I don’t like reading things like this, I really don’t.  But today I came across a report released by Modern Survey which found that we have a lot of work to do around engaging our employees.  Modern Survey isn’t the first firm to report low engagement numbers, Gallup and Blessing White (along with others) have all found low engagement rates within our organizations.  The questions, approaches, methodology, and data that all of these firms get is different but the trend and overall findings remains the same.  I don’t think we realize how crucial employee engagement within our organizations really is.

Modern Survey measures engagement by asking employees five...  Read the article

A little while ago I wrote an article on how employee collaboration and customer collaboration initiatives solve different problems.  I kept hearing about how one was more valuable or had a greater impact on the organization than the other but the truth was that they indeed addressed different needs for the ...  Read the article

Around 30 years ago James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente (professors at the University of Rhode Island) were studying how smokers were giving up their addictions.  During their observations they developed a model called the “Stages of Change Model” or “Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change.”  I remember reading and hearing about this when I studied economics and psychology at UCSC and thought it actually applies quite well to enterprise collaboration.  This model has in fact been applied to all sorts of behavior changes, not just quitting smoking.

There are five stages: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance.  When describing the stages I will refer to ... Read the article

This post was inspired by a discussion I had with Bert Sandie who is the Director of Technical Excellence at Electronic Arts.

It seems as though nowadays everyone is talking about “gamification” for the enterprise.  For those of you not familiar with the concept, gamification is all around taking game mechanics and concepts and applying them to a business setting.  Think of something like an airline loyalty program or a customer service forum where participants are rewarded and recognized for their contributions but applied to the workplace .  Although we throw around the gamification terms haphazardly, the reality is that there is a lot that is required to understand how games work and what makes...  Read the article

It’s no secret that I’m an advocate for the voice of the employee and for the necessity of emergent collaboration in the workplace.  I don’t like it when my friends or acquaintances (or anyone else for that matter) tell me that they don’t like their jobs, that their bosses hate them, that they don’t feel inspired, or that work takes up so much of their time that they can’t do anything else.  I genuinely feel bad when people tell me these things, it’s sad.

However, I’m still grounded in reality (or I like to think I am).  This means that while I believe that collaboration can make the world a better place I certainly ... Read the article

Last week I wrote an article on “designing for collaboration” and this got me thinking a lot about serendipity which is the unexpected occurrence of events in a beneficial way.  Within organizations this can be something such as an employee finding another employee to connect with to help on a project, ideas being shared which then turn into revenue generating or cost cutting projects, finding some piece of useful but perhaps unexpected information, and a host of other things.

This made me think that serendipity within the organization should be more than this unexpected “happy” thing we hope will happen.  Instead we should plan... Read the article

More organizations are starting to deploy new collaborative tools and strategies as a core part of their business evolution to connect and engage employees.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult (especially at large companies) to oversee these initiatives as typically there isn’t a role devoted to collaboration.  Usually collaboration falls on...  Read the article

I find it interesting that when it comes to collaboration; oftentimes it still need to be sold as a line item.  I mean, doesn’t that seem a bit ridiculous that a company needs to have someone explain why they need something that can connect their employees together?

Some companies have some type of tool in place and... Read the article

When it comes to deploying a collaboration solution for the enterprise there are a lot of things to consider especially when it comes to budgets.  Towards the end of the 2009 I wrote an article called, “Companies Interested in Enterprise 2.0 Need to Take Strategy Seriously,” which looked at data collected from a 2009 report on collaboration.  What I found particularly shocking was the small budget allocation that strategy was receiving.  Towards the end of 2011 Chess conducted another survey on the “State of Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration” and one of the topics we looked at was budget allocation.

Unfortunately not much has changed over the past few years... Read the article

As we approach 2012 I thought I’d create a short post and provide some ideas for collaborative new years resolutions for organizations.

My company (or I) will:

• Educate employees around collaboration in the workplace
• Make an effort to listen to employees and find out what their needs are
• Try our best to inspire employees
• Explore some of the many collaborative tools that exist today, if anything, just to understand what they do. ...

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