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)