Michael Sampson

WWPYCBW: Strategy and People (August 13, 2008)

Contents at a Glance
- Universal McCann links its Offices
- Challenges of Working Virtually
- Quick Links

Universal McCann links its Offices
Universal McCann, a global communications firm, has been exploring social networking tools to enhance communication between its 60 offices and 3000 people. Key technologies: Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and NewsGator Social Sites for SharePoint.

"Because Universal McCann already had SharePoint, and NewsGator built Social Sites to integrate specifically with SharePoint, Harrison's group was able to seamlessly add its new social network, which would essentially become the new starting off point for the corporate intranet.

For Harrison, the key was to make sure people started using it so it wouldn't become another statistic amidst the wasteland of failed corporate social networks. To ensure adoption, Harrison did two things. First, he found allies, primarily managers of divisions and departments, to champion its use in the company. "We wanted to develop super users," he says. "We chose people who understood the technology and who realized why it had value."

Secondly, he set Limo — the Universal McCann corporate intranet containing Social Sites — as the default site on all employees' browsers. "It sounds kind of like a hokey thing to do, but it does really work. When the browser pops open, there it is," he says."

Analysis
Interesting adoption strategy: (1) find user champions in the business, and (2) make it the default thing that people see each day. That's a pretty simple approach ... make people hear about it by enthused people, and make it the thing they see. Don't dismiss the simple things ...

Challenges of Working Virtually
Angelo outlines some of the challenges of working virtually, including technology (mainly around remote access to key information) and psychological challenges.

"Psychological challenges also change the nature of a telecommuting job as opposed to a face-to-face job. Since your home becomes your office, you sometimes begin to feel that you are always at work. This can make your home become very unappealing or even depressing to be in. It also becomes hard to focus on the task at hand because there can be many distractions around you that do not appear in a regular office setting. Staying motivated is sometimes difficult because of this. I found it hard to not take constant breaks because I was unable to stay focused on my work or I became frustrated with what I was doing because of the logistical challenges. Not being able to interact with coworkers in person made the job a lonely one. The mental challenges of working virtually are often not considered by someone who wants to undertake a telecommuting position; however, they can make the job even more difficult than the organizational problems that one can face and are even harder to avoid."

Analysis
Somewhere I've written about this ... the need to find another group of people for in-person interaction when you are isolated from work colleagues ... perhaps it's even in Seamless Teamwork. Fascinating observations from Angelo.

Quick Links
- One way to encourage adoption of collaboration tools: take something else away.

WWPYCBW: Strategy and People (August 7, 2008)

Contents at a Glance
- Matt's planning a Collaboration Open Space
- How Did We Get Reduced to File Sharing?
- How are you learning to do virtual work?

Matt's Planning a Collaboration Open Space
Following on from some discussions at Open Publish last week about the people aspects of using collaboration technology, Matt is wondering about running a Collaboration Open Space to look more into the people aspects of collaboration per se.

"So I want to run an Open Space event around "collaboration". Only we probably won't use that term as such. Suggestions for a better one please. I dunno whether this will be 20 people in a church hall or 1000 people at the exhibition centre. You tell me."

Analysis
Great initiative Matt ... looking forward to it happening ... and to helping make it happen. Most likely this will take place in Australia, so start saving your airplane dollars now.

How Did We Get Reduced to File Sharing?
Kevin shares his thinking on the adoption of collaboration tools in the enterprise, and wonders why the grand vision of collaboration got reduced to a new way to share files.

"The good news was that these groups all tended to focus on the primary issue at hand, which at that time, was 'can’t find stuff'. This consistent attempt to solve the same problem suggested that there was indeed wisdom in the crowd about what needed to be done, but not in how to do it. Also, the wisdom did not spread as past problems of communication and inabilities to integrate remained, and limited the ability to organize the grass roots effort.

Executions are badly flawed when multiple approaches emerge, and worse, the methods implemented simply mirrored the existing bad practices. Result show a great many sites that contained lots of documents, but with no structure and very little, if any integration. The underlying trap that became apparent was the focus on fixing my problem, rather than a cogent approach to broadly managing, sharing and exchanging valuable business assets."

Analysis
How indeed. One of the key drivers for writing Seamless Teamwork was to outline a way for using SharePoint for more than "merely file sharing". Will be interesting to see how that pans out. And as I talk about in SharePoint for Business, there needs to be team level agreements about how to use the capabilities of a given tool to improve business work.

How Are You Learning To Do Virtual Work?
Art asks how we are learning to live and work in an increasingly virtual world.

"It’s increasingly a virtual world, and everything about communicating, interacting and developing relationships feels a bit different than it used to. While many/most of us are compliant with the changes in communications (telex to fax to e-mail to IM, web conferencing etc.), I wonder how many of us are truly working to become competent at living and working in this world .... The common thread in all of these items is the shift in how we work, lead and learn.  Like it or not, the world is becoming more and more virtual everyday, and those of us that are old enough to remember life before fax machines and e-mail will be well-served to quit fighting the trend and start learning how to become competent and comfortable communicating to no-one and everyone at the same time. "

He gives some data points that demonstrate the challenges involved, and even gives a bottom line: "The difference between compliance with new technologies and new styles of communicating and competence at leveraging these tools and styles for results is significant. Deriving value from virtual leader/employee relationships or on-line learning is a very different task for all parties involved than it was in the almost bygone era of face-to-face. It’s time to quit fighting the changes and learn how to master the new opportunities to engage. I still struggle to see how these new methods will replicate the richness of face-to-face communication, but that’s my problem to deal with as the world keeps changing. In the meantime, if you are looking for me, don’t call…I’m busy learning how to communicate all over again."

Analysis
Wow, Art's blog just became essential reading for me. This really gets to the heart of it: the world is changing, what are you -- what am I -- doing to change with it?

WWPYCBW: Strategy and People (August 5, 2008)

Contents at a Glance
- Tomi on the Redefinition of Presence
- Is It Fair?
- Implementing Collaboration: Directions from Debbie

Tomi on the Redefinition of Presence
Tomi has been ruminating on the role of technology in changing our take on 'presence', and forecasts much greater usage of different technologies in the standard course of day-to-day living to be 'present' in many different places without travel. And he also (appropriately) talks about the splitting off of some forms of communication that currently rely on interactive communication into asynchronous communication and reporting tools.

"What I think I'm saying is that ultimately, we are heading to a time when technology will become standard proxy (i.e. presence) for our reactions to predetermined event activities while the emergence of richer and richer media (e.g. holographs et al) will enable remote participation (i.e. telepresence) in distance events in ways that are just starting to begin."

Analysis
Technology is creating many more opportunities for us to truly be present with remote people -- listening, engaging and conversing -- and also for us to fake being present by multi-tasking and dividing our focus. When you can't travel to be somewhere because of other demands, you have a good reason for not using that time for being there, and for doing other things. When the possibility of being everywhere all through the day presents itself, it is going to open tremendous demands and challenges, forcing us to choose much more carefully where we place our focus and emphasis.

The technology is going to help in some situations, but it's also carries the power to crush us, if we aren't careful.

Is It Fair?
Ken says that teams generally miss a third crucial question -- Does it feel fair? -- when they review how well they are collaborating. Test one is "Is it working for us?" and Test two is "Is it working for me?".

"However even these 2-green collaborations can fail if there is a perception that one party has done a lot better than another.

So if A perceives that B has achieved b++ which is much greater than their a+ then it will cause resentment.

Yes my pie may be bigger by collaborating - but yours is enormous so I am not happy.

I am prepared to lose my benefits rather than see you taking more than your fair share.

So where all the parties also perceive fairness I call this a 3-greens collaboration."

Analysis
Is this a question that you ask, or could ask when you evaluate how your team is going? Ken has some more ideas on this too ... he offers some great resources.

Implementing Collaboration: Directions from Debbie
Debbie shares her best practice tips for implementing social media tools into organizations.

• Take advantage of what you've got.


• Don't think the tool is going to make it happen.


• Get HR on board.


• Figure out your measurements of success.


• ... and more.

Analysis
A good list of jumping-off points ... really like most of them, and the ones I question will come down to interpretation and saying more about what they really mean. Eg, "Don't think the tool is going to make it happen" ... I agree to a degree, but the tool will make some things possible that were not there previously -- so there's a dynamic interplay at work between what's possible and what the social group is capable of enacting. But then I'm sure Debbie would agree with that ...

See my SharePoint for Business framework for a general approach to wrapping up some of Debbie's key ideas in a set methodology.

WWPYCBW: Strategy and People (August 1, 2008)

WWPYCBW ... "Working with People You Can't Be With"

Contents at a Glance
- Virtual Collaboration is a Disaster
- Telepresence Needs People Factors to Succeed
- Building a 100% Virtual Business

Virtual Collaboration is a Disaster
One writer laments the disaster of virtual collaboration, arguing that (1) it only works for art, (2) company culture will get destroyed, and (3) remote workers don't put in as many hours as in-house workers.

Analysis
My response:
(1) I have done virtual collaboration for writing for years,
(2) "company culture" as defined by the author assumes that everyone in a company is together all the time, which is not the case for most, and
(3) it's about value-add, not putting in the time in front of the clock.

Update ... see the comments. I missed the real intent of the article ...

Telepresence Needs People Factors to Succeed
Jessica warns (again) that technology to support remote meetings is only one part of overall success.

"Our old motto, "90% people, 10% technology," is being drowned out by the reflexive action whereby companies/organizations throw technology into the hands that once held airline tickets. It's not enough. Virtual meetings, including those conducted by Cisco's telepresence, can be very good indeed but I wager that the technology only contributes a small fraction of the reason attendees deem these meetings as good. It's the process by which the meeting is conducted, the inclusiveness of their facilitators, the hard work of the leaders - and their exemplary virtual behaviors - that make such meetings sing."

Analysis
Good reminder from someone who has been researching and writing this for a long time. Hey Jessica, you need to write the "Guide to Effective TelePresence Meetings" ;-)

Building a 100% Virtual Business
OrganizedWisdom Health, a business focused on helping people find the right health information, talks about how and why they went for a virtual business with no brick-and-mortar office.

"Since we officially made this transition to Going Green Virtually over a year ago, we have debated the merits of our decision many times. We've often asked, would we be more productive if we were all sitting in the same room everyday? Would our team members be better off commuting to and fro? Would our ideas be better? Would we attract better talent? Would we have more or less expenses? Would our business be more successful? Would our product be better? Would we be more happy?

The answer to every question each time we assess our operations is simply, no."

Reasoning:
- they can access the world's best talent pool
- increased productivity
- metric-based goals
- less interruptions = less wasted time
- no commute
- flex time
- huge cost savings
- rapid innovation cycles
- no more meetings
- ... and 11 more.

Analysis
Now that's a very different picture to what the first writer is saying.

Messaging News for November/December 2007 is out ...

The November/December 2007 edition of Messaging News is on the Web. My article in this edition is entitled The Four Habits of an Effective Collaborative Individual:

"Collaboration" denotes a group of people working together towards a mutually desired outcome. It is an accepted concept to describe organizational reality—people must work together to achieve things that stick and must be embraced by either an internal culture or a set of customers. "No man is an island," wrote John Donne in the early 17th century. This truth remains unchanged 400 years later, even though we increasingly work on different islands, geopolitical soil, and even continents. Collaboration is more than an abstract need of organizations; it's the daily practice of many an individual. As such, we must contemplate what it means for us to be effective as collaborative individuals. In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey argues that effective people share common life habits. If true, it makes sense to conclude that people, who are effective at collaboration, likewise have mastered and practice similar habits.

You can download the PDF (48 pages, 2.8MB), or read the article online.

The Collaborative Individual Report (September 2007)

In addition to actions that management need to take to set the context for effective distributed work, employees themselves need to embrace responsibility for increasing their own capability to work effectively at a distance from their co-workers and collaborators. In this inaugural edition of The Collaborative Individual, I review the news from September 2007 and look for common themes and insights. I welcome your feedback.

Personal Responsibilities
Distributed workers need to embrace strategies to keep themselves motivated and thus ready to perform their tasks appropriately. Mike had eight ideas for doing so, including going to work somewhere else where there are people around, participating in virtual water cooler conversations throughout the day via Twitter and similar tools, use strategic napping to refresh yourself, and break big tasks into smaller ones to increase the urge to finish. While there is nothing particularly unique or special about these recommendations--even traditional office workers need to follow many of the ideas--distributed workers have to embrace the personal responsibility for seeing them done.

The need for personal responsibility definitely extends to the realm of being effective in communication. Consider the example that Daniel relates:

As I was in the final throes of getting my most recent book into print, an employee at the publishing company sent me an e-mail message that stopped me in my tracks. I had met her just once, at a meeting. We were having an e-mail exchange about some crucial detail involving publishing rights, which I thought was being worked out well. Then she wrote: "It’s difficult to have this conversation by e-mail. I sound strident and you sound exasperated." At first I was surprised to hear I had sounded exasperated. But once she identified this snag in our communications, I realized that something had really been off. So we had a phone call that cleared everything up in a few minutes, ending on a friendly note.

What the lady in question did right was to recognize there was a problem and do something proactive about it. Rather than letting the breakdown in communication go from bad to worse, she named the problem, highlighted it to the other person who could participate in its resolution, and after doing so, was able to move ahead. And more than merely addressing a tactical problem in communication, she co-created an experience to guide her (and now others) in the future when faced with similar dilemnas.

Build Relationships
Distributed workers need to master the skills of engaging with others and building relationships with co-workers even when in-person work is not possible. Lisa wrote that "the key to telecommuting situations is connection, engagement, and relationship. An invested employee works hard and is more likely to exercise good judgment", but beyond the management aspects of that, there is a certain set of steps that individual workers can take and need to own.

Pick up the phone and call a co-worker when there has been too much electronic interaction and you are feeling disconnected.

Express an interest in both the work and lives of others.

Learn what you can about the strengths of other people and what they believe they do best, ie, what's their passion.

Clip articles of interest to others and send them off with a cover note (and by email it's very painless to do, but it doesn't mean that we all do it as often as we should).

Again there is nothing really different about all of this, but with fewer opportunities to work together in person, it is more important to do these things. The distributed worker has less opportunities to show that they are a real person by consequence of being away from others in body, and so must use the tools at their disposal to portray humanness and collegiality through acts of kindness initiated from a distance.

Know Thyself
Finally, and yet fundamentally, individuals need to understand themselves, and whether or not remote work is compatible with their personality and cognitive composition. The research commissioned by Cisco described five personality profiles that were conducive to a more mobile (and thus distributed) workstyle, with the recommendation that managers need to recruit carefully for high mobile work roles. That is undoubtedly correct, and individuals should explore in advance whether such arrangements will actually work for them or not.

In line with this counsel, Randy points to a set of parameters noted by author Alice Bredin:

"You should consider your ability to: resist distractions, manage your time, set limits on work, and deal with challenges. You also need to determine if you are internally or externally motivated and if you are an over- or underachiever. Know what your virtual office skills are before you try to sell the concept to your employer."

He, too, has some pointers for undertaking a critical self-evaluation of ones ability to be success in a remote work situation.

Conclusion
There you have it ... three key insights on the collaborative individual from the month of September: (1) accept personal responsibility for making it work, (2) build relationships, and (3) know thyself.

How are you going as a collaborative individual? What do you need to improve on over the next month. Please share.

Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload (Mark Hurst)

During my talk with Rajesh Setty last month re iPolipo he was gracious enough to recommend a book I should read. I duly added it to my Amazon list (I love buying books and sometimes I get to read them) and then about a week ago it arrived: Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload by Mark Hurst (see also bitliteracy.com and Mark's business web site).

There's finally a solution for information overload. Bit Literacy, the new book by Mark Hurst, describes how to manage e-mail, todos, photos, a media diet, and other sources of stress for people today. Bit Literacy is written for normal, non-techie users, and it doesn't require any special software or computer skills. Read the book and you'll start working more productively, so as to live a fuller life outside of work.

In a word: It delivers.
For a next action: You absolutely have to buy it. Now. Right now. Before reading any further. I know I don't normally say that, but this book should be required reading of everybody who ever uses / touches a computer at any time.

Here are the things I particularly liked:

• Mark outlines the problem (bit / information overload), advocates a solution ("letting the bits go"), and then gives some very concrete recommendations on how to achieve "bit literacy". I didn't agree with all of them, and found some of the recommendations uncomfortable for me, but (a) perhaps Mark's way is better, and (b) there are many, many valid ideas that I agreed with immediately. He devotes a chapter on how to use email as a "bit literate" user, and also how to manage a to do list in a "bit literate" way.


• Mark's got some very specific recommendations for software to use to make computer time much more productive. I've already switched to TextWrangler for editing text (p.111) and Typinator as my "bit lever" (p.144). I can't believe I've lived my life without these tools!


• Although Mark provides a generic framework for implementation on either Windows or Mac, he outlines the reasons why he believes the Mac is a better platform (wow, I like him more already). But more than that, he includes a list of add-on software that translates the Mac into a "bit literate capable" platform. Most I hadn't heard of, but man they are brilliant.


• Reading the book gave me the kick in the behind that I needed to sort out the mess that was my RSS subscriptions list. It had grown to an unmanageable 650 or so subscriptions, and I never got it down to zero. So last night I went through the whole list, removed the deadwood, and drastically trimmed my subscription count to 190 or so. And ... more than that ... I made it easy to review them consistently, by adding each to one of seven group folders in NetNewsWire: a folder I need to clear every day (yes, Eric, you're in that one), and then a Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday folder. The implication is that I only have to clear two folders a day ... and will get through all of my subscriptions every week.

There's more ... lots more ... but you'll have to buy the book to learn it. And again, I highly recommend it. I will be revisiting this book frequently in the future for a "bit literacy tune up".

Thanks Mark. And thanks Raj! You've both changed my life a little bit in the last 48 hours ...