John Sawyer and I had the opportunity to flesh-out ideas on how to trigger innovation in today’s relatively abstract world.  Published this week in the Ivey Business Journal “Changing Perceptions – and Triggering Innovation” extends my discussion of physical objects and innovation to include some practical advice:

 

1. STOP: Reflect on what’s new. Is there an opportunity to use what you have in order to do something different?
2. LOOK: Use analysis and experiments to highlight concrete differences in strategies or products.
3. LISTEN: Create concrete opportunities for innovation.

Take a look and feel free to comment here, or on the Ivey site.  We think we’ve provided some interesting examples to stop, look, and listen to.

In September I posted about forest firefighters using portals (my definition of portal: one-stop web shopping for information and/or working space on a project or topic – often updated from multiple sources).  In October, Wired’s Damon Tabor wrote about the LAFD’s 23-year veteran Brian Humphrey – calling him a one-man geek squad. 

The article talks about how Firefighter Humphrey is building resources for the LAFD and the public using Twitter (microblogging, see related posts here & here), Yahoo Pipes 
(free data aggregating tool – you can build a custom pipe, or subscribe to ones built by others), mobile alerts 
(subscription to get messages on your mobile phone when something happens), and map mashups (they already use a Google Maps mashup, he wants to link to more detailed info like USGS topographical maps.)  LAFD’s portal.  LAist article with even more examples of LAFD’s efforts.

Clearly real-time data is crucial for firefighters.  But given all the firefighting I hear about in business organizations, perhaps there is something to be learned here.  What data could you be accessing, mashing up, aggregating, or just tapping into that would enhance your work?  Situational awareness has to be balanced against information overload, but if done well may support immersive performance.  Always looking for examples…  

Internet resources provide us with amazing power for innovation. For example, we have the ability to simulate earthquakes with great precision and thus stimulate new building approaches for greater safety; quality (and sometimes just fun) video production is in the hands of the masses (e.g., YouTube), and there is the broad availability of Internet interfaces that engender “mashups” across major platforms such as GoogleMaps  (here’s one that shows the “walkability” of your neighborhood).

However, these technologies are also relatively abstract.  They are available for our use – but will we think to use them?  A computer is just a dark screened paperweight until it’s turned on.  Does that trigger your thinking for innovation the same way a physical object would? Would the Houston engineers of Apollo 13 “Houston, we’ve had a problem” fame been as likely to find a jury-rig solution to fit a square carbon dioxide filter in a hole for a round one if they’d had to imagine the objects the astronauts had rather than having access to physical duplicates?

People are generally lazy – or perhaps “efficient” — even with just their thinking.  Louis and Sutton called this “habits of mind”.  We have to trigger new understanding if we want to spur on innovation. 

I’m getting to my question of the day.  Think about the Amazon Kindle eBook, recently promo’d by Oprah and so apparently moving into the mainstream.  Electronic presentation of written material has been around for a long time.  Yet only recently are we seeing electronic textbooks in significant use.  We don’t see people reading books on more general use laptops.  The University of Texas is running a pilot project where students get their textbooks via the Amazon Kindle eBook.  Is it the physical nature of the eBook that will make the difference regarding people reading electronically versus on paper?  The outcomes may extreme: smaller backpacks, smaller bookstores, no “used” textbook sales.

The physical existence of the eBook (and certainly the improved quality of the text in the high-end models) may be playing a triggering role.  Sony seems to understand the role of physical objects in changing perspectives.  Their Sony PRS-700 eBook is being introduced by 1000 specially trained sales people in 3000 physical stores.  They say this is important as people changed their minds about being “uninterested” in reading eBooks after physically being exposed to the product.

Do we need physical objects to help along otherwise abstract innovations? What other examples do we have?

I’m still a Twitter holdout, but Jessica Vascellaro’s WSJ column today claims Twitter Goes Mainstream.  As noted in my previous post on microblogging more generally, Twitter allows you to post “tweets” (messages of 140 characters or less) that are read on-line or on your phone.   I’ll let Jessica’s more informed perspective describe the possible work-related benefits of Twitter, but I did take note of the following:

To help employees get the hang of the service, Zappos has begun offering classes. They range from teaching basics like how to follow a friend’s updates to “advanced” topics like using third-party services for fancier tasks, such as adding images to one’s Twitter stream.

Microblogging has yet to find an obvious enterprise sweetspot – but if there are formal classes going on it may be time to pay attention.  Classes would help implementation by providing the basics of usage, and perhaps more importantly, the opportunity to brainstorm about uses that would help employees and the firm.  I believe an evolutionary (versus intelligent design) approach is less likely to consider the integration of both organizational practices and technology tools.  If a valuable mutation occurs, great.  But classes with formal discussion of possible links to other enterprise systems, consideration of organizational policies or procedures that might be effectively adjusted, discussion of pain points that might be addressed, and organizational support, are more likely to result in a technology system that provides value.  This intertwining of organizational and technological aspects is needed for Twitter or any other change introduction.  Ideally the implementation becomes a negotiation with full consideration of the costs and benefits for involved stakeholders.

Has your organization offered classes related to more “social” technologies such as Twitter or Facebook? Were the classes about how to use them for organizational benefit, or policy statements about inappropriate behaviors at work (remember when email wasn’t accepted at work?)  Were there opportunities to brainstorm about new uses?

Claire Cain Miller’s article in the WSJ Business Innovation Technology Society (BITS) section focuses on Yammer and the possible value of microblogging in organizations. Yammer is similar but different from Twitter in that Yammer’s key questions are “What’s happening at your company?,” “What’s happening on the project” versus the less formal Twitter “What are you doing?” (“Thinking about what’s for lunch”).

Miller’s article touches on the value of short updates and speaks to Yammer’s founder, David Sacks, about microblogging versus email and IM:

E-mail no longer serves its proper purpose, which is to request an active response, Mr. Sacks said. All the rest of the stuff that clogs in-boxes — mass e-mails sharing a link to an article, for example, or notifications of company events — makes e-mail less efficient. He wants to move all that to Yammer.

I certainly agree with the idea that email is broken for many of our organizational and team coordination needs, but I’m not sure if a stand alone microblogging platform is the solution. I’m still thinking about how we can support collaboration and work performance more as a symphony and perhaps less as jazz improvisation. Even with jazz, collaborators understand the possible instruments and how they best intertwine. We aren’t there yet with our understanding of work collaboration and its support. We do need to support situational awareness within teams – especially in virtual work situations.

Knowing when and how to communicate, document, and discuss are key to team performance. Tools like Yammer are an additional method, but the value will be in how the tool is interconnected with the team’s process.

Further reading:

Whitepaper on microblogging and Twitter 

Discussion of Twitter for enterprise use

Twitter hall of shame 

I’ve made the “just one thing” point in multiple posts, and I make this critical point as part of the first class session in every course and exec presentation I make. I’ll continue to highlight examples of excellent analysis or implementation as I find them.

Some prior discussions:

• Organizational Design, virtual work — and the Skwish toy model
• Document retention

Team leader: Responsible for making sure work is fairly divided, meetings happen, members are aware of what’s expected of them, and any executive decisions that need to be made.  (Of course it’s still great when decisions are made by consensus.)

Document editor (one per major document): This person is responsible for assembling everybody’s work and for high and low-level consistency of the document.  This person needs to be very quick on communication and editing near the document due date.  In a time crunch, this person has authority to make editing decisions or rewrite someone else’s work.

 As a professor, I’m thrilled to see a goal of ensuring consistency to a project that has piecemeal characteristics. If this particular task is left out it shows – in class projects or any other group task.  My contribution here is to push for a broader consideration of the team roles – one more focused on the overall behaviors needed for effective performance. 

Ketrow (1991) notes that effective teams cover three types of roles.  People who can do the task itself (e.g., ship builder, computer programmer, statistical analyst).  These people are the reason the project is being done.  Then, given it’s a group project, you also need to organize the process (procedural facilitation), and to make sure the knowledge of the team is made available (socioemotional facilitation).  The best person/people at the task are not necessarily the best facilitators.  In fact, you may not want them facilitating if you really need them focused on the task.  The team leader role above seems to be a combination of the two facilitation roles.  That’s fine if you have one person on the team who can do both (both be organized and be effective drawing out all the needed knowledge from the other team members), or you may have co-leaders.  I’d put the document editor role down as a critical task role.  You may also have critical roles assigned to the accounting expert, marketing guru, etc. depending on the nature of the project.  A strong suggestion: If you are trying to learn from this work (be it in class or on the job), yes, have the expert in accounting in charge of the accounting portion of the work – but also have the weakest person in accounting in a support role to that expert.   

What about the technology? As noted in the prior post, an early discussion about the role technology will play in the project is key.  Ketrow’s work was before the age of wikis, blikis, and blogs.  You may find value in extending the three role format (procedural, socioemotional, task) to include a fourth: technical facilitator (sometimes call a “chauffeur.”  You may also find value in seeing how you can off-load some of the procedural and socioemotional tasks to technology tools.  Anonymous brainstorming may overcome the need to have a socioemotional facilitator in the mix for some tasks.  To-do lists with “tickler” may take-on the reminder role often played by the procedural facilitator.

Overall, think carefully about:

• How you meet (face to face or electronically)
• How you store your work product and manage versioning
• What are the response time expectations – are their family or work obligations that block certain days for certain people  – calendar these. 
• Individual responsibilities
• Team expectations and timeline for feedback and adjustments.  No team is built perfectly from the start — you don’t know your resources or needs well enough.  Set aside time to renegotiate after the first few weeks.

Please feel free to add additional questions, suggestions for tools or processes, or roles that you think make a critical difference.  I’m especially interested in how you have best managed the discussions around team expectations and feedback. 

Disclaimer – Limited QA here – I may have left out a click or two – be sure to save your work at each stage.

Simple (using a student project as an example) — See bottom for a more sophisticated version.

Three basic components – To Do list, Discussion Tool, and a File Repository. Here’s the demo site.

Create a Google Site for your project (you do need a Google account – free):
Go to http://sites.google.com
Click on Create New Site
Give it a Name and a URL (they don’t have to be the same, e.g., Primo Project for Name and http://sites.google.com/site/primoprojectsite for the URL)
Click appropriately for adult content
Click on whether sharing is with the world, or just with people you will specify
Pick a theme
Enter the funny text that proves you’re human

Presto! Now you have a site.

Immediately “Create a New Page” and choose Dashboard as the format. Click that you want this page created at the “Top Level.” I like to name my Dashboards –ok, Primo Project Dashboard. Very creative. Click on “Save.”

Click on Site Settings (top right of page)
Click on the “Other Stuff” tab
Change the “Landing page” to your dashboard page. Click “OK” then “Save Changes”.

Return to the site and delete the page with the title “Home” (go to the site, click on the link called Home, click on the “More actions menu” then “delete”). Now your dashboard page is your home page.

Create another new page. Choose the “List” format. Call the page “To Dos” and have it put underneath the Dashboard page in the site structure (this is an option you have to pick). I like the “Action Item” style, though you are given other choices.

Create another new page. Choose the “File Cabinet” format. Call the page “Files and Documents.” Put it under the Dashboard in the site structure.

Create yet another page. Choose the “Announcements” format. Call the page “Comments and Questions” and put it also under the Dashboard in the site structure.

Now for the fun. We need to link these pages to the Dashboard. You can’t create the dashboard links until you’ve created the pages to link to. Makes sense.

Go to the Dashboard page. Click Edit. You should see four place-holders for “gadgets.” These gadgets are the tools of the dashboard – they keep track of changes in the other pages you created. Click on the first gadget – use the dropdown box to insert the “Recent List Items” gadget – this will now keep track of and provide a link to your To Do page. Click on Save. Click on the next place-holder and link to “Recent Files.” Click on Save. Click on the third place-holder and link to “Recent Posts” (links to your Comments and Questions page). Click on Save. Go crazy. Use the fourth place-holder to add a link to an existing shared Google calendar (you’ll need the URL from the calendar’s site. For more info click here).

Click on the save tab near the top of your page and you will see your dashboard page with its three gadgets (four if you added the calendar). The site map will let you go directly to the underlying pages – or click on the links provided by the gadgets. (I like to put in a test “comment” so people know how to use the comments and questions section).

Click on the Files page and add any files you already have. Decide as a group whether you want to post separate files (e.g., stand-alone Microsoft Word or Excel files), or whether you want to use Google Documents – see this education focused discussion on Google documents.

Take on the hard but critical task of deciding as a group how to do the work. If possible, do this over a beer or coffee in a place with wireless.

• Bring a laptop and do some group design on the site.
• Ask people to bring their resumes so you can get to know their strengths.
• Convince everyone to “subscribe” to changes to the site – this means that they will get an email each time a change is made (under the “more actions” tab, click on “subscribe to site changes”.
• Add any other gadgets to your dashboard that the team thinks will help you get the work done. (I added the Santa Clara logo by using the “Insert” tab and then uploading the image from my desktop.)

Dylan Salisbury (SCU http://www.Scu.edu MBA student and author of a thoughtful blog) http://blog.dylansalisbury.com/ had some additional suggestions after he read a draft of this post (he’s also suggested a post on team roles, I’ll do that next):

For an actual MBA class project, I think that e-mails directly to the project mailing list is the best format for all group discussion — announcements and discussion boards are not as useful (but you knew I was going to say that!). It’s very common to see an e-mail from somebody that comments on all the three current open issues and expresses an opinion about what to do next, which is good. The quarter moves so quickly that I *want* multiple discussion threads to be consolidated whenever it’s appropriate, and I want a linear view of all the communications at the potential expense of not seeing the threads so clearly. I don’t want any chance that I update a discussion but only 3 of the 5 team members sees it right away. Also, each of us has our own e-mail client that we can use to create a threaded view — we own our tools! {TG asks: Dylan (or anyone else), do you still feel this way if you are getting email announcements of changes to the page?}

Announcements and Q&A pages are really helpful for some of my real-world projects where we have a team of 4-5 people but 20 or 30 possible stakeholders who occasionally want to browse the web site to understand what’s going on.

But it may be good to start some wiki pages for various ideas and things that need to be collected during the project, outside of the discussion format (List of URLs of relevant articles, list of open questions, ideas for the paper, etc). {TG notes: To create a basic wiki page in your team’s Google Site, create a new page and choose the “web page” as the format. This format has the ability to “see earlier versions” and then the possibility of reverting to an earlier form if you need to}

Get an “A” on the project because you have an excellent collaboration process.

More sophisticated version (includes project status, background on project, background on team members – site example provided by www.enterprise-dashboard.com)

Three times in the last week I’ve heard/read about employees owning their own computers – rather than having the company provide them. This harkens back to a world where the identity of a craftsperson was partially determined by his/her tools.

First time was a friend who was switching jobs and going through the start-up costs of a new computer. Decision was finally just to turn in the company-provided laptop and use a personal one. My friend is a world-traveling consultant who needs his personal applications on the road. (Even when companies will allow you to put personal applications on a company machine, problems are created when tech support re-images the drive to do updates and fixes.  You then get to spend hours reinstalling your personal applications.)  Carrying two laptops isn’t an option.  Agreement is that the company will support its applications, owner will support his own.

Second time was on the TWIT podcast (about 54 minutes in) where the panel noted that it’s common for people to have preferences about their tools – e.g., Windows versus Mac, and/or particular applications.  John C. Dvorak noted that when he was a kid working in factories, the master mechanics owned their own tools.  The benefit the TWIT panel ascribed to the firm is that the employer doesn’t have to take on the burden of computer “refreshes” etc., and the employee gets the benefit of controlling their own applications and methods of work.  The conversation then hit on the main reason big enterprise isn’t excited about this: security.  Quick transition to the variety of technology approaches available for solving the security problem.  It can be solved.  Issue is creating safe “virtual machines” that connect to the company network.

Third time was an email summary of the week’s tech/work news from a professional group I belong to.  They linked to Rasha Madkour’s article “B.Y.O.C. (computer) to work - wave of future?”  Citrix (the company highlighted in the article) even provides a $2100 stipend to help employees buy a laptop and support package.  Key to note is that Citrix sells one of the tools that handles the virtualization issues (VMware  also provides a desktop virtualization product). 

Is the third time the charm?  Have we circled back to an age where we will again own the means of our production?

Other organizations that seem to be getting on the bandwagon:

• Microsoft & British Petrolium (see Ina Fied’s Beyond Binary CNET blog)
• Arizona State University (see article by Jennifer Mears of Network World)

How does this change our relationship with our employers?  Do we then become more valuable the better our technology? Do we become more effective given greater control over our tools? Tool ownership might tip the balance for some regarding employee versus contractor status.  (See some checklists here and here.) Note that the desktop isn’t the only tool in the box.  Access to organizational resources stored either on company servers or on company portions of the “cloud” may be where the real work gets done.

In my post “First there was Yahoo Groups” I promised an audit as a starting point for building a team or project “information architecture.”  I’ve had both on-line and face-to-face conversations with readers offering that email with distribution lists is still the best option for short-term teams.  I’ll try and respond to some of those points below.

Disclaimer: This is not an overview of the full space of available tools.  These are questions to ask as you think about the design of your team’s portal architecture.

1. Who are the participants?  Key to this is whether they are all inside your organization or not.  This matters first because it determines whether or not they will have access to platforms provided by your organization.  For example, are they included under your Microsoft Sharepoint license?  Are they allowed to make design changes to a Sharepoint site you set up?  What happens if you leave the group? Will the group lose access to the site? 
2. What tools do you have access to?  Will your company allow company work to sit on external servers (e.g., Google Sites)?  Will your company allow non-company work to sit on their servers (e.g., you have access to Sharepoint and/or Basecamp, can you put your grad-school team’s work on the company servers)?
3. Cost.  If you are using a fee-based tool, who pays? Is it your account and you can bring others in as you choose (see my concern about what happens if you leave the team)? Is it by the team member or by the project?
4. Who do you want to be able to redesign the site? Different wikis have different features around how you can free up or close down permissions.
5. What capabilities do you need for your site? 
   1. File storage
   2. Versioning of files
   3. File syncing – systems that are passive are more likely to be up to date as the system is managing the uploading of the most current version.  Right now I’m running several team projects via Google Sites, but I have yet to enact the part that would manage syncing.  This means that team members have to remember to upload the current versions of the files to the site. 
   4. Notification of changes to the materials on the site – I may wish email dead for moving information in collaborations, but it’s perfect for being notified when new work has been done, or a question has been asked.
   5. Threaded discussions
   6. To-do lists
   7. Gnatt-charts
   8. Calendars
   9. Personal blogs.  Socialtext keeps team members up to date by having members blog about the work they are doing.  Think of this as stopping by a team member’s office and saying “what’s up?”  This gives needed unstructured visualization into member’s work, and helps the rest of the team coordinate.
6. How long-term is this team? Are any learning curve issues acceptable given a longer view?
7. Ease of design.  I’m having good luck with modular/Lego-like sites.  Google Sites, Facebook, web-versions of Blogger, WordPress, etc. don’t assume you have a personal website, know how to program, etc.

Why not just use email with a distribution list? Besides the issues raised in my Kill Email post, who maintains the distribution list?  With a portal strategy people are having to go look at the portal and are actively involved in their own account maintenance.  How do you know that your version of the file is really the latest version? You may have a date on the file you have, but your spam filter may have eaten the version that came after (I speak from experience).  Discussions around the material are piecemeal and may be distracting to other work you’re trying to do.  You don’t have control (or even awareness) of how the material looks to other parties (do they read from the top down, bottom up, or via Gmail and so in a full conversation?)  How much email do your team members get a day – will they even see yours?  When they are ready to work on the project, do they have the skills to track down all the different related emails that have come through since they last took action?  Email is asynchronous with little control over permanence of the materials.  You’re relying on the skills and attention of your team members, and that may or may not be a good idea.

Yes, there are start up costs to a “portal” versus email approach.  But I’ve gotten it down to about 15 minutes per Google Site.  In a following post I’ll describe the basic format I’m using and talk about plusses and minuses.

What have I forgotten in this audit?  I see this as a starting list, please help us build it out.