Collaboration Pizza: The E2.0 Talk Show

Everybody on the planet would happily collaborate at work if it weren’t for one drawback: human nature. “ Like it or not, people don’ t like to share,” says Barb Mosher, managing editor of CMSWire. “They’ve got too much to lose." A former IT professional who specialized in content management and collaboration, Barb learned the difference between promise and reality first-hand. Now she offers an editor’s perspective on vendor credibility, knowledge-sharing resistance, and what’s missing in the dialogue between E2.0 buyers and sellers. Live June 2, 2011 at 3:30 pm ET on www.blogtalkradio.com/collaborationpizza; download anytime.

One year ago Stan Garfield published a short guide on how to make collaborative communities succeed. It was a modest document (just 13 pages, really big type), but the Communities Manifesto took off like a rocket and has been sparking tweets, blogs, quotes and conversations ever since. Stan, community evangelist for the Global Consulting Knowledge Management Group at Deloitte, also led KM initiatives at Digital Equipment, Compaq and HP. Tune in to Collaboration Pizza to hear Stan’s approach to managing 30 internal communities of practice worldwide and his take on the #1 success principle for any enterprise CoP. Live May 19, 2011 at 3:30 pm ET.

You've sunk megabucks into knowledge sharing systems and training, but to no avail. Don’t despair, and don’t spend another dime on technology. Kate Pugh, author of Sharing Hidden Know-How: How Managers Solve Thorny Problems with the Knowledge Jam (Jossey-Bass 2011) suggests your next step is a good conversation. Her Knowledge Jam model—based on structured, 90-minute dialogues between people with insight and people who want it--is a proven way to close the gap between collecting information (where it typically languishes in ‘knowledge jail’) and actually using it. Tune in to Collaboration Pizza to hear Kate describe the approach she refined at Fidelity, Intel, BankOne and PWC Consulting. Live on Thursday, April 27, 2011 at 3:30 pm ET, or downloadanytime.

If your E2.0 funding requests keep hitting a brick wall, maybe you just haven’t paid your dues. “Until you explain what’s wrong with the way it is now, you haven’t earned permission to fix it,” says Sameer Patel, co-founder of Sovos Group. A consultant who specializes in boosting business performance using social tools, Sameer’s client list includes Ingres, Sun Microsystems, KPMG and McKesson HBOC. Tune in to Collaboration Pizza to hear his views on how vendors and buyers miss the boat in their approach to social computing, how employers will measure individual performance in the new collaborative workplace, and behind-the-scenes political obstacles to changing systems. Live Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 3:30 pm ET or download anytime.

Reportedly we make a whopping 35,000 decisions a day. How many of them are wrong? Matt Work says it doesn’t matter as long as 51% of them are right, so he cofounded a company to boost the odds. Cohuman, a “task network” for project teams, is a free web-based service that automatically organizes information, prioritizes to-dos and alerts the team when things change. According to Matt, once we know where to focus and who’s responsible for what, we make better decisions faster—and the effect compounds. Tune in to Collaboration Pizza to hear his opinions about serving “adventurous” customers, biz dev on a budget, and why 16-hour workdays are crazy. Live April 7, 2011 at 3:30 pm ET on www.blogtalkradio.com/collaborationpizza or download anytime.

The cynic’s definition of a wiki: a good idea or two buried in a mountain of trash. Too harsh? Maybe, but wikis, blogs and online forums are often black holes for useful information. Phil Green, CTO of Inmagic, is on a mission to clean them up. He’s an advocate of “collaborative curation,” where low-value content is screened out before it ever hits a repository; valuable information is prioritized, tagged and constantly vetted by users. Result: junk data never gets a foothold. Tune in to Collaboration Pizza to hear Phil talk about why idea management systems fall short, how “moderated crowdsourcing” lets product managers become decision-makers instead of custodians, and how NASA catalogued a staggering five million photos. Hear the show live March 31, 2011 at 3:30 pm ET, www.blogtalkradio.com/collaborationpizza, or download anytime.

Social media and storage don’t have much in common, but Ben Golub, CEO of Gluster, plans to change that. The guy who sold networking site Plaxo for $150 million figures it’s time for data storage to become “more E2.0-like,” and he’s in a position to do something about it. Tune in Thursday, March 3 to hear Ben talk about why he made the move to Gluster, what intrigues him about the economics of in-the-cloud services, and why he’s convinced that “data storage is sexy again.” Hear the show live at www.blogtalkradio.com/collaborationpizza or download anytime.

How do you get five marketing companies to share information on a system none of them chose? Ross Croley, CEO of In10sity Interactive, knows. In the brutally competitive world of interactive marketing, Croley follows an aggressive growth strategy that simply wouldn’t fly without collaborative technology and an intranet that really works. With offices in five cities and two acquisitions over the past 12 months, his disciplined focus on process and metrics is unusual among small and mid-size creative companies. If your professional services firm is considering a merger (or the deal’s already done and you’re tired of hearing, “But that’s not the way WE did it”), don’t miss this episode of Collaboration Pizza. Tune in February 17, 2011 at 3:30 p.m. EST; download anytime.

E2.0 has turned the tidy universe of enterprise content management on its head. How in the world are you supposed to capture and secure corporate information emanating from cell phones, web conferences, blogs and Tweets? On February 3rd,2011 Steve Weissman, executive director of Holly Group and a certified ECM instructor, talks with Collaboration Pizza about how social business networks change everything for risk and compliance managers: the people responsible for corralling a deluge of “soft” content generated by devices that didn’t even exist ten years ago.

In his new book ‘42 Rules for Successful Collaboration’, David Coleman points out that nothing happens until people, processes and technology sync up—in that order. An author and analyst who’s been focused on knowledge sharing for so long that he snapped up www.collaborate.com when it was still available, David’s sweet spot is people. For more than 20 years he’s observed how culture, environment and corporate politics influence online teamwork. On the January 20th, 2011 episode of Collaboration Pizza he offers advice about how to help team leaders be more effective, how to choose an executive champion who can get the job done, and why experience trumps credentials in the E2.0 world. Check out David Coleman’s blog at http://www.collaborate.com.

Has your intranet turned into a black hole? A repository for useless stuff nobody can find even if they want to? David Gwyn, vice president of R&D and collaboration for HighPoint Solutions, had the same problem. Working nights and weekends, Gwyn and his team turned their static site into a collaborative hub where hundreds of consultants nationwide share ideas, information and create proposals in less time. David explains how he sold the idea, encouraged resistant users to get on board, and squeezed the work into a schedule packed with consulting engagements and travel. If you’re trying to manage team projects the old way—blizzards of email and hours of conference calls—don’t miss David Gwyn live at 3:30 pm on Thursday, January 13, 2011 on Collaboration Pizza, or download the interview anytime.

How does work get done in your company? Odds you don’t really know, and nobody else does either. Sure, you’ve got operations manuals and best practices, but reality just isn’t that clear-cut. On paper, a map of the human interactions involved in even the simplest task looks like a giant hairball, not a tidy Gantt chart. Creating and de-tangling these hairballs, known as Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Value Network Analysis (VNA) maps, is Jacob McNulty’s strong suit. He is the CEO of Orbital RPM, a consulting firm that integrates collaboration tools into business strategy. In a discipline where intangibles rule, the power of a network analysis map cannot be underestimated, according to Jacob. “It’s concrete proof of how ideas, information and resources flow through the organization,” he says. “You see influencers and knowledge hubs immediately. We call it harnessing the invisible.” Who’s got the power to promote new ideas within your organization? (A job description can’t tell you, but an SNA map can.) Where’s the social capital you need to champion a new project? Where are your company’s thought leaders and experts? Which areas are isolated or overburdened? In this episode of Collaboration Pizza, Jacob McNulty describes how extracting activity data from your collaboration platform can become a powerful strategic advantage. He discusses the privacy implications of network mapping, explains how to (and how not to) make decisions based on social maps, and how to launch your own SNA initiative. For more about Jacob McNulty, visit Orbital RPM. Collaboration Pizza is sponsored by Yakabod Secure Knowledge Sharing Systems.

Virtual meetings have two big advantages over the face-to-face kind: they save on travel costs, and we can catch up on our email while the air hogs ramble on. It’s no secret. Most of us multitask (or nap) during teleconferences. But really, can you blame us? A whopping 96 percent of companies use remote collaboration to some extent, but not many focus on making those conversations fully productive. And without body language, facial cues or huge yawns as a guide, it’s easier for a few people to dominate while everybody else drifts away. According to Nancy Settle-Murphy of Guided Insights, it doesn’t have to be that way. A professional facilitator who specializes in remote collaboration, she advises Fortune 500 companies about how to bridge geographic and cultural gaps in team communications. A good place to start, Nancy says, is on the phone. On today’s Collaboration Pizza Nancy dispels a few myths about multitasking (if you’re Twittering as you read this, you won’t like what you hear), explains how to leverage the power of silence, and shares tips on how to keep the agenda moving and people actively engaged during a virtual meeting. If you’re part of an international team, you’ll be particularly interested in Nancy’s advice about dealing with language barriers and minimizing time zone disadvantages. Perhaps most important, she offers practical suggestions about when to wrap up and say goodbye. (Sooner is better than later.) Nancy is a member of the International Association of Facilitators, the American Society of Training and Development, and the Boston Facilitator’s Roundtable. She is a volunteer facilitator for the Communities for Restorative Justice of Concord, Massachusetts and a cum laude graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia. Contact her at nancy@guidedinsights.com or www.guidedinsights.com Collaboration Pizza is sponsored by @Yakabod Knowledge Sharing Systems. Email host- Aparna Sharma asharma@yakabod.com

Question: How many SharePoint consultants does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: How many can you afford? Joe Mack, a veteran of more than 80 SP engagements, doesn't fit that stereotype. If a $99 plug-in makes sense, he's the first to admit it. Clients have actually heard him say, ‘Why pay us? You can take care of this in-house.’ Regardless of the knowledge sharing platform they use, IT and business people appreciate Joe’s common sense. He’s passionate about the Microsoft system but doesn't shy away from market realities ('SharePoint is oversold almost 100% of the time’) and myths (‘No, it doesn’t work right out of the box. The system’s only as good as the metadata.’) On this episode of Collaboration Pizza, Joe describes the one thing every planning team, no matter how well aligned, fights over. He explains why pain is the project manager’s best friend. He talks about the best and worst ways to manage SharePoint consulting costs and retain control over your own system. And he shares a couple of tips on how to probe for both technical skills and overall effectiveness when interviewing a consultant. (Added bonus: Joe’s radical proposition for reengineering the National Football League playoffs.) Joe Mack, an “Enterprise Microsoft Solutions Senior Manager” at Sogeti., lives in Indianapolis with his perfect wife and two children. He has 12 years of corporate and entrepreneurial experience as a consultant, developer, project manager and knowledge management evangelist. Joe graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a degree in Economics and served in the army for eight years. Check out his blog: www.themackpage.com.

When three-time author Phil Simon started his latest book, he didn’t even consider mainstream publishers, whose production cycles stretch to a year or more. Instead, he turned to an online community for funding, and the money rolled in so fast he exceeded his $4000 goal in weeks. Next month 'The New Small' rolls off the press, with acknowledgements to 106 individual backers. This week on Collaboration Pizza, Phil talks about how other entrepreneurs—dentists, lawyers, restaurant owners—harness E2.0 tools with equally impressive results. “It’s no longer a liability to be the little guy,” says Phil. Research for 'The New Small' has convinced Phil that new technologies are the golden door for small organizations determined to not only level the field, but leapfrog beyond bigger competitors. What can a Fortune 50 company learn from a computer repair company? How can a four-person manufacturing firm hold its own in the consumer products market? Find out first-hand from Phil Simon, who claims, “All else equal, it’s better to be small”. Collaboration Pizza is brought to you by Yakabod Secure Knowledge Sharing Systems: http://www.yakabod.com.

Trust. When you’re building a collaborative team, it trumps everything—and without it, even brains and talent don’t count for much. That’s Pat Lefler’s take, and based on his credentials, he knows a thing or two about winning teams: the Wharton School, the U.S. Naval Academy, the Marine Corps, Goldman Sachs. According to Pat, trust-deficient organizations have a huge disadvantage. They can’t innovate; and worse, they can’t fix the problem simply by bringing in new talent. Pat Lefler’s job is to help companies turn new-product ideas into revenue, a process that doesn’t get off the ground without an effective team in place. On October 14, 2010, Pat tells Collaboration Pizza listeners how to make the leap from individual to group competence, describes behaviors that nurture and damage organizational trust, and shares two questions every company should ask before spending a dime on a new idea. Pat is CEO of the Spruance Group, a New Jersey consulting firm focused on product innovation, positioning and pricing. He was just named among the top 40 innovation bloggers of 2010 and is a four-time Boston Marathon finisher. Tune in at 3:30 pm EDT on Thursday, October 14 to hear Pat Lefler live on Collaboration Pizza.

Every employee in the world asks three questions. Where is it? Where can I put this so others can find it? Who can help me get my job done? Facebook isn’t the answer. Neither are traditional “knowledge management” systems. According to Gil Yehuda, who heads Open Source activities at Yahoo!, the solution is enterprise social software—also known as E2.0 tools. Gil’s seen Enterprise 2.0 from just about every perspective—Forrester industry analyst, Fidelity Investments community-of-practice manager, systems architect—and today he talks about why some collaborative efforts succeed and others don’t. He explains the link between social tools and user behavior, and the (often inverse) relationship between system cost and user satisfaction. Expect some candid advice in the mix, too. This is a great opportunity to hear one of the E2.0 industry’s big thinkers. Read Gil’s blog at wwww.gilyehuda.com.

Are you tweeting when you could be microblogging? Emailing when wiki-ing makes more sense? With so many choices out there, it’s tempting to pick one social media tool and use it all the time. Don’t do it, says Bill Ives. You get better results if you choose a method based on the outcome you want. In today’s show, Bill talks about how the medium you choose for your message—words versus pictures, for example—influences the way people process information, draw conclusions and solve problems. He shares specific examples of how to use wikis, blogs and microblogs to get work done faster and better. Bill, who has a Ph.D. in educational psychology, researched the effects of media on cognition at Harvard University. He has 25 years of experience as a consultant focused on business applications for emerging technologies. Bill writes for FastForward, The AppGap, and his own blog, Portals and KM. You can also reach him via http://twitter.com/BillIves.

Didi Dellano has more than 100 IT deployments under her belt. As director of business development for Denver-based Tempus Nova, (www.tempusnova.com) she specializes in migrating Fortune 100 and government clients to in-the-cloud collaboration. Today she talks about: 1. How to manage politics, personalities and shifting priorities without sacrificing the project plan; 2. Predictable E2.0 pushback and what you can do about it; and 3. Addressing post-rollout problems to prevent "initiative poisoning".