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Enterprise Collaboration – What's Your Problem?

Standing in line at DFW this morning, I glanced over to scan the latest TSA signage. The placard asks that anyone who has feedback to vista the TSA blog. Huh? Why use a blog that’s intended primarily as a publishing channel to collect feedback? That struck me as odd. So, I went to the site to have a look.

After visiting the site, I was pleasantly surprised that they have a pretty decent, content-oriented blog going with a good voice (from Blogger Bob, no less) and a link to a feedback form.  So, no, the TSA isn’t trying to use a blog as a feedback platform like the poster suggested.  But the issue of matching the right tool to the right problem is still a good one that many of our clients struggle with (or don’t but should).

This week I spent some time with the CIO of a global financial services company who is laser focused on establishing a set of internal social media capabilities (or enterprise 2.0, if you prefer) and experimenting.  He told me about a platform that one of his incumbent vendors “lent” him for the rest of the year and that he has several communities in various states of readiness.  My question to him was “what collaboration problem are you trying to solve?”  After talking for several minutes, we came up with a few business things that could benefit from better collaboration, better idea generation and better sharing.  But I explained that I don’t think this is enough.

To help focus and prioritize efforts, I suggested that he line up the kinds of collaborations and interactions he’s trying to address, what current business problems that they might improve and how he would measure the efforts.  Maybe a table like this could help your e2.0 efforts too?

Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise Collaboration Alignment

In the case of my CIO colleague, he told me about using some of the tools to get ideas from the field in detecting and preventing fraud.  This is a business problem with high importance and visibility and seems like one that could benefit from collection and magnification of the best ideas in the field.  The next steps for him are to make sure he has “the right” tools aligned with that goal and some way to measure the initiative’s impact.

How have you and your organization aligned the right business problem to the right collaboration tools?

  • http://www.agilityissensible.com Aleks

    Chris –

    A couple of observations –

    – It takes a strong-minded individual to face the question of ‘what problem are you solving?’ without getting defensive. Often, the question had not been thought through to sufficient level of detail, and few like having that pointed out to them.

    – I like the chart, but noticed that several points in “Tech Platform” column appear multiple times. Also, the “Business Problem” column appears to be business objectives? If so, there are a number of problems inherent in each of them, and some of those problems likely overlap. Perhaps a dependency model approach would make more sense than a tabular format?

  • http://www.agilityissensible.com Aleks

    Chris –

    A couple of observations –

    – It takes a strong-minded individual to face the question of ‘what problem are you solving?’ without getting defensive. Often, the question had not been thought through to sufficient level of detail, and few like having that pointed out to them.

    – I like the chart, but noticed that several points in “Tech Platform” column appear multiple times. Also, the “Business Problem” column appears to be business objectives? If so, there are a number of problems inherent in each of them, and some of those problems likely overlap. Perhaps a dependency model approach would make more sense than a tabular format?

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  • http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com Avery Otto

    The Collaboration Platform is a 2010 imperative. Afterall Globally at this time our resources are limited both in terms of ecologically, as well as fiscally. The repetition of importance in the chart, for me emphasizes how new the focus is on Community Management and Collaboration. Here is an article on lessons learned from Collaboration perspective:http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/news/?p=85

  • http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com Avery Otto

    The Collaboration Platform is a 2010 imperative. Afterall Globally at this time our resources are limited both in terms of ecologically, as well as fiscally. The repetition of importance in the chart, for me emphasizes how new the focus is on Community Management and Collaboration. Here is an article on lessons learned from Collaboration perspective:http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/news/?p=85

  • http://www.oneplacehome.com Dana Larson

    This is a fantastic article. Everything listed in the diagram is what we are working to solve at companies ourselves. It’s always nice to see likeminded individuals in the enterprise collaboration space. I definitely think that including current or developing new social media tools for increased collaboration is something that needs to happen. With the majority of business people using at least one popular social site, utilizing them in the enterprise will be easy because they are already familiar. This is a great post.

  • http://www.oneplacehome.com Dana Larson

    This is a fantastic article. Everything listed in the diagram is what we are working to solve at companies ourselves. It’s always nice to see likeminded individuals in the enterprise collaboration space. I definitely think that including current or developing new social media tools for increased collaboration is something that needs to happen. With the majority of business people using at least one popular social site, utilizing them in the enterprise will be easy because they are already familiar. This is a great post.

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