I am on a mission to change the typical business culture on how we collaborate. I am wanting companies to start the process of getting rid of most emails within the organization and to setup a community where everyone can collaborate. Forester reported that 50 percent of people’s time at work is spent searching for something or creating duplicate content. FIFTY PERCENT! That is ridiculous.
Employees are wanting a change and want to contribute in order to make a difference. So why is upper level management scared?
1. Change
2. Loss of control
3. Fear of the unknown.
I am sure all of the above apply but what I think is most in play with organizations is success. What I mean by this is they are happy with the growth path which is preventing them choosing a different path.
For example, I watched a great video the other day and the speaker was talking about one particular company that has been referred too in the past as the following:
* Has been turning creative ideas into breakthroughs for well over a century
* Invented grammar checker
* Invented the laptop word processor in 1989
* Starting building PDA 1994.
Can you guess which company this was…? Smith Corona!
Who is this? They are the best typewriter company in the World.
In the 80s and 90s they were growing and had revenues in excess of $500 million and they thought if one of these small computer companies started something great that they could buy them. Well, I don’t have to tell you that they were wrong.
Point is, they didn’t see the culture shift that was happening because they were successful. Most people only change when something bad happens.
A recent case study that I came across by CTO Denise Hatzidaki discussed how their organization was a year into a multifaceted community. The goals of the community is to make sense of all the data and gather relevant insights both for the organization and the employees. She said: “The problem is not technology, it’s culture. How do we enable people to think differently about how we solve business problems?”
In order to be successful and start the process of killing emails, you need to get buy in from leadership and HR to help change the culture of the business as well as IT providing the framework.
I feel that this cultural shift could be as big as when businesses started using the Internet, so don’t become another Smith Corona.
