00The word “collaboration” is creating lots of confusion these days. Global thought-leader Jane McConnell has seen different interpretations of “collaboration” trigge
r serious misunderstandings and even internal conflict. In a business setting, people use the word collaboration to describe very different things. Although the different collaboration purposes are not black and white, there are fundamental differences. Today we’re sharing Jane’s thoughts on why it’s important to clarify the kind of collaboration you want to achieve with your intranet.
Confusion and misunderstanding around “collaboration”
The word “collaboration” is creating lots of confusion these days. In several recent client projects, I’ve seen firsthand to what extent different interpretations of “collaboration” have triggered serious misunderstandings and even internal conflict. I can’t count the number of meetings I’ve been in where people use the word collaboration to describe quite different things.
It is important to clarify the type of collaboration you are talking about. Although the different types are not black and white, there are fundamental differences. Why is it important to clarify?
- It influences the coherence of your whole digital workplace, in particular your entry point strategy.
- It will reduce conflict among digital teams and bring understanding of how different pieces fit together to serve the people.
- To some extent, it impacts the roles and scopes of members of the digital teams. It partially answers the question of “who is in charge of what”.
Team collaboration- probably the oldest sense of “collaboration”
This refers to designated people working together on a project with deliverables and a timeline. This has long been part of what organizations do. Today, in many cases, senior management have taken a new interest in intranets because they now include collaboration as well as information. This type of collaboration gets their attention because they see it as “the way work gets done”.
Communities of practice for support functions- long established in most organizations
Most large organizations have long-established communities of practice for their support functions: finance, IT, communication and HR. Finance is almost always the leader because companies need to consolidate figures across the organization. IT and Communication sometimes struggle depending on how decentralized the company is. HR has a different challenge because the central function and the country functions need to work hard to clarify their complementary scopes.
These communities are “obligatory” in that if you have a job in finance or in communication, you are automatically part of the relevant group. Over the years, I’ve seen many global intranets built on the backbone of functional communities of practice. These communities are often strong allies for your change facilitation initiatives.
New for many organizations: social communities and collaboration
Informal networking around the water cooler and on business trips has long existed but, by definition, has geographical limitations. Online tools that enable people across organizations to discover each other, answer questions, discuss and so on, even if they never meet physically. This is bringing a new dimension of “collaboration” to organizations.
Communities around topics of interest are being created. They are voluntary. People join, participate, leave as they wish. Leaders emerge. There are no pre-defined deliverables. These communities are usually closely tied to social networking in that they may live inside the social networking platform and do a lot of their communication and collaboration using social tools.
The digital workplace where it comes together
I published my first diagram of the Digital Workplace in February 2011: “Snapshot of the Digital Workplace“. The purpose was to provide people with a visual way to communicate the digital workplace concept to management.
Over a year later in February 2012 I published a second version of the diagram. “Digital Workplace in Brief: 5 Fundamentals” where I emphasized the overlapping of the different dimensions and scopes.
A number of organizations now use these diagrams to explain how their “pieces” of the digital workplace fit together. They also use them to illustrate their entry point strategies. They help people talk about single or multiple entry point strategies. They also make it easier to define what is on the start page (as per the second diagram on the February 2011 version.
What does “collaboration” mean inside your organization?
Jane McConnell has over 14 years of intranet consulting experience and is a sought after leader in intranet research in our industry. Read her original blog post right here.
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