Whitepaper - Building a collaboration beehive
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This document provides guidance on how large companies can improve collaboration to drive innovation. It recommends establishing clear goals, breaking down organizational silos, using collaboration software, engaging employees, and analyzing collaboration data. The key idea is to create a "collaboration beehive" where employees communicate effectively like bees in a hive to accomplish goals in a focused, non-duplicative way and drive innovation.
Whitepaper - Building a collaboration beehive
- 1. A Co l lab o r Whitepaper A Collaboration Beehive A guide to effective collaboration within your enterprise Nov 1, 2008 Sandeep M. Kaujalgi, Chairman & CEO 1|P a g e www.collabor.com info@collabor.com A Collabor Whitepaper | Collaborative Innovation
- 2. Executive Summary A Collaboration Beehive Companies have long worried, wondered and frustrated Think of a beehive. Agreed that the goals of a beehive are themselves over innovation. Innovation is the engine that different from a company, but please indulge me a bit. drives commerce, & collaboration is the engine that drives innovation. There is a queen bee (think CEO and management team) that sets direction and specific goals. The clearer the As companies get bigger, their ability to continuously goals the better the chances of success. There are a innovate seems to reduce in direct proportion to their number of drone bees (specialist) and a number of worker growth in size. This is indeed, a Catch 22 situation which bees (generalists). leads to companies becoming the victims of their own success. We see this happening everywhere – whether we take the examples of Yahoo, Google and Linux threatening Microsoft in the Email, Office or OS area; or we look at the low-cost airlines threatening the more traditional airlines or as we saw in the hospitality industry with budget minded hotels and service apartments take on the “city center” fancy 5-star hotels. Innovation seems to be the business of upstarts and startups. A company’s ability to keep on innovating determines their ability to “stay ahead of the competition”. In many cases, the competition is an upstart company or business model, and what may seem a Not only do the bees have specific goals and objectives diversion to large companies when competing with an and are probably measured against them, they also upstart – can be significant in how the company grows in communicate with each other about the state of the the future. beehive (reports, status), the resources outside the beehive (sales, marketing planning), they have to keep So, why is it so tough to innovate? Well the answer lies in finding new ways to achieve their goals (innovation), they how large companies collaborate. Firstly, it is easier to plan moves to new sites (expansion) and keep the hive collaborate when there are 2 or 5 or 10 decision makers, clean (governance). Some of them are also tasked with as in startups. But as companies grow, in size, across taking care of young bees (education and training) geographies, there are a significant number (hundreds) of people involved who all have their own view of how things All of this is achieved because bees constantly should be done. This considerably slows down what used communicate about their work, the environment that to be a very smooth and simple process, when the surrounds them and the resources available to achieve company was smaller. them. They do not duplicate effort, they do not spend time after diversions, they focus on the key task at hand and In this whitepaper, we focus on the ability for large accomplish them as per their individual goals and companies to turn their size to their advantage. We focus objectives. In essence, they Collaborate. And very on how to create an effective collaboration model. A effectively. collaboration model that thrives on inputs from across the It would be easy to say that we should emulate a beehive. company, across geographies, languages, departments That would be oversimplification of a serious problem. and divisions and up and down the hierarchy. A But, we can learn from a beehive, as far as collaborating collaboration model that is constantly buzzing. and communicating with the enterprise are concerned. And we will innovate better A collaboration beehive 2|P a g e A Collabor Whitepaper | A Collaboration Beehive
- 3. Building a Collaboration Beehive 4. Breakdown Organizational Hierarchies To collaborate successfully, it is important to consider the In any company, everybody has ideas that can benefit– following 10 items: however small or large their impact. This could be a truck driver in the distribution division who may offer more effective route layouts or a young employee who may offer ideas on using social networking tools like Facebook or Myspace. We see no reason for collaboration initiatives to be “restricted” by how high up in the ladder somebody is. Collaboration is a right, not a privilege. 5. Pick a good software platform I once worked in a company, where the CEO had an Ideas contest every August. What this involved was for middle managers to “force” their teams to submit ideas to make the company better. The CEO and top management would then choose the best ideas and they would reward the employee who proposed it. And then all was silent till the next Ideas Contest. 1. Have clear goals and objectives. Do not collaborate just because it is fun that will soon lead While Idea contests are okay, these are a drain on the to all collaboration initiatives to deteriorate into “time administrative bandwidth of middle management who are wasters”. now busy trying to please the CEO and not doing their jobs. Also, people don’t come up with ideas necessarily in 2. Collaborate with a purpose the month of August. And when they are forced to – guess Generic reasons to collaborate include – Increasing what the quality of those ideas is like. Productivity, Increase Knowledge Sharing, Faster Innovation and Cost Saving. In addition there are many There is a better way. Use a platform. There are many other Specific reasons to collaborate – whether it is for software applications that offer collaboration and R&D for new product development or HR on new hire community features. Pick one and implement it. management, or Green Initiatives like Car Pooling and Recycling. Of course, we’d rather you picked our platform. WORK 2.0. Look for more info on Work 2.0 at www.collabor.com 3. Breakdown organizational walls. It achieves no purpose to keep collaboration within 6. Engage and Reward departments and/or divisions. A lot of companies do that, Once you implement a platform, use it to communicate but that is not how collaboration happens. It happens, and collaborate. It creates a virtual meeting place where when new voices are allowed access to departmental employees can gather around and network. Make it multi- initiatives, new ideas are introduced and debated and new media with Videos and Audio and Written word, to make experiences are shared. it easy for everybody to learn and belong. And reward the usage of the platform with points or rewards – a frequent e.g. think of a scenario where Marketing and Sales benefit flyer program for employee, if you will. in their plan to enter a new country (say, Sweden), because somebody who grew up in Sweden and works in And a good platform, will give the CEO and top HR, opens up her experience and network to them. management an opportunity to communicate their thoughts regularly with employees, get direct feedback and actionable data. 3|P a g e A Collabor Whitepaper | A Collaboration Beehive
- 4. 7. Avoid too many applications. A disparate cobbling together of applications (opensource or otherwise) that all seem to offer “Collaboration” or “Community” features may seem good in the short run. But it often leads to low adoption by users. It also leads to an inherent administrative problem. Firstly, meaningful behavior modeling data is not easily available, since you cannot really compare information within 100 posts on a blog application with 250 threads in a forum application. Secondly, each of these systems need to be administered individually creating a administration overhead not earlier envisaged. When choosing commercial software, make sure you are not creating a disruption in your existing technology stack. A new collaboration application should not recreate your content management system, your document management system, your knowledge repository, your intranet and portals, etc etc. It should not stand alone as a separate application, which leads to low adoption and “one more” thing to do. A new collaboration application should work with your current technology stack, integrating existing applications into the collaboration framework 8. Code of Conduct It is important to establish right up front, what the new application can be used for and what it cannot be used for. It is also important to make sure that this is not a platform for complaining about work or specific people or to discuss politics or to post about “your cat having given birth to a litter”. 9. Have Fun Introduce items which keep drawing your audience to the system – like Polls, Surveys, Loyalty Programs, etc. While “fun” for average user these could provide actionable intelligence. 10. Track and Analyze Like any good management decision, track the usage of your collaboration application with vigor and rigor. Analyze adoption, track frequent contributors, track views, comments. Use this information to see if employees are collaborating on the corporate goals and take corrective action to enhance desired behavior. 4|P a g e A Collabor Whitepaper | A Collaboration Beehive
- 5. About Collabor Contact Collabor is a technology company focused on building software products to improve collaboration, innovation, Americas productivity and knowledge sharing in enterprises One Apple Hill Drive, Suite 316 Natick, MA 01760. USA About Work 2.0 AsiaPacific Collabor’s first product is Work 2.0, a software platform # 32, Street No 2 Sagar Society that allows enterprises to better collaborate in their Off Banjara Hills Rd No 2 Information and knowledge chain, but building online Hyderabad, AP 500034. INDIA communities. Online www.collabor.com info@collabor.com Copyrights Copyright ©2008 Collabor, Inc. All rights reserved. Work 2.0 is a registered trademark of Collabor, Inc. Collabor, Inc. owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners These communities can be internal focused around departments or divisions or initiatives. OR, these communities can be external to include customers or suppliers and other stakeholders. Online communities take portals and the intranet to the next level. Online communities bring in interactive tools, user generated applications and user generated content. Online communities also allow the company and users to upload a variety of media including: documents, spreadsheets, videos, audio/pod, presentations and collaborate over them. Online communities allow real time messaging and group discussions over company initiatives. Collabor allows companies to embrace social networking “for a purpose” with its Work 2.0 software product. 5|P a g e A Collabor Whitepaper | A Collaboration Beehive