 minutes for me to prepare, which involves going through 200-400 items of news and change a day. Given that you can read it in 5-7 minutes, that's a big productivity benefit for my readers.

And it forces me to stay current with what is really going on, and exposes me to a heap of new insight and ideas, which helps with my learning, consulting and writing.

Happy to discuss more if you do proceed with doing this for your company blog. One point of note: these posts generally get very little commenting or conversation, because it is linkage off to somewhere else. It's a very different model to the constant stream of writing and conversation that you maintain on your site today.

Best, M.