where does collaboration using technology begin?

I was asked: “Where does col­lab­o­ra­tion using tech­nol­ogy begin?”

Hmm, social net­work­ing is truly a dis­rup­tive tech­nol­ogy when one thinks about it espe­cially in the work­place. The con­trolled and hier­ar­chi­cal aspects of most work­places think col­lab­o­ra­tive tech­nolo­gies are the next big thing to jump on. How­ever, these insti­tu­tions don’t take into con­sid­er­a­tion how the imple­men­ta­tion of these tools may change their culture.

Our stu­dio worked for sev­eral years at cre­at­ing a new par­a­digm for cor­po­rate com­put­ing at QVC. With their tech­nol­ogy group we not only cre­ated a com­mon inter­face and infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture upon which they would build over time; we cre­ated a new way of think­ing. Break­ing down the depart­men­tal walls with the shar­ing of information.

The ini­ti­a­tion of this project came from a vision­ary IT depart­ment that under­stood that col­lab­o­ra­tion actu­ally reduced the bur­den on indi­vid­ual pro­gram­mers and the depart­ment as a whole. It cre­ated a need for smarter and inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies that were essen­tial to a com­pany whose very exis­tence was dri­ven by tech­nol­ogy. The orga­ni­za­tion had grown being very entre­pre­neur­ial – cre­at­ing tech­nolo­gies to grow their busi­ness by a bil­lion dol­lars a year. When they hired us their busi­ness was more mature and needed to focus on col­lab­o­ra­tion. Col­lab­o­ra­tion and shar­ing are essen­tial to being more efficient.

So, back to the ques­tion. Col­lab­o­ra­tion begins with e-mail. Every­one begins there. The dreaded REPLY ALL is the clog of every cor­po­rate mail­box I know. How­ever, the orga­ni­za­tions that under­stood the collaboration/communication needs oflarge orga­ni­za­tions bought into Lotus Notes early. Lotus Notes allowed attach­ments, ver­sion con­trol, iter­a­tive doc­u­ments and group leader approval and control.

The kind of tool needed for orga­ni­za­tional social net­works are dri­ven by the orga­ni­za­tional cul­ture. An orga­ni­za­tion that makes deci­sions top down needs a dif­fer­ent work­flow and men­tal model than an organic orga­ni­za­tion that allows for free-wheeling col­lab­o­ra­tion. We often set up wiki’s for our work because they allow us to cre­ate our struc­ture on the fly and amend it as needed.