we moved to http://kbex.wordpress.com

keep things simple. now it’s all the same name.

 

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http://kbex.wordpress.com

Applied Collaboration – Participation as KPI

Collaboration – in terms of knowledgemanagement, discussions, sharing or cooperating – strongly depends on participation. That’s a no-brainer.

But why not integrate employee’s participation in the kpis that are part for their bonuses?Andrew MacAfee raised some questions in his blog.

Actually we thought of connecting our future prediction markte to senior managers’ bonuses: They have to make their decisions on what they want to bet on, and the employees’ market will tell them within three months if they were right.

We did not receive very clear answers to that but the other model found definitely more supporters. In that other model, employees trade on the market and senior managers decide afterwards, if they were right and if this idea will be pursued any further.

But still: scientists’ currency are publications, writers and artists have to make themselves heard – so why not rate knowledge workers who claim to be innovative and creative by their collaborative and social output beyond their dedicated projects?

Only thinking about this could help speed up a lot of things.

Applied Collaboration: Respect

Yesterday I joined an event of the Digitalks-series in Vienna covering online collaboration. Two youngsters from small new media/consulting companies presented their view on collaboration and the tools they used in their companies.

Applied Collaboration- fixing errors

Another benefit of collaborative work: It allows to fix errors without having to make a drama out of it.

You can fix your own errors, because your publications are always open for editing and it will be nothing unusual that there is a new version out from time to time.

ECM Summit Day 2: Communication Controlling and Knowledge Management

Today I could listen to another four presentations.

In the morning, the topic was communication controlling: How do you know that your communication activities really achieve their goals, that you reach your audience – and how can you transform that into ideas for and ROI argumentation?

Applied Collaboration – tell them about it

Collaboration is not only about doing things together or exchanging information.
Collaboration is also a very powerful tool in internal public relations: Tell them what you do; make them know about it. Sharing is a way to gain power, to recruit new ideas or comments and enhancements.

Applied Collaboration – Spread the Word

We had a long discussion today on how to publish the reports of our research department. They are of very low interest to most users, but very important to some; most of the time they are considered to be nice to have, but they can become very critical information very soon.

• Emailing the reports is the worst solution: they waste space (500k – 1 meg), they are deleted or archived and forgotten and only considered as another annoying newsletter.
• Publishing a summay of every report as a news on the intranet also takes your users straight to boredom – this will be the perfect example of a never read information.
• On the other hand, people complain that they dont find enough information if they search the intranet for business-, market- or country-specific-information.
• The complete information is published on the internet – but employees dont go there to search, and on the research-department’s share – but that’s where employees don’t have access.

We decided to start a report-channel that published only very short abstracts of the reports, containing just enough keywords so that a search on this business or that market should find it. Monthly news highlighting the most important reports will be published to point users to that service and to keep the curiosity alive.
The full reports would be found in the internet only; the summaries will link there.

What a lot of work. But we have to prevent the ongoing experience that there is nothing in the intranet.

What a beautiful solution would it be to have a common report-directory, maintained collaboratively by the researchers, descriptions of their reports on their personal pages or phonebook-profiles and downloadable reports that could be accessed from there.

That would not only mean less work for us a intranet managers, but it would also save the researcher’s time – and it would deliver a much greater value to the users: The easy combination of information empowers searching and browsing features, because the higher density brings better search results and makes menus more understandable, it creates a goof overview of the content’s context (because there is a direct relation to the authors and their environment) – and information would have to be stored only once, but linked to very often.

Other benefits:

• users get more into the intranet, they are invited to look around
• keeping a clear and strict information architecture, but mixing the access to information and providing multiple entry pages (from channels to personal profiles or phonebook entries) makes the intranet more transparent and inviting for users
• it’s actually not exactly collaboration, but it prepares people to use the intranet, to add their own views and contents and to participate and socialise.

Applied collaboration – Share files

It’s ridiculous, but true: It’s still a problem in the enterprise to share files. Emails get blocked because of attachment-sizes and extensions, network drives are not available for everybody and the administrators are unknown. And even if you managed to put the file on a place where everybody can access it, you still have to tell people where it is. And there is no control – once it’s open, you can hardly exclude anybody, you don’t see who already downloaded it, and if you have a new version of your file, the trouble starts all over again.

Applied collaboration should allow you to store files, manage access rights, get statistics, control versions – and, most important: tell people where and how they can find it.
If there is then some realtime editing mode and more stuff that allows “true” collaboration on one file – that’s a nice add on. even though I think that this perception of collaboration does not focus on it’s biggest benefits. Concentrate on information, opportunities and status. Collaboration doesn’t mean that others will do your work.

Applied collaboration – Get in touch

You don’t go there and ask people what they are doing, not in the enterprise environment.
But if they write it down – you may be highly interested…

You can do some research without being intrusive, you can talk to people without having to hide your findings, you don’t have to feel like a stalker.
And you can present yourself as an expert, you can tell everything you want and you don’t have to talk louder than anybody else. You don’t even have to care whom you are talking to – of course you should think about your target group, but if your audience today does not understand a thing – maybe your audience tomorrow is perfect.

So an applied collaboration network could be the place to give you information about new people, colleagues you’ve met for the first time. And it is the place for you to set the tone: How do you want people to perceive you, how do you want to position yourself. – It becomes an important tool to shape and steer your career – more transparent and flexible than MBOs, Performance Contracts or Review Meetings, more tailored to your needs, and more under your control.
It’s not only the content that matters, but also the mere activity: do you do something, do you want to achieve something? As an opposite, you can also use networks to hide: If you’re not in there, nobody will find you. Whatever that tells about your company…

Applied collaboration – The collaborative value of doing nothing

Applied collaboration is extremely valuable, if you’re doing nothing. Well, maybe not literally nothing, but not what somebody expects you to do.

As an example: I’m waiting for Patrick to send out meeting minutes, coordinate a workshop and give me more information on the innovation project he’s working on. I haven’t heard anything for the whole week. So how should I know? Call him? Wait for an email? Or just wait?
Or should I send him an email, asking what he’s actually doing, when he will send the meeting minutes and if there is anything new with the innovation stuff? – You know how likely emails are to sound rude, and how easily rumors are spread: Is the innovation project dead? Am I telling Patrick that he does not do his work?

A collaboration network with minimal status-notes could tell me that Patrick was very busy with the innovation project, did not have any time for the meeting minutes, and is dealing with our partner agency to schedule our workshop.