To use collaborative tools effectively you’ll create additional ways of doing things that will become norms. Once you’ve devised those new ways and incorporate them, you’ll do your work faster, better, more smoothly. That’s how it has always worked for any tool, hardware or software.

The biggest lesson I learned from working with Doug Engelbart is the critical requirement that there be a hand-in-glove relationship between the tools and the ways in which they are used: the use practices.

Back when there was only paper, manilla folders, and file drawers, we organized file drawers in certain ways. So, when a document was put into a folder, a customer name was put on the folder’s tab, then the folder was put in the drawer holding that alpha location for <customer name>. That’s a hand-in-glove relationship between tools and how they’re used. The same sorts of tools & use practices must be developed for all networked collaborative tools (file repository, group calendar, task database, etc.).

These norms don’t just happen; leadership must support and resource each group or team’s creating and adopting tool use practices for their work. And practices take time to form and evolve - groups will walk before they run.

Most importantly, each group practice should fit smoothly inside the glove (tools). If you want help resourcing your teams to do this for themsleves, give us a call at Teams and Tools.

Next time, I’ll talk about the new roles needed that will make the new norms happen.

Few of us are talking about how networks and team tools are essential to making us more productive information workers, or how productivity affects the standard of living of individuals like you and me—the competitiveness of our businesses. But productivity drives national economic growth and decline, good times or bad. And collaborative tools - complemented with group-wide practices - are the most powerful way for most information-intensive businesses to become more productive.

The strength of our nation will turn on how effectively we deploy networked capabilities. Yet most of the planning that goes into collaboration and community initiatives is focused on the technology, not on how to make sure the users can use them effectively in their work. Did you know a backhoe in skilled hands can dig 100 cubic feet of dirt in 5 minutes? Businesses that want their teams to collaborate online, or their stakeholder groups to work with them through online communities, need to spend a lot more time and effort on the human factors.

For the productivity and collective values to accrue, the users themselves must work through when and how they use networked software in support of common goals. This cannot be dictated by management nor driven by IT. As Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar told me so often back in 1995: “It’s the people, stupid.”

What this means is, when you plan to provide collaration tools, be sure they’re configurable by the people who will use them. Also, plan to provide resources for users themselves to work out practices - how each group will use the tools for their specific work. If you don’t provide these, the new tools will be about as useful to them as a backhoe. If the users can’t customize the tools to their needs, they won’t use them.

The men who asked that question funded projects that became ARPANET which became the internet. They also funded Dr. Douglas Engelbart who went on to create the first uses of computers to support individuals and groups of information workers. Doug called his lab Augmentation Research Center – ARC. He had the phenomenal vision in 1964 that computers and the networks connecting them could be productivity-enhancing tools for information-age workers just as backhoes are for industrial-age workers. His use of the term “augmentation” was mighty prescient, too.

When I joined the early adopters who began getting online in the 1980s, much of the discussion was on social and affinity topics. I knew this was an awesome new capability for connecting people. In 1983, working at Apple Computer in Cupertino, I risked ridicule when I asked for a role in a nascent networking concept - Apple Shared Knowledge. The ASK concept grew to become Applelink - one of the first widely adopted email and extranet systems …online collaboration by professionals was beginning.

When I led the WorldsAway community in the 90s, the power of people connecting virtually was capturing headlines. Online ‘community’ has evolved to professionals and been renamed ‘collaboration.’

Technology prices drop as capabilities increase—most of our experience with this is in hardware, but it’s just as true in software. The capabilities available in portal frameworks, collaboration toolsets, etc., that F100 companies paid $100K-$1,000K license fees + annual support of $20K-$200K/year 4 years ago are now available with far more capability for $0 license and maybe $20K per year for support and unlimited seats.

Engelbart’s backhoes are here at motor scooter prices. The lower price points and growing capabilities will support all our communities to connect and collaborate.

Hi! Welcome … glad you’ve dropped in.

The terms Collaboration and Community are growing in public awareness these days - students, businesses, programs, projects, causes - anything that requires people to interact with others. It’s about time.

Collaboration and Community are terms used for small and large groups of people who interact aided by software tools on networks. We interact when we work, when we relate, when we shop. We share information, knowledge, experiences all the time; interaction is so core to life that we interact much more often than we eat.

I’m not a natural writer; it’s hard, slow work for me. But I’m writing this blog because, over the coming years, so many categories of our interactions will be increasingly touched by networked software tools that support our interacting—our lives.

Since I’m writing under the Teams and Tools masthead, I’ll talk a lot about business teams and groups who need to collaborate to work, to ‘deliver.’ But communities are a passion for me, so I’ll talk about those too, starting next time.

Hope you stick around. Let me know what you think.