Building an Infrastructure for Collaboration

There are many ways to look at the “new” phenomena such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and other collaboration sites.  With the rapid explosion of users, information and ways to communicate, they can be viewed as a way to connect with others on a massive scale that was not possible before.  Not only can you talk about your life through words, pictures, videos and other things, you can invite others to be part of your journey.  Let’s call this thought the “pyramid communication scheme.”

Alternatively, social networking sites can be viewed as a time waster that takes business people away from their core job responsibilities.  With so many people to talk to, and so many ways to communicate, it can be a drain on time and bandwidth.  Let’s call this thought the “mega water cooler scheme.”

A third, and possibly more productive way to look at social networks is the “what can I gain from this” scheme.  Facebook, for example, has allowed me to connect with people I haven’t talked with in 20 years.  It has also become a place where I can communicate with peers in a way that doesn’t seem possible in other venues without some effort.  So, with this in mind, how do social networking sites work well, and how can that be applied to business? 

Let’s take each scheme above and bring it back to the firm, and see what we get.

Initiating collaboration within firms

I chose the term “pyramid communication” because each of the sites mentioned allows you to find other people, usually through something easy like importing your contacts from another location. In addition, as you communicate you broadcast to multiple people, who can all contribute back to your conversation.  It’s a viral model of spread, and in my eyes looks like multi level marketing – the more friends you find, the larger your network!  In business, this is still a valid thought, but needs to be more selective in the choice of peers for communication. 

Intra-firm communication can benefit from an open communications system that may capture corporate memory that is being lost each and every day.  With an aging partner pool in the accounting industry, succession planning should not just include the transfer of business, but the successful transfer of knowledge from the people getting ready to retire.  In addition, developing strategies for capturing corporate memory can have implications for records retention and management that go beyond just making sure that legal standards have been met.

Think about the “pyramid communication scheme” above.  Getting people in your firm connected by invitation to virtual conversations may be a way to draw information out of normal non-contributors.  It encourages people to ask online what they may not be able to ask in person, and gives a location to collect and store this information.  Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 and Lotus Notes and Domino 8 both include just such tools, and are valuable additions to collecting the information that can fall through the cracks in email, or are lost in the vertical software specifically geared to accounting. 

In addition, there are a number of other tools that can serve as the “mega water cooler” that can track conversations that would fall outside of normal need to know circles.  In many senses, this type of system needs to be open and allow users to decide what should and shouldn’t be posted.  +

One of the largest anti water cooler objections to business I heard at the Gilbane Conference on Content Technologies regarding opening up a system to all employees was the “need to know” factor.  How can you prevent people from getting into things they shouldn’t get in to, or prevent something from being posted that shouldn’t be?  The answer from all of the speakers in one session on Social Computing in the Enterprise was that people do their jobs first, and giving them a system that lets them do their jobs more effectively far outweighed the risk.  In addition, Asheesh Birla from Thomson mentioned that people were too busy getting their work done and had enough passion about their jobs that snooping and mishandled information were almost non issues.

And finally, “what can I gain from this”.  Collaboration systems, if properly opened to use, can be excellent locations for the partners/owners of firms to get real information about their firms that would not be accessible otherwise.  Using a collection system, even something as simple as a base wiki, can increase the transfer of knowledge up as well as down the leadership hierarchy.  People down the chain can often get faster responses from the people who have an investment in the project being discussed, and there is a record of what happened for reference.

Extending collaboration beyond the firm

There are some larger challenges in bringing this type of “open” communication to the knowledge space between accounting firms.  How do you select your peers?  Who is going to be the most effective resource for answering questions that relate to accounting, and how do you know the information you receive is viable and applicable?  What do you share in such a system so that you are not giving away the core of your business?

With a larger, open social network this is difficult to achieve because you do not have a selective audience of qualified peers.  Face to face networking still seems one of the better ways to accomplish this, with inter-firm communication happening in somewhat isolated instances throughout the year.  But, there are ways to get around each of the questions above.

Selecting peers

One of the simplest ways to select peers is to choose an organization that is built of peers in the first place.  In addition, this organization should have the facilities in place for open collaboration and encourage it.  Since the same questions apply to the organization (sharing but not draining knowledge from the organization being one key), the number of organizations that open their knowledge base for collaboration is narrow in the accounting industry.

Choose the right resource, and make sure it is viable

An organization that can select qualified peers should take into account the quality of the participants and select peers of similar size, technical complexity or organizational state as the benchmarks for communication.  This requires more of a front end investment from the organization itself, but is key to creating a high quality pool of resources as well as people.

In addition, the organization should provide resources that have track records of effectiveness.  Knowledge is a valuable resource, but applicable, battle tested knowledge is where many firms can really benefit.  Talking about their questions with qualified peers who have been through a similar situation is priceless, and opens a resource for others if properly collected and shared.

Deciding how and what to share

In an extra-firm collaboration system, there is a huge question of secrets.  How can you share enough to make your contribution valuable to others as well as receiving quality feedback without sacrificing core business to competitors?  It comes down to an analogy I bring from the open source arena – core versus context.  The core of what you do is your clients, your specialized business track, and the data surrounding each.  The context of what you do relates to the infrastructure in place to get these pieces done.  Internal Technology, Human Capital, and Learning & Training are just three areas where the collective knowledge and sharing of your peers can make the whole firm run more cleanly.   

Some of our greatest insights here at Boomer Consulting have resulted from just such discussions.  In person, they happen at the Boomer Technology Circles™, during the Performance3™  Management Program and the Human Capital & Learning Symposium.  Bringing these communities together to share knowledge and increase productivity & effectiveness is critical to improving the knowledge of all. 

The Boomer Knowledge Network is our commitment to bringing such collaboration into a social network that can benefit each firm involved, with highly qualified individuals committing knowledge that can enhance the infrastructure of participating firms.  Look for more information on the BKN in next month’s Boomer Bulletin.  We believe you will see the value of collaboration, and join us for the journey.