Michael Sampson on Collaboration

Don't Answer Your Phone! - on The Smarter Office

Over on The Smarter Office blog, I talk about not answering your phone when you're already in a meeting:

"Perhaps I’ve had it too good, but the most annoying words to hear when getting someone on the phone are “I can’t talk. I’m in a meeting.” Usually I don’t have to wait that long to figure it out though. Something about how they answer the phone—their tone, the slight hesitancy, the distracted quality in their voice—give it away before they even speak the dreaded words. I can usually beat them to the punch line now too—”You’re in a meeting, aren’t you?” In the back of my head, I’m adding – “If you can’t talk to me, why did you answer the phone in the first place?”

Why does this happen?

The very idea of a meeting is that two or more people agree to be present for the other, for some purpose. For an update. For sharing of ideas. For getting information out into the open for the benefit of all in attendance. For all the wrath they attract, a meeting is one of the purest forms of collaborative activity available to mankind. In my opinion, the wrath is not about meetings per se, but about meetings that are poorly planned, badly run, and that require inappropriate attendance and participation. I believe in the power of well-run meetings for collaboration.

And then the phone rings."

Read more: Don't Answer Your Phone!

Culture Challenges and Adoption with Collaboration - A Response to Joe Leno

Joe asked about cultural and organizational barriers within the equation of collaboration:

"Couldn't agree more with the equation Michael, but I'm interested in your audiences' perception (as well as yours) on not just how is this done but how do they deal with cultural and organizational barriers when it comes to the actual engagement dimensions of this equation, meaning connecting, sharing, and collaborating in meaningful ways. I've read many of your writings (enjoyed them all!) and like you, we provide services to help activate collaboration in organizations - including the UX design of collab platforms based on SharePoint and other tools, but we find the greatest challenges come from the behavioral change that is required for people to connect and effectively share & collaborate in ways that are new and with people with whom they may not be familiar. Our experiences show that most effective engagement occurs among people and teams who already know each other and extending that beyond the familiar is a significant challenge for them unless there's a smart way to help breed familiarity among previously disconnected people."

Here's some thoughts:

1. In my presentation, I chose not to talk about the tactical level of finding, connecting, and sharing. There are many tools to do that - such as Lotus Connections (see re Lowe's), SharePoint, Jive, and others. As I said during my presentation, and overreliance on the tactical / technology involved will cause all sorts of problems, such as what Joe has indicated.

2. I talked instead about the strategic level of the equation of collaboration - here's the slide:

When a leader (manager, executive) embraces the equation of collaboration in their sphere of influence, it means:
- Finding opportunities for improving value.
- Connecting collaboration technology with real needs.
- Sharing a culture that supports and extends collaboration.

Activities like these and the disciplines they are composed of go a significant way towards overcoming the challenges Joe indicates. If there is a recognition of value and increased benefit, and user adoption has been done in an appropriate way, then people are more inclined to "connect and effectively share & collaborate in ways that are new and with people with whom they may not be familiar."

Likewise on the collaboration technology one. If there has been real effort put into exploring the current needs of teams and groups, and technology is carefully selected to enable this - rather than just choosing a product based on being aligned with a particular vendor without any pre-purchase due diligence - the post-implementation task is much easier.

3. Re connecting people who have never been connected before. If there's no communication, there can be no collaboration. A skilled online moderator can often speed up this process, but if there is significant value in working together via collaboration technology, make the introductions, stimulate the conversation, and invite people in. Face-to-face interaction on projects or other initiatives helps greatly too.

4. There's more to come on this - most of my time at the moment is going into finalizing the manuscript for Collaboration Roadmap - so keep an eye out for its release (targeting end of November 2011).

In Praise of Collaborative Processes - Taking Turns, Working Together, Developing Shared Understanding

Conversation is about taking turns. I talk and you listen. You talk and I listen. If we're in a conversation and both of us talk at the same time, our ability to hear what the other party is saying decreases rapidly, and we start shouting to make ourselves "be heard." If we're working together on a whiteboard, the same dynamic plays out - to work together means taking turns.

Working with others on the whiteboard is akin to "a conversation with pens." I have the pen and you watch. Then you have the pen and I watch. We know how to do this when we are clustered around a physical whiteboard, but this approach to co-working on ideas, to collaborating on developing shared understanding, is much more difficult across geographical boundaries. And so due to the lack of access to good tools for co-working in real-time, we revert to more stilted ways of sharing stuff - by video conference perhaps, with the video camera pointed on the board. It allows one person to say what they are thinking, but the other person is locked out by design. This is one of the reasons I like the promise of the eBeam approach - it's collaborative by design.

Think about another scenario that could be collaborative. A PowerPoint presentation locks the presenter into a particular flow - the slides are laid out in linear fashion, and in most instances, the presenter wants to "get through the deck" before taking questions. With 90% of the meeting taken up with the PowerPoint show though, there is very little time or inclination left at the end for insightful interaction.

I remember back in 2000 when I taught a final year undergraduate course in Information Systems at the local university. While I can make PowerPoint sing, I deliberately chose to use an overhead projector and printed and blank slides. I wanted the ability to engage with my students, to hear what they were saying and to say something different to what the next PowerPoint slide would demand me to say if that's what the students needed. It's hard to do that with PowerPoint; the medium constrains the message. But by using a more malleable form of conveying information and stimulating conversation - overhead slides - I was able to create a very different dynamic in the classroom.

Is collaboration supported or hindered by the tools you use?

Being a Bully - How Can We Tell?

One of the lead articles in New Zealand this week is about the allegation of abuse at a government department from the CEO to a staff member. The allegations have resulted in previous staff members saying the department has a "culture of bullying."

"The government department whose chief executive is being investigated for an alleged assault on a junior staffer had a culture of bullying, former workers claim.

The Dominion Post revealed yesterday that a complaint about Building and Housing Department chief executive Katrina Bach was being investigated, involving "serious allegations" by a junior employee.

It is understood Bach was allegedly involved in an altercation with Jaime Rawlings in front of several other staff.

The State Services Commission confirmed that an independent inquiry had begun after the allegations were made by Rawlings.

Bach, who has been head of the department since 2002, is remaining in her post while the inquiry is being carried out.

The Dominion Post was contacted yesterday by several people who said they used to work at the department, and all complained of a culture of bullying.

One staffer said: "The place has a primitive culture of bullying ... I've never worked anywhere with such a culture and where staff were so unhappy.""

My Comments
1. Here's my question - how do we know when bullying is happening is happening at work? That is, what's the evidence that would say bullying was or was not happening? Are there particular words that are used? Are there certain decisions made around the promotion of some people and the overlooking of others? Does it get physical (like at school), with pushing and shoving?

2. In my recent article, Being Collaborative - How Can We Tell?, the second potential answer was to look at the "type of language used in the interactions between team members." If this could be an early indicator of collaborativeness, could the same approach also be used to identify bullying?

3. Specifically, what if email messages (or other common forms of electronic communication) inside the organization were automatically monitored for particular phrases, cue words, or patterns. If a match to a "bullying" profile was made, an early escalation to the head of Corporate Counsel, or the CEO, or a Board member (for matches among senior executives) could be sent so that early corrective action could be initiated.

4. This type of analysis already happens in other domains. Could it be applied for good inside an organization?

Being Collaborative - How Can We Tell?

In my Making Collaboration Work monthly newsletter for June, I wrote about three possible ways of seeing whether collaboration was taking place.

Being Collaborative - How Can We Tell?
How do we know if a group or team is being collaborative (or even an organization for that matter)? Are there objective attributes we could look for that would define collaborativeness? I don't yet have a final answer to this question, but it's consuming a lot of my attention at the moment.

One potential answer is to look at the technology used by the team. According to this argument, we could conclude that a team was being "collaborative" if they used collaboration software - Traction TeamPage, Yammer, Atlassian Confluence, Central Desktop, or any one of the other alternatives. Although it's an indicator of collaboration, the use of collaboration software is an indicator I reject. The tools play a very small role in whether a team is collaborative or not - it's how the team uses the tools that matters.

A second potential answer is the type of language used in the interactions between team members. If team members used language to seek clarification from others, to request input, to offer constructive input in response to requests, perhaps that would signal greater collaborativeness in the team. The opposite would be the use of language to tell other people that their ideas were dumb, to tell them that you had the right answer (and they didn't know what they were talking about), and to offer stinging criticism in response to their requests for help. Would the predominance of language of this kind signal that the team was anti-collaborative, and dysfunctional?

A third potential answer is the presence of well-formed collaborative interaction routines. If I ask for help, and you and others respond with input, and I then express thanks for your contributions and incorporate them into my work and thinking, that's a well-formed interaction - and one that looks collaborative. On the other hand, if I ignore what you say in response to my request (because I was just doing it to go through the motions and comply with our team agreement), would that signal a lack of collaborativeness? As with the language patterns, you would need to be able to look at the predominant style of the team, rather than isolated examples.

Of the three that I've outlined, what do you look for in the teams you support? And is there a fourth objective attribute?

Patterns of Effective vs. Ineffective Knowledge Sharing

At an education conference in 2003, Amy Soller and Alan Lesgold talked about using computational approaches for analyzing online knowledge sharing interaction between students. A prime motivator for the underlying research was to attempt to equalize the learning behaviors of virtual learners with face-to-face learners.

At the end of the paper, they outline the differences between patterns of effective knowledge sharing and patterns of ineffective knowledge sharing:

"In general, the discussions in which students effectively shared and learned each other’s knowledge elements were marked by questioning, explanation, agreement, and motivation, whereas the discussions in which the students experienced breakdowns in knowledge sharing were marked by poor (inaccurate or incomplete) explanations, instructions for action, doubt, and acknowledgement. These elements alone, however, do not suffice to distinguish effective from ineffective sequences. This was confirmed through a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test comparing the distribution of the proportions of acts from the effective and ineffective sequences.

The next step is to use the results of the computational analysis to recommend appropriate types of guidance. For example, if the system has recognized that the sharer has explained his Knowledge Element, and the receiver has either doubted the suggestion (case Ci), or said nothing at all (case Di), there is an opportunity for the system, or instructor, to encourage the sharer to justify, clarify, or re-explain the Knowledge Element. If the receiver has acknowledged the explanation, but the system still has evidence that the receiver does not understand the material, then the system might suggest that the receiver attempt to apply the new knowledge to the problem at hand." (emphasis added)

With respect to showing the patterns themselves, see Table 1 above (click it for a larger image). Note the subtle difference between the final responses in the effective vs. ineffective patterns - the effective ones gain "agreement" or "motivation / encouragement," whereas the ineffective ones at best gain "acknowledgement" (eg., "I heard what you said.")

An Anti-Collaborative Pattern: Gossip

Pollyanna writes about the damaging effects of gossip on team performance:

"Work place gossip (like gossip in any situation) undermines relationships. A successful team is built on solid healthy relationships which are built on trust. Trust disintegrates rapidly in a culture where gossip is the acceptable norm. What are you creating in your team as the acceptable norm?

The impact of gossiping in the workplace are obvious to us all, however it's useful to see it written down to remind ourselves why it is so damaging.

Gossiping:
- Undermines your credibility and integrity.
- Creates a lack of trust, both within the team and for the person who is gossiping.
- Damages team unity and cooperation.
- Impacts on performance, usually resulting in an underperforming team.
- Magnifies an issue. Usually a person will gossip about another as a way of avoiding an issue with that individual. This can result in the issue escalating and exploding into something bigger and more charged than it needed to be.
- Negatively impacts on communication, resulting in a team who do not collaborate which impacts on performance.
- Damages reputations, the reputation of the person who is gossiping and the reputation of the person being gossiped about."

She goes on to give on-the-money advice about dealing with gossip in a team.

My Comments
1. There will be (many) times when you disagree with what other people say - that's the nature of close working relationships. But be very careful what you do with that disagreement - devolving into a gossip is to be avoided at all costs. As Pollyanna says explicitly, it undermines trust, credibility and integrity - and without those, you will struggle to make collaboration work.

Barriers to Knowledge Sharing: The Biggest One Isn't Systems

David Zweig, a Professor at the University of Toronto, commented on the problem of focusing on building knowledge sharing systems rather than focusing on the human barriers to knowledge sharing:

"Puzzled as to why some companies were having trouble getting employees to share ideas and tips, the University of Toronto business professor talked to corporate managers and found something in common: they were focused on systems rather than people.

In a research paper he co-authored, Zweig argues that workplaces focus on developing software and therefore do a less-than-stellar job of identifying the barriers to knowledge sharing.

"It really was a case of, if you build it, they will come — but they weren't coming," Zweig said.

Welcome to world of "knowledge hiding," where workers become evasive, play dumb or call a report confidential — even if it isn't — whenever they are asked for information from a colleague. The findings will be published in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Organizational Behavior."

A couple of the human reasons cited in the research:
- The person being asked for the information distrusts what the asking party will do with the information; or
- the company has done a poor job of promoting inter-office sharing.

"The paper suggested that companies can overcome knowledge hiding by having more direct contact and less email communication with employees, highlighting examples of trustworthiness, and avoiding "betrayal" incentives, such as rewards for salespeople who poach another's clients.

Changing a workplace climate from a focus on the individual to a focus on the team should improve communication, Zweig said."

My Comments
1. David's findings are very similar to what I talk about the collaboration side. See my Intranets2011 keynote speech on "You've Got Collaboration Tools - Now What?" Here's slide 44, which I thought of immediately when reading the above article.

2. I like the pro-offered strategies too - build trust in person (thereby make sharing personal), show examples of where it's working and is delivering value, and get rid of organizational things (incentives) that stand in the way of not doing the "new right" things.

Encourage the Quieter People to Speak: Do or Don't?

David linked to my blog post about balancing contributions during face-to-face meetings, and commented on his web site about encouraging quieter people to speak up:

"One thing, I think never works, whether it's a facilitator or technology, is trying to explicitly draw the quieter people into the conversation. In my experience if they feel they are being coaxed, encouraged or otherwise manipulated, they withdraw even more. I think the best approach is simply to create an ultra-safe environment, sit back and wait. If they are ever going to, they will emerge in their own time. "

My Comments
1. I know what's David's saying, and have some thoughts about it.

2. I think there is a clear difference between coaxing, encouraging, and manipulating the quieter people to participate. All of these are not equal - and I think the rules under the different intents are different.

3. In my workshops or seminars, I often ask specific quiet people if they have something to say - not usually early in our time together, but frequently later in the day. As in, "Jane, you haven't said much today. How is this session going for you?" I think it's worked out okay - I definitely haven't had as strong a negative reaction as David seems to imply above. I really want to hear what they have to say - and I can only get that if I ask.

4. What's your experience with intentionally asking the "quiet" people to share their thoughts during a workshop / seminar / meeting?

Being a Leader - and the Role of Collaboration

Michael looks at fostering collaboration when you're the leader. In particular, he talks about the necessity of trust:

"You will only be able to build collaboration if you create a climate of trust. This is a critical success factor, and if you are not honest and transparent, almost everyone will see through you. You must exhibit and DEMONSTRATE a framework of authentic trust. Now, you ask, "How does one build trust"? First, you need to construct a safe environment where your team members are comfortable asking tough questions. Unless the individual team member is exhibiting pathological characteristics, you must embrace the questions either that you do not know the answer to, or that make you squirm. If you surround yourself by YES folks, you are doomed to failure. Your team members must be able to ask “why,” and if you cannot honestly answer the questions, be candid but brief, and indicate that you will find an answer?"

My Comments
1. What applies to leader to team member collaboration also applies more broadly to collaboration between any two people. Without trust, you won't get the "non-trivial actions" (to use Michael's phrase) of collaboration.

2. For the record, the non-trivial actions - or activities - of collaboration are: "brainstorming and idea generation, communication, conflict resolution, cooperation, coordination, deep critical thinking, information sharing, knowledge transfer, negotiation, and problem solving."

3. Last week a colleague asked me to review one of his upcoming reports, and to provide feedback thereon. I read the paper, had some major concerns, and asked for a time to discuss my "major concerns." We set a time, he listened while I talked, he accepted what I said, and took on-board my concerns. We had a trusting relationship before the call; and that trust for me was built further by his response and reaction. I'll be willing to say I have "major concerns" again in the future if he asks me for feedback on another project. Even if he didn't act on what I said, his method of response and reaction - listening, seeking clarification, exploring the idea - was powerful.

4. Trust is built interaction-by-interaction, and can be destroyed very quickly.

5. What are you doing to build trust between the people you work with?