Social Business strategist, podcaster, blogger, founder of Social Connections and conference speaker
A fascinating article by Bill Higgins, the IBM Distinguished Engineer that lead a major project to revolutionise the company’s approach to product development.
I love this idea…
One initiative we’re trying at the moment is CoffeeTime. CoffeeTime is an app, created in less than a day by Daniel, one of our developers. It works by pairing people up randomly, to meet and greet each other, often with someone you may not normally interact with. It doesn’t matter what level in the org chart, or role each person plays. Anyone can be matched up for a 30-minute chat (though people can choose to opt-out, of course). It aims to encourage the cross-team communication and serendipitous learning which otherwise happens naturally when co-workers share an office.
At its heart is the idea that the most important things to learn are often those you didn’t even know you needed to. By making more connections with the people you work with, it increases the likelihood that you’ll have access to someone who can help you further down the line. Maybe that person is having a similar problem or has experienced it before and can point you in the right direction. Or maybe you just end up making a new friend!
Either way, once a week CoffeeTime runs and you’re matched up with someone else in the organization. Each of you receives an email telling you who that person is. You then take it from there and arrange to meet in person or over a Hangout, to eat lunch or just chat.
The folks at Fog Creek who invented the CoffeeTime app have now open-sourced it and so you can try the concept out in your organisation.
I believe that any digital transformation project needs to embrace and enable face-to-face as well as online relationships. I therefore think that this model has real potential in breaking down barriers, developing stronger cross-departmental ties and reinforcing an open and informal culture of collaboration.
What do you think? Would you consider running a similar app at your organisation?
Anyone that follows me on Twitter will have seen that this week has been rather dominated by a single topic, The Collaboration Diner, and was brought to you by the hashtag #cbdiner 😉
So I hear you cry, what is The Collaboration Diner?
Many of you, especially those in North America, will be aware of a rather famous 1942 painting by Edward Hopper known as ‘Nighthawks‘:
Painted soon after the attack at Pearl Harbour, the painting is thought to detail the alienation felt by those in a strange city, and the interaction, consolation and prospective relationships that could be found within the diners that were scattered on street corners throughout New York and other cities. Diner customers could ‘network’ with the few others in the physical location they inhabited.
In 2003, Wired magazine commissioned comic artist Josh Ellingson to bring the diner situation up to date in the face of the emergence of free wi-fi, ubiquitous mobile devices and laptops:
Once again, the diner or coffee shop had become the place where relaxation and re-connecting could be combined, but this time connections were as likely to be with those hundreds or thousands of miles away. In 2003, it was likely that this would have been via a relatively small group of friends or colleagues that the individual was in regular contact with.
Now bring the situation up to the modern day. Social and Mobile dominate. Almost every individual carries at least a mobile phone, most a smartphone and many more than one device. Multiple social networks are reachable from these devices, personal, professional and organisational sites provide a constant connection to friends, family, colleagues, customers and partners. Business is as likely to be carried out in a diner in a strange city as at one’s own desk.
However, the diner is still a useful metaphor for the meeting place, for the clash of cultures, the possibility of accidents and incidents leading to passionate discourse and idea-sparking conversations.
Thus we have seen the birth of The Collaboration Diner brought to you by Collaboration Matters, with its first outing at the UC Expo show in London this past week.
Look out for future posts detailing what was involved, why it was such an innovative concept, and what discussions took place there. One thing’s for sure, tech trade shows have never seen anything like it!
Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, writes on the correct way to deal with competition:
Reacting well to competition requires critical analysis of your own product and its shortcomings, and a complete, open-minded understanding of why people might choose your competitors.
They’re not fanboys. They’re not brainwashed by “marketing”. Your competitors’ customers aren’t passing on your product because they’re stupid or irrational.
They’re choosing your competitors for good reasons, and denying the existence of such good reasons will only ensure that your product never overcomes them.
He goes on to discuss why Microsoft’s recent reaction to the threat of iOS is more constructive than Google’s.
It’s a fascinating reflection, and bears great relevance to the way in which we see some Collaboration and Social Business vendors react.
Customers are not irrational, users are not stupid. If you want them to choose to buy your solution, or even more importantly, to desire to use it, you had better go focus your attention and resources on making yours significantly better than the opposition, not on dissing the opposition or those that buy or use their products!
