So many questions… …do you have the answers? Don Gulliksen - JTSi11 February 2009.

So many questions…

…do you have the answers?

Don Gulliksen - JTSi 11 February 2009

The Billing

• Part 1: The changing landscape of skills and tools needed to be innovative in today’s global economy.

• Part 2: The challenges and management of team conflict in the virtual environment.

The Questions• In your organization, what have been the disadvantages of people working

virtually? • What has your organization tried to help overcome some of the disadvantages?  • How has the need to protect intellectual property impacted the use of virtual

teams in your organization? • From your experience, how are virtual teams similar to, or different from, co-

located teams? • What mechanisms, if any, does your organization employ to develop virtual

teams? • What has been your experience with managing team conflict in the virtual

environment? • Does your organization do any specific training in the virtual communication

technologies? What is the nature? • Are there virtual communications technologies you would like to see used that are

not currently employed? What is holding back their adoption in your organization?

Recent NY Times Articles• “Now, Brevity Is the Soul of Office Interaction”

(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/business/23micro.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=brevity%20soul%20office%20interaction%20milstein&st=cse)

• Use of internal microblogging systems with features tailored for the workplace, for asking quick questions and sharing brief status updates. A surprising benefit: the ease with which employees can learn relevant information across departments.

 • "Melding Obama’s Web to a YouTube Presidency”

(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/us/politics/26grassroots.html?scp=1&sq=you%20tube%20presidency&st=cse)

• How the traditional ways of communicating with and motivating voters are giving way to new channels built around social networking.

• "Israeli Entrepreneur Plans a Free Global University That Will Be Online Only” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/education/26university.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=shai%20reshef&st=cse)

• Applying social networking to academia, taking advantage of the open-source "courseware" available online

Collaboration Spectrum

• Functional Business Units (727)

• Cross Functional Teaming (737)

• Mergers and Takeovers (757)

• Outsourcing and Partnering (777)

• Mashups and Crowdsourcing (787)

Where is your organization?Where is your organization?

Mashups

• mainstream businesses (Google, Amazon, SAP, etc.) are adopting Service Oriented Architectures to integrate disparate data by exposing this data as discrete web services

• web services provide open, standardized protocols to provide a unified means of accessing information from a diverse set of platforms (operating systems, programming languages, applications)

A communication mashup…

• Pinger– Facebook, MySpace and Twitter feeds

are pulled together into a concise, elegant format

– Connect with your friends and associates using whatever tool makes most sense

– See your whole communications history with each friend, including IM conversations, social network feeds, calls, texts or mails

– See IM status next to each name in Contacts and Favorites so you know what they’re up to and the best way to get them

Crowdsourcing

• the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call

• Innocentive crowdsources R&D by providing connection and relationship management services between "Seekers" and "Solvers."

Super crowdsourcing…

• Think of an idea for a DORITOS® brand commercial.

• Shoot it. Submit it. Make it as one of five finalists and win $25,000.

• If America votes it their favorite, your video will be aired as a DORITOS® commercial during Super Bowl XLIII.

• If your ad gets the top spot on the USA TODAY Ad Meter, we’ll give you a $1,000,000 bonus.

What is the right balance?

• labor costs• travel costs• energy costs• real estate costs• product complexity• local talent pool• protected IP

• open IP• open platforms• open innovation• global workforce• mass collaboration• crowdsourcing• mashups

Our traditional skills and tools…

• telephone• email• web conference• video conference• meetings• conferences• restaurants• etc…

Net generation skills and tools…

• texting• blogs• wikis• twitter• facebook• myspace• youtube• secondlife• gaming• etc…

The gap…

Training out the gap – our responsibility…

• student transition from social networks to business networks– how to run a meeting– how to read another person’s body language– how to effectively use a telephone in a business environment– the do’s and don’ts of corporate email

• employee transition from business networks to social networks– how to use social networking tools to your advantage– the etiquette expected in the use of each tool– the security risks of using these tools

• the right mix of social and business networks– how often / when are face-to-face meetings appropriate?– what are the effects of each on a co-located workforce?– what are the effects of each on a dispersed workforce?

Think about this challenge…

• SmartPhones

– access anytime

– access everywhere

– access to everything

– why use corporate• telephones?

• computers?

• networks?

– everyone will have one…

Dilemma: Control the technology or train the employee?

Control or Train?

• The best practice organizations have not experienced significant problems with the abuse of tools or the sharing of inappropriate or proprietary information.

• There is a willingness to allow less authoritative content to be published and made available across the organization.

• Using Enterprise 2.0 tools does not require policy changes or security updates.

“The Role of Evolving Technolgies: Accelerating Collaboration and Knowledge Transfer”APQC Study, 2007

Collect or Connect?• The simple, easy, and even fun features of social

computing tools encourage employees to contribute to/participate in/leverage the knowledge-sharing tools made available to them

• Adopting a centralized portal for back-end services and data/knowledge repositories, federated search functions, and an open collection of social computing tools with automated processes and analytics enables the fluid exchange of both tacit and explicit knowledge

“Using Knowledge: Advances in Expertise Location and Social Networking”APQC Study, 2008

Wikinomics By Design*

• take cues from your lead users• build critical mass• supply an infrastructure for collaboration• take your time to get structures & governance right• make sure all participants can harvest some value• abide by community norms and create trust conditions• let the process evolve• don’t lose sight of your business objectives• collaboration starts internally• finding the internal leadership for change• hone your collaborative mind

*“Wikinomics – How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything”Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

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…for your answers!