How Lotus Notes Changed the Collaboration Landscape

http://readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/09/sheldon-laube.php

I was part of the early days of Lotus Notes (1989-1996) while at Price Waterhouse.  I worked with Sheldon and his team and then later worked for him at a start-up.  There is a great podcast interview with Sheldon Laube linked to from this article, it is very relevant to the conversation today around enterprise collaboration and social interaction.

Enterprise Collaboration/social interaction is almost a back to the future moment.  We had it with Lotus Notes and now people are starting to recognize again the power of collaboration.

Truths of Enterprise Social Interaction (Collaboration)

1. Collaboration tools do not need to be complex, costly, or fully integrated into the organizations other business tools to provide value.


2. The value of Collaborative technologies often cannot be quantified.


3. The “mom test” should be applied to collaboration technologies.
   
   
   
   • David Coleman of Collaborative Strategies defines the mom test as: “…tool needs to be easy enough for my mom to use for it to be successful.”
   
   
   
   


4. Collaboration doesn’t need to be managed, just fostered.
   
   
   
   • Provide people the freedom to share their thoughts, ideas and experiences in a way that can be applicable to the organization.
   
   
   • Collaboration will grow organically if it is left alone - free from management meddling.
   
   
   •  People must be given the ability to converse with limited constraints (within acceptable usage parameters).
   
   
   
   


5. Trust is developed through genuine interaction not edict.


6. Successful organizational collaboration is evidenced through cross-functional interactions.


7. Collaborative technologies will expose the hidden networks within an organization.


8. The hidden networks are where the real work of the organization takes place and value derived.


9. Collaborative technologies empower individual contributors.


10. Productivity enhancing collaboration does not always have to be 100% business focused.


11. Context is a determining factor in the value derived from conversations.


12. Self organization and policing occurs where collaboration is free of artificial constraints.

Doing things backwards

More times than I care to remember I have encountered collaborative technology that actually hinders collaboration and knowledge sharing.  Why?  Well I think David Coleman of Collaborative Strategies hits the reason in his post about how some of the least collaborative people in an organization are often the ones picking the technology.

It isn't that IT doesn't know what they are doing (when it comes to collaboration), but that they sometimes become disconnected from the people that could benefit most from their leadership.  Having a simple conversation with people about how they would like to use technology and then helping them understand what is available and then implementing unstructured pilots can help everyone understand the value proposition.  Of course there are extremes where no one does anything about collaboration tools because of a fear of failure or making things over complicated.

Collaboration isn't rocket science, we do it everyday.  When it comes to technology to collaborate we need to stop over thinking things and use simple methods and tools.

Is Lotus Notes Still Relevant?

I've been catching up with my reading and came across this item on Lotus Notes at TechCrunch.  It really was a fair treatment of Lotus Notes.

As an early adopter, implementer, evangelist, consultant, author and builder of Notes applications I've always been a bit partial to it.  I believe that even today it is a fundamentally better platform than Microsoft Exchange (it takes more than Exchange/Outlook to equal Notes built-in capabilities). 

What Lotus/IBM failed to do was understand that an intuitive User Interface is key to keeping the users happy.  We can't forget that command and control IT management also had a hand in diminishing the users perception of Notes.

In the early days of Notes users were actually allowed to build their own applications; that was before IT management decided that users were mucking up their stuff.  Well, here we are in the Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media era and the users don't know how powerful Notes is and how it can do most everything they want in 2.0/Social Media. 

IBM has updated the UI in version 8.0, but will users be handed back the keys and allowed to use the tool to its fullest potential?

Politics Of Collaboration

A must read post by David Coleman of Collaborative Strategies - The Political Conundrum of Collaboration.  David walks us through the various collaboration technologies that vex the CIO/IT team in organizations but empower people and processes.

I can especially relate to the story of the "Disgruntled Collaborator". 

Many IT departments today fail to understand that you can not and should not always take the traditional project management/systems development life-cycle approach to organizational collaboration (process or tools).  I am not saying to throw process out the window, but collaboration involves people, process, and technology and screams for a more iterative (collaborative!) approach to defining the need, picking the tool, and implementing the process and tool.  The process needs to take days or weeks not months or years.

Moving forward with collaboration is not an all or nothing proposition.  I am a firmly believe that an organization, no matter its size, needs to form a strategy for leveraging knowledge.  But, not having a strategy in place should not keep you from moving forward with solutions that empower and enhance productivity.  This is especially true given the low cost of SaaS (software as a service) collaboration technologies.  You can start down a path that provides immediate value and then as the strategy and architecture around knowledge management and collaboration are formalized a reevaluation of the current solutions can be undertaken.

The bottom line is that collaboration and collaborative technologies are all about connectedness.