Hack:
Collaborate with a purpose

By Geoff Carss

November 7, 2011 at 7:09am

business change

transformation

collaboration

management 2.0

Moonshots

Reinvent the means of control

Take the work out of work

Disaggregate the organization

Summary

Design and implment a collaborative technology that helps you get the work done - that moves the portfolio of change projects forward ina social colaborative way!

Problem

On one hand we still use ways of managing change that hevn't really changed in 20 years - spread sheets, monthly reports, shared drives. On the other hand companies are investing in 'social' technology which engage a proportion of the organization but in many cases do not create value that the business wants.

In addition the speed and pace of change is more intense, has broader reach and greater impact on an organization - and it is only going to get more challenging.

There must be a better way....

Solution

Almost all forms of improvement in an organization are projects - they have a start. middle and end, they may utilize a set of specific methods or approaches such as Lean, IT Project methods (Agile, Prince 2 etc), M&A etc.

How about a technology that allows you to manage all these forms of change in the same place in real time with all project teams collaborating to get the real work done - not spend most of the time reporting upwards trying to work out what to do next.

Each phase of a project a team comes together to collaborate on the work that needs to be done - Risk Register, Benefits Analysis, Gantt Chart etc etc. It's social - so most anyone can support, guide, mentor the team to get a better outcome - both for the project and the overall portfolio - projects typically do not exist in isolation - they are part of an eco-system.

Practical Impact

A team coming together (who may have never met) chooses the appropriate 'lifecycle' or template for the change they want and it lays out all the activities, work products, mandatory controls (if any) and actions - the team then knows exactly what they need to do to drive the project forward so they are more productive and achieve better quality outcomes faster.

Any one in the extended organization can comment, chat, add ideas etc to make the project better - in a transparent collaborative manner so there is more chance of business change being adopted.

Management (as well as everyone else) can look at the overall portfolio so focus on the exceptions (projects off the rail, greatest risk, critical path etc) and help teams be more effective - and provide the right recognition and support. Overall the change portfolio is achieved faster, with higher quality, more predicatable benefits with greater organizational involvement.

First Steps

Review the portfolio of changes you are making as a whole (anything that takes your organization forward) This should include the obvious things like Lean, IT Projects, New Production introduction etc but may also include product transfers, marketing programs, changes to customer services, continuous improvement portfolio's etc.

This allows you to get a handle on the breadth and scale of activities taking place at the moment

Then think about how you might manage it as a collaborative portfolio

Credits

We have been experimenting with this approach in a range of organizations such as Banks, Healthcare and Social Enterprises - some good insights and outcomes but it does need great leadership to get complex organizations to work in a new way.

The insights behind this came from Alex Clark - CEO at element8 software - who knew there must be a better way of managing business change and transformation!!

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