knowledgecontact.com

Wanted to call out a blog I discovered through a comment to yesterday’s post: Leading Virtually.

Take a look–it’s thoughtful, positive, with lots of good ideas and insights.

Here’s a sample:

For those who are interested in virtual team collaboration, the concept of teamwork is crucial. But rarely is “teamwork” actually defined. Just as the adage goes, we know it when we see it, but we may have trouble explicitly saying what makes for good teamwork. This week, Surinder sent me an academic journal article by Martin Hoegl and Hans Georg Gemuenden that has great practical application for defining what good collaboration or teamwork consists of. The authors call their concept “teamwork quality”, and define it in terms of 6 facets. They are:

1. Cohesion
2. Communication
3. Coordination
4. Balance of member contributions
5. Mutual support
6. Effort

Go to the blog itself for more on this and other good articles.

I’ve recently signed on as a full time employee of a small start-up, ending a 6 year consulting practice. There were many aspects of the company and product that were compelling for me, but also intriguing was the idea of being part of a remote workforce.

The company has team members in New York, Seattle, Bangalore and Poulsbo, WA–this last location being the tiny headquarters in a picturesque, if sleepy, port village on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula. I go there from Seattle about once or twice a week–usually once.

I work from home in my West Seattle office–a great spot fully outfitted from my time as a consultant. In fact, I traveled much more as a consultant than I am doing now as part of this far flung start-up.

But there are concerns. Communication is sometimes a challenge. Email is the most efficient way to communicate to multiple people or to disseminate information on the fly, but there’s a hesitation to rely on it too much. Skype is great, and you can include people–as long as they’re on and available. Email hasn’t gone the way of the 8 track tape for me…not yet, anyway.

Video conferencing isn’t really happening yet, but I hope we’ll begin to use it at some point.

Knowledge transfer can be a real challenge in remote workforce situation. Adoption of social biz software like basecamp gets a lot of positive press but takes a long time to integrate into one’s real workflow. People don’t want to learn yet another application. In our specific case, we don’t yet have an intranet, and we need one, if only to keep everyone on the same page.

And finally, there is what something I’ve seen a lot in my consulting practice. A sense of an information “black hole.” This is an interesting issue because it gets down to the very human issue of not realizing that what I know isn’t known by all. What I have shared didn’t get sent out beyond a small circle. Others may feel left out. In a virtual workforce, this issue becomes compounded.

I’m looking around the blogosphere for others’ experience of these issues and welcome any pointers, ideas, etc. I just read a very positive overview (maybe a little too rose-colored) of the state of telecommuting, a trend that is increasing rapidly as a response to rising gas prices.

And here’s a wiki for managing a remote workforce that is evolving. I appreciated the mention of contact–there is a feeling of being “out-of-it” when you are remote. Even if you talk on the phone, email, skype–there’s still a chance to feel a little adrift. That’s a knowledge sharing issue and a human issue.

And another blog that discusses loneliness among those at home, resentment among those still in the office. Not sure that last one applies to me, but maybe–how would I know? They’re not communicating it to me.

If you have ideas or feedback, let me know. Thanks!

An overview of Larry Sanger’s talk at Outsell’s Go! conference has been around a few months, but I just ran across it on the Digital Universe site in the Blog link.  In this discussion, he cogently identifies what in the biz focused web 2.0 universe goes where…ie, what to do with blogs vs. forums, etc.  It’s not news or anything, but just a nice, focused approach to the most common web 2.0 applications out there:

What sort of Web 2.0 projects will satisfy your customers while keeping your business alive? For publishers particularly of B2B material:

• Use wikis to organize compendia of information that is useful to a large body of people, information that they are thinking about and using on a daily basis, and which they are willing to share.
• What forums are for is the exploration of new ideas. Use forums to discuss proposals, arguments, explanations, etc.
• Use individual blogs for getting personal takes on things out there as and when you wish.
• Use collective blogs to aggregate news about similar interests.
• Rating…
• Use citizen journalism when the people might have leads and insights that journalists might not have.

B2B use of web 2.0 apps is of particular interest and applicability since the audience is more motivated to get over the learning curve than are other consumer groups.  The end user in a b2b relationship needs the tools and can’t count on a lot of external support.  And that’s what makes this usage such a compelling model for these applications.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Ever since Web 2.0 took hold following the dot.com bubble burst, followed by Enterprise 2.0 when it was coined by Harvard prof McAfee, seems like every industry is learning to fold the 2.0 promise into its thinking. While the 2.0 moniker might be tiresome, the trend is good. It means companies and sectors are understanding and implementing the move towards greater connectivity, towards online knowledge and information sharing. I thought it would be interesting to look at a few of the “2.0″ movements out there:

Library 2.0: I’ve spoken to a few librarian friends and the opinion is mixed. Some feel it’s too trendy to last and others think it’s the evolutionary spark needed to make libraries more relevant. Some interesting links: a Ning group called Library 2.0 , a great and influential blog by L2.0 authority Laura Cohen also entitled Library 2.o, and another blog that gets pretty good traffic called Library Crunch

Health 2.0: You’ve maybe even seen some commercials on TV where individuals are involved in a virtual conversation with each other about their various medical conditions–support, information, references, all shared online. HippocraTech does a good job of reviewing some of the better known online platforms for patients and support; some comments include even more. This is a growing area and good to see–one can only hope it will encourage a more active role in one’s personal health. Health 2.0 is a wiki for the growing movement.

Office 2.0: No, it’s not the second season of Office. It’s specifically aimed at all the tools and applications that make a traditional workspace virtual. It’s aimed at the wireless worker and the wireless office. A more specific interest than Enterprise 2.0. Google is said to be driving this movement with its online set of productivity tools. Open Office is another site that supports applications for the virtual office. Office Two Point Zero is a site with a healthy following and the stated mission of “I’m out to prove that a web browser and online services are all you need to get the job done.”

Lunch 2.0: a growing organization of business focused people and groups that host events to network and share information. The online component is comprised of blogs, wikis and social networking tools like facebook. The interesting thing about Lunch 2.0 is how it intersects the virtual and real worlds of networking. Its got participants in a number of major cities around the world.

And finally, there is All Things Web 2.0, a collection of more 2.0 organizations, applications and sites than anyone really wanted or asked for. Pretty much begs the question of whether 2.0 is over-used, but it still offers some interesting links.

In all, the move to online networking is–can we say it?–done. If your organization or interest hasn’t already moved online, there’s someone out there working to make it so right now. This is good, but one wonders: when will 3.0 really get under way?

There’s a news story out recently about Whole Food’s CEO John Mackey’s online blogging and board commentary that crossed a line, causing Whole Foods to initiate a rule around blogging.  To whit: refrain from posting items that would be injurious to the company or that would reveal competitive information.  I think Microsoft already has that rule: Don’t be stupid.

Mackey was apparently (I will not take advantage of the obvious pun here) feeling jolly about the imminent acquisition of Wild Oats, the competing natural food chain they wanted to buy. He posted several negative comments about Wild Oats, its management and its stock price anonymously on a number of boards; the FTC discovered the posts and engaged in some wrist slapping.  Mackey insisted he was just having some fun…gotta wonder if he’s not busy enough with his official responsibilities.

In a July entry on his Whole Foods blog, Mackey said that he wrote the external postings anonymously because it was “fun,” and he claimed that he never intended any of them to be associated with him. He added that the comments sometimes were his personal opinions and at other times were efforts to play “devil’s advocate” with online readers.

Seems common sense, as Voltaire noted, is not so common.

Library Journal has an interesting review of social knowledge sharing tools in a recent article entitled 2.0 for Readers. The article focuses on the “RA,” or Reader’s Advisory services which include reader and library staff notes, reviews and overviews of books in the stacks, making the information librarian that much more prepared to help patrons find what they’re looking for…and more.

Makes sense.  Librarians are the world’s information moguls, born to annotate and organize the exponentially growing universe of knowledge–makes sense that they would “grok” the applicability of 2.0 tools to their needs.  Seems like libraries, in fact, are making extraordinarily good use of the 2.0 tools available and tweaking/designing more and better ones to boot.

Currently, this old-school annotation is undergoing a transformation, thanks to the tools and applications of Library 2.0. As Michael Casey and Laura Savastinuk define it, a Library 2.0 service is one “that successfully reaches users, is evaluated frequently, and makes use of customer input” (see “Library 2.0: Service for the Next-Generation Library,” LJ 9/1/06, p. 40–42). The entire point of RA is to reach readers. The very act of RA, suggesting titles, getting feedback on those suggestions, and using that feedback—in conversation with the reader—to adapt, retool, and refine additional suggestions is a highly evolved process of frequent, if not constant, evaluation and use of reader input.

The part of this scenario that really pulls librarians out of the stacks and into the streaming conversation of users is the invitation to readers to give feedback, share information, make suggestions.  I have to think that Amazon’s ongoing amazing treasure trove of reader reviews is one of the planks in the foundation here–ever since Amazon hit the big time, even detractors had to admit that having access to reader and user reviews was a phenomenal resource.  And libraries are finally seeing how that brilliance can work in their favor.

As the ultimate goal of RA service is to create, maintain, and increase all types of conversations about library material, incorporating readers’ interactions into library catalogs and web sites pushes RA a giant step forward. Suddenly, we can help readers help one another, engage with RA services more deeply, and thus increase the serendipity of RA.

This approach and tool set expands the RA discussion and connects the collection and readers to each other in original, flexible, and idiosyncratic ways. It allows for reader-to-reader conversations sparked by interest, whimsy, and personal knowledge. It makes greater use of librarian expertise as well, offering another way to interact and offer suggestions. This larger and more fluid virtual conversation is in turn amplified by the sociability of the tools that support it, and the result is an ongoing discourse that continually grows and adapts.

Using social knowledge sharing tools will reshape libraries in ways that will make them more a part of the community around them and that will be a boon for everyone.  I love my local library and can see some of these changes taking place in small ways, and of course, the UW library is admirable for its inclusive forward thinking–an emphasis on greater participation with the community, rather than the locked away and aloof institution of the past.

With the proliferation of web based applications to enable contextual networking, it’s easy to think blogging is a thing of the past already…and really, it hasn’t been around that long.  It’s even easier to think of blogging as so-15-minutes-ago when it’s being picked up so broadly inside of corporations and outside, not to mention the dizzying popularity of the indie blogger.

But not so fast. BlogWorks recently compared Second Life and Blogging as a means of getting your corporate message out there into cyberspace.  Second Life has enjoyed, well, a second life in the last year–even though it’s been around for quite a while–as corporations pour phenomenal amounts of money and energy into creating hot spots in the virtual world.  And they get a lot of attention–millions of visits.  But in cyberspace, does “millions of visits” actually mean anything when the average page visit lasts from 0 to 5 seconds?

But back to the BlogWorks post.  The upshot is this: it’s the content, stupid.  Content is King has never been more true than right now in this age of massive online verbiage.  There is simply so much stuff out there, that when real gems show up, they get a lot of attention and the long tail is indeed long.

The comparison on BlogWorks stacks up like this:

Nice.  I think corporate blogs are not only here to stay but will just get more and more interwoven into the way we disseminate information, internally and externally.

Good article by Bill Roberts in CIO two weeks back, and the first line says it all:

New tools can help, but collaboration is still about culture.

Roberts looks at a number of companies that are trying to introduce more collaborative tools such as wikis and blogs, who’s finding the process a success and who’s not and some ideas why.

To succeed at collaboration, experts say, it’s best for organizations to focus first on corporate culture and then choose technology that fits that culture.

“You can’t snap your fingers and say you’re going to be collaborative,” says Ed Colbert, SPHR, director of organizational effectiveness for Dow Corning Corp. in Midland, Mich. Dow’s workforce has been collaborative for decades.

“The culture has to focus on the organization first,” he says. “People have to have common goals. This is the first requirement for collaboration.”

Couldn’t agree more. But more often than not, as the statistics in this article prove, the software is more the focus of attention when the need to collaborate is recognized, which is sort of cart-before-the-horse.

Interestingly, the article focuses on HR for applications of collaborative software–that’s interesting because as Roberts admits, HR tilts towards people over software and collaborative software is…well, software. The HR group, then, may surface some interesting applications of collaborative software that highlight the culture issue.

For example, the search for talent. Talent within, talent without–how do you know it, what are you really looking for, how can you model it. Now those are so-called “soft” issues for which collaborative software may be a god-send. HR team X in Europe is looking for something to match the position profile as created in California. Not a perfect match. The issue becomes then not just one of feedback, but one of documentation, sharing and learning. In fact, there may be some blind spots in the profile from CA that could be vastly improved through feedback from France. Collaborative software allows for just this kind of real time, valuable sharing and everyone wins.

Further, the article notes, there may be regional vacancies that could be filled through collaboration on talent pools in other areas. It’s not just a matter of posting a position and hoping the right (or wrong) person finds it on the intranet; it becomes a matter of surfacing the best and sharing the news, including adjusting that job profile to better suit the actual requirements.

Executives that are coming to Web or Enterprise 2.0 now are likely facing a company that is deeply silo’d, accustomed to a hoarding mentality around information. Information is power…and job security. It will be a major challenge to change that culture and to be honest, I doubt all the software in the world would help.

As this article rightly notes, the approach to collaborative software then becomes a subtle challenge that needs to be guided from on high…and planned very well in advance. Without executive sponsorship, the application will likely flounder and stumble towards a quiet retirement.

And can a company get by without having to deal with web 2.0? Not likely. You can put it off, but it’s coming:

In the July-August 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review, authors Neil Howe and William Strauss discuss the effects of generational differences on this trend. Those born between 1982 and 2005 — the first generation to grow up with mobile digital technology — expect nonstop interaction and cooperation with peers. “They will tend to treat co-workers as partners rather than rivals … and use information to empower groups rather than individuals,” the authors write.

In a 2006 Accenture survey, 42% of executives queried believed that knowledge sharing was a critical concern:

The most common obstacles were a lack of common business culture across locations (38 percent), the absence of a knowledge support infrastructure with dedicated staff (37 percent) and a lack of rewards for knowledge sharing (32 percent).

Interestingly, and coming full circle, the author declares that working with that most technophobic of groups, HR, will be critical in ushering in effective, useful and successful applications to allow sharing across groups and geographies. We live in interesting times.

Bob Garfield recently started a blog, the name of which reveals the intense frustration and dissatisfaction of one customer’s experience: Comcast Must Die. His mission statement bears that kind of clarity one reaches when one is at the end of one’s rope:

What I do have is the earnest desire for such companies to change their ways. This site offers an opportunity — for you to vent your grievances (civilly, please) and for Comcast to pay close attention.

….Congratulations. You are no longer just an angry, mistreated customer. Nor, I hope, are you just part of an e-mob. But you are a revolutionary, wresting control from the oligarchs, and claiming it for the consumer. Your power is enormous. Use it wisely.

Jeff Jarvis, of Dell Hell coinage fame and who has since been the mediary-guide-sherpa, leading Dell out of the storm and into the light, recently responded to the launch of the Comcast-Must-Die blog by suggesting another step in his Buzz Machine blog: imagine the company you want Comcast to be.

It’s an excellent idea: I might imagine the Washington Energy Services company I would prefer to deal with, based on my latest experience. One with better online tools that tell me what to expect in the installation, has better post-installation and quick start information both online and in the non-existent welcome pack. One that understands I don’t know the first thing about gas furnaces–that’s why I hired them, and that’s why I need them to be attentive once the thing is in my house and actually turned on. One that in the end, when all is said and done, listens to me when I ask for information or corrective action.

I might imagine a slightly improved Apple that includes the simple stuff in its product manuals, vs. studio grade photos of gleaming products against a black background: how to turn the iPod off, how to use the video conf feature. It might figure out once and for all that while I LOVE my Mac, my Mini, my iPhone, and my iPod, I still have a yearning for a native Mail app that interfaces with the native iCal app. And I share that yearning with a LOT of others.

Now, notice I’m not ranting. I’m sharing my vision of what would make these companies ideal for me. Some of this those two companies may never decide to do, but some may help them create a fabulous customer experience and reduce dumb contacts and needless irritation, to boot. Does Apple really need someone calling them to find out how to put their iPod in stasis mode to save battery and avoid having it turn on while it’s in your pocket? A friend of mine who recently bought a Nano complained about the product and said she’d never get another because it gets turned on accidentally in her briefcase….she’s not the only one I’ve heard that from. If you want to guess at how many dumb contacts Apple creates for itself just by leaving these instructions out of their handsome if minimal instruction pamphlet, do a google search on “iPod won’t turn off”–amazing.

Jarvis is suggesting something of importance and relevance to any company out there, namely this simple truth: customers have information that would enable you to be more successful and waste less money. How? By listening to the customer. Most customers, if they care at all about the product or service they’ve purchased from you, have at least one good idea to share with you about how things could be better. Jarvis puts the invite out to start sharing our visions for ideal companies, paving the way to sharing more information with those companies we sometimes have to do business, but would prefer to partner with. Here’s his input on the Ideal Cable Company, if Comcast is willing to listen:

Here’s my shot. Please add yours. Here’s my ideal cable company:

* I want my cable company to treat me with the respect it would give a business and issue me an SLA (service-level agreement) that guarantees me uptime, speed, and response time to problems on the internet, TV, and phones — with penalties if they fail. If a gas station can’t pump gas, I don’t pay them anyway. If a cable company can’t pump bandwidth, then I want my money back — plus. And if it’s mission-critical for me, it needs to be mission-critical for them.

* I want my cable company to guarantee that they will not restrict any content on the pipe I pay for. Let network neutrality start at home.

* I want my cable company to offer wi-fi all over my town and to come to roaming agreements that let me get wi-fi anywhere I travel. I’m willing to pay more for that. But I want it.

* Let me choose what channels I get. (Yes, I know that cable companies make money off of bundling but they need to shout back up the stream and change their relationship with the channels to make this happen or we’ll all revolt against both.)

* Give me the ability to watch the programming I’ve bought whenever and wherever I want, without having to pay extra on-demand fees or program my TiVoesque thing or buy a Slingbox. If I bought it, I want to watch it on my terms, damnit. Kill the schedule. For that matter, kill the channel. Serve me anywhere, not just at home. (And, yes, I know there are copyright challenges but the industry better figure this out or their stuff will be left behind.)

* The wise cable company will seamlessly merge programming from broadcast, cable, and the internet. I shouldn’t care where it comes from if I want to watch it.

* The wise cable company would enable the people formerly known as the audience to become critics, recommending programming to each other as part of their system. If cable companies had a business model built on desire — I want to watch that — rather than on mere monopoly, it would serve them and us so much better.

* And the wise cable company would realize that peer-to-peer would save them money, used well.

* The strategic cable company will start to think two-way and realize that many of its customers are creating, not just consuming. So give us the means to host our stuff.

* I want a means to report bad employees and know that action has been taken to fix the personnel problems that give these companies such a terrible reputation with their customers.

* When they have to come out for a service call, I want a guaranteed time. If something beyond their control happens, then I want to be notified. If they don’t do this, I want to be paid for my time.

What does your ideal cable company look like?

Is your company too busy to listen? Hmmm. Might want to take a page from Dell’s playbook, then.

I have to amend the post below with late breaking news.  Washington Energy Services sent a guy, Mark, out today to view the damage to our deck, inspect the installation and generally get an idea of how the whole project went.  He gave me some tips on the heat duct covers we have, checked things out, very happily agreed to have the part of our deck that got hit repaired, and generally put some things into context for me.

I appreciated his willingness to listen and hear my experience of the installation–and I have made it clear that the product is everything they said it would be and we’re very happy, post-installation support nothwithstanding.

It doesn’t take a lot to right things when they go wrong.  I remember back at Amazon in the early days we used to savor the problem orders and the customers who had fallen into the 20% gap (the 80/20 satisfaction rule).  Why?  Because we knew if we could “flip” the situation, we’d have a customer for life.  Customers just don’t think about companies a lot until something goes wrong.  And at that point, the proof is in the pudding–if the company handles things well (and again, it doesn’t take much, really), alls well that ends well.  If not, well, that’s another story.

So, we go forward from here.  I still think WES could leverage email and the internet a whole lot more, but that’s my bias.  At some point, I’m certain, that option will make sense to them.

Today: thanks Mark!

———————————————————–

I recently purchased and had installed a new Bryant energy efficient gas furnace, the i90, I believe it is. The sales process made the product sound like the perfect solution to heating our older 3 story house. You know how that goes: warm at the bottom, need to wear hat, gloves and coat at the top.Anyway, we bought the pitch from Washington Energy Services and hoped for the best. Just yesterday my partner said, “wow, this thing really does make the air feel a lot better–it’s so different.” I said that was good to hear since their support has been abysmal. She said, “Well, I’d rather have a great product and bad service than the other way around.” And I couldn’t agree more…if that were the only choice in the world.

The Installation

Here’s how things went: we signed up for the installation. When the day came, the truck and driver were lacking in grace and agility, and as it was recycling day, hit and dragged for several feet up our gravel driveway our glass container–crushing and spilling glass through the gravel and up the drive. Picture it: glass in gravel. This is no easy sweep up, there’s still quite a lot of glass in our driveway now.

Next, as the driver barrels up our long, steep driveway, he hits our upstairs deck and knocks off a piece of siding. To tell the truth, I would have stopped things right there if I didn’t have experience with Washington Energy. They put in our gas fireplace and it’s been a great addition to our house in the winter. But still, I was worried about the installation.

But proceed they did, and as with older houses, they encountered a few unexpected problems that caused them to spend more time than expected. I felt for them, they had a schedule to keep. But it’s my house….They finally finished, though, and brought the papers up to sign. I said, would you walk me through how to use this system–after all, it’s apparently very different from the previous one we had. Well, the installer showed me quickly how to use the thermostat, pushed the papers for signing, and I gave up–signed them all and figured I’d learn on my own. Not exactly what was promised in the sales pitch.

Then the duct cleaner shows up–nice guy, tells me what he’d going to do and starts to do it. Only problem is, some of our ducts were screwed into the floor–not a big deal, easily removed, but apparently too difficult for the duct cleaner. I didn’t follow him around to make sure he cleaned all the ducts, but a day or so later, before trying out the heater for the first time, I checked the ducts and sure enough, there was considerable debris still in the ducts that had small screws attaching them to the floor.

Post-Installation

Now we get to the post-installation part of the deal. The paperwork accompanying the Bryant furnace installation was not exceptionally helpful. No easy to find “Next Steps,” or 1-2-3 Introductory Info–nothing like that.

I called to arrange an inspection, which is apparently required and which I paid for as part of the installation. Upon calling the number, I am given another number to call which I couldn’t do for a few days. When I finally did, we got things set up and the inspection took place.

I received a notice from a bank that my “loan” for the furnace would start immediately and I would get a loan packet soon. I didn’t want a loan, I wanted to pay outright. This threw me so I called the original sales agent who told me to call Jim M. at WESco, which I did. Twice. Three times. Nothing, nada, zilch. Not even a phone call back saying, sorry we can’t help you. Talk to the bank. Finally I did call the bank and they were able to help me, though I wasn’t able to run this purchase through my Visa card. Se la vie.

I also called Travis at WESco to let them know they needed to fix my deck and that they really screwed up my driveway; Travis was sympathetic and asked if I’d been given an online survey for this installation. I had not. He said he would take care of that and arrange to have my deck looked at. Never heard back from Travis and haven’t received a survey.

Good product, poor service

So, at the end of this whole process–and I’m sure it’s the end because I’ll never hear another word from WESco again–we’ve got a good furnace and a bad feeling. Is that enough? No, probably not. I read later, online, that perhaps Bryant furnaces aren’t the best in class, and that there are others, like Trane, that might be better. If I were to do this again, and for any future heating needs for our house, I likely won’t use WESco again. It’s too much money to spend to be treated like that.

What could WESco do differently? They could hear me–they could send out the survey, they could respond to my questions, they could acknowledge that there were problems and at least try to take care of one or two. They could include a simple “Quick Start” document that helps me easily do the next steps without bumping into walls at every turn. They could even just point the customer to their non-existent online tools for all kinds of stuff. They could make sure that the installer knows how to explain correct usage of the system so that it works as promised, rather than making the customer ask around, go online, call the company for tips and hints and trial and error.

There’s a lot they could have done. Instead, I’m left with that feeling of having given WESco what they wanted–money, cash on the barrel head–in exchange for something less than I expected.

Must customers have to to choose between Heaven and Hell?