Managing the Digital Workplace
Session 4: Managing teams and communities and driving adoption of participative media in organisations
Léon Benjamin
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Big Picture - Collaboration Landscape
Issues Old Economy New Economy
Markets Stable Dynamic
Scope of competition
National Global
Organisational form
Hierarchical Networked
Source of value Manufacturing core Services core
Key growth drivers Capital/Labour Human/social capital
Key tech drivers Mechanisation Digitisation
Tastes Stable Changing rapidly
Skills Job specific Broad/adaptable
Regulation Command & control Market tools, Flexible
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Big Picture - Collaboration Landscape
Quotes• “The future of a company is less about the nature of its issues, and more
about its capacity to invent social structures able to solve them” Jean Francois Noubel
• “We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.” R. D. Laing
• Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority. Cluetrain Manifesto (circa 1999)
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Exercise 1 – The Network Leadership Game
What• Planning game tool for community leaders, adoption practitioners• Built on a world class mathematical simulator (Netsim)• Based on the work of Ken Thompson and his theories on
bioteams as a model for organisational designPurpose
• We use this tool to teach leaders on how to create and maintain successful virtual communities
• To help community leaders understand the effort and reward of leading communities• “Managers get their power from the top, leaders get theirs from the
bottom”Community Use Case
• I want to crowd source ideas for reducing our manufacturing costs
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Game Dynamics
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Community Leader Activities
1. Members• Major goal of leader is to create and sustain a critical mass of members• Recruitment takes many forms – electronic (email, notifications), senior leader
support (verbal, written, call to actions) offline meetings, network effects, promotion through employee comms channels
2. Leaders• This activity is about recruiting leaders. Communities often need other leaders to
share the responsibility for maintaining a healthy community• Leaders coach and train members (how to, solutions) and recruit new members• Leaders define and maintain community purpose and outcomes
3. Community environment• This activity is about the design of the community. What we call dressing up. It
includes• Visual design, format, page structure• Devising clear purpose definition. What’s in it for me?• Sourcing and organising content
4. Trust/Alignment to purpose• Moderation – keeping it safe
• Maintaining relevancy5. Execution
• Connecting people• Publishing stats, show casing best practice• Sourcing and sharing content from around the entire community/platform• Teaching/coaching
Exercise 2
Value proposition for new collaboration service
WebEx Collaboration Service
Business Landscape
Business requirements• Save £m on teleconferencing costs across 5,000 people• Quantitative return on investment measured by use of
VOIP (free)• Qualitative Increased productivity and engagement
measured by surveys• Benefits take 1-2 years to be realised
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Your Mission
Write the email inviting the first 1,000 users• Your WebEx accounts are ready to use• These are ‘super connectors’ – the best connected people in the company• You are the executive sponsor of the project• There’s only one chance to get it right. High adoption/conversion results in faster
benefits realisationChallenges and constraints
• The use of WebEx is voluntary and requires discretionary effort from employees• There is a pre existing audio only conferencing system in use by over 5,000
people today with over 30,000 meetings taking place every month• You need to convince people to switch to WebEx given that ‘old habits die
hard’• How can people be persuaded to use headsets and video?• How to answer “what’s in it for me?”
• People aren’t really interested if the company’s saving moneyThe Rules
• Use the information provided to write a short, persuasive email not more than 500 words
• You have 30 minutes• Read out your email• All students vote yes/no – I’ve been persuaded• Highest ‘yes’ votes wins
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Tour of Virgin Media’s collaboration platform (if time)