July 2014

Fostering a Culture of Collaboration

Culture as a key to unlocking Collaboration with a “big C” SMART Technologies’ Collaboration Leadership Summit Series

This paper sponsored by

Executive Summary

Every company, of every size, in every corner of the globe collaborates at some level. At one end of the spectrum lies tactical communication and coordination between people, teams, partners and customers. The other end of the spectrum is reserved for those who are Collaborating with a “big C” – in other words, who have established the tools, process and culture, and who have optimized their environment for Collaboration.

Those charged with enabling enterprise Collaboration – namely vendors, IT teams, and industry technologists – have all been overly successful at driving an increasing volume of interaction. As a result, many end users are most certainly collaborating more. The question is... are we collaborating better? The answer is often an emphatic “NO!” When polled, most end users express collaboration fatigue, an exhaustion driven by volumes and volumes of collaborative information.

Those enterprises that are Collaborating with a “big C” point to technology as one component in their collaboration strategy – albeit an important one. In order to maximize the effectiveness of today’s advanced collaboration solutions, enterprises must establish a culture of collaboration, back that culture up with appropriate process, and then deploy technologies that support the enterprise’s Collaboration vision.

The real question here is “how” - how does an enterprise truly change its culture to embrace Collaboration with a capital C? This paper is the second in a series of publications that explore the insights gathered from the SMART Technologies Collaboration Council. Here we summarize the Council’s views on the criticality and steps towards of establishing a Collaborative culture.

SMART Collaboration Council Participants

A Top Global Investment Group• Employees: <20• HQ: Dubai, United Arab

Emirates• Locations: 3 countries?

Volker Wessels• Employees: ~14,000 (2013)• HQ: Rotterdam, Netherlands• Locations: ~5 countries

IBM• Employees: 431, 212 (2013)• HQ: New York, US• Locations: over 170

countries

Intel• Employees: 105, 000 (2012)• HQ: Santa Clara• Locations: ~65 countries

Plantronics• Employees: over 3,000 (2011)• HQ: Santa Cruz, CA• Locations: ~25 countries

A Multinational Professional Services Firm• Employees: 175,000• HQ: London, UK• Locations: ~150

countries

A Multinational Banking and Financial Services Firm• Employees: 139,900 (2013)• HQ: London, UK• Locations: branches in over 50

countries

GEC Architecture• Employees: <20• HQ: Calgary, Canada• Locations: 1 country

Stanford University• Students: 16,000• Location: Stanford,

California

Over 10k

1001-10k

51-500

2-50

501-1000

Size of Organization (employees)

Wainhouse Research• Employees: ~20• HQ: Duxbury, MA• Locations: 1 country

Collaboration Council

© 2014 Wainhouse Research, LLC 2

Overview

IT teams across the globe have been tasked with delivering an increasing range of collaborative solutions, driven largely by a massive sea-change within global industry. The members of the Collaboration Council pointed to a shift in the way work gets done, which is impacting the collaborative technologies they are delivering:

In order to enable today’s knowledge worker to collaborate effectively, across borders, intuitively, and without exorbitant cost, many enterprises have deployed a range of technologies. Some are embracing open seating models, creating “collaborative space” intended to foster both in-person and virtual collaboration. The primary solutions used by today’s knowledge worker – email, IM, and conferencing solutions – do an excellent job at driving volume, but very little to ensure quality.

“The great thing about collaborative space is there's lots of collaboration. The challenge of collaborative space is there's a lot of collaboration – sometimes at the cost of project work getting done.”

– Senior Vice President, Plantronics

Email Instant

Messaging Audio

Conferencing

Web Conferencing

Video Conferencing

Social Enterprise

Advanced Technology

Work / Life Harmony, shift

of power to employee

Virtual teams, global

recruiting

Knowledge workers,

Generalists

Localized decision making,

empowered employees

Top-down management,

hierarchical leadership

Centralized workforce, local talent

pools

Work / Life imbalance, employee

owes debt of employment

Factory workers,

Specialists

Yesterday Today

© 2014 Wainhouse Research, LLC 3

Delivering technological solutions is considered a core mission to most IT teams. Similarly, most enterprises are very familiar with creating and updating collaboration processes – for example, assigning collaborative tools to the right users, requiring team meetings with regularity, and providing “best practices” for meetings. However, those enterprises that are Collaborating with a “big C” consistently point to culture as the most critical variable in establishing a successful Collaboration program.

To be clear, the Council agreed unanimously that Collaboration requires the solid integration between culture, process, and technologies. However, most enterprises likely have not focused on establishing a collaborative culture, at least not consciously, with an emphasis on supporting Collaboration. An enterprise’s culture defines its core identity and establishes a base set of values that are shared, communicated and reinforced between employees. In addition, a collaborative culture knocks down barriers and reinforces positive collaboration. A collaborative culture will:

1. Eliminate information hoarding.

SYMPTOMS:

Employees resistant to posting relevant information to a social enterprise system, teams reluctant to engage across functions, email responses saying “why do you need to know this?”

SOLUTION:

A collaborative culture will reward knowledge sharing, setting examples of teams who effectively increase organizational knowledge.

ISSUE:

Employees or teams confuse “Knowledge” with “Job Security.”

2. Establish “when” to collaborate.

SYMPTOMS:

Project teams hold “working sessions” to get tasks completed; teams hold weekly status update meetings to keep management informed; weekly staff meetings are held, regardless of new information to be shared.

SOLUTION:

A collaborative culture helps drive the ‘When’ – focusing group collaboration only when it will drive a specific outcome, and reinforcing when individual work should be completed outside of a group setting.

ISSUE:

Teams confuse “collaboration” with “work”.

3. Instill collaboration empathy.

SYMPTOMS; Team meetings held based on reoccurring schedule with no updates to share, instant message requesting information that could have been easily found otherwise with a simple search, ‘reply to all’ emails noting the sender is “paying attention” but holding no other value.

SOLUTION:

The right culture instills a level of empathy in each team member – users should understand the impact of each interaction. Ask: Is my communication adding value, or simply taking time from my audience?

ISSUE: With fewer and fewer barriers to collaboration, it is easy for users to inadvertently reduce each other’s productivity with unneeded or inefficient interactions.

© 2014 Wainhouse Research, LLC 4

Bringing It All Together

Every enterprise finds itself somewhere along a cultural continuum, with non-collaborative enterprises at one end, often defined by competitive environments and top-down / micro management philosophies; on the other end are the highly collaborative enterprises, with empowered employees, a focus on enterprise-wide success, and the ability to reward synergy and knowledge sharing.

Of course, cultural change is not an impossible task, and those wishing to move from left to right on the continuum can certainly do so. The council reinforced that a strong collaborative culture starts at the top, requires unwavering commitment from the executive ranks, and ultimately must be understood and reinforced by all employees as referenced in the following examples:

1. COMMITMENT FROM THE TOP Executive support and strong leadership is critical to instill a collaborative culture. While this requires the support, buy-in, and execution by every employee, the top brass must establish the target behavior and be ready to lead by example.

USE CASE – PLANTRONICS

Plantronics’ CEO visited a bank that had implemented an open seating environment and realized “We need to do the same in order to attract talent in the future.” As a result, Plantronics moved from walled offices to all cubes and open seating – including the CEO. Of course, who do you think gets the best cubes, those closest to the windows with the nicest views? If you answered “The executive team” you’d be wrong – it’s the interns (who happen to show up at 6am every morning).

“Work is no longer a place where you go, it is what you do.” - Senior Vice President, Plantronics

2. CULTURE AND PROCESS

It is critical to clearly define what it means to be one of your team members. But defining your culture is not enough – you need to back it up with process that supports your core identity. Establishing culture is not just about documentation of course – the real trick is to get every employee marching to the same beat.

USE CASE – IBM

IBM employs over 400,000 employees across the globe. The company has purchased over 100 companies over the past 10 years. In order to instill culture when most of your team members recently worked for someone else, the Office of the CEO established and communicated a core identity: “Our Purpose is to Be Essential.” The entire workforce was subsequently engaged via online, virtual ‘Value Jams’ to establish a related set of core values and supporting ‘actions’. The resulting actions are simple, easy to understand, and reinforce IBM’s values and identity – such as “Put the client first,” “Share expertise,” and “Think. Prepare. Rehearse.” ”Values are esoteric – we needed to translate between values and action”. - Director and CTO, IBM Client Centres

3. TECHNOLOGY SYNERGY

This mix will be different for every company, depending on vertical industry, available budget, and general mission. A key lesson, however, is that deploying technology in hopes of creating a collaborative culture will invariably fail. Supporting your collaborative mission with the proper mix of technology and collaborative solutions, on the other hand, will position you for success.

USE CASE – INTEL

Intel was faced with the challenge of supporting globally distributed teams across multiple time zones. Intel’s development teams also follow the well-defined agile development process, including daily stand-up scrum meetings. In response, Intel’s IT team created several “Virtual Scrum Rooms,” each outfitted with a SMART Interactive Whiteboard. This allowed each room to be used individually or connected to other Virtual Scrum Rooms to enable collaborative white boarding sessions. Each room is also equipped with an independent video conferencing system so that teams can interact naturally while engaged in a white boarding session. “Our scrum rooms address three core challenges: how can we make the time zone overlap more productive, how can real-time communications help teams move faster, and how can we make local team workspaces and experience more effective?”

- Video Collaboration Service Design Manager, Intel

© 2014 Wainhouse Research, LLC 5

The council also recognized a critical shift in the way an enterprise monitors and quantifies the success of its collaborative journey. For example, many IT teams attempt to quantify the success of a new solution by counting transactions, tallying the number of instant messages, conferencing minutes, or documents shared over a given time period. Similarly, it is not uncommon for an enterprise to preach the benefits of group collaboration, but provide incentives to the employee based on individual performance – an obvious contradiction in direction. The council recommends shifting your mindset, changing what you monitor from a transactional and individual level to that of group success and business outcome. Several council members noted they determine the success of their collaboration program on core end-results like improved profitability or customer satisfaction measures. By measuring the success of your collaboration program based on key business drivers – bottom line, profitability, etc. – collaborative behavior is appropriately focused, and commensurately rewarded.

SMART Technologies’ Inspired Collaboration Assessment The best practices referenced by the council are reinforced by data gathered from SMART’s own Inspired Collaboration Assessment – a tool intended to help enterprises determine their collaboration maturity level. The most mature collaborative enterprises employ the following set of best practices that help foster and maintain a culture of collaboration1 within their organization:

1. Develop a collaboration strategy 2. Have an executive collaboration champion 3. Provide opportunities for teams to collaborate 4. Develop strong collaboration skills 5. Address all technical aspects of a collaboration implementation 6. Integrate collaboration with existing work process

Enterprises looking to benchmark their current collaboration maturity level can complete SMART’s Inspired Collaboration Assessment online: SMARTtech.com/inspiredcollaboration given time period. One council member noted “many enterprises preach collaboration, but provide incentives to the employee based on individual performance” – an obvious contradiction in direction.

1 SOURCE: Filigree Consulting

“We asked the question ‘How do you measure the success of your cultural strategy?” The answer: “We consciously don’t measure it. Once you measure behavior you kill it. We expect the benefit comes to the bottom line.”

- Director & CTO, IBM

© 2014 Wainhouse Research, LLC 6

About SMART, the sponsor of this paper SMART Technologies Inc. is a leading provider of technology solutions

that enable inspired collaboration in schools and workplaces around

the world by turning group work into a highly interactive, engaging

and productive experience. SMART delivers integrated solutions of

hardware, software and services designed for superior performance and ease of use, and remains a

world leader in interactive displays.

About Wainhouse Research

Wainhouse Research, www.wainhouse.com, is an independent

analyst firm that focuses on critical issues in the Unified

Communications and Collaboration (UC&C). The company conducts

multi-client and custom research studies, consults with end users on key implementation issues, publishes

white papers and market statistics, and delivers public and private seminars as well as speaker

presentations at industry group meetings.

About the Author

Bill Haskins is a Senior Analyst at Wainhouse Research with a strategic focus on unified communications products and services. Bill has over 15 years of experience supporting, delivering, and designing converged Collaboration services in a global communications environment. He has authored multiple white papers and articles detailing the keys to a successful UCC implementation and delivered various UCC presentations, highlighting his experience integrating Collaboration solutions into business process and enterprise applications. He can be reached at bhaskins@wainhouse.com.

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