5 key elements to promote collaboration

I couple weeks ago, I wrote an entry on this blog titled “Promote Collaboration in large Enterprises” where I pointed out I had been requested to present on the subject. I have progressed my thinking since and found 5 key areas playing an important role in building such collaboration. I’d like to spend the next entries to discuss each of those in a little more details, and do hope this can spur a conversation between us on the subject.

But before doing so, let me highlight which those 5 areas are so you have a structure of what I intend to blog about over the next weeks. Once the presentation has taken place, I also intend to give you some feedback on the discussion. So, what areas did I come up:

• Organization & Finance. Large companies are build around business units or product lines. Does the enterprise architecture, in other words, its organization foster collaboration? How are the budgets set-up and does this push them to competition or collaboration? Where are profits and revenues recognized?
• Measurement. This is the second leg. How are business units or product lines measured? Are those measurements inclusive of collaboration, or exclusive? Are they pushing entities to collaborate or to compete?
• Compensation & Recognition. Business Units or Product Lines work through people. How are those compensated and recognized for their success in collaborating with other BU’s?
• Culture & Leadership. Is collaboration core and center to the culture of the company, or is it a nice to have? How does top management behave? How often is the collaboration subject addressed by management, are they leading by example?
• Tools & Techniques. Tools support collaboration and make it easier for people to work together. Using specific techniques and approaches, collaboration can be made easier. However, it is a myth that tools & techniques on their own push companies to collaborate.

Actually what I discovered is that none of these 5 key elements can foster collaboration on their own. All 5 are required for collaboration to work across business units. Common vision and objectives need to be established and buy-in by the organization as a whole is required. Collaboration is not something that is established once and for all. A continuous reinforcement and effort is required for it to work within a large enterprise. When the economy works well, it’s easier than when times are hard. This might be a reason why the subject is popping up today. So, stay with me. We’ll look at this in more details.

A Cloud Platform for Data Collaboration?

Hewlett-Packard today announced the availability of a Cloud Computing Platform for the Manufacturing Industry on the back of its product recall partnership with GS1. The product recall approach consists in a cloud based service providing access to product track and trace information across the supply chain and is primarily focused at the FMCG and Retail industry. It allows them to collaborate and exchange data across the ecosystem while not having to invest in a private environment to do so. The real interesting part is that, working with GS1, HP immediately secures a consistent identification of the products, as this is precisely what GS1 stands for. Otherwise one could say this has already been done, but not in the cloud neither with GS1.

The benefit for companies is that the service allows a faster and more effective way to identify the products that have to be recalled, resulting in both a cost and a risk (liability) reduction. The service is available on a subscription basis.

Now, could this be a first example of how companies could collaborate in the future? Rebecca Lawson seems to hint that way. I also found a blog entry on the HP site labeled “A Cloud ecosystem for inter-enterprise visibility” that hint into the same direction. What additional services could be delivered, well Mick Keyes hints at counterfeiting efforts and hazardous materials as other areas.

If I understand correctly and the platform consists in a development and runtime environment that provides data, analytics, management and security services, then I can see many opportunities. In a couple earlier blogs I spoke about the need to exchange structured data across companies. This might be the backbone that would allow us to do just that. Let’s dream for a moment and assume we have available a service allowing us to share information across our supply chain without requiring upfront investments, just “pay-as-you-go”. This would allow us to more easily motivate our partners to participate and experience for themselves the advantages of sharing. It would demonstrate how sharing allows to reduce inventory, to optimize capacities etc.

To date it may just be a dream, but definitely worth monitoring how HP will evolve this platform.

Promote Collaboration in large Enterprises

After a good break where I had the opportunity to discover other cultures, I’ll come back to that, I found an interesting challenge at my return in the office. One of my clients want me to present on how to promote collaboration in a large enterprise that has grown through acquisitions. I point this out as each of the business units has its own culture, making things a little more interesting.

Many large companies are actually confronted with this problem and although many have tried most have failed of really getting things going. The first issue is that each business unit is ultimately measured on its results. When things get though, as in the current environment, business units have a tendency to focus on their own objectives, ignoring anything else. And one can argue that, ultimately, collaboration will give them more benefits than working in isolation, it does not matter, they focus on their own objectives. Dave Packard used to say “Tell me how you are measured and I will tell you how you behave”. He is absolutely right in this. It’s all about measurement and the associated incentives. So, you could say, lets change the measurement and reward everybody on the company successes. Yes, that would work, but would dilute responsibilities. Who is responsible to maximize the revenues from each of the business units.

Developing the incentives to ensure maximal revenues for each business unit while maximizing collaboration, taking advantage of the “power of the portfolio”, is really an art. It consists in establishing measures and rewards that include both aspects. The use of balanced scorecards may help in this process. But there is another element to take into account. It is not enough to incent teams to work with each other, its also important to ensure they know of each-other and can easily find the appropriate resources to collaborate with. Particularly in large enterprises grown through acquisitions, this is absolutely not trivial. One approach I have seen in companies is the use of a “buddy program” where employees from different business units help each other understand the workings and culture of the other unit. It works effectively to integrate an acquisition for example and it helps harmonizing the cultures.

A more intriguing approach to finding the right resource in a large organization I have seen lately is a program from HPLabs, called WaterCooler. WaterCooler is a social networking tool focused at helping employees find the right resources (information and people) to address a particular problem. It aggregates shared internal social media and cross-references it with an organization’s directory.

As I progress with the preparation of my presentation, I’ll share some more thoughts with you. Feel free to share yours with me. We may be able to find the approach that helps companies to break down the Chinese wall they have between their BU’s.

New means of Communication

Last November I looked with disbelieve at CNN realizing they were relying on blogs to comment the situation in Mumbai. The real up-to date information was coming from bloggers that combined data gathering in their neighborhood with reporting. It allowed the world to follow. Combined with the iPhoto mechanism put in place several months ago, it transformed the way TV’s are reporting events.

But the Mumbai situation was only one step in the change, the Iranian elections and follow-up events have taken this a whole new direction. Twitter has become the center of the battle, and I have been fascinated seeing the events unfolding right from my TweetDeck screen. Courageous people have and are still keeping the world aware of what happens. Several of them seem to have disappeared in prison or even worse. But at the same time we have started seeing the limits of this real time reporting. Israelis, posting themselves as Iranians, have started trying to destabilize Iran through false information.  Fortunately, the Twitter community has quickly reacted and pointed at their feeds as being hoax. They are probably not the only ones conveying wrong information and as such putting people’s life in danger. But that’s probably the least of their problems.

Now, if we bring this to a business community, we will, albeit at a different level, have similar phenomena. We can learn from what happened and put a couple elements in place:

• First, clearly establish rules of engagements between the members of the community. In the context of Iran, this was obviously not practical, but in a business community it is.
• Second, motivate reporting of unacceptable behavior
• Third, warn and then exclude the participants that do not follow the rules of engagements and make this visible

In doing so, one establishes a certain discipline between the members of the community and ensures they are followed. All members quickly understand the implications of not following the rules. Occasionally refreshing those and reminding members helps keep a community functioning well. 

Collaboration, how far to go?

I have spent the last couple days in a workshop around the connected car. We have discussed how the car could be connected to the outside world in the easiest and most appealing way, and what should be done with that connection. What was really interesting is that a number of social network ideas were introduced by the attendees. This got my attention. Social networking being a form of collaboration, what could we do in the car.

Obviously we all do teleconferences from our cars, driving down the motorway, using handsfree obviously. There is a whole debate out there if the driver has the same level of attention to the road while listening/contributing to a telecon. But obviously, this was not what the workshop had in mind. Two main patterns appeared during the discussion. One related to the fact of driving itself, the other to the business interactions associated by driving.

Let me give you some ideas of both, and lets start with the driving itself. The driver is obviously not alone on the road, and anonymously may want to collaborate with other drivers, telling them about the driving conditions on his stretch of the road. Another intreaguing idea was that, if the driver entered the location and timing of his/her next meeting, the car, collaborating with external programs and information (in the cloud), could guide the driver on how to go to the location in the most fuel efficient way. Here we are no longer just speaking about people collaborating with people, but about interactions between people and programs to optimize the trafic and the use of fuel.

The second aspect, the business interactions, got started when somebody pointed out the driver may not be the only person in the car, and even if he/she was, he/she could be stuck in a trafic jam and may want to take advantage of this idle time to warn the contact, prepare the meeting etc. Another collaboration example that was identified was to have drivers and passengers updating a wiki about the locations they cross during the trip, so that others could learn more, discover new curiosities etc. A third example would be if the driver would have access to the location of other "friend", finding out how close they are etc.

So, all in all, it coudl be quite fascinating if we could find applications that make sense while ensuring the security of the driver. All in all, this will require a convergence of car intelligence and the internet, in particular the social networking side. Fascinating.