Digital collaboration tools are designed to help people work together and learn from one another by facilitating knowledge sharing. But they also provide a window into who knows and does what in the organization. People who collaborate regularly and those who collaborate sporadically have different needs and require different types of tools.
Eric Hawkins, director of engineering at AppFolio-a digital technology firm that offered cloud-based business software to small and medium sized companies-was shocked by an unusual request from his senior leadership team. Could Hawkins and one of his agile teams build a check scanner feature inside their management software? AppFolio's founders had instructed to never build a check scanner; providing technologies to help businesses move into the digital era was a primary company goal. A scanner for paper checks would contradict the hard-won culture of software innovation and project self-selection that AppFolio and Hawkins' teams lived by. Hawkins also worried that creating a new team to work on the check scanning project would cause workload and morale issues. But the sales team believed that this technology could close deals with larger, more complex property management companies, some with managers who wanted the check scanner feature. Several large-scale deals were on the line. Hawkins quickly assembled an agile market validation team and considered two options: hold fast to the company's values and refuse to build the check scanner feature or capitulate and build a basic check scanner with minimum functionality. Engineers would likely consider this a "loser" project, yet sales might get a boost that could open a new revenue stream. Hawkins had to make his decision quickly.
Lately, people analytics--using statistical insights from employee data to manage talent--has gotten a lot of hype and even won mainstream acceptance. Yet most firms lack an understanding of which talent dimensions drive performance in their organizations. Why? Their analytics examine only the "attributes" of employees, when people's "interactions" are equally, if not more, telling. Research shows that a lot of employees' success can be explained by their relationships--something that's the focus of a new discipline, "relational analytics." The key is finding "structural signatures": patterns in social networks that predict who will have good ideas, which employees have the most influence (it's not senior leaders), which teams will be efficient, which will innovate best, where silos exist, and which employees firms can't afford to lose. This article describes what indicators to watch for and how most firms already have the raw material they need to build relational analytics models: the "digital exhaust" from their internal communications.
To identify the value that social tools can bring to companies, the authors split employees at a large financial services firm into two groups, only one of which used an internal social platform, and observed them for six months. Those who had used the tool became 31% more likely to find coworkers with relevant expertise and 88% more likely to discover who had useful connections. Internal social tools can help employees make faster decisions, develop more innovative ideas for products and services, and become more engaged in their work and their companies. But companies that try to "go social" often fall into four traps: They (1) assume that Millennials will embrace social tools at work; (2) struggle to foster personal interaction that builds trust and promotes knowledge sharing; (3) fail to recognize how learning occurs on social tools; and (4) focus on the wrong data. The authors offer advice on how to avoid these traps.
Quick-and-dirty prototypes can help move projects forward. But many companies rapidly follow them with polished prototypes--and everyone focuses on the prototype, not on the remaining ambiguities about the problem the product is meant to solve or the obstacles in the way. This "innovation blindness" can delay a project or sink it altogether.
How do effective managers get employees to act promptly? New research suggests that it's by making their requests at least twice. Though you may think redundancy is unnecessary and even a waste of time, a new study indicates that it helps your message cut through today's information overload.