Patrik Bergman – Page 11 – A corn of wheat

Collaborate – The third C and the humane digital workplace

This is the fourth post in my journey towards working with a humane digital workplace. It started with “Building a humane digital workplace” (listing the 5 Cs) and followed up with “Connect – the first C and the humane digital workplace“ plus “Communicate – the second C and the humane digital workplace“.

The third of the Cs is Collaborate, and the 30.000 feet overview of our intent with Collaborate is:

Focus on the team
Engage and work together
True team player
Appreciate diversity

Here, my first thought immediately went to Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) and the work of Harold Jarche. He mentions collaboration and cooperation in several posts, such as “In networks, cooperation trumps collaboration” (2012), “Extending collaboration toward cooperation” (2013), and “Retrieving cooperation” (2014). Should we, in a professional environment, ignore the collaboration and go for the cooperation instead? I would say no: We all need to start where people often do their daily business, and then incorporate more. It is not either-or.

In the 2012 post above, Harold posts the continuum all organizations live on:

By starting in the structured and goal-oriented corner and collaborating in work teams, we can accomplish a lot. Collaboration is not worse than true cooperation. In fact, as Harold shows in “Cooperation in the networked workplace” (2013), they complement each other:

One goal for us on the journey towards a humane digital workplace, could be moving towards cooperation. With a sound base in Work Teams, we can incorporate more Communities of Practice and Social Networks along the way. We already explore these in our company, but we could engage even more people and use the right tools to do it.

There are also other things I have started relating to Collaborate, when it comes to typical things mentioned in the digital workplace:

It must be easy to create and maintain virtual teams, no matter your device. This could be done in tools like Yammer or Slack.
We make it mandatory to fill in your expertise and your photo on out intranet, so others can find you easily.
We could set KPIs that measure that you have actively contributed via the collaboration channels we provide. Exactly how, I am not sure of yet (or even of we should do it). But we could surface the fact that you engage actively in collaboration also in the social sphere.

Other thinkers that can guide us here are for example (there are of course many more):

Dion Hinchcliffe on modern workplaces http://dionhinchcliffe.com including the strategic value of social business.
John Stepper on Working Out Loud: www.johnstepper.com
Luis Suárez on no e-mail: http://www.elsua.net/

We could probably do more in exploring which tools fit Collaboration, Communities of Practice, and Cooperation. The above posts are great. Meanwhile, we get several new tools per year it seems, but now we have a continuum to measure them against.

Communicate – the second C and the humane digital workplace

This is the third post in my journey towards working with a humane digital workplace. It started with “Building a humane digital workplace” (listing the 5 Cs) and followed up with “Connect – the first C and the humane digital workplace“.

The second of the Cs is Communicate, and the 30.000 feet overview of our intent with Communicate is:

Open, transparent and active communication are the keys to our success
Listen to others
Share information and knowledge

Here are my first thoughts when relating Communicate to typical things mentioned in the digital workplace:

Use the best available systems for communicating easily with any audience, including between employees. Move away from e-mail as far as possible, since it builds silos without meaningful context. Learn how to move from e-mail from experts like Claire Burge and Luis Suarez.
Create an updated communication plan based on our own needs, while learning from experts like Rachel Miller, Gloria Lombardi and more.
Ensure it is very easy to reach anyone, anywhere, from any device.
Don’t try to convince everyone at the same time when launching new tools. Instead, begin with the people that need it the most and build a solid business case from that.
Business intelligence must be channeled to the correct people in the right time.
All departments must share best practices and stories regularly.
Continue to keep a very detailed and clear use of our documents including archives.
Deliver and execute a new Learning & Development plan, including our version of learning at the workplace. Here, the ideas of experts like Harold Jarche, Kenneth Mikkelsen, and Jane Hart can help.

Yes, all of the above are major tasks for any organization. But they are for sure worth looking into. Going forward without effective ways to communicate, is a dead end for any company.

Connect – the first C and the humane digital workplace

A few weeks ago,, I published “Building a humane digital workplace“. It included a video from my employer Haldex, where we introduce you to the 5 Cs. These are 5 Cs that all employees should embrace and express in our work.

The first of these is Connect. Now I have started relating what we mean with Connect, to some items others have created regarding the digital workplace. Let’s start with the 30.000 feet overview of the meaning of Connect:

One Haldex approach
Connect the dots and understand the bigger picture
Connecting with each other to become a team

My first attempt at relating this to the digital workplace ended up in ideas like these:

Help all employees understand how we do business, so we move in the same direction.
We serve the users with news from the industry we act in.
Ensure people have full access to all necessary systems no matter where they are.
Ensure it is very simple to contact anyone directly, preferably from your mobile.
The Management Team should vocally support the Humane Digital Workplace.
The governance plan must include all aspects of the Humane Digital Workplace, and not only the intranet.
We must connect services to our mail, to draw the structural capital from individual mailboxes into open forums where we can discuss them.
Apply techniques like Working Out Loud (WOL) and Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) to let knowledge into the open and build a networking sharing habit.

Am I going in the right direction? Is something vital missing? This is hard but fun work, and all input is welcome.

The 80/20 principle for the humane digital workplace

Once I continued working with developing our plan for our humane digital workplace (see my previous post), I felt it was easy to get overwhelmed. Everything starts internally with our culture and strategy. But then we also need to take into account the other aspects of what very wise people and companies have presented regarding the digital workplace. And that is where the fatigue can set in: There are simply too many aspects to take into account, and then I haven’t even covered all the wise contributors in the area.

Maybe books like Richard Koch’s classic “The 80/20 Principle – The secret to achieving more with less” can help here? Also for the digital workplace, maybe 20 percent of the efforts we spend can produce 80% of the rewards? But which 20% are key to succeeding?

Most probably, the 20% varies between each company, given their culture and strategic goals. But I believe everyone working with applying smart ideas on building humane digital workplaces can win from such ideas. You simply cannot do everything others list as crucial for succeeding. You might just feel overwhelmed, tired and do less than you hoped. But you can find the key aspects that can have the biggest effects in your workplace, and start working on those.

As an example, our 20% could potentially be: getting the mobile access right, grounding all humane digital workplace ideas in the extended management team, and turning manual procedures into effective workflows and forms. I will explore this the coming weeks.

The workday is only so long. Choose wisely.

Building a humane digital workplace

Intranet governance – a starting point

When I started my new job and became the owner of our intranet, I immediately wrote a governance page on our intranet. Yes, maybe only three people will look through it spontaneously, but I thought it was needed. On this page, we outline what the intranet is for, compare it to other systems we use, outline who is responsible for what, where to turn for training, and more. This way, anytime an employee wonders how we run the intranet, we can point them to this page.

For me, governance is a subject that easily can become unnecessarily complex. No one wants far too long-winding governance texts. Luckily, quite a few people have already thought through the governance question, and below I list some of the resources I found helpful.

Rebecca Rodgers at Step Two and her “Creating an intranet governance guide“. Rebecca outlines what a governance plan is, advises to keep it short and distinct, and presents 8 steps that I used when outlining our governance page. It is also good to know why you should have such a guide:

[blockquote cite=”Rebecca Rodgers” type=”left, center, right”]A clear set of policies and guidelines for the intranet will support good practice, avoid confusion and ensure consistency of approach.[/blockquote]

Annika Appeltofft from Ericsson presents at Intranätverk how they succeeded in building governance around their new intranet. It is very refreshing to hear a practical example like this, compared to only reading theoretical material. She also asks us to focus less on only functionality, and look more at how the intranet is run:

[blockquote cite=”Annika Appeltoft via Intranätverk” type=”left, center, right”][…]a whole lot of time is often put on functionality issues, but that’s not necessary what makes the difference in the end. Instead, more energy should be focused on governance of the intranet – how we work with content owners, web editors etc.[/blockquote]

Ephraim Freed at the Digital Workplace Group in the Analysis of Gartner’s “8 building blocks for the digital workplace” aims at the broader picture and talks about governance for the digital workplace. It is not only needed for intranets per se, but also for the whole planning of our future work places:

[blockquote cite=”Ephraim Freed” type=”left, center, right”]Time and again at DWG we see that strong governance is critical to successful digital workplace programmes. [/blockquote]

There are of course many more sources when looking at governance, but I found the above to be a good start. Good luck!

What I hope to gain from changing jobs

This summer, a big thing happened in my life. After six years at Axis, working with e-learning and then as the global editor for the intranet, I changed jobs. It was not my original idea when getting to know them, but once I knew more about their plans, I made the leap. Starting at the end of July, I now work as a Corporate Communications Manager at Haldex.

Continue reading “What I hope to gain from changing jobs”

Ignite: What is new for intranets and the digital workplace?

Recently, Microsoft hosted their Ignite conference where they presented their view of what is coming. Yes, they are a vendor pushing their own agenda, but a very influential one.

Here are two summaries of Ignite I have found useful:

– SharePoint 2016 – What’s new for intranets? by Sam Marshall. Sam works as a consultant for intranets and the digital workplace.

– Ignite: Collaboration in a Modern Workplace Transformed, by Benjamin Niaulin. Benjamin is a SharePoint MVP and runs a company focused on migration.

Yes, much of what was presented might change before for example SharePoint 2016 is released. Meanwhile, it presents a view of the agenda of a massive company.

Harold Jarche summarizes 10+ years of PKM

Harold Jarche has summarized more than 10 years of thinking about Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM).

More and more, we need to take responsibility for our own learning and development, and Harold has summarized it in the Seek-Sense-Share paradigm. PKM has certainly helped me structure my personal professional learning, and therefore I warmly recommend it.

I have also started relating PKM to designing an intranet, for example via this presentation at the Intranätverk conference in Malmö 2014. It is a start, and in no way finished. But half-baked ideas like this might lead to something productive in the end.