Part 2, Collaboration “It’s not about technology” - expanded! (Statement 2)
July 9, 2008
If collaboration was about the technology, then…
We would be focusing on how to support collaboration’s needs, when collaboration was meant to support our needs. Our organization ends up working for the ‘collaboration implementation’, when in fact the implementation’s entire existence was meant to work for the organization. It is completely upside-down. We have all felt that pain, when ‘systems’ miss their mark – While they do bring lots of change to the organization, its in the wrong direction!
As an IT group, we are now relegated to simply supplying a service/product and not partnering with the business. Anyone can sell and supply a service or product - this is a commodity. Sure there is some value here, but far greater is the value that a partnership brings. Don’t miss out on those partnership opportunities that can align an organization’s strategy and tactical plans. These are the opportunities that can separate us from our competitors!
We miss the big picture when we focus on technology first. In my post “Part 2, Collaboration Tactical Verticals - expanded! (Statement 10)”, we see that collaboration is an entire buffet of technology options and configurations, and just like making a good salad, we need to add the components that work for us – not someone else. Abstracting technology out of collaboration allows us to focus on the need, then to develop strategic initiatives for the different “domains of collaboration”. The best strategy for instant messaging may be to simply turn it loose in the organization. But, that same strategy doesn’t hold up for work flow where we may want to introduce a common enterprise taxonomy with rules and metadata integration. This abstraction of technology from collaboration also allows us to better match the value and return on investment with our efforts and the impact it brings to the organization’s culture.
Thinking about technology and making decisions in this upside-down context, will lead us to a situation where we are constrained to the features that exist in the product that we chose. For in this context, we consider first the features and then the need – we are thinking of the solution prior to identifying the problem. We are hammers and everything looks like a nail. Throw any analogy out there you want, at the end of the day, we put all our focus on the solution and try to force fit it to a ‘problem’. What we should be doing is looking at the business problems we are faced with. We need to spend time understanding people, teams, and our culture.
The key is not to loose business agility; by having a true collaboration strategy, we keep this agility – responding quickly to the ever changing marketplace by applying the best solutions at the right time.
It’s always easier to first seek technology, to get that initial shot of momentum. But what is it worth to you. Technology connects our strategy to tactics!? If you think of it this way, we can develop our strategy over time with the business leaders without regards to the complexities of technology. Then at the appropriate time, we consider the impacts of our strategic directions with our technologists. This way we have the business people driving the business and the technologists getting us there. This abstraction allows leaders to lead on both sides of the equation. The business leaders will benefit by not being constrained by the dependencies on technologies and are set free to vision us to the future. The business person will say “Don’t tell me what I can’t do…just let me set our direction”! And the technologists will benefit by having the clarity of a strategy without the burden of business strategy development. Then the technologist will say “Don’t tell me how to do it…just tell me what you want”! It’s a win/win situation.
Now the magic is to meet in the middle and develop that partnership! Click here for my 13 points regarding collaboration.
~ Scott Felten
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Thanks, Scott. It’s so true…figure out what the business problem is, then apply technology to fix it. (Not the other way around.)
BTW - I wanted to link to your 13 points, but the link is broken…
Thanks for letting me know about the broken link. Here it is… http://thefuturevalueofbusiness.com/collaboration-expressed-in-a-microblogish-format.htm
I’ll go through the posts this afternoon and make sure they are all working.
~ Scott Felten