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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.