The Networked Watercooler

A WorkShift white paper by Dr Nicola J. Millard

The networked watercooler: virtualising collaboration

Imagine this scenario:

You are working from home and need to go to a team meeting which is four hours away by car, do you:

(a) Hopinthecar–youhatesittingintrafficforhoursbutyourphysicalpresencewillbemissed.

(b) Dial in to an audio bridge – since most of the rest of the team will be doing the same.

(c) Use videoconferencing – it’s almost as good as face-to-face and no travel is required.

(d) Meet up in a virtual world which combines talk, text and video.

The chances are that you used to do (a), but are more likely now to do (b), a bit of (a) and (c) in exceptional circumstances but would probably only do (d) if you were an online gamer or a futurologist.

The growth of collaboration tools and technologies has evolved alongside rapidly changing work patterns. Work is increasingly becoming what we do rather than where we are [1]. With employees notnecessarilyinthesameoffice(oreveninthesamecountry)asthepeoplethattheyworkwith,face-to-face meetings can be an expensive, environmentally unfriendly and time-consuming luxury.Meetingsoftenhappenoutsidetheconfinesofthemeetingroom.Serendipitousconversations that used to happen around the watercooler, the kettle or the photocopier are aslikelytohappenonsocialmediaasintheofficenow.

Introduction

Serendipitous conversations that used to happen around the watercooler, the kettle or the photocopier are as likely

to happen on social media as in the office now.

3The Networked Watercooler: Virtualising Collaboration

We can collaborate using a whole raft of technologies. There are text-based tools like web chat, socialmedia,onlinejamsandSMS,whicharequick,efficientandsuitourlaptop,tabletsandmobile phone. Then there are voice-based collaboration environments such as audio conferencing, which are much richer but often lack some of the visual cues we get in face-to-face interaction. Finally, there are the richer, more visual environments ranging from low resolution desktop video tohighdefinitionvideoconferencingtotheintriguingvirtualenvironmentsthatspringoutofthedesigner’s imagination and onto your browser. The choices are becoming bewilderingly large and, worse still, these tools often aren’t integrated together – forcing us to juggle multiple passwords, gadgets and platforms.

Two-thirds (64%) of UK adults, in research by Ofcom [2], said that technology has changed the way they communicate, while just under six in ten (57%) say that new communications methods have made their lives

easier. The under-35s are the most likely to agree with this statement (72% of 16-24s and 73% of 25-34 year olds). Older people are less likely to agree (only 30% of over-65s said that new communications methods have made their lives easier).

However, despite the Ofcom study [2] reporting that text has now eclipsed phone calls as a means of contacting friends and family, it seems that 83% of us still prefer face-to-face and still choose richerchannelslikethephonetotalktopeoplethatwedon’tknow(itismuchmoredifficulttotextastranger).Thisisreflectedatworkaswell.Forty-sixpercentofunder-25sand63%ofover-45s interviewed as part of BT’s research agreed that “one of the most rewarding parts of my job is having face to face conversations with my colleagues” [3].

There is often an in-built assumption that we are all naturally able to collaborate effectively over long distances using technology. It is often far easier to do things face-to-face. This is because there is one critical piece of software that has not been upgraded recently and it is, tragically, our brains. Millions of years of evolution mean that, although we are pre-programmed to collaborate with other human beings, we are also most attuned to doing that in close physical proximity to each other.

Trusting, knowing, empathising and liking were all based upon us getting to know the people that we relied on for survival. This means that we are not naturally able to function in this new, more virtualizedwayofworking–itisnoteasyforustodo.However,technologyisrespondingtofillthe face-to-face gap and provide richer and richer alternatives for collaboration that go some way to replicate many of the things that we do naturally.

When this works well powerful things can happen – and not necessarily things that conform to the traditional top-down ways of doing business. We are moving from an age of command and control to one of connecting and collaborating. The power is literally with the people – this is not really about technology, it is about building better and faster ways of communicating.

Organisations that exploit this well are:

• Better at responding quickly and efficiently to changing demands. Agility – the ability to mobiliseresourcesmorefluidly(andlesshierarchically),makedecisionsfasterandrespondtounpredictable demand – is a key buzzword in the boardroom at the moment. However, moving faster also requires better co-ordination of expertise and clearer, more effective communication flows.Achievingthiscanresultinloweroperatingcostsandfirstmoveradvantage.

• Better at innovating. Throwing diverse people together (appropriately) can often create somethingnewandinnovationisoftenthekeytosurvivalinadifficultmarket.

• Better at engaging and retaining employees through stronger personal ties. Companies that encourage high levels of community feeling and promote collaboration tend to have better team cohesion, less employee churn and higher levels of employee engagement.

• Better at building and sustaining relationships. The best salespeople spend their career building a strong network of business contacts – and that’s why they are the best salespeople because it’s all about the relationship. People buy from people.

However, it’s not just about the relationships. ‘The Collaboration Paradox’ [3], BT’s research on 1,042 global executives working across a wide range of functions, shows that the self-reported loss of time each day due to poor communications is 134 minutes – 25% of a nine hour day. This communications conundrum equates to an annual cost per executive of US$25,000, which adds up to an eye-watering amount of waste in a global corporate with thousands of employees.

This paper looks at why and how we collaborate and how, using the rich set of collaboration technologies that are emerging, we can create an effective virtual, organisation where face-to-face isn’t the default way of doing business anymore.

Much of this has been written from our own experiences in transforming BT. Over the past 20 years, BT has been through a process of fundamentally rethinking the way we work – and we continue toexperimentandrefinethisasthewaythatweworkevolves.Tenpercentofouremployeespermanently work from home. More than 70% of BT’s workforce is able to work anywhere. We reduced face-to-face meetings by more than 40% in some functions through technologies such as video and audio conferencing – eliminating one million face-to-face meetings, saving £169 million in travel costs and freeing up £103 million of management time. Face-to-face is no longer necessarily the default in BT – which means that understanding the tools and methods through which we effectively collaborate is more important than ever before.

The choices are becoming bewilderingly large and, worse still, these tools often aren’t integrated together – forcing us to juggle multiple passwords, gadgets and platforms.

BT’s research on 1042 global executives working across a wide range of functions, shows that the self-reported loss of time each day due to poor communications is 134 minutes – 25% of a nine hour day.

The Networked Watercooler: Virtualising Collaboration4 5The Networked Watercooler: Virtualising Collaboration

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” Henry Ford.

Collaboration on the face of it seems simple – it’s all about achieving a goal. Easy, then! However, as soon as more than one person is involved things can get a bit more complicated because the psychology of teamwork starts to kick in. Most jobs today increasingly involve complex collaboration, with 81% of executives surveyed in BT’s ‘Collaboration Paradox’ research [3] saying that they spend all or much of their day working in teams or collaborating. Orchestrating this collaboration means ensuring that all the members of the orchestra are playing the same song, in tune and in time and sometimes on a global basis – and that requires a lot more than just giving them the sheet music.

This is not easy – with execs interviewed in the Collaboration Paradox saying that they are struggling because of:

• Slowdecisionmakingbymanagersandcolleagues(56%)

• Lackofconsultation(41%)

• Informationnotathand(36%)

• Poorteamworking(33%).

Collaboration technologies could provide a way of preventing all this as it helps people to come together and co-operate virtually and in real time. To do this, though, these systems need to be able to support:

• Networked expertise – knowledge that is both written down (and searchable) but also the ability to access the knowledge in the heads of distributed experts.

• Communication – ensuring that dialogue and discussion can happen quickly and easily. Alex Pentland from MIT [4] suggests that patterns of communication are the most important predictor of a team’s success – over and above that of individual expertise.

• Shared workspaces – the ability to share media easily across all team members (including third partypartnerswhomayliveoutsidetheconfinesoftheenterprisefirewall).

• Management and co-ordination mechanisms – supporting the process of co-ordinating who is doing what, when, where, how and why and making progress visible.

• Awareness and availability indicators – the ability to see where people are, whether they are available and what they are currently working on. This will increasingly link the location information from smartphones with activities on other devices, such as PC and tablet, as well as social data and shared documents.

However, these are mostly about the visible task-related aspects of collaboration. The often hidden element is ‘social glue’, because work is inevitably a social activity – and the adhesive for this is trust. The challenge for adhesion is the fact that teams increasingly have to come together in an agile way – diverse experts who don’t know each other and who need to hit the ground running. This requires teams to develop ‘fast trust’.TohelpthisprocessLyndaGrattonfromLondonBusinessSchool [7] suggests that teams need to be built with people’s ability and propensity to collaborate in mind and that trust should be assumed rather than earned from the start.

Therecipeforsocialgluedoesn’texclusivelyfeatureofficepartiesandgoingtothepub.Itismoreabout encouraging conversations and encounters outside task-focussed time. One issue with virtualised organisations is that non co-located teams often only come together for task-focussed dialogue – and rarely in a face-to-face situation. There is seldom time on an audio conference or an email to discuss people’s past experiences, challenges and anxieties. However, high performing virtual teams emphasise the importance of this social glue. According to Alex Pentland[4], this alone can account for as much as 35% variation in a team’s performance and 50% of positive changes in communication patterns.

Socialisation is particularly important when teams come from across different cultures and geographies. Anyone who has done business in Asian, Middle Eastern or Southern European cultures will tell you that it is the relationship that is everything in terms of creating trust and co-operation between people. Contrast this with more Western approaches, where the task is everything;nevermindwastingtimeonallthatfluffyrelationshipstuff!

This tends to mirror the extent to which cultures are individualistic or collectivist. In individualistic cultures like the US and UK, the needs, values and goals of the individual take precedence over the group; whilst for those in the collectivist cultures, like China and India, the needs and values of the group take precedence over the individual. As a result, individualistic cultures are less likely to be influencedbygroupaffiliationsandmorereadytotrustunknownothersinvirtualenvironmentsthan those from collectivist cultures [4]. This is likely to be why executives from China, Brazil and India interviewed as part of BT’s Collaboration Paradox research [3] put a higher premium on good communication and collaboration technologies.

Of course, all of this is easier said than done when employees can’t actually see or hear each other. Inphysicalofficespaces,conversationsareoftenstimulatedbecauseyouoverhearstufforbumpintopeoplewhilemakingthatlifesavingcupofmorningcoffee.Thisisanaturalpartofofficelifebut requires both intent and effort in a more virtualised space – plus, such encounters might be frowned upon as time wasting.

The key is to reinvent proximity in a virtual space – allow employees to have a peripheral awareness of one another and see if they are both present and available. In simplest terms, it can be about scheduling extra call time for small talk, ensuring that diaries and presence information are available and encouraging interaction through webchat, forums or microblogging.

Building collaborative teams... fast!

There is seldom time on an audio conference or an email to discuss people’s past experiences, challenges and anxieties. However, high performing virtual teams emphasise the importance of this social glue.


This implies an ‘always open’ culture, where team members use applications through their desktop and also their mobile devices to encourage what Fayard and Weeks[5] call ‘frictionless access’ – i.e. within one click. They compare thistonormalofficebehaviourinthatyouwouldprobablybeunlikelytodropinonacolleagueonanotherfloorunless you happened to be there anyway. However, the negative aspect of being always open is a temptation to be open all hours – a pressure to swap physical face time (where people can see you working) with virtual face time (where people can see when you are NOT working).

This is likely to be a dilemma as we move into a hyperconnected, located, aggregated social world where ourdevicescanfindusinphysicalspacerelativetosimilarothers. Smartphones already have the capability for

employees to check into physical locations and broadcast that location to their social network. This can be a great tool for virtualised employees toliterally‘findtheirteam’. It can also provide the opportunity for face-to-face encounters if team members happen to be in the same city or building (‘tweet ups’).

However, if this information is abused, the likelihood is that people will be reluctant to share their location or knowledge with anyone as their privacy is eroded and they become overwhelmed by being always on.

Fayard and Weeks [5] also issue a warning about constant connection in the virtual world: “networking applications such as LinkedIn, Lotus Notes, IdeaJam, and Twitter can tear down walls, but they can also create them. We’ve seen virtual-team members get so involved in their digital world that they become disengaged from the people right next to them.” This is when the lessons learned from our previous research on the Balanced Communications Diet for Business [6] come in. People need to always have the right to press the ‘off’ button.

Both Ofcom and BT/Cambridge research [6] on communication preferences have found that text-based communications are now a favourite for pure information exchange. Many people say that text tools, like SMS and email, are the easiest way to talk to large numbers of people, instantaneously and with minimal effort.

“Texting is good, because it’s not intrusive for the person you’re sending the text to... It’s usually short and sweet, so it’s simple,” said one British man interviewed as part of the BT/Cambridge study [6]. This thought was echoed by a British lady: “I like being texted because it’s instant. I always have my mobile with me. Yesterday somebody left me two messages on the phone and I had no idea, until just before I went to bed when it was too late to call them back; whereas if they text me I’ll get it straightaway.”

The issue with text-based communications – especially if you don’t know the person – is that they can easily lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations since they don’t convey much in terms of emotional content, relationshiporpersonality(particularlyifyouareconfinedtothe140-160charactersoftoolslikeTwitter and SMS).

With text-based tools coming out as somewhat impoverished forms of communication, videoconferencing looks as if it is a candidate for massive growth. With executives stating that the benefitsofvideoare [3]:

• Youcanseepeople’sbodylanguage(61%)

• Youcanseewhatparticipantsaredoing(58%)

• Itiseasytolookatadocumentordemonstrateaproduct(57%).

Highdefinitionvideoandtelepresencecannowgivepeoplethefeelingofalmostbeingthere(although, you can’t shake hands on a video conference). Personal use of lower quality video is also becoming more familiar through applications like Skype, Fring and Facetime and cameras are now an essential accessory for laptops, tablets and smartphones.

However, video has frequently been hailed as the ‘next big thing’ and then has singularly failed to gain the acceptance of users, largely because of the bandwidth required and the quality of service delivered (especially the pixellated visuals and distorted voice that was the bane of early video services).Assuperfastbroadbandand4G/5Gacceleratenetworkspeedsthesequalityissuesarealready starting to fade into the past.

“Networking applications such as LinkedIn, Lotus Notes, IdeaJam, and Twitter can tear down walls, but they can also create them. We’ve seen virtual-team members get so involved in their digital world that they become disengaged from the people right next to them.”

The issue with text-based communications – especially if you don’t know the person – is that they can easily lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations since they don’t convey much in terms of emotional content, relationship or personality...

Text, video, voice - technologies stepping intofilltheface-to-facegap


Technical aspects aside, there are still some basic human issues with video. These largely lie around anonymity and context (eg lying in bed or wearing pyjamas when doing an early morning meeting is much harder if cameras are involved). When video comes into play, people start doing their makeupandtidyingtheiroffice.

There is also an argument that, unless the task is visual in nature (eg showing a doctor a nasty boil; doing a customer presentation) or requires a shared reality (eg building architectural plans for a house; training people to make furniture), participants who already know each other often gain verylittleinbeingabletoseeeachother.Participantswhodon’tknoweachothercanbenefitfromseeing what other people look like but, frequently, end up either turning video off or covering it with other windows once they’ve gone beyond initial pleasantries. However, as video becomes more ubiquitous, it can be used as a powerful way of building relationships in an increasingly virtualisedworld.Itstimemaywellhavefinallyarrived!

Voice comes next on the list of rich communication tools – and, although it is not as new or sexy as social media or video, its value should not be underestimated. Despite being deprived of visual cues, we have evolved to

become very good at responding to voices and the emotional nuances in them. It really is good to talk and audio conferencing gives people a low-cost option for collaboration in that all users need for basic access is some kind of phone (be it soft or hard, dumb or smart).

However, there is a caveat here. Evidence shows that both video and voice become less effective as more people become involved. They become broadcast TV and radio as the number of active contributorstendstoreduceandopendialoguebecomesmoredifficult.Thisisfineforinformationdissemination but other things may need to be deployed to get people talking.

King of the text-based tools within enterprises is email – much maligned but still considered to be a keystone of collaboration in most organisations (except companies like Atos, who have banned its use internally). It is now so pervasive that it is worth considering it in its own section.

Email alone seems to be a very poor collaboration tool and yet it has established itself as a communication default, a form of instant messaging (with access on smartphone encouraging a quick response culture) and it’s even become a business process. However, it is not a dynamic form of communication, does not encourage dialogue, is not conducive to knowledge sharing and struggles to convey emotion and nuance. This is why things can be easily misinterpreted in email, even if emoticons are deployed extensively.

Finally, there is often too much of it to cope with. Forty-seven per cent of executives say that they always or often have to wait too long for colleagues to respond to email [3]. These same execs also admit that some of the issues with email start with their own habits with:

• 43%admittingtoignoringemailandvoicemail(41%saytheyare‘toobusy’asa way of dealing with information overload)

• 32%havingatleastfouremailsleftintheirinboxthattheyshouldhaverespondedto by the time they shut down at the end of the day

• 43%checkingandwritingemailsinmeetings,whilenotreallypayingattentiontothe meeting.

This means that email can often become a bit of a black hole for collaboration because critical knowledge can be lost or stranded in a single individual’s inbox. “I live in fear of the ‘reply all’” said one senior manager suffering from inbox implosion.

The case for email tends to be:

• Wecanthinkaboutthelanguageweuseandstructureemailsbetterthanmanyother text-based tools

• Itisdateandtimestamped,soauditableandsearchableaswellasbeingavailable for both legal and regulatory reasons

• Itcanreachmultipleaddresseessimultaneously,regardlessofwhethertheyareavailable or not (especially good when working across time zone boundaries)

• Theaddresseecanreaditwhentheychoose

• Itisalowbandwidthmediumsodoesn’trelyonagoodnetworkconnection

• Fornon-nativespeakersitcanbemoreunderstandablethanverbalcommunication

Despite being deprived of visual cues, we have evolved to become very good at responding to voices and the emotional nuances in them.

Mind the generation gap: the case against email as a collaboration tool


The case against email for collaboration, however, is:

• It is low on group memory. The message sits in an individual’s email inbox and can’t be accessed or searched by anyone else. When the owner of that mailbox leaves, all the messages are often either deleted or archived and are lost entirely. Shared inboxes can be a way around this – but someone ultimately needs to take ownership of them in order for them to work.

• It often isn’t integrated with other collaboration tools. This means we spend a lot of time toggling between applications, searching different folders and cutting and pasting things. Some tools are starting to rectify this problem by combining instant messaging, email, social media and other audio and video tools into a single desktop.

• It is often disorganised in terms of content. We all manage information in different ways and some of us are more organised than others. Additionally, archiving can be on a local drive, a remotecloudoranythinginbetween,sofindingsomethingspecificcanbesomethingofablack art.

• It is difficult to evolve content because it is static. Ifyoucan’tfindcontenteasilyitalsocan’tbe reused, edited or critiqued by a broader and more diverse community.

• It’s hard to figure out relationships. Especiallyinaneraofflattenedhierarchy,youneedto know who to email in order to collaborate with them. This isn’t necessarily easy! Finding people who have been involved in a particular account or someone with particular specialist knowledge can be almost impossible using email alone. Much of this information lies within people’s heads and is inaccessible unless you know who to talk to and, for email to work in this situation, you need to know who to include on the distribution list.

• It’s not great as a relationship builder. Once you have found someone, email isn’t necessarily a great way of engaging them in collaboration. For one thing, they may well ignore you in a way that they might not be able to using other more synchronous collaboration tools like the phone. In small groups who know each other it can be an effective tool for information sharing but, as groups get larger, emails often get lost in the noise which leads to fewer contributions and less collaboration.

• It’s not a synchronous communication tool. Theadventofquickreflexresponsesonemailhas taught people to treat email almost like instant messaging – which it actually isn’t! An Australian woman interviewed as part of the Balanced Communications Diet for Business research[6] observed: “There is that expectation that you respond immediately...my phone buzzes beside the bed all night, as emails come in...the number of emails you get in at nine o’clock at night and then you get one at seven o’clock in the morning saying: ‘you haven’t responded to me yet.’” This belief tends to create a false sense of urgency, puts pressure on us to respond fast (with no time to think carefully about our responses) and means that we can spend more time reading and responding to it than actually getting any other work done.

The other emerging challenge with email is around who uses it. The older generation of Baby Boomers seem attached to email and are often deeply suspicious of tools like social media at work. However, theyounger,moremobile-centric(andimpatient)GenerationsYandZareplacingadiminishingemphasis on email, preferring more synchronous tools such as instant messaging and social media. When they do use email, they are more likely to use it with an expectation of a more instant response – and they are also more likely to check emails on a regular basis than the over 55s [3].

There is still the potential for a generational communication gap to emerge at work. BT’s Collaboration Paradox research showed that 74% of 25-34 year olds, compared to 66% of

over 45s, agreed that ‘overall, communication technology (IM, email, video, telepresence, etc) helps me do my work better’ [3].

LyndaGratton[7] wonders whether this generation gap is overstated as collaboration technologies become much more intuitive and user

friendly and both synchronous tools like IM & phone and asynchronous communications like email & social media become more integrated. In

addition, older executives are showing a willingness to

keep up with their younger counterparts [3].

So, just like Mark Twain, the rumours of email’s death seem to have been greatly exaggerated! The great thing – and the problem – with email is that it covers a kind of middle ground between other more instant forms of communication (IM, social media, telephone) and more traditional written communications (white mail). Because it has the monopoly on that nicheandfillsitsocompletelyitislikelytobearoundforawhileyet.Inaddition,by2020,fivegenerationswillbeworkingalongsideeachother,sothekeytocollaborationisgoingtobechoice.Onesizedoesnotfitall.

The great thing - and the problem - with email is that it covers a kind of middle ground between

other more instant forms of communication (IM, social media, telephone) and more traditional

written communications (white mail).


Combining communication with content

Social media is seemingly the rising star of text-based collaboration – so it also warrants a section to itself. It is one of the few technologies that tap into a number of basic human instincts – forming and identifying with communities and groups, sharing interesting things, communicating with like-minded people and enjoying novel and continuously changing content. It is increasingly the way that we keep in touch with friends, acquaintances and, often, complete strangers.Twenty-fivepercentofexecutivessaythattheyareusingsocialtoolslikeFacebookandTwitter to do their work [3].

SitessuchasFacebook,Google+,LinkedIn,YammerandTwitterarepopularinpartbecausetheyallow people to maintain some level of contact with lots of people through mini-feeds or status overviews. This is by no means detailed but these ‘weak ties’ are enough, in many cases, to keep a feeling of contact. They also encourage unanticipated, serendipitous exchanges as people start conversations or respond to comments.

Weaktiescanhavemoreinfluenceoverdecisionsandinsightsthanstrongonesbecausethereareso many more of them. Any one employee can only have a strong relationship with a few others – probably those in their direct team. But weak links allow employees to talk to a wider variety of other colleagues, providing exposure to many more groups. Ideas can come from unexpected directions and that’s often where innovation comes from.

One great example of using social technologies to create discussion and ideas are online jams. These are highly interactive forum-like sessions that allow people to collaborate in virtual spaces overafixedperiodoftime.Theyarebasedaroundtheprincipleofcreatingonlineconversationsand are generally easy to join, work across geographies/timezones and have a limited duration. LondonBusinessSchool,whichrunsjamsaspartofitsFutureofWorkConsortium,usesthembecause: “it creates a buzz and gives participants a sense of urgency to get their point across and communicate with people in their own organisations that are outside their normal working groups and networks. They work from a constituency of a couple of hundred up to several thousand participants.”

Despite this, the place of social media within enterprises is less than certain with some banning it entirelyandothersfaintlyencouragingit.Acceptanceoftenstartswithleadership.Leaderswhoregard social media as a fad, a folly or a recipe for time wasting at work are unlikely to believe that it can improve business performance. However, the evidence is stacking up against those who think it is a waste of time.

According to research from McKinsey [8], 72 % of companies they surveyed used social technologies in their businesses and 90% of those organisations reported that they are seeing businessbenefits.Forastart,theyfoundthatsocialcollaborationtoolshavethepotential

to raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20-25%, if the right mix of process, tools and behaviours are put into place. This is largely by streamlining how they collaborate and communicate, shattering functional silos and extending networked expertise across the enterprise. However,only3%ofcompaniesintheMcKinseysurveyreportedsubstantialbenefitsfromsocialacross employees and customers alike – which points towards the fact that there is a lot of room for improvement!

ROI for social is often the elephant in the room. However, ROI for many communications technologies is not straightforward – what’s the ROI for email for a start? With very little ‘i’ in the ROIforsocial,benefitscanbereapedatlittleupfrontcostintechnologyinvestment.

Socialmedia,byitsverydefinition,isaboutpeople,nottechnology.Simplyprovidingtheplatformforsocialdoesnotmeanthatitwillflourishintoamagicalplacewherecollaborationspontaneously occurs. The problem is that businesses are often focusing on the value a social networking community can provide to themselves, not the value it gives employees. In order to be successful,socialnetworksneedtobenefitusers firstinorderforthemtobenefitthebusiness.Itisoften users that determine what social tools are useful for – and it is participation and content that makes social useful. A social network of one is not an especially good social network!

One of the big strengths of social collaboration platforms is that they combine communication with content. The ability to discuss ideas within a group wiki via comments or respond to a colleague’s blog or micro blog post, creates new, dynamic content that builds on existing knowledge. Discussions formed around information are also stored for future use. This is arguably the most valuable content of all as it is then both available for all to see within the enterprise and also searchable (given a good search engine or aggregator). Add to that the ability to tag content and you can create user generated folksonomies which can be tracked and trended in real time #useful.

One enterprise social media director summed the power of social collaboration up: “Social Media is a potential game-changer for knowledge management and collaboration. Past Knowledge Management initiatives have been about people putting documents in a repository, and many initiatives have simply died. Social Media means that knowledge sharing activity (whether document sharing, micro blogging, social bookmarking or whatever) is drawn to the attention of an audience, and can evoke comment and conversation. If the feed is malleable enough, it also starts to achieve the holy grail of ‘delivery of relevant knowledge.’ People search, profiles and follower networks fundamentally start to unlock the tacit knowledge of an organisation by encouraging human-human interaction at the moment of need.”

Why enterprise social networking fails: lessons from experience

Despitespendingsignificanttimeandeffortcreatingsocialnetworks,manyorganisationsaregetting relatively little user participation, with around a third of communities reporting less than 100 active members. Social networking is generally the victim of the 10% rule – since 90% of users either only contribute once or twice or are inactive lurkers who consume but don’t contribute.

The social enterprise

“We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.” AlanBennett,GettingOn(1972)

“The more content you have the more members you will get. The more members you have the more content you will get. The better you match content and members to member profiles, the more members and content you will get.” Gartner


Peoplecanfinditalltooeasytoconsumeinformationwithoutcontributing(whatacademicsterm‘socialloafing’butlesspolitepeoplecall‘goodfornothingfree-riding’).Thereisaperceptionthatittakeseffort,time,inclinationandconfidencetoactivelycontribute.So,toencouragepeopletojoinin,enterprisesocialnetworksneedtofindawaytoselltheirbenefitsrelativetopersonal costs. If they don’t manage to do this they can become a wasteland of little content, poor participation, unorganised contribution and infrequent usage. None of this encourages others to join the party.

However, too much content (particularly if tagging is not used) can also be a problem as people struggletofindusefulinformationinamassofdisorganisedandunsearchablestuff.So,successseemstobebasedonasufficientbaseofcontentandinteractionandontheabilitytoleveragetechnology to reduce the chaos of searching for meaningful information.

There are many case studies documenting valiant failures in the world of enterprise social media. There is no magic formula for success but these are the common pitfalls:

• No critical mass of users. Social networking within organisations is inevitably constrained by the number of people in the organisation. There isn’t the critical mass that the whole world’s population offers with globally available applications like Wikipedia, so numbers are inevitably smaller. The smaller the network, the less effective it is.

• Failure to integrate it in to everyday workflows, reward systems and other collaboration tools. Ifsocialbecomesacomponentinhowcommunicationflowsandworkisresourcedand employees are rewarded for what they share rather than what they keep to themselves, then it won’t become a mere bolt-on to other communication tools. Unless social is part and parcel of the way in which collaboration is done in organisations, and it complements other collaboration tools, it won’t be used.

• Inability to cope with constantly evolving ideas. Enterprises tend to struggle to cope with endless debate and innovation – they are built to last rather than to change – preferring to go with rubber stamped, tried and tested processes and documented and reusable methods.

• Hierarchy. Eveninflatorganisations,notallusersareequal,andthereare‘realworld’consequences from contributions that offend those with power over one’s career prospects. As one consultant interviewed as part of this research put it: “Senior managers feel threatened by Enterprise 2.0 – they lose control, they get their ideas openly criticised by any oik with a keyboard, they aren’t going to listen! It’s not a level playing field even if they claim it’s a flat organisation.”

Socialtoolshavethepowertosignificantlydisruptexistingpowerstructuresasthevoiceofbothcustomersandemployeescanbecomeamplified.Oneenterprisesocialmediastrategymanager summed it up: “The organisation has the hardest and most critical role of all – they have to create an atmosphere and a space in which people feel free to participate, feel free to express themselves without recrimination and trust that their contributions are being taken in the way that they mean them to be taken.”

• Data ownership. Who owns the data and information contributed in collaborative social networking forums? Protecting intellectual property rights in a social world are an interesting

matter for discussion. There are also other risks that could lead to damage to brand, reputation and legal repercussions. This is why it is important to give employees guidance on appropriate behaviour in social spaces.

• Governance. According to many IT strategy managers, this is the biggest headache related to social networking. Enterprise computing is often about enforcing control and conformity. The rationale is that the most secure, reliable and predictable environment is one that is well understood, well documented and well managed. However, with social networking tools, the world is not cooperating. One issue is around how out-of-date and/or incorrect data gets removed. As one IT strategy manager put it: “You can have tens of thousands of team sites sitting around costing money and cluttering the place up.” For example, who is ultimately responsible for the content of a shared resource such as a Wiki? This requires tools where time dependence and validation points are built in where, if no one from the community objects, content is deleted.

• Time wasting. McKinsey [8] reported that 40% of employers were afraid that employees would simply waste valuable work time on social networks rather than doing ‘real work’. Aside from debating what constitutes ‘real work’ anyway, if employees are measured on the quality of their output this should render this concern irrelevant. As one social media strategy manager commented: “The biggest barrier to social media adoption internally is culture, there is a perception that the small talk that people undertake to start to build relationships is a waste of work time when it is in the written form using social media sites. This is not in line with what is expected as a social norm when people meet on a face-to-face basis.”

Employers who block access to social networks because they fear time wasting are then blissfully unaware of how long their employees are spending on social networking sites on their own devices at work (or indeed actually wasting time doing other less productive things like email instead). It is better to know, monitor and acknowledge that social networking is as muchpartof‘realwork’asattendingamanagementbriefing.

The more interesting aspect of time consumption is when experts whose skills are in demand on social networks get overwhelmed by requests for their time, rather than being able to get on with their day job. In this case, the logical thing to do would be to consider how their expertise can be better leveraged using social and recognise them for their contributions.

• Trust. Although there is evidence that weak ties can improve trust amongst strangers, trust is keytoencourageopennessandinformationsharinginasocialenterprise.Lackoftrustmaywell mean that people are not willing to share.

When they do work, enterprise social networks provide an opportunity to complement other collaboration tools. For a start, research by McKinsey [8] estimates that email usage could be reduced by as much as 25%, freeing up 7-8% of the working week for more productive activities and saving considerable investment in email archiving.

However, it is social media’s ability to unearth expertise that provides one of its most powerful functions within an enterprise.

40% of employers were afraid that employees would simply waste valuable work time on social networks rather than doing ‘real work’


“The idea is not to create an encyclopedia of everything that everybody knows, but to keep track of people who ‘know the recipe’, and nurture the technology and culture that will get them talking.” Arian Ward, Hughes Space & Communications

InaneraofGoogleknowledge,whereimmenseamountsofinformationaboutprettymuchanytopic you can think of (and even a few you can’t) is available at the click of a button, human expertise is more valuable than ever. Anyone can follow a ‘how to’ guide but, when complex issues occur, it’s the people who can convert knowing into doing that are the most valuable. This requires enterprises to rapidly network experts together – regardless of who they are, where they are or who they work for.

Thetricktoeffectivenetworkedexpertiseistofirstlyfindtheexpert,secondlyfigureoutiftheyare available to help (presence information is useful here) and then allow them to collaborate (using the most appropriate and universally accessible tools for the job). This is not necessarily an easy thing for organisations to do because of the way that they are siloed and measured as well as whetherthetechnologycancopewithdynamiccollaboration(sometimesbeyondthefirewall).Italso relies on people being open about both their knowledge and their availability.

In highly expert environments, like consultancies, knowledge is often regarded as power and successdefinedbybillablehours.Theseenvironmentstendtoactagainstanetworkedexpertenvironment because sharing and collaboration is often contingent on people gaining some kind of reward for sharing.

However, especially in the world of expert forums, there is a lot of sharing that goes on that is not rewarded by anything tangible. We call this ‘psychic income’ because it is about more about reputation within a community, enjoyment and self-esteem than tangible rewards. This implies thatapersonwhomorehighlyidentifieswiththecommunitytheyarecollaboratingwithlongtermismorelikelyto‘trade’knowledgeformutualbenefit.

Reputation is a critical currency in collaboration since people only tend to place weight on knowledge from reputable, credible and trustworthy sources. The building of online reputation is a fundamental principle that underpins sites such as Wikipedia and eBay. Just as thoughtful, erudite and useful contributions can boost someone’s reputation; it can just as easily be ruined if he/she posts something inappropriate, insulting or ill-informed. For this reason, anonymity is very rarely appropriate in an enterprise setting.

It is this kind of ‘soft’ culture that helps to explain why public Wikis, that allow information to be edited and changed by anyone, do not collapse into a heap of gibberish or offensive material. For example, on websites like Wikipedia, anyone can edit an entry and there is little to stop a malevolent user from deleting or changing valuable material. In reality, however, this rarely occurssinceuserscanbeheldaccountablefortheiractionsandtheseactionsreflectontheirprofessional reputation.

These reputations can also go beyond the limits of your organisational silo. As one engineer put it: “The advantage of my community is that it allows me to build a reputation beyond my team.” However, these reputations need to be reinforced by both peers and by the organisation itself. Inaddition,sinceknowledgeisoftenhowpeopledefinethemselvesprofessionally,attacksonpeople’sideas(especially‘flaming’)candestroyparticipationandreputation.

On websites like Wikipedia, anyone can edit an entry and there is little to stop a malevolent user from deleting or changing valuable material. In

reality, however, this rarely occurs since users can be held accountable for their actions and these actions reflect on their professional reputation.

Networking expertise: matching talent to task


“What is useful, isn’t always used.” Alan Dix, University of Birmingham

Witharaftofcollaborationtechnologiesatourfingertips,wenowallhaveachoiceastohowwecollaborate.However,onesizeclearlydoesnotfitallandsuccessoftenrestsonthesetechnologiesbeing widely adopted across organisations.

There are many academic studies as to why some technologies are adopted and others are left to collect virtual dust. The ways we decide to select one collaboration tool over another often comes downtoanunconsciouscost-benefitanalysiswhichincludeseffort,risks(financial,socialandpsychological) and the expectation that the technology will actually improve our productivity and get us to our goals.

In order to adopt technologies generally, we need to have ticks against the 3U’s: Useful, Usable, Used [10].

Useful

Usefulness includes a number of critical factors:

• Let’sstartwiththeimportantthing–thetask. Task and technology are intimate bedfellows, particularly where collaboration is concerned. Discussing ideas, making decisions, designing things and delivering a speech all have different aspects to them and are supported to a greater or lesser extent by different collaboration tools. Delivering a speech over instant messagingmightnotworktoowell!Weneedtobelievethatthetechnologyfitsthetaskathand and gets us to our goal, before we consider using it. Twenty-eight per cent of executives interviewed in the Collaboration Paradox thought that the technology simply didn’t suit their type of work [3].

• Anotherkeyfactorisaroundwhether we believe that the technology will enhance our productivity?Partiallythisisaboutconfidenceastowhetheritwillworkinthefirstplace,with 32% of executives saying that they thought that the technology didn’t work reliably enough to use it [3].

This is linked to other considerations such as:

o Concurrency – can we do other things at the same time? E.g.being on an audio conference means that people can IM or email – however, as our previous research into ‘The Balanced Communications Diet for Business’ [6] showed, this may not actually make us more productive because we may be paying more attention to our email than the audio conference.

o Immediacy – is the technology synchronous or asynchronous? Are the people that you need to communicate with available at the same time as you? How much interaction is required? So, although telephone or face-to-face are more effective in terms of social presence, text-based, asynchronous communication might be faster if people are not available at that moment in time. However, although an email may reach an inbox immediately, it doesn’t mean that people read it immediately.

o Cost – simply is it going to break the bank to do it?

• Anotherkeyaspectiswhetherwearefamiliar with the people we are collaborating with and, in particular, whether we trust them. As we work together we start to develop shared norms, a common language, deeper understanding and trust. All these make collaboration both easierandmoreproductive.Thisfamiliarityhelpsustofillinthegapsevenwhenwecan’thearvoicesorseepeople.Thirty-fivepercentofexecutivesbelievethatcollaborationtechnologiesare only effective with people that they know [3].

Thiscanbeparticularlydifficultaswetendtotrustpeoplemorethatseemsimilartous.Invirtual teams, people tend to use their imaginations and build stereotypical impressions of others based on the limited information available to them – they often assume similarity and tend to reveal cues about themselves that reinforce this similarity.

Useful, usable, used – why do people adopt or reject collaboration technologies?

28% of executives interviewed in the Collaboration Paradox thought that the technology simply didn’t suit their type of work.

Evaluation of actual

experience

Channel usage model

Experience evaluation

Useful Usable Used

Perceived value


Usable

Usability is a relatively mature design discipline now and it is all about ensuring that technologies are designed to support the variety of ways in which users work, are intuitive and as effort free as possible. ‘Usable’ will depend on user perceptions of a number of factors:

• Effort expectancy – this is simply about the effort that we believe is required to use the system.Ifpeoplethinkthatthetoolsaretoodifficulttouse,requiretoomanypasswords,aren’tcompatiblewithotherthingsthattheyuseanddon’tseethebenefitofinvestingtimeinlearning how to use them, then it is highly unlikely that they will be adopted. Sixty-nine per cent of executives found collaborating with individuals and teams requires a high degree of effort in itself. Thirty-two per cent said the technology for collaboration required too much effort and 20% also said it wasn’t easy to use [3]. All this often adds up to so much effort that people simply decidetodowhattheythinkistheeasiestthing–whichmightinvolveflying10hoursaroundthe world to meet face-to-face! To be usable, effort needs to be reduced on all counts.

• Education and training – ideally, the technology should be as intuitive to use as possible. However, just assuming that everyone will ‘get it’ without any education or training may cause peopletotakemuchlongerontasksthantheyneedto.Ifusersfindittakesmoreefforttolearnthan they think it’s worth, they are unlikely to use it again.

• Facilitating conditions – this is all about the context of use. For a start the technology needs to be both available and appropriate to use where we (and the people we are collaborating with) happen to be. Is the infrastructure up to it? (This can be a big factor when working across multiple countries or on the move.) Does the organisation support it? Is it compatible with systems that our fellow collaborators are using?

• Social presence – this is all about the ability of the technology to convey some of the more subtle things that we would normally get in a face-to-face encounter, e.g. non-verbal cues, vocalinflection,whethertheuserispayingattention.Obviously,face-to-faceoffersthegreatest amount of social presence followed by technologies that provide both audio and visual capabilities, followed by text-based. However, different people will have different preferences for social presence depending on where they are and what they are doing.

Tasks which need high levels of discussion or individual, personal interaction generally need higher levels of social presence than those that are primarily about information exchange and require little discussion.

Used

Technologies that are both perceived to be both useful and usable have a better chance of being used. However, there are another couple of factors that come into play that determine whether they are adopted or not – who else is using them and whether people are educated that they exist and have been taught how to use them effectively.

• Education–50%ofexecutivesidentifiedtrainingasthebiggestsinglebarriertotheadoptionof collaboration technologies in BT’s Collaboration Paradox research [3]. A study by Wharton[9] foundthatorganisationswouldbenefitbyshowingtheiremployeeshowtobestexploitthetechnologies that they have been provided with. This includes guidance as to what tools are suitable for what tasks as well as guidance around appropriate behaviours. Telling (and showing) employeeshowtheirjobcouldbenefitfromthedifferenttoolsavailable may seem obvious but is rarely done. This should also been done at a team level, with norms for day-to-day collaborationbeingdefined.

Educating people about appropriate usage is also important – many organisations are now teaching new inductees about email and social media etiquette (and have social media policies). However, other channels like voice and video are often neglected and ignored. Education needs to encompass the whole rich swathe of tools available in order for people to understand their strengths and weaknesses and theirrulesandetiquettesandbecomfortableandconfidentinadoptingthem.

• Social influence–oneofthemostpowerfulinfluencesonwhetherpeopleadoptcollaborationtools is whether their peers and superiors are using them. Of course, the other way is to mandate use (with many organisations forcing employees to collaborate remotely by putting in travel bans). The other strategy is to reward, recognise or incentivise use.

Lurkersonsocialmediasitesareafascinatinginstanceofpeoplewhousesocialcollaborationtoolsand see value in them but contribute nothing back. These individuals are more likely to actively contributewhentheyareremindedthattheircontributionisuniqueandthattherearebenefitsassociated with that contribution to the group and its outcomes, e.g. feeding back that collateral on a Wiki helped to engage a key customer.

All this is inevitably linked to the wider culture of the organisation. Studies have found that success of the adoption of collaboration technology in organisations is related to:

• Theleveloforganisationalandmanagerialsupportforcollaborationtools

• Thelevelofparticipationofseniormanagementandotherkeyinfluencers(e.g.peergroups, coaches, mentors, managers) in the use of collaboration tools. Managers should actively use collaboration tools to host important discussions or to make major decisions that require participation

• Thelevelofgeneralacceptanceanduseofcollaborationtoolsamongalllevelsoftheorganisation.

By keeping the 3Us in mind when introducing collaboration technologies, organisations are far morelikelytogetthebenefitsthatbettercollaborationcangivewithoutpeopleautomaticallydefaulting to face-to-face.

Education needs to encompass the whole rich swathe of tools available in order for people to understand their strengths and weaknesses and their rules and etiquettes and be comfortable and confident in adopting them.


Annie Kinsella: “If you build what, who will come?” Ray Kinsella: “He didn’t say.” W.P. Kinsella, Field of Dreams, 1989

So, in the light of the vital role of management and peers in the adoption of collaboration technologies and the fact that effective collaboration is so critical for businesses to get right, one would imagine that the ways in which people collaborate would be a key strategic focus for organisations.

However,thiswasnotthefindingsofasurveythatweconductedwithasmallsampleof12 global businesses. Of these 12, one had a head of collaboration, two had heads of knowledge management who had collaboration as part of their remit, two had Human Resources people looking at collaboration but not responsible for it and the rest said that it was the infrastructure and IT guys who were responsible for collaboration as they provided the tools and platforms through which collaboration could take place. However, the issue with the latter strategy is that the IT and infrastructure guys do a really good job of implementing a multitude of collaboration tools but then forget to tell people that they exist and, if they do tell them, they often don’t train people to use them effectively.

Although technology underpins the new world of collaboration, it is the culture of communication and collaboration that gets it used. This requires HR, IT, business leaders and employees to work togetherandensurethatthetechnologiesfitorganisationalpatternsofcommunicationwhile

providing people with guidance and encouragement for use. It also needs to works reliably and be easy to use.

Newer tools, such as enterprise social media, can drive an employee led revolution in terms of communication as

organisational silos are ripped apart. This, of course, can lead to even more cultural challenges as organisations are forced out of their comfortable command and control mode and more into a model of connect and collaborate. The ability to better leverage human capital, develop better

‘social glue’ and become more agile are all things, over and above that of simple communication, that collaboration tools can facilitate.

As we move into the future, the tools we use to collaborate are likely to become more and more integrated across multiple technologies. It will be easy to move from one channel to another, consolidateallcommunicationsintoasingledesktopandallowaccessacrossfixeddesktoptomobile and corporate device to employee’s own device. Our toolbox for collaboration will support a variety of more or less rich collaboration tools that can be deployed depending on device, context and content.

Some of the more futuristic developments of 3D cloud based collaboration spaces, such as Openqwaq (see picture), attempt to mirror some of the sophisticated interactions that are already present in multiplayer networked games such as World of Warcraft (WoW) and EVE Online and apply them to business.

Screenshot from Openqwaq session (including moose!)

The ways in which these games blend multiple collaboration platforms on a massive scale (with some‘Guilds’inWoWboastingthousandsofactivemembers)hadatrialruninbusinesswithenvironmentslikeSecondLife.ThereasonsSecondLifefailedhavebeenwelldocumented.Italsofailed the 3Us test in that it had no discernible point (i.e. not useful), was horrendously slow and hard to navigate through (i.e. not usable) and attracted few users that you wanted to hang out with for any length of time (i.e. not used).

However,‘gamification’(theuseofgamedesigntechniques,gamethinkingandgamemechanicsto enhance non-game contexts) is currently on a bit of a hype curve – and collaboration tools are getting a virtual environment makeover as a result.

Avatars can be personalised to project our personality, video can be streamed from webcams onto virtual heads, audio can be used to chat, presentations can be shown on screens in virtual theatres, post-it notes can be pinned to shared walls, meeting rooms can be entered for private conversations and instant messaging can be used to comment on events as they are occurring. This is reinventing the real world in a virtual one – but that may help our primitive brains to adjust to a more virtualised way of collaborating by giving us familiarity, choice and richness in the tools we can use.

However, before we get carried away, remember that making collaboration tools available does not guarantee their use by employees or by customers. Technology is only part of the equation.

From ‘command and control’ to ‘connect and collaborate’

Although technology underpins the new world of collaboration, it is the culture of communication and collaboration that gets it used.

Collaboration is all about people and participation. Consider why people would use these tools, the ways in which current collaborative relationships can be enhanced and the culture in which these tools sit.


Collaboration is all about people and participation. Consider why people would use these tools, the ways in which current collaborative relationships can be enhanced and the culture in which these tools sit. One tool to help you to do this is the BT Freedom Evaluator (www.bt.com/freedomevaluator) which can gauge how free or tethered your workforce is.

Onemessagecomesthroughclearly–onesizedoesnotfitallandchoiceisvitaltomoveintoamore connected and collaborative future where face-to-face is no longer the default. However, it is also vital to ensure that these powerful tools work alongside each other so that we can do the same–onesizemaynotfitallbuthavingasingleintegratedtoolkitofferingachoiceoftoolscansimplify and accelerate people’s ability to collaborate.

1. Millard,N.J.andGillies,S.(2011),WorkShift: The Future of the Office, BT White Paper.

2. Ofcom (2012), Communications Market Report, Ofcom White Paper, 18 July.

3. BT/Hickman/Davies (2012), The Collaboration Paradox, BT White Paper.

4. Pentland, A. (2012), The New Science of Building Great Teams, Harvard Business Review, April.

5. Fayard, A. & Weeks, J. (2011), Who Moved My Cube?, Harvard Business Review, July-August.

6. Millard, N.J. (2012), The Balanced Communications Diet for Business, BT White Paper.

7. Future of Work Consortium (2012), Future of Work 3 Executive Report, Hot Spots Movement/LondonBusinessSchool.

8. McKinsey (2012), The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity Through Social Technologies,McKinseyGlobalInstituteWhitePaper,July.

9. Brown, S.A., Dennis, A.R., and Venkatash, V (2010), Predicting Collaboration Technology Use: Integrating Technology Adoption and Collaboration Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Autumn, Vol. 27, No. 2.

10. Millard, N. (2005), Designing Motivational User Interfaces, VDM Verlag.

Withthanksto:ProfessorLyndaGrattonandtheFutureofWorkConsortium/HotSpotsMovementatLondonBusinessSchoolandBT’sveryownDrRosieButterworth.

References

Tofindoutmore…Ifyouwanttofindouthowtopowerupyourprofessionalworkers, get access to the other papers in this WorkShift series plus much more, go to www.bt.com/poweringup

For more information as to how BT could provide one toolbox for all your collaboration needs, check out www.bt.com/btone/oneforall

For more insights and discussion, drop into our blog at http://letstalk.globalservices.bt.com/en/ or follow ‘BTLet’sTalk’onTwitter,Google+,FacebookorLinkedIn.

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