Collaborative Relationships

“A culture of collaboration does not just happen. It must be formed and fashioned by many hands.” Seaburn et al. (1996)

"Teams who could easily reach other teams and access the knowledge they needed were more successful than teams with poor network connections. The ability to reach a diverse set of others in the network through very few links was the key to success." M. Hanson, Harvard

Network and team collaboration must be stoked and reinforced to flourish in organizations just like any other positive social relationship involving groups of people. Introducing and adopting collaboration programs and technologies effectively within organizations has many benefits - better team sharing and team building, cross-silo innovations, better faster communications, understanding and acceptance corporately, better productivity, access to the right resources and subject knowledge, collaborative co-creating, and a memory trail.

Some of the pitfalls to deploying collaboration process, methods and technologies? One size fits all roll-outs and deployments to staff; senior management not seen to be participating in the new ways of collaborating; trying to engage staff without a personal "hook"; and understanding where and how staff sit and engage on the technology adoption curve.

Bottom line, collaboration is a good thing for team success and organizational success if properly introduced, adopted, reinforced and maintained.

Business benefits of Collaboration - Web 2.0, The Human Web

I was asked recently about how Web2.0 collaboration would help businesses and organizations. Immediately three things came to mind:

1. More innovation with Wikis

2. Increased accountability with Blogs
3. Better teamwork with Collaboration

Innovation because collaboration and Web 2.0 offers the ability for colleagues, team members, project members, from anywhere in any time zone to create, collaborate, problem solve and build ideas and products together.

Organizations and their customers, stakeholders, leaders and shareholders benefit from faster, well-grounded product and service innovations.

Before Web 2.0, businesses used only one way communication like press releases distributed via traditional media and with only promotional and informational content. Enter Web 2.0 and there is a whole new accountability factor for organizations.

Blogs are favoured by the public over press releases as a means to the "real" story; consumers, publics, taxpayers can post opinions to news articles, corporate missteps, government public spending. This quite simply and naturally leads to better performance by corporately by enforcing authenticity and candour.

Innovation and transparency: Two very good reasons to move to the human web and we haven't even touched on some of the other business drivers: employee satisfaction, business networking, relationship and team building, cost savings, revenue generation, profitability...

Check out a presentation I developed and delivered on Web 2.0, The New Human Web.

User Adoption and Information Architecture Defined

The realm of Information Architecture is enormously complex mostly because it’s a mix of art and science and related systems that all must work and mix together with the ultimate goal to ensure a site's users and visitors can easily and intuitively use the site and find and access the information they are seeking efficiently, quickly and painlessly.

Every Consultant and Information Architect wants to hear the words “Now that was a really easy application to use", "what a great website”, "it was so easy to...", “What a treat to be able to find what I was looking for” sadly these are not the words spoken about most websites or applications.

So what then are the attributes of good information architecture leading to fast user adoption?

• Combinations of search, indexing, categorization and navigation
  
• Research based in science: search logs, web analytics, entry path analysis, key search terms, top downloads, top visits, top uses, user surveys
• Qualitative research: focus groups and interviews to determine user needs, preferences and dislikes; usability studies to watch how users interact with the tool and see where users stumble
  
• Reviews of best practice sites – there are good examples out there that have been well-researched and well-funded and the results are evident in the intuitive, easy access to information and knowledge
• Well optimized content, metadata and taxonomy strategies – optimized for users and optimized to return top results on search engines
• Content well designed with visual aids and using inverted pyramid style of writing – most important information up top – with highlights, links and paragraph headings and subheadings
• Other credible sites linking to yours which boost your search results
  
• Fluid integration and optimization of your site's supporting technologies: search, indexing, WCMS, RSS, web communications, databases, business systems and enterprise architecture
• Think like a user
  

Mix all these together and like a great recipe the results are something to savour: “What a treat,” “What a positively delicious experience to be able to do what I can here to do and find what I was looking for and so easily,” "Chef I must have your recipe,"“I’ll take two to go please...”

Blogging, collaboration, social networking and connectivity

Eight years ago I was VP of Marketing at a high tech company developing web collaboration applications. At the time it was a tough sell trying to promote and communicate project web sites, team sites and collaboration sites before there was much of a market let alone understanding that users could come together in a dedicated website or space on the web and trade, expand, create, store and retrieve new ideas, documents and strategies.

Fast forward 8 years and we have a whole generation collaborating, gaming, connecting among groups of people and all over the world. Kids when they move these days bring their entire student networks with them. Connectivity is so ubiquitous with this generation that they expect employers to also be offering the same kinds of connectivity, performance, productivity and ease to support their business relationships as they now have with their personal relationships and productivity.

A great example of business catching up with connectivity...I attended a recent IT event - Summit 2008, a session on Web 2.0 and social networking. The room was packed, about 300 people at the session, many grey heads, evidently a mix of managers, business, and senior IT people. The speaker talked about blogs and asked for a show of hands of who was blogging. I was the only one in the room who put up my hand. This surprised me. Not because I was the only one blogging but considering the interest and participation - other sessions were not standing room only - I would have figured that others would be trying out blogs and the new connectivity applications. Not so. Not the generation who are managing the IT budgets and making the business decisions.

For a quick overview of the fast approaching future, just look to your sons and daughters, nieces, nephews, or grandchildren. They're not likely to let you on their Facebooks but sneak a peak anyway because its all about connectivity and relationships. The future is fast on our heels.

IDC and Nortel released a great study today on the world-wide connectivity habits of employed workers (n 2400 globally) - it's worth the price of signup/contact info to download a copy to learn about the 16% hyperconnectivity segment (people using >7 devices and >9 applications); 36% increasingly connected (using between 4-7 devices, 6-9 web apps). And the 36% are moving fast into hyperconnectivity; so soon more than half of all workers will expect their employers to be offering them connectivity. Better to get thinking about this now. Download a copy at: http://www.nortel.com/promotions/idc_paper/index.html

Setting objectives for your web channel strategy

Your website objectives should be based on your business or organizational needs because identifying these needs will help determine content priorities, user tasks, even your information architecture/navigation.

Review the following list of objectives and check off those that apply or that will help your business or organization:

• provide general information?
• educate your clients?
• provide reference information and documents?
• support decision makers?
• handle transactions?
• interact with the broader community?
• have information that only specific audiences should be able to access?
• comply with disclosure and legal requirements?
• gain a competitive advantage?
• develop or improve consultation?
• provide a private work area or space for groups of employees?
• provide a private work space for internal project teams?
• provide a secure work space for external client or partner teams?
• manage information?
• provide institutional information?
• publish institutional information?
• promote the institution's image?
• integrate the wide range of information available across the institution?

How do users find information on your website?

There are three primary methods for accessing, finding and exploring information on a website and each method must be optimized for usability standards so that they are easy and intuitive to use:

1. Access: The website’s first and second level information architecture;
2. Find: Search and information access through search engines
3. Explore: Guided navigation using content indexes to drill down to explore, find and access desired knowledge and information.

When is it time to refresh or create a new website?

There are some important new trends related to user needs and website usability factors that contribute to the decision to refresh and redo an entire website:

• Evolving User/Customer/Stakeholder Needs:

• User needs and audience expectations change due to organizational priorities, new methods of working, and new information.

• · Continually improving website usability standards

• Websites must remain fresh and relevant to users and potential users in order to have them continually return for knowledge acquisition and to want to contribute information and knowledge;

• User expectations for information acquisition, search, retrieval as well as usability standards change frequently as the world wide web grows and adapts therefore it is important that website managers respond to this by undertaking reviews of content, usability and bringing the system up to date regarding the most current standards for KTE (knowledge transfer and exchange) and usability.

• Other tools and information sources become available, therefore organizations wish to remain leading edge in understanding their audience and user needs for information in order to remain relevant; and 
•  Importance of establishing website goals: Organizations that wish to remain the leading or premiere sources of information and by extension have their users and stakeholder continually returning to their website must be cognizant that there are three primary methods for accessing, finding and exploring information on a KTE website and each method must be optimized for usability standards so that they are easy and intuitive to use:

1. Access: The website’s first and second level information architecture;
2. Find: Search and information access through search engines
3. Explore: Guided navigation using indexes to drill down to explore, find and access desired knowledge and information.

• To remain fresh, appealing and bring users back the website must have an easy, intuitive means to upload new knowledge and information in a variety of formats;

• That usability standards are present and systematically accounted for on the website to make the user experience as easy, simple and rewarding as possible.

It is important to note that new technologies and indeed a refreshed design may help to increase the awareness and penetration of the ideas, practices and methods as part of a broader marketing strategy. The corporate or product marketing strategy and any new directions for the website need to be aligned carefully.

Websites are living, breathing and need to be fed

To remain the premiere source of information and knowledge on a given topic, managers of web technologies are increasingly recognizing that their websites need to be living, dynamic tools which must be “fed” very regularly with the best and most current information.

These websites must be so useful to visitors by allowing efficient access and discovery such that their audiences and stakeholders continually want to return to retrieve information or offer new information to keep the website populated, dynamic and continually living, taking in and breathing out new knowledge and insight.

Establishing website goals

There are usually three over-arching goals for organizations that either want to refresh/redevelop their current site or plan a new website: 

• Goal No. 1: A website should have a detailed roadmap that sets out what new content should be added, the new fields required for its database and a set of detailed requirements that will guide the enhancement of the site’s user experience, web interface, its functionality and plot out the information architecture.

• Goal No. 2: Existing stakeholders and users should have access to the most current and robust information and research available that is easily accessible, easily found and available to them in a variety of formats that serve their needs and purposes.
  

• Goal No. 3: New customers, new users and new stakeholders should be able to easily find and access your website's information because the site and its content are optimized to return first page results from the leading search engines and because compelling marketing strategies are in place to promote the website and direct new users to the site.

By satisfying these three goals, your website becomes a leading source of information populated with relevant, timely, comprehensive, and current information that is available and published to the web in a variety of formats so that your users access your content in the way they want, in the format they want, when they want it.

Customer focussed websites

Want to know the secret of great websites? These sites are focused on how their customers find information. Sounds simple, but it rarely it unless intuitive usability principles are added. Check out these websites are my favorite example of great customer focus and design:

1. Web 2.0: iGoogle 

• customization, personalization, choice of many web parts, searchable, scannable web parts that can be displayed on my custom view, RSS options
  
• My iGoogle homepage contains many daily organization and inspirational web parts:
  

• to-do lists
• shopping lists
  
• sticky notes
  
• daily announcements/updates from my kids' schools
• motivational quotes

2. Commercial site: Kohler Bath and Kitchen

 

• excellent example of picklist guided navigation using Flash
• excellent use of search and access technologies
• excellent ways to navigate to get to desired information
  
• customer focused design, interest, movement
• best of smart web design driven by business objectives and satisfying customer needs

3. Non-Profit/Governmental Site: Centers for disease control and prevention (www.cdc.gov)

• best practice usability research went into site design
  
• smart indexing
• best of federated site search
• full level navigation by topic, audience, corporate