Comments on: McAfee’s Hypothesis (plus contest results!)

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By: driessen

driessen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:57:12 +0000

Nice post! We researched this starting from the other side. We looked at the way information flows through the company and how personal information flows. What you see is that almost all digital info comes to you via email. This is one of the reasons people find it hard to maintain tools next to their email. If email is our habitat (or it has been and will be so for some more years as you say), be sure the new collaboration tool you set up connects to email in some way. Also refer to this paper: Documents at hand.

By: esl english

esl english — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:36:27 +0000

Working in a team is certainly harder than tweeting, or sending emails. In fact it's one of the most coveted habilities a worker can have.

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By: Jen Cornelssen Ellis

Jen Cornelssen Ellis — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:09:33 +0000

THREE thoughts on email relative to your engaging blog:
1) Busy people in corporate world favor PUSH communication rather than PULL as long as they are not nagged unnecessarily – I.e. social media that requires people to check many places is often forgotten, email can be the ping that wakes people up.
2) I question if the very MOST powerful people (e.g. CEOs) really USE email – I think email is a corporate necessity of the people who make the organization run, but they use it out of necessity, not because they are following the role model of a corporate exec.
3) Email does have the advantage of being easily and reliably referenced based on simple factors such as date – e.g. 'I know I worked on that project in April of 06, let me look for the details there' – while other tools claim such functionality, it does not work in practice because the tools are changing so often and historical information is not typically accessible once the latest tool has been mandated and the prior one shut down.
Keep up the fascinating blogs – they are one of the few sites I 'PULL' information from!
- biz consultant, turned High Tech Corporate functionoid, now happily released to academia – still a geek at heart.

By: G. Lance Strzok

G. Lance Strzok — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:51:36 +0000

Andy,

I agree with your hypothesis in most cases. I think in some organizations there is a board rather than one person that makes that kind of decision. If not a board, then a small group of "go to" people that the CEO looks to for advice on decisions that may not fall completely into his/her expertise.

However, if the boss wants the email signal, then he/she gets the email signal.

If the boss wants collaboration done by way of email, then I would encourage that we ask him/her what it is they want, and then agree to deliver what they want, but argue that collaboration by way of email is not the way to go. With that I'll say that often you don't directly change the boss's mind on how to do something, rather the boss usually has a number of "go to" people that they seek advice from. Those are the people that need to see the value of the tools and make that argument to the boss. Finding those trusted "go to" people would be key.

As for email as a collaboration tool, of course it stinks, but your points on its ubiquity are true and the death grip on it also true. Why do you suppose that is? I think that part of the reason this is so is that at some point or another in a persons life, they are held to "I sent you an email" and by default it became something we are held accountable for. If it is the method by which we will hold people accountable, then it will not go away anytime soon. How can we change it too, "I posted it to my blog, of which you (and the rest of the staff) were directed to monitor and read when new posts are made."? I of course like to see us get to this point, but I am not aware of a single place yet in my place of business where this is the case yet. (I'll keep working on it).

I would prefer to send an email with a link to the projects wiki page or other technology where the boss can see what is being done, and get what it is that they are looking for. Be it a dashboard on the project, milestones etc...

By: cofiem

cofiem — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:30:45 +0000

I really agree with the idea that the most powerful person in a collaboration dictates how that collaboration takes place. It's also a keen observation that tools which approach collaboration, but don't quite get there (usually to do with output) do not fall under this hypothesis.

Email is a scourge, but we cannot work without it. It is most certainly the 'dashboard' of today. I would love to take email away and replace it with tools much more suited to individual jobs, but as yet there are no simple ways to bring the really suitable tools into a single place.

As the tools mature along with the current crop of 20-something geeks, I think we'll see some progress on that front. Where would business be without the geeks?

By: Doug Cornelius

Doug Cornelius — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:35:45 +0000

I don't think you should jump too quickly on the “younger generation of Web 2.0 changing everything” bandwagon. I just gave a presentation on the use of Web 2.0 to a class of college students. They were mystified and skeptical. We should not equate the use of IM and Facebook as the equivalent of embracing collaboration tools/Enterprise 2.0.

By: antonyslumbers

antonyslumbers — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:11:31 +0000

Email is nigh on useless for collaborating but yes you are right that, "Within organizations, collaboration technologies are dictated by the most powerful person involved in the collaboration." However the most powerful person collaborating is unlikely to be the most powerful person in the organisation. 2+2 = 5 thinking is rare above a certain level. Hence, your CIO advocating Scoble's approach would be shown the door. Paradoxically seniority often narrows the mind. Do what I say is more common than 'what do you think?'. Let alone, what does the customer think?

In this world email is fine.

But it is a world coming to an end as a younger generation (or the Net Generation as Don Tapscott calls them) comes of age. For them, collaboration is all and openness and transparency is a good thing. The head geek today will be 'everyman' tomorrow. And in that world email will just be one tool they use. Twitter, Wave, Glasnost21 - these and similar tools will soon replace email.

Whether 'soon' is one year or ten it is simply a matter of time. The days of email being the tool of choice of the powerful is drawing to a close.

So, to answer your question - Yes but No !!

By: Doug Cornelius

Doug Cornelius — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:35:32 +0000

I will make a lawyerly response and say “it depends.”

If your boss wants a weekly report sent by email, then email will be the technology. If she wants projects kept up to date in the wiki, then the wiki will be the technology. But part of the team could be using another technology and pushing their completed work into the boss’s preferred technology.

Of course you can argue as to whether the activity is truly collaboration. As well, you could argue about whether the whole team is collaborating or just subsets.

From personal experience, I have worked with a team that lived in your second implication. We used a wiki very successfully without participation from the head of the team. The users of the wiki realized tremendous value. The leader ended up being isolated and we ended up having lots of meetings that merely repeated information that had already been processed through the wiki.

I have also led a team that I imposed a wiki upon. As the head geek, I liked the wiki as a way to manage the multitude of projects. I badgered them into using the wiki, updated the wiki myself, pointed out the answers to questions that were already in the wiki, and led by example. After the initial resentment, they came to realize the benefits and became wiki-lovers. That required my as the head of the team, to impose my will and spend the time, energy and organizational capital on this new tool. Of course, the junior members of the team may have been using email or other technology to collaborate among themselves.

In the end, I think people will use one set of technology tools that they like the best. Then they will use another set of technology tools to comply with the demands of others. Ideally, you would like those two sets of technology tools to mostly overlap.