- Let me tell you a short story about one
of my personal highlights in helping
to rollout an enterprise social collaboration platform.
The system hadn't been live that long,
and adoption was still relatively low.
But one of the great features
that it had was a conversational thread
that was open to all company employees worldwide.
Now, this was actually the very first time for the company
that anyone with a network login could participate
in any single platform.
So there's this guy who works in finance in the US,
and he's gotta some process that he's not familiar with.
I don't remember specifically what it was,
but it was moderately arcane.
And he decides, oh, what the heck,
and he posts a question about it on the all company feed.
Six minutes later, someone
in the finance department in China posts a response,
I just did this, and here's what you need to know!
Now, these guys didn't know each other.
Didn't even know each other's names before this exchange.
But through the power of collaborative tools,
but a need was expressed, and satisfied between them.
Giving people an opportunity
to ask questions in an open forum can lead
to surprising results.
Most organizations have little visibility into people
or resources beyond their local operations,
but collaborative tools
and practices can extend that worldwide.
I find this tremendously exciting.
I've been lucky in that I've had the opportunity to travel
and meet people in other places.
But you know what, I've also got extremely strong
relationships worldwide
with people whom I've never met face-to-face,
or who I only met after
we've been connected online for years.
Strong collaborative tools not
only expose the hidden resources in an organization,
they give employees a way to make
and maintain connections with people
that they'd otherwise never get to make.
And this has practical implications,
not just feel-good stuff.
Aside from getting input from unexpected places,
having these connections exposes opportunities for working
together that weren't practical or even apparent.
Now, what do I mean by this?
Well, let me give you two personal examples.
Number one, at one point,
I was the administrator for multiple online forums.
And when I wanted to go on vacation,
one of my online connections in Mexico
took over administrative duties for me.
Now, this was a guy I had been in contact with for a couple
of years, but it was at least another two before
we finally got together in person.
Because of our connection,
he got the chance to do something
he was interested in doing,
and I got to have a worry-free vacation.
Number two is a similar story, but the other way around.
I covered for a person in Europe
for a couple weeks, when they were out.
Once again, it was our online connection
that made this possible.
I knew she was needing coverage,
and she knew me and knew I could do the job.
Would this have been possible
without collaborative technology?
Well, yeah, maybe.
But the likelihood of it happening would
have been much less.
It was the visibility
that our connection gave us that made these things happen.