Digital workplace – points to cover
The digital workplace from three complementary angles: management & stakeholders, people and “building blocks”
This diagram is work in progress with three of my clients who have asked me to help them evolve their “intranet+collaboration+social” online environments to a more coherent digital workplace. The slide has also evolved gradually thanks to input from workshops in Washington DC and Stockholm with participants in organizations with different cultures, and a range of experience from a few “well on the way” to most “just starting” the digital workplace journey.
I’ll be talking on my blog about these “building blocks” over the next few weeks, but wanted to already publish the slide, hopefully to get some feedback.
Start where you can. Avoid a linear approach.
One of the biggest questions people ask is “Where do we start?”. My answer is “You start where you can, the nearer the top the better, but not exclusively from the top.”
Many of the items on the chart can be done in parallel. Most of them take a fair bit of time. The one thing you do not want to do is to be linear in your approach. Ideally, you have a number of teams and people in different “pockets’” of the organization working on projects simultaneously that all help move the enterprise and the culture towards a collaborative digital workplace concept.
If you’re in a position to locate these projects and work with the project leaders to bring people together with a collaborative digital workplace vision and strategy, that’s great. But even if you can’t yet do that, there are plenty of positive actions you can carry out.
How about your experience?
What has your experience been? What is missing on the chart? What would you change?
Comments
Reading your post I immediatly connect it to this post > http://johnstepper.com/2012/02/18/when-your-audience-says-no-time-no-money-no-thanks/
and the sentence I pinned from it:
“The problem was that I was talking about what I had instead of talking about what they needed. They didn’t want yet another tool or thing to do. They wanted help.”
Pragmatic way to find the path to 2.0 digital workplace.
I agree completly with you about: “starting where you can”=where they call for help, not to be linear…links are not driving you to a linear organisation.
THello Jane,
Nice sheet, I like a multi view approach. What I would like to add is the management role of setting the example. Making clear by doing, not by saying, that the new way of working is important. Put presentations on the right (sp) site, react on a blogpost etc. And translate that to the (management)goals the set for their submanagement. I like very much the idea of outputmanagement.
I agree completely with doing things in parallel, and I think “management”, “people” and “building blocks” is a useful categorisation.
In terms of building momentum, perhaps also something about:
* uncovering staff and business opportunities
* delivering quick wins
* alignment with business priorities
(These may sit outside or alongside your diagram perhaps.)
I must confess, on a broader point, some concern that the digital workplace has ended up with such a big focus on collaboration. Collaboration to what end?
Somehow I’d love to see more explicit “business language” in all this, but not sure how best to position it…
This is very timely, as we’re in ‘fast forward’ mode with the evolution of a digital workplace. Because of the pace, it’s essential that all three “buckets” are happening in tandem. I appreciate the way you’ve captured and categorized the key components of the digital workplace because they reflect how much effort goes into this type of transition. My experience has been that a lot of energy is spent on the “cool” factor and not enough on how employees will actually benefit from (or use) the new workspace. An understanding of employee behavior, both D/O and F/F, will be more valuable in the adoption of the digital workspace than the coolness factor.
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'Efficiency and cost savings' and 'organizational intelligence' are the top two goals for digital workplace initiatives.
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Good overview, Jane! Don’t have much to add, for now. I agree with the non-lineair approach. But I do find the people responsible for the roll out should have a good idea of the final digital workplace. What are we really trying to achieve on the 3 levels you list? Too often I see people start with a DWP project and stop after a couple of months. This has to do with not addressing the points you list, but also it has to do with not having a long-term vision for the DWP.
Another point is having an understanding of how people work at the moment. This relates to your ‘change’ point. But change should relate to the way people are working now. If the company is very email oriented, don’t think they’ll get microblogging (or even messaging) quickly…
And of course you could extend the list of building blocks: email, business tools, blog, wiki, etc.
Hope this helps!