David Coleman: The ability to get up and running and to put a team together from anywhere, quickly, in an ad hoc manner, without a lot of overhead is certainly an advantage. It makes companies more nimble and allows them to get access to expertise more efficiently and target it toward a specific task or goal. Those factors inevitably affect the bottom line. I’ve heard companies cite numbers where they’ve been able to improve productivity by 20 or 30 percent.
Phillip Lanzafame:
People are learning to work more efficiently and it saves them time. In our particular business, it’s tricky because so many of our people are clinically oriented, taking care of patients, so they’re not in front of a computer all day. They need to work when they have time. That may be at two in the morning or weekends or nights.
Nancy Tennant Snyder:
Before this technology, we would [brainstorm ideas] face to face. Now we can do that globally. We may ask people from around the world to collaborate and innovate on new water products, for example. When you have global reach, the amount of ideas that we get are exponentially more than if we did it face to face. We use a blog capability, so an idea will build on an idea. There are human factors around innovation. It taps into our human need to dream, to be the one in the group that creates the next new product. |
|
| |
| Q. How are companies successfully integrating virtual collaboration into their business models? |
| Snyder: : Some of it is like setting up any team, but some of it is very complex due to time, space, language, technology differences. You need to think about cultural differences and the different technology people are using. When you’re in a corporate environment, you have to think about what time the meeting actually will be if we have participants from around the world. |
| Lanzafame: Like anything, you have to have a business purpose, something to drive it. You must create incentive for people to go there. It might not be company-wide at first, but once people understand the rationale, they’ll use it. Our marketing people use it to distribute stock photos. Human Resources uses it within a secure environment to manage job descriptions that are constantly changing. Some people using it in a business intelligence sense, FTPing data into various applications and sharing information in a secure environment. There really is no one flavor of collaboration. |
| Coleman: What we’re seeing is more partnerships, joint ventures and teams where members come from multiple organizations. Initially when we looked at collaboration, 20 years ago, most of it was occurring within organizations between colleagues. Now, it’s more outside the organizations, which means some sort of standardization of technology. That’s what I refer to as the fourth stage of collaboration. |
| |
| Q: Are there any potential pitfalls? |
| Lanzafame: Some things work better for different organizations than others. It depends on how computer literate the organization is. We tried doing some discussion boards, chats, things like that. They weren’t received well. It’s kind of a trial and error. You have to experiment with different aspects and features. |
| Snyder: If you’re running a meeting, you really have to think about how you’re coming across. You can’t tell if [the participants] are not responding to you because you can’t see body language. You have to sort of keep taking roll call—making sure that everyone can hear you, that they’re understanding you—and practice inclusive behaviors, so that everyone feels like they’re part of the effort. |
| Coleman: The collaboration space is littered with people who have been pioneers who have arrows in their backs. Don’t get too enamored with the technology. It’s unfortunate, but everyone focuses on the technology. We look at people, process and technology, and believe that tech is only 20 percent of the solution. Focusing on the people and the process means picking the technology to support those people in whatever they’re working on. |
| |
| Join the conversation by e-mailing special.sections@newsweek.com. |
|
Related Articles:
FIVE STAGES OF COLLABORATION
<< Back to Driving Innovation |
|
|
|
