Social Business Advisor: Enterprise Collaboration Strategy

Connect to Work

Jacob Morgan — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:39:09 +0000

Last week I wrote about one of the key themes that I believe are going to make up the future work, I encourage you to read that post titled: The Future of Work is About Customized Work. There are several of these themes that I’m going to be exploring in the near future and the next one is “Connect to Work.” The traditional view of working sees an employee waking up around 6:30 am, having their morning breakfast and then commuting anywhere from 30 mins to over 1.5 hours to get to work. The employee gets to their office around 8 or 9 am and usually leaves around 6 pm. This is what it used to mean to “work” or better yet “to GO TO work.”

What does it mean to connect to work?

The notion of having to go to work is dying, in fact for some it’s already dead. Work doesn’t have to be done at an office anymore. The only thing that most of us need is an internet connection that allows us to connect to the people and information we need to get our jobs done. This is what it means to “connect to work.” The many collaborative platforms out there are making this possible and what is particularly fascinating is the transition towards mobile work! We can now access virtually all of the same people, files, conversations, tasks, and other types of information on our mobile devices that we can on our computers. The power of these mobile devices that we carry around in our pockets is, for lack of a better word, awesome and it’s enabling and empowering a new type of employee, the future employee.

Connecting to work means that you can have access to everything and anything you need whether you are at a cafe, in an airplane, in a cab, or sitting somewhere on the beach. You don’t have to go to work, work now comes to you.

This shift is forcing organizations to rethink some of the core assumptions that were made during the creation of these institutions, for example, do we now need offices or a central headquarters for our company?

I’m seeing more and more organizations implementing flexible work policies and our recent survey on the future of work (which you can still take and share!) is already revealing some very telling results on this which I will be sharing soon. The giant elephant in the room is that we (including mangers and executives) all know that we have the ability and the capacity to enable this type of work to happen and we all inherently know that it is beneficial to do so. It’s a virtually palpable shift that we can’t deny when looking at the future of work.

I’ll be exploring this theme in much more detail in the future but for now I just wanted to introduce it and I’m sure many of you are already quite aware of it.

The future of work is “connecting to work.”

The Future of Work is Customized Work

Jacob Morgan — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:08:24 +0000

The typical career path for an employee starts in an entry level position in a particular department wherein the employee needs to then ascend the corporate ladder and move up the proverbial food chain to a more senior level role. Most of the time the employee ends up stuck in a particular department or a particular role but occasionally some horizontal pivots are possible. This is a type of pre-determined work because essentially the career path of the employee is set out for them once they join the company. If they get hired in the marketing department then they will typically stay in that area. It’s akin to set-up marriages which used to be common many years ago in some countries. Before the child was even old enough to know what marriage was they were already paired up with someone. Thankfully in most parts of the world this custom is now no longer being practiced but we run our companies in much the same fashion. This is how it has been for many years inside of organizations and it’s starting to change. The future of work is about customized work.

What is customized work?

Customized work is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the ability of an individual employee to shape their career path within an organization and allows them to navigate to the roles they are best at and most passionate about. Employees no longer need to focus on ascending the corporate ladder, they are now building their corporate ladder.

There are two things making this possible within organizations. The first is technology in the form of collaboration platforms that allow employees to share their ideas and passions while becoming leaders in areas of their choosing. The second is the changing behaviors we are starting to see in management around following from the front. We still have a long way to go before this notion of customized work becomes pervasive within organizations but we are certainly moving towards that direction.

We are all still collectively learning what this is going to look like and how exactly it’s going to take shape but it’s a fascinating journey for organizations to be embarking upon and I’ll be doing my best to explore much more around the future of work and collaboration. Stay tuned as I’ll be exploring several key themes around this!

Aligning on Purpose

Jacob Morgan — Tue, 14 May 2013 07:08:21 +0000

One of the things we can’t neglect when thinking about the future of work is for organizations to align on a sense of purpose. Many organizations who are investing in enterprise collaboration tools and strategies to a good job of messaging and conveying value but where many fall short is on being able to align the organization as a whole on a sense of purpose. Atos Origin does a good example of this but publicly conveying their goal of becoming a zero email company by the end of 2014. Another company that does a great job of this is TELUS which set out an aggressive goal to have 30% of their almost 40,000 workers work full-time from home by 2015. These are organizations who are truly planning and seeking to impact the future of work.

So how does an organization go about aligning on a sense of purpose?

At a very high level there are a few things that need to be done:

Set out an ambitious goal that is going to significantly impact what it means to work at your company. This goal needs to be something that all employees can relate to and easily understand.
Convey this goal (or sense of purpose) to the company at large, and if possible communicate this with the general public as well.
Make sure this goal is consistently being reinforced within the organization
Create public updates and announcements on the progress of the organization as it moves towards this goal, Atos does this quite well with their “zero-email” blog along with public appearances, interviews, and events that they host. This makes sure that everyone inside and outside of the company knows what the big picture is.

These four things should be the foundation of helping your organization align on a sense of purpose around the future of work. The investments that are made in enterprise collaboration tools and strategies are all being driven by this sense of purpose that everyone at the organization shares. It’s the driving force behind change at your company.

Before doing anything else, make sure your entire organization can align on a sense of purpose around the future of work.

If you’re interested in the future of work make sure to take our survey, you will get a free copy of the report when it becomes available!

Enterprise Collaboration Technology Deployment Scenarios

Jacob Morgan — Thu, 09 May 2013 07:08:19 +0000

I’m seeing a few trends around how organizations are deploying enterprise collaboration platforms. Typically one of four paths are taken which are: a unified solution, multiple solutions (not connected), an aggregator solution, or multiple solutions which are integrated together. These are explained in more detail in the table below.

	What is it	Pros	Cons	When it occurs
Unified solution	Single platform across the enteprise	In most companies this is the ideal scenario. All of the employees will wok across a single platform which acts as the single source of truth for information. All employees have access to this central "collaborative operating system for the enterprise."	Not all of the business units or departments are going to derive the same value from a single platform. Oftentimes a specific unit will know of another platform that better fits their needs or will want some customization that is not available, this can hurt adoption. The larger the company the harder it is to get everyone using a single collaboration platform. It's challenging for the organization as a whole to keep everyone happy and with such a low barrier to entry any business unit can beak off and deploy something else without needing the backing from corporate.	When commitment exists across the enterprise and the necessary resources are in place for customization and integration. Integration of employee feedback and ideas as well as feature updates may be required regularly. The organization needs to have a plan in place for how to deal with rogue/side deployments that may arise. Somewhat frequent occurrence.
Multiple solutions (not connected)	Multiple platforms acoss the enterprise	This approach gives every department or business unit the ability to deploy something that best meets their needs. Each department essentially owns their own deployment and make the changes and customizations that are most relevant to them.	With multiple platforms deployed across the enterprise larger silos can be created. Information and activity doesn't pass from one system to the other so complete organizational collaboration is still not possible. Oftentimes employees will work in one platform but may need access to someone or something in another platform that they can't get into.	Typically this is seen when corporate level support is minimal or takes too long. In this situation business unit leaders take things into their own hands and deploy solutions which make sense for their respective business units. Seen frequently but is not something I would recommend.
Aggregator solutions	Multiple platforms acoss the enterprise, with a central aggregator platform	The ability to use multiple platforms is still an option but now the activity can be aggregated into a central environment that anyone and everyone can access. This approach is a bit of a combination of having a unified and multiple solution. Everyone can use what makes the most sense for them.	These types of solutions don't really exist. Platforms do allow for integration into other systems but oftentimes this integration results in information being duplicated in mutliple places. Integration and aggregation is not the same thing and while many vendors can integrate well there is still a big gap around being able to bring together multiple collaboration environments (or several instances of the same platform) into one area. Organizations seeking to go down this path become a bit of a product company as they need to develop customized solutions to allow this to happen.	If an organization has already been using multiple systems but wants to get the organization on the same page then this method can be used. The business units still use their own independent platforms but the activity and data is aggregated into a central platform that everyone can access. I haven't seen this happen much but am aware of some organizations who are attempting this.
Integration solutions (multiple solutions, connected)	Multiple platforms across the enterprise that are integrated together but there is no aggregator.	The ability to use multiple platforms is still an option but now the platforms can "speak" to each other and pull/push information from one to the other. There isn't a central platform which aggregates information.	This approach typically doesn't work (or is difficult to make wok) in situations where an organization is using multiple instances of the same platorm in addition to other plaforms. The same content may also be present in more than one place as oftentimes the platforms simply "sync" together. Upgrades also become a challenge as complex integration's can make things difficult.	This is perhaps the most common scenario and happens in many organizations where multiple platforms are being used and those platforms needs to "speak" to each other. I see this more often in larger enterprises. Oftentimes there isn't a central platform, instead each business unit uses what they want but the multiple platforms allow for communication and collaboration across them.

There is no perfect approach and as I mentioned I’ve seen all of these methods attempted. The reality today is these deployments are not perfect and organizations do need to make some tough choices around how they want to approach these technology deployments. This goes hand in hand with understanding the four types of enterprise collaboration deployments. The best solution for your organization depends on where you see this initiative going in the long run and the kind of support you are willing to give it.

Hopefully this will provide some guidance or at least start some discussions around what your organization should be doing.

The Gap Between the Consumer Web and the Enterprise

Jacob Morgan — Tue, 07 May 2013 07:08:57 +0000

Much of what we are seeing in the enterprise is being fueled by the consumer web. For example if there would have been no Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin, chances are there would be no Jive, Yammer, Chatter, or any other enterprise collaboration platform. The behaviors we exhibit on social media channels are also making their way into the enterprise. For example we can easily use social media to: create communities, easily find people or information, share our ideas and insights, ask for help or get advice, create and share content, and get access to people and information anytime, anywhere, and on an device (among other things). The same cannot be said for many enterprises around the world. In fact there is a large gap between the consumer web and the enterprise (which is trying to catch up!).

The image below looks at some of the different characteristics of the consumer web and the enterprise and the gap that exists between the two.

The next couple years are going to be very interesting as organizations start to invest more resources into enterprise collaboration and future of work initiatives. It’s clear that business leaders around the world are understanding that the way we work is evolving and that they need to adapt. It’s still early in the game and we still have a long way to go in the innovation adoption life-cycle but we are moving in the right direction.

The gap above isn’t one that can’t be bridged nor does it need to be 100% on par with what is happening in the consumer web but our organizations can’t be THAT far behind (and thankfully some aren’t). What I’m finding is that the first step is always the hardest, in other words committing to change and moving forward with that commitment. As I always say, you can’t learn how to swim by watching Youtube videos, eventually you are going to have to get in the pool and when you do, you will find that you learn and adapt much quicker.

Here’s to closing the gap and learning how to swim.