At the end of the day, people have always been what determines if a business succeeds or fails. They are the ones who work hard and achieve objectives, most often using tools in which their organization has invested. With the proliferation of and advances in technology such as SharePoint, Yammer, Delve, Office Groups, and Office Graph, why are 60-80% of organizations still struggling to achieve collaboration nirvana?
This 60-minute session will answer this question and more, spending time discussing how people, and not technology, lie at the heart of successful collaboration projects. In fact, in its most basic form, collaboration means "To work with another person", and this session will extract and explain the most common human factors that are present in every collaboration initiative, and how slight changes in your approach to people can lead to enhanced user adoption, improved employee engagement, and lasting ROI.
8. 8
APA - Employee Distrust is Pervasive in U.S. Workforce
2
3
1
4
Failure
To
Collaborate
Fear comes from many places,
and is often at the root of poor
collaboration.
Fear
In the end, everyone is out for
themselves and the environment
becomes competitive.
Isolation
Fear leads to distrust, which
causes people to withdraw.
Distrust
Withdrawn people begin to
hoard information, and do not
share knowledge with others.
Hoarding
25%
The Root Causes of a Collaboration Collapse
8
10. 10
How Many Sound Like Your Organization?
We work regularly with other departments
We trust colleagues completely
Failure is embraced and discussed
IT is an enabler and supports the business
4
3
2
1
0
4
3
2
1
0
Very High
Average
Very Low
How Many Sound Like Your Organization?
Our best work is produced by individuals
There is competition for rewards, recognition, promotions, etc.
For someone to succeed someone else won’t succeed
Fingers are sometimes pointed when mistakes are made
Collaboration
Success
Likelihood
Are You Ready For Collaboration?
10
13. 13
Global Leadership Summit; Fast Company – Future of Work; STC Services; Ad Week – Social Media Addiction;
A NEW WAY
OF WORKING
Telecommuting Growth
Between 2005 and 2012, telecommuting grew by 79%
79%
Remote Workers
By 2020, as many as 50% of all workers could be remote
57% Mobile Phones
Currently, 57% of the world population has a mobile phone
50%
Social Media
As of 2014, 2.03 billion people in world are active on social media28%
13
14. 14
Millennial Branding – The Cost of Millennial Retention Study
MULTIGENERATIONAL
MOVEMENT
2014
2020
= 36%
= 50%
Millennials In The Workforce
14
3
Year tenure
33%
Leave for money
5
Generations by 2020
17. Gartner – Carol Rozwell
http://blogs.gartner.com/carol_rozwell/2013/08/20/outputs-are-important-but-behaviors-are-better/
of social and collaboration
business efforts will not
A Focus
On Technology
80%
achieve the intended benefits due to
inadequate leadership and an
OVEREMPHASIS ON TECHNOLOGY
25. 26
Concentrate on Building a Collaborative Culture
4
Encourage and reward
collaborative behaviors3
Be transparent - with
everything
2
Build brainstorming into
every project1 Get everyone on board
26
27. 28
Not All Connections Are Created Equal
Marketing
IT
HR
Logistics
Legal
Finance
28
The Power of Weak Ties
28. 29
Understand the Collaboration Lifecycle
29
Engagement
Forming bonds awakens a
desire to serve each other
1 Relationships
Relationships become
natural and organic
Connections
Bring people together in
friction-free ways.
2
3
29. 30
Focus on Employee Engagement
30
The things that give us a sense of
purpose, contribution and value
as a professional
Purpose
Make it both about leadership and something
that is attractive, interesting, and rewarding
for those leaders to do
Engagement
The things that we are compensated
and rewarded for investing in
Leadership
We tend to invest our efforts in two things:
30. 31
Understand the Collaboration Lifecycle
31
Engagement
Forming bonds awakens a
desire to serve each other
1
Information flows easily
and ideas begin to multiply
Relationships
Relationships become
natural and organic
Connections
Bring people together in
friction-free ways.
2
34
Innovation
31. 32
Have a Plan
32
2
What
What problem(s) are we trying to solve?
3
When
When is this needed?
1
Who
Who will this impact?
4
Where
Where is our company going?
5
Why
Why should our company invest in this?
It all starts with a few simple questions…
33. There is too much focus on content and technology, and
not enough focus on leadership and relationships. Leaders need
to develop a social business strategy that makes sense for
the organization and tackle the tough organizational change
work head on and early on. Successful social business
initiatives require leadership and behavioral changes.
— Carol Rozwell, VP and Distinguished Analyst, Content, Collaboration and Social Team, Gartner
“
2 MINUTES
GOAL: To paint a picture of how people - and not the technology you choose - are the secret sauce to successful collaboration. In fact, they’re actually more like the fuel in your car…without it, you can’t go anywhere.
Technology is often contributing to our inability to collaborate effectively
5 MINUTES
TELL ELLIPTICAL STORY
QUESTION: How many of you have talked to another employee today?
QUESTION: How many of you have asked another employee about something work related – knowledge sharing?
Since the first 2 humans worked together, we have been collaborating – so collaboration is nothing new to us.
And you would think that we’ve had a LOOOONG time to practice and get better at this, right?
The truth is, somewhere along the way we stopped doing the things that had always worked - probably in our search for something new and shiny - that would get us there faster.
In 2015, you see it all around us – this need for immediate gratification. A quick win, low hanging fruit…
QUESTION: Who produces stuff in your organization? Animals, robots, computers…no, people are still our producers – always have been…
And without people - and not just warm bodies in a chair - collaboration cannot take place.
Everything else – no matter how new, shiny or great - is just a TOOL.
So over the next few minutes, we’re going to be talking about the original tool…the foundation of great collaboration…US…you and I.
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2 MINUTES
Emotional
Our thoughts and our feelings
How something make us feel
Our past and current experiences
Our successes
Our failures
Our fears
Physical
The physical world around us
The people around us
Our organization
Information
The way we physically respond to these things
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So first, let’s take a look at the emotional side of collaboration
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3 MINUTES
I’m going to save you the time of many years of experience and digging to understand what is almost always at the root of collaboration breakdowns….FEAR
And fear means different things, but when we peel back the layers of collaboration we find that individual fears are often the beginning of a process that not only affect the individual but infect the organization as well.
Fears such as fear of failure, fear of making mistakes, fear of not getting credit, fear of being fired…
As we take a look at the process we can see that
FEAR DISTRUST (by the way, 25% of you don’t trust your employer or boss) HOARDING (anti-collaboration) COMPETITION (I’m out for me and me alone)
Slows everything down in an organization – innovation, etc.
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And as I’ve already mentioned, this leads to a complete failure to collaborate within an organization.
We call this baggage. People have baggage, organizations are made up of people, therefore organizations have baggage too.
QUESTION: Do you know how much baggage your organization has?
Just a note on this – technology was not mentioned and has nothing to do with the problem OR solution here…
Still don’t believe me or think your organization is immune?
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http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/04/employee-distrust.aspx
1 MINUTE
GARTER
So if this is the case, then doesn’t it make sense that we slow down, even stop, and spend a little bit of time better understanding how our organization is doing with this?
I mean, you get a checkup annually, why not give your culture a checkup
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2 MINUTES
…And that’s just what you are looking at – a 60-second culture self-assessment or checkup
Here’s how it works:
In the first section, check how many sound like your org?
In the second section, check how many sound like your org?
Draw a line between the 2 numbers
This is a quick and dirty assessment of how likely your org is to succeed at collaboration
Again – not a mention of tools…see a trend here?
Now let’s take a minute to talk about some of the physical things round us that are affecting how we collaborate
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3 MINUTES
QUESTION: How many of you would say, this looks like me?
Heck, with this much going on, it sure seems like we’re collaborating…but this is not collaborating…this is chaos.
Today, we are INUNDATED with information…and the truth is, this isn’t going to get any better.
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Now some of you might say, “Wait a minute, isn’t this talking about technology?”
It’s an interesting question because tech can contributing to and relieve this problem.
But truly understanding how people are responding to this information overload - and how it is actually changing us as human - is where most organizations say, huh?
In fact, did you know that humans now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish?
Don’t believe me - look it up! Our attention span has dropped 25% in the last decade, due primarily to the nature of how we receive and contribute to this information.
Frankly, I’m surprised anyone is still listening to me on this webinar!
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http://www.scmagazine.com/2013-mobile-device-survey/slideshow/1222/#1
http://www.informationweek.com/it-life/microsoft-says-short-attention-spans-are-fine/a/d-id/1320433
12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds now – 1 second less than that of a goldfish!
Better at multi-tasking
2 MINUTES
Just as information and our reaction to it evolving, so are our teams today
These aren’t the organizations or teams of yesteryear (or even yesterday)
They are often short-lived
Very much project-based
We’re seeing teams become very fluid – no longer is it 1 department or 1 group of people working on a project
We’re also not coming into the office as much
In fact, Global Leadership Summit in London found that nearly 50% of the workforce will be remote by 2020
This is a new age of working – We’re a part of a new generation of collaboration…
Speaking of generation…
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http://www.fastcompany.com/3034286/the-future-of-work/will-half-of-people-be-working-remotely-by-2020
http://www.stcservices.com/blog/unified-communications/remote-workers-to-be-50-of-workforce-by-2020-is-virtual-becoming-reality/
http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/social-media-addiction-stats/504131
2 MINUTES
The last thing I want to talk about in terms of physical collaboration is probably one of the largest changes in our organizations – the PEOPLE themselves.
Millennials in the workforce is on the rise, and by 2020 (I think before this), they will be the majority in our organizations?
Don’t think this matters…?
Did you guys know that only 1/3 of Millennials leave for more money?
And when they do choose to leave, it’s only after about 3 years?
And that if these 2 things weren’t enough, about the time that millennials make up the majority of our workforce, we’ll have yet ANOTHER generation entering the workforce – and these employees literally grew-up knowing only about the Internet, social media, etc.
How will these generations work together? Think technology will automatically make a 65 year old work seamlessly with a 22 year old? Think again.
Generational changes are some of the most frequent conversations we’re having today with our clients
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1 MINUTE
So now that we understand a little more about us humans and how we’re impacting collaboration, let’s talk about 3 myths that we see prevalent in today’s organization.
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2 MINUTES
Now many of you may be saying, wait a minute…I thought best of breed was the way to go?
Let me explain…
This one goes back to something I said earlier – we’re all looking for quick fixes and quick wins.
We hear it all the time, especially with the amazing tools and platforms that are out there today
“Let’s pick a great, new technology and surely we’ll collaborate better.”
This one is not about the technology – yes, select best of breed technology – but don’t START with the technology. I’ll talk more about this later.
We often say that this approach is like paving potholes - it’ll may work for a while, but you’re not addressing the root problem.
Do you want to spend time paving potholes only to fix them later, or do you want to build a superhighway?
Don’t take my word for it…
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1 MINUTE
http://blogs.gartner.com/carol_rozwell/2013/08/20/outputs-are-important-but-behaviors-are-better/
http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/social-crm/gartner-80-social-business-efforts-will-not-succeed-through-2015/161754
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2319215
More detailed analysis is available in the report "Predicts 2013: Social and Collaboration Go Deeper and Wider." The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2254316.
However, whilst adoption is set to escalate, Gartner estimates that through 2015, 80% of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology.
Carol Rozwell, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner, explained: “Businesses need to realize that social initiatives are different from previous technology deployments. Traditional technology rollouts, such as ERP or CRM, followed a ‘push’ paradigm.
Rozwell added: “There is too much focus on content and technology, and not enough focus on leadership and relationships. Leaders need to develop a social business strategy that makes sense for the organization and tackle the tough organizational change work head on and early on. Successful social business initiatives require leadership and behavioral changes. Just sponsoring a social project is not enough — managers need to demonstrate their commitment to a more open, transparent work style by their actions.”
2 MINUTES
This one will probably come at a shock to you, but technology will always give you an ROI of exactly $0
Wait, what?
Let me explain…
ROI on collaboration initiatives never comes from the technology – it comes from the USE of that technology.
Want to know the quickest way to get fired? Spend a lot of time and money on a big initiative and no one uses it.
The truth is, organizations need start spending more time understanding how to get people to use these tools and work together, than they do on the tools…I’ll talk more about this later.
Warren Buffett puts it nicely…
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You’re paying a lot for that shiny new technology – great – but what are you getting?
2 MINUTES
I know I know….this is what our parents always told us…
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
But here’s the catch – no one ever told us (much less taught us) to spend time understanding why we didn’t succeed and that when we try again, maybe we need to try a different approach.
Sure, we kinda figured it out…ever seen a child learn to walk. Stand fall – stand step fall – stand step step fall – stand step step step step…
We see many organizations that don’t embrace failure – they think failure is something to be avoided, and sure, no one comes into work each day hoping to fail, but we sure as heck ought to learn from it, don’t you think?
Put into practical terms, when you struggle (or fail) with something in your organization, even if it is on another project, learn from it, understand what went wrong, and don’t keep repeating the same mistakes.
A few years ago I met my future mother-in-law for the first time. She was preparing a roast dinner. As she readied the lamb to go into the oven, I watched her cut off the shank and throw it in the bin. She then placed the tray in the oven. I was bewildered. I asked why she did it and the reply was “we always do that.” I didn’t say anything else as I didn’t want to make a scene, especially as this was the first time I had met her.
A year or so later, my new wife was preparing a lamb roast. Just as her mother had done previously, my wife removed the shank and disposed of it. Unable to contain myself, I asked why she had done that. “We’ve always done that” she replied. “But why?” I asked. “I don’t know. That’s what our family have always done” was her answer. Whenever we would have a lamb roast the same thing would happen.
Years later we were visiting my wife’s grandmother in her home where she had lived for nearly 50 years. She was preparing a lamb roast. I watched her remove the shank and throw it in the bin before placing the tray in the oven. Unable to contain myself I said “forgive me, I don’t mean to be rude, but can you tell me why you did that?” “Of course I can“ she said. “This old house has only got a tiny oven and I can’t fit the entire roast in with the shank still attached.”
When I see my 3 year old putting a puzzle piece in the wrong place, I don’t tell him, “Keep trying…it’ll eventually fit.” That’s ludicrous!
You do know that’s the definition of insanity, right?
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2 MINUTES
One thing we have found to be certain is that focusing on technology always leads to disappointments.
Garage analogy
This includes being “owned” by IT (or the business) – it should be a collaboration between them.
Focus on connecting people, bringing people together
As you approach the 2nd and 3rd times, people really begin to lose faith/trust in the next solution and become more resistant
Failure not only costs money, it costs satisfaction (which lowers productivity), and ultimately could cost jobs
Avoid the Silver Bullet
Technology is a wonderful thing, but it’s not the only thing
One size never fits all
Understand what it is you are building and for whom
1 MINUTE
Ok, so let’s have some good news
Let’s close today’s discussion talking about how we can tap-into the power of our people and make these initiatives more successful
I’m going to share 3 DOs and 3 DON’Ts with you
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2 MINUTES
Let me ask you a question – when is the last time you went to your garage, grabbed a saw or hammer, and THEN went looking for ways to use it?
Tech is great, but it’s only a tool and without people using the tool, the initiative will fail.
I’ve never woken up on a Saturday morning, only to find that the hammer had completed nearly half of my to-do list while I slept.
Silver Bullet Syndrome
So don’t start with a focus on tools.
Start with a focus on connecting people and finding ways to help people work together better
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2 MINUTES
It should be obvious now – don’t forget about your people
If you don’t hear anything else I say today, please hear this – Focus on value vs ROI – ROI comes from use, not implementation.
People support and use what they help create
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2 MINUTES
Last but certainly not least, we often see organizations get to the end of a very long collaboration project and then say, “Whew, we’re finally finished. On to the next project.”
This is a sure-fire way to be on a fast-track for collaboration failure.
Remember how fast our people and organizations are changing? That isn’t slowing down.
In 2 years, 5 years, things will be different, and then what?
House project analogy/question
Make sure you have a process for continuous evolution and innovation. Keep going back to the drawing board.
Keep getting feedback from your users, keep doing checkups, always understand what your culture of collaboration is – it can change and you not even know it.
So now let’s focus on 3 things you should always DO
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2 MINUTES
Technology and tools will not change your culture. Period.
These are the processes, rules and frameworks for HOW and WHY your people should work together
This is the foundation – you’d never build a house without first focusing on the foundation.
After doing the self-assessment we saw earlier, here are 4 ways to focus on building a culture of collaboration
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2 MINUTES
I want to take a few minutes to talk about what I’m calling the collaboration lifecycle.
We talked earlier about the emotional process that causes collaboration to break-down, now let’s talk about how collaboration takes shape in our organizations.
Understanding this lifecycle is critical to ensuring a successful project.
First, "Collaboration always requires connection" Period. It's a prerequisite to collaborating
Give people a reason to work together
Build bridges
Knock down silos
Build communities
Get people talking
Once you bring people together, connections are formed, but are all connections created equal?
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2 MINUTES
The truth is, they’re not.
Mark Granovetter (sociologist) in 1973 – published paper
Strong Ties
Your close friends, family, and in an organization, the people that sit next to you, in your dept that you work with daily, etc.
They take a lot of effort to maintain
Our strong ties move in the same circles that we do The information they receive overlaps with what we already know
Weak Ties
Acquaintances
They most often know people we do not know, and allow us to receive more unknown information – new information
If you have an acquaintance in the marketing department, then you have a weak tie to that person, and more importantly a weak tie to her entire network, and the network of her strong ties.
Weak ties = BRIDGES to other networks – they help you cross the gap of knowledge that may exist
Once you cross this gap, you have the ability to generate new ideas, opportunities, cost-cutting strategies, etc.
Think LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook.
So yes, some of your connections to other people and groups are better than others and will generate more innovation value than others
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1 MINUTE
As we continue too look at collaboration lifecycle, we see than once we form connections, we begin to form and strengthen relationships, which in turn leads to more engagement.
We humans, want to serve others and we actually do want to work with other people. It’s how we’re wired.
Engagement is hot topic today, so let’s look at this for a minute. I’ve got a pretty basic formula I want to share with you on how employee engagement works.
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2 MINUTES
My guess is, you don’t look forward to work because you’ll get to use your fancy laptop or that awesome printer down the hall.
Hopefully you come into work every day, because you want to work with and enjoy working with other people in your company. You get fulfillment and satisfaction from this.
Hopefully you also have a sense of purpose and achievement from your work.
The truth is, at work, all of us ultimately put effort into 2 areas:
Leadership
Purpose
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If any one of these is missing, then you will never see the levels of employee engagement that are needed for innovative collaboration and people working together in ways you never dreamed of.
Remember, collaboration follows this path: ConnectionsRelationshipsEngagement, so if engagement is broken, the collaboration cycle is broken and we don’t get to the final stage, which is …
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2 MINUTES
…Innovation.
This is what we’re all after – call it something else if you’d like.
The culmination of all of this hard work to bring people together, form relationships, and achieve engagement, ultimately bears the fruit of innovation and ideas
Or put another way: new products, better customer service, more efficient processes, more customers
This is the collaboration nirvana that every organization wants, but as you can see, technology is nowhere to be found in this lifecycle. It can help – as a tool – but it’s not the core driver for this.
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2 MINUTES
The last thing I want you to do is to have a plan
In fact, Steven Covey once said that we should stop setting goals if we’re not going to have a plan to achieve them. A plan is the roadmap –what get’s you there.
This is where we spend a lot of time of with our clients these days, because the ones that want to be successful understand that all of this is great stuff, but it means nothing if you don’t have an actionable plan to achieve it.
So, to oversimplify, but give you something to chew on, start by asking some basiuc questions. And if you’re being honest, some of you may admit (not out loud) that you have never asked these questions. Don’t worry - YOU’RE NOT ALONE.
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1 MINUTE
Ok, now that you know…
How people impact collaboration
The myths that you hear, but are simply not true
And a few dos and don’ts, now, and only now…
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…Are you ready to select the right tools for the job.
1 MINUTE
If you’re still scratching you’re head and not sure if all of this really makes a difference, don’t take it from me…
Carol Rozwell of Gartner has this great quote from a study they did in the last couple of years regarding collaboration and technology projects.