Many of you have never heard of fractal organizations, I hadn’t until I talked to a colleague working on the Hyperloop project, which she described as a “fractal organization.” I could not find it on Wikipedia, but google (today’s source of all knowledge on the Internet) had a variety of listings. I looked at an…
Some Thoughts on Unified Communications
I have written about UC recently when I covered ConnectSolutions in a blog last month. I also think this area is changing rapidly. One of the factors is a new standard (owned by Google, but there is an open source version) WebRTC is this new standard that is changing the face of video conferencing, and ultimately UC.
The WHY of Collaboration?
Most companies today tell customers how and what, but not why because often they don’t know the why or can’t articulate it. This is something I have thought about for a while. Why do I do this, why have I focused on collaboration for most of my career? My answer is “I believe I can make the world a better place, one collaborative interaction at a time.”
Where Can You Apply Collaborative Leverage?
Collaborative leverage is a concept which talks about optimum performance in a process that utilizes some aspect of collaboration. It is the ability to apply the right technology to the right process at the right time with the right people. Below are the six areas we found in any size and type of company that have collaborative leverage. I have included the department, an example of where and how it can be used and what the benefit may be.
Why Don’t We Have The Collaborative Skills We Need?
With teams becoming more distributed (geographically), and hybrid meeting becoming the norm, collaboration is more important than ever. Yet, aside from learning to share toys in kindergarten, we get very few collaborative skills in our formal education. With teamwork becoming the norm, and more contractors or consultants on teams, collaborative skill improvement is both a unique and effective way to turbo-charge team performance.
The Twin Challenges of Collaboration and Productivity
During the eight years from 2005 to 2012, output per hour expanded at an annual rate of just 1.5 per cent—the same as it grew between 1973 and 1996. More recently, productivity growth has been lower still. In 2011, output per hour rose by a mere 0.6 per cent, according to the latest update from the Labor Department, and last year there was more of the same: an increase of just 0.7 per cent. In the last quarter of 2012, output per hour actually fell, at an annual rate of 1.9 per cent. Americans got less productive—or so the figures said.
The Distribution of Work in 2015
You may have noticed some changes in the way you are working today, compared to how you did things 5 years ago. Maybe you do more on your mobile device, use more video or screen sharing? In December of 2014 we did a survey of three different populations with over 500 responses to look at how some of the ways we work are changing.
Distribution of Work in 2015: Meetings, Metrics and Challenges
Everyone knows there are problems with meetings. There are unneeded meetings, meetings that are run badly, that don’t stick to an agenda, that don’t generate decisions. In all we looked at 20 common meeting problems. Overall, we spend about 15% of our time in meetings each week.
Distribution of Work in 2015: Collaboration Success, Challenges and Tool Use
Collaboration Success and Challenges When we asked what the top three challenges to collaboration success were in their organization, only one was about technology: Better collaboration technologies (52% felt their tools did not support distributed work) More transparent and interactive leadership Cultural change for more transparency, better communication and coordination We also asked what made…
Collaboration and Your Economic Graph
Jeff defined his Economic Graph as “a tool that can “digitally represent” both every economic opportunity in the world” and “every skill required to gain those opportunities.” Combined with a database of “a professional profile of every worker in the world,” this theoretical tool would not only provide job-seekers with potential career destinations, but also — and here’s the disruptive bit — give them a clear idea of how they might arrive at those destinations.”
