Tag: Collaboration

The digital workplace is more than technology

I’m a keen reader of the Chieftech blog and saw this interesting take on the digital workplace

http://chieftech.com.au/what-is-the-digital-workplace-mostly-harmless#comment

The ‘digital workplace’ (or whatever people call it) is far more than grouping some technology as a response. For me it’s an enabling cultural change to the way we work, manage, lead and combine work with the changing needs of our life.

If you shepherd some technology products under a banner for employees who still spend hours travelling to an office to plug into a network extension and spend one day ‘working at home’ where they complete their standard weekly powerpoint presentations, then this fails to understand what can be achived.

The digital workplace is a mindset and technolgy toolkit that enables organisations and employees to truely shape the environment where they can innovate, create and begin to gain some work / life balance that reflects the growing change of the society we live in. It will provide us the ability to be flexible and agile, enabling us to combine work with true quality of life – raising our children (rather than atching 30 minutes before bedtime) and caring for elderly relatives, having freedom to think and create in an environment create by the you rather than sat at a white desk, in a white office. 

Organisations that have the tools but still expect powerpoints, use the term ‘working at home’ and continue with the statics processes around people development and innovation (just look at the standard yearly appraisal systems) will be on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Leaders need to understand where best employees can innovate and create, employees need to develop disciplines and behaviours that understands that the physical office is perhaps the worst place to get their work complete and Intranet Managers, or whoever is respoonsible for stewardship of this toolkit need tolearn more nuturing and relationship skills rather than managing a database behind a firewall.

It’s a ‘must happen’ for organisations (particularly in the West) that will enable us to complete in a new economy. The alternative of more of the ‘corporate shoulder pads’ of the 1980s is something that will ensure organisations fail to atract the best talent and the best responses to changing markets.

Something to support the physical

One of our business units used video to deliver strategic messages throughout the year. The feedback we received from the unit (approx 250 people) was that it was a ‘nice’ way to deliver a message, but in terms of registering what was said it had very, very little impact (reports received back from employee focus group). I was also part of a discussion today regarding the launch of a knowledge programme with a large business unit (approx 800 people). We talked over a mixture of delivery methods to determine how to launch a new initiative in knowledge sharing. The general consensus of opinion from various areas of the business unit was that methods such as ‘video’ look and feel fresh but do not register with the audience without some physical take away. A number of people quoted an example of an initiative that was launched last Easter which included an Easter Egg on each employees desk. The initiative is remembered far more than video messages given by a CEO. My early musings on this is that any virtual campaign needs to be supported (or vice versa) by a physical example that the audience can take away. Someone quoted an example of a match-day programme or magazine from a concert of football game. You need something you can hold/touch to remember the messages (or event) you attended. I’ve always maintained that we need to look at channels which satisfy our physical, virtual and social needs to make an impact.

When two become one

Got a baby sitter on Saturday so my wife and I went to see ‘Up in the clouds’ – good film but that’s not the point of my post. In one scene  ‘preppy’ rookie employee was giving presentation that focused on the merger of the words ‘global’ and ‘local’ to form Glocal!! Stealing my thunder I think. For a while I’ve garnered a sense that we are looking back towards local solutions to combat the rise of ‘global this and that’. The same applies in the world of intranets. Some of our most popular communities are based around strong local connectors, doing local things that matter to the members. Regardles of the ‘global’ solutions offered (or forced upon them) from new technology, fancy new branding,  etc. The communities work because they know and understand what’s required. A know all usability people will say that any site should do the user research etc prior to launch but sometimes you can’t please everyone and comprises to fit within the company guidelines. Our local community sites have purposely kept themselvs under the radar to avoid having to conform to global requirements and have remain far healthier than gloabl communities that have grown big and perished.

Getting the community ready

This weekend sees the final content loading for one of our new online knowledge communities. Next week the site goes for stakeholder sign-off and then a week of user testing. Training is being organised for the 12 appointed content publishers. Subject to no major issues being reported the area should launch on 7th December. Nearly 20% of the community has been involved in its development, therefore we already have a core group of stakeholders eager to seed the site within the infrastructure of the community. Once the site is bedded into the stream we then look at the physical and social aspects of their knowledge networking and sharing.

Thinking of the people

HR and people related content on intranets generally feature highly in the most popular pages. Our HR pages are no exception, with over 20,000 visits per month to ???people??? related areas. However, over the past 24 months the attention given to maintaining these areas has not reflected this popularity. The area has suffered from old, duplicate and incomplete content.

This area is now being addressed. A project, sponsored by our HR department are now looking at ensuring content will be published within a governed, user centric structure.

The approach has two stages. First the ???ticking plaster??? ??? urgently addressing the issues with the current site. Stage two sees the complete redevelopment of HR related areas, bringing content under one structure, improved search, enhanced navigation, new taxonomy/tags and a greater focus on how the user engages with the content. Working with the Intranet team the project milestones will include stakeholder workshops, user research, design briefs, user testing and a full adoption programme to ensure a site that is sustainable moving forward.

Intranets Live

Really enjoyed by session co-hosting Intranets Live yesterday.

 I thought the quality of presenters were excellent. Some notes I made during the broadcast are below: 

Laurel Castiglione (PGE) talked about the first 100 days as an intranet manager. My thoughts were: 

  • Find out who are the key stakeholders and big hitters in the organisation
  • Know who does what
  • Don’t step on toes
  • Understand the purpose/strategy of the intranet
  • Build relationships with IT
  • Define a governance model early
  • Don’t talk about technology

 Roie Edery (IPC) talked about Yammer. My musings on Yammer were:

  •  Good at skirting the IT department
  • Is it another inbox to keep up with in an already cluttered digital world?
  • Think what you want to achieve and have strategy/governance around it
  • Is there a reward for collaboration?
  • Need to determine a degree of importance or value on messages
  • Is that message really necessary? Think of the cost of interruptions
  • Love one of the first commenst from Roie – we trust you. Beautiful.

 

The value is in the playground

I always use analogies to simplified and understand the world of online. Its helps me make sense of things. At my job interview back in 2000 I used analogies for cooking and football to explain my methods.  

 

When I first started developing websites I used the analogy of a supermarket, linking comparisons with usability, unique visitors, length of visits etc – you should have heard it, a master class if I say so myself.

 

The intranet world has moved on and my analogy now for intranets is a school. At a school we have formal classes, play time, assembly, registration and after school activities. The structure of an intranet is the same. We have formal document areas (class time); assembly (internal communications); registration (all the HR elements within the site); and communities (the various after school activities). Play time is where we introduce the collaborative elements of an intranet. It’s unstructured but it’s where the intranet can provide most value. Looking at our role within intranets we could see ourselves as playground assistant – monitoring what occurs in the playground, ensuring  nothing dangerous is happening, and then learning, reporting and structuring around what we learn from these social collaborative gathering.  By the way the intranet canteen menu is dinner time.

 

Hassle free sharing

Always been a fan of Twitter since I first came acros it 2 years back. Why? Because it fits into our way of life. The spare moment on the bus or tube, the mobile to hand allows us to share quite easily. Never been a fan of audioboo. It just doesn’t fit into our pattern of behaviour. I’ll tweet on a bus but wouldn’t start ‘booing’ (is that what its called). The way we share needs to fit into our behavior pattern. Yammer is so easy, email is easy. Too many of our internal systems make us work to collaborate. If I have to do that the battle is already lost.

ps – Posterous is soooo easy I love it

Its all about people

It’s almost a year since we started an intrenal blog about the work of our team. When we first did it was a way of sharing with a wider audience the discussions and thoughts we have internally, in our team meetings and across the intranet community. Although I write most of the posts, they actually reflect the discussions, ideas and thoughts that we have had right across the Intranet community. Sharing our thoughts on social media, online communities, content, training, intranets and everything related to it.

If you’re new to our blog (or have just been a long-time reader) I thought it would be interesting to reflect on what’s been, and after the proliferation of word-clouds for Obama’s Inauguration Speech, I created the same for the Intranet blog.

Four words were prominent:

people

social

communities

governance.

We write about online communities and how they behave. We write social media and its potential in knowledge sharing. We write about the protocols that govern the behaviour. That’s what we know and what we do. But in doing so it’s important to remember that what we’re really writing about is people and how they interact in a social environment. It’s why we think that we need to focus on how we build and manage online communities. In a good online community, the technology should be invisible, it’s about the people and the way we work together in a social environment than makes the difference.

 

Hurdles to collaboration

At a recent forum with key knowledge/collaboration stakeholders within my organisation we talked abou the barriers/hurdles to sharing. Some of the hurdles were

Culture

KS not seen as a priority

Lack of awareness of the potential role of KS

Not aligned to processes

Not essential for daily work

Silos and rigid reporting lines

To many firm bottlenecks and roadblocks that prevent holistic approaches to knowledge sharing

No time invested in creating a passion for knowledge sharing

No time spent in creating a “2.0” mindset

Trust

Technology

Lack of or insufficient search solution for knowledge

Little use of Wikis to empower employees to be active communicators on Insite – not just “listeners

No engagement tools to rank and rate – “like minded” tools

No opportunity to find ‘people who know people’

No emotional intelligence – tools to help me know myself and others

Social media is all about participation – all content is collaborative. I have to search to collaborate

Training

Equip the workforce

No slot on induction

No reward for KS

No code for KS (Timecard)

Strategy

Lack of ownership at a senior level

Do we know where the knowledge sits?

Do we have the big-picture thinkers?

Little KM leadership