The world is changing before our eyes. Just reminisce on your life five years ago, three ago or even last year! Facebook, Twitter, iPad’s….these were not part of our personal lives let alone part of our work lives. Our social life is changing fast and it is not limited to what we do outside of the office. The newest generation of employees does not necessarily have a distinction between their lives depending on the time of day. In the social enterprise, the days of time cards and ‘work shifts’ is over. Our work lives interfere with our personal lives and our personal lives interfere with our work lives….they are really one and the same and it is all of our responsibilities to balance these duties.
Many people reading this will nod their heads in agreement because it is a sentiment that they practice every day. However, many people read the notion and understand the concept but lament the fact that their company does not promote this kind of environment. Many large, multi-national companies have IT policies in place that limit how employees use the Internet. Their fear and misplaced perception is that ‘web surfing’ is pervasive and is a cancer to employee productivity. Clearly there are situations where this concern is valid. I would argue though that this policy inhibits more than it protects.
One of the hats I wear at Model Metrics is to help run our Collaboration / Social Enterprise / Chatter Enablement practice. Recently we ran a Chatter Quick Start at a customer to help them get the salesforce.com tool up and running. It was a very successful implementation and the customer was very excited to get started with Chatter. One method we use to help frame out the discipline and best practices for using Chatter was to educate the customer on how Model Metrics’ uses the tool internally. It is no exaggeration to say that Model Metrics would sacrifice email as a tool over Chatter! The customer was surprised at how our company used the tool from a ‘social’ / ‘non-work’ perspective even though it was an ‘Enterprise Tool’. Our team explained that it was part of our company culture and that we encouraged our employees to ‘make work fun’. There were a few mumbles in the crowd about how that would never work in the clients culture and then an amazing thing happened: one of the Business VP’s stood up and proclaimed to the crowd of 20 people “Why shouldn’t we let Chatter change our culture?” The VP went on to state that the company was having a difficult time retaining and attracting top young talent. The reason: the working environment. This was not a ‘hip’ five year old social company building fancy websites, this was a company that was decades old and very set in stone with their culture. They needed to evolve! They needed to change that culture!
The VP was right on though, Chatter is the perfect tool to help change the culture of a company. I suspect that this adoption was just the beginning. My hope is that this culture change leads to other policy shifts. Companies should be encouraging their employees to use social media sites to benefit the enterprise. These organizations who have a long history and pedigree need to embrace change, not police against it. The new class of employees expect more and have the knowledge and skill set to deliver more but they have to be enabled! If the organizations are not enabling their employees and embracing change then how do they hope to compete and thrive when those around them are adapting?
I love paper! In particular, I love legal pads. My process is to have a dedicated legal pad for each customer I service, 8 – 10 in total. Of course there is also a ‘To Do’ legal pad and two or three others for various disciplines I manage. A rugged / reinforced bag is necessary to carry this extra weight and volume when travelling. On an airplane my suitcase goes underneath the seat in front of me and my briefcase goes in the overhead!
Enough is enough though, I have made the strategic decision to go paperless. I do not take this decision lightly but I think there are many good reasons to follow through. Mobile devices, like the iPad, are excellent enabling tools. The idea of not having to carry around the extra weight is also a huge positive. My kids like the fact that I am helping to save the rain forests and environment. My biggest reason to go paperless though is to add value to my organization and my customers through greater collaboration.
So here is my NEW process: All notes are taken on the iPad, which, through the App Store, offers a variety of excellent note taking applications. Use a wireless keyboard or a touch stylus to take your notes. The applications are great because they allow to have different note books (just like in my prior life) and you can email these notebooks or individual pages to yourself or others. Once the email arrives in my inbox it is simple to upload the PDF notes to our operating system of record, Salesforce CRM.
An important tool in the Salesforce CRM system is Chatter. Chatter is a collaboration tool where individuals in a company can share information, ideas and documents. Back in my ‘paper days’ it was very time consuming to replicate notes into the system. Having these various notes, documents and presentations in the system is critical for collaboration with members of the sales team and other colleagues. Chatter is an exceptional tool for managing and tracking this collaboration as well as storing the documents.
Another value of Chatter is it’s ability for audit purposes and indefinite search capabilities for these pieces of company intelligence. Documents do not get lost in personal folder systems, they do not get misplaced on someones desk and they are accessible to everyone who needs the access. The searching capability of Salesforce CRM is intuitive and efficient. The fact that these documents ‘live’ indefinitely in the system is key for some industries and a great feature. Everything you want in an Enterprise Collaboration tool is offered to you with Chatter. Salesforce.com even offers free versions of the tool for organizations who are not Salesforce CRM customers.
So there it is, some great reasons to go paperless. Save yourself time, save yourself frustration and by all means necessary, collaborate with your colleagues. You will quickly understand the power of this collaboration by being able to better serve your customers. Your personal knowledge will grow. Your customer response time will improve and your value add to your customers will go up. And let’s not forget that you will be helping our planet with your ‘Green’ approach to business and collaboration.
Not only is The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr an enjoyable read but it is also extremely pertinent in today’s IT world. The book reviews a paradigm shift which occurred through the industrial revolution where manufacturing facilities built and maintained their own power generation engines. This started with water-driven power wheels on the riverbank and evolved to pieces of machinery. In either case, these power generators were the life-blood of a factory.
Lose power and a factory went dark, in many cases there was no backup. Fast-forward only a few years and the idea of power (electricity) represented as a service was born. Edison and other revolutionaries transformed the way factories were run by providing this utility and reduced one necessary core competency of the factory. Many companies are experiencing this same shift in the IT thought process. The incumbent process is the Old Guard that builds in-house applications, is comfortable with its 15 gate reviews and is perfectly content completing a plan and design phase in as few as 48 months. The new paradigm on the block is Cloud Computing. Members of this revolution are young, eager and anxious to advance conventional thought and eliminate costly outdated processes. The problem with the ‘old’ IT thought process, in many cases, is that it is inefficient. Value is not being added quickly enough to the business they support and the organizations’ credibility may have taken a hit.
There is little debate now that eventually the Cloud Computing gang is going to displace the Old Guard. For some companies though this displacement is not going to occur without challenges. These IT organizations have been dominated by the Old Guard for decades. The Old Guard also has constituents at very high levels in the organization, including the C-Level boardroom. A CIO recently asked me, ‘How do I make the Shift?’. A challenge indeed, but here are some ideas that have been successful.
The first idea to help shift direction is to incorporate the fastest growing new technology innovation into your organization: The Smartphone or Tablet. As individuals, we all know how these Internet-connected and UI-enabled devices have changed our lives. Many of us would be lost without them. There are two reasons why these devices have swept us up: 1) They are efficient and make our lives easier and 2) They are engaging. Why would you not want to bring these characteristics to your organization? Every company can benefit from creating mobile solutions for either your demand (Sales) or supply (Operations) side of the business.
The second kick-start to a shift is collaboration. Social networking sites like Facebook have become pervasive in our society and, just like mobility, this concept is finding it’s way into the enterprise. Tools like Salesforce CRM incorporate collaboration functionality (Chatter) to connect employees and organizations like never before. Employees will embrace their new-found connectedness and will participate. This stepping-stone will help begin to change the way employees think about technology and it’s place in your organization.
The third innovation idea is that of enablement. Somewhere in the IT organization is a burgeoning star. This person is energetic, ambitious, anxious and even rambunctious. He or she wants very badly to make their mark on the organization through the use of new Cloud Technologies. They know all the benefits but they don’t know how to overcome the roadblocks, whether physical (existing technology stacks) or organizational (Old Guard management). As an IT leader it is your duty to enable one of these rising stars. Give them the budget and authority to work on their pet project, call it a pilot, call it a proof of concept, call it whatever you want; just let them do it. Not only will you keep a great resource happy and fulfilled but you will probably end up with a showcase solution that can be leveraged as you continue to make culture shifts in IT.
The last idea for pushing along the paradigm shift in IT is to communicate continuously the desire and necessity for the change. This communication has to be from the top down. If your leadership team is not on board with the philosophy shift, those lower in the hierarchy will not buy in. A great way for leaders to demonstrate their commitment is through the first idea above, collaboration. The characteristics of collaboration and top down buy-in can be tied together if the leaders in our organizations are active collaborators.
This shift in IT thought process and solution methodology is a challenge for many organizations to overcome, despite the desire. Businesses can reap measurable success by employing strategies, like the ones above, to begin momentum. By definition, once the shift gains momentum it is difficult to slow down. Leaders in today’s IT world want to add value to the businesses they support, in some cases their organizations credibility needs a win. The shift detailed above may be the perfect prescription for these objectives.
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