My Ignite-style presentation at JiveWorld 2012 on "Barn Raising - A Technique to Accelerate Collaboration".

1. Barn Raising
A technique to accelerate collaboration
Jeff Maaks
Director, Communities & Collaboration
Hitachi Data Systems
@jmaaks #BarnRaising #jw12

2. IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME, RIGHT?

3. HURDLES TO COLLABORATION
 To improve collaboration, employees said they needed:
‒ Time
‒ Training
‒ Guidance about which tool
to use
‒ Global reward system for
sharing
‒ Management attention &
encouragement

4. WE’VE LOST THE WATER COOLER

5. INSPIRATION
“…we have examples of people
coming together and engaging in
collective action that is both long
term and creative. The canonical
example is a barn raising…”
“Small communities with long-time
residents have the necessary
social density and continuity to
build up enough mutual favors to
be a fertile ground for reciprocal
altruism.”

6. EPIPHANY: IF THEY COME, YOU CAN BUILD IT!
 Addressing concerns
‒ Time
‒ What to contribute
‒ How to use Jive
‒ Contrast to other tools
‒ Management attention
‒ Rewards

7. ABOUT BARN RAISING EVENTS
 Goal: Build out community content
using a collaborative approach
 3-4 day offsite meeting, with
parallel, facilitated content tracks
 Participants invited from across
silos
 Provide focused time away from
daily distractions
 Positioned as a reward,
fun, exclusive event

8. HOW WE SELECT PARTICIPANTS
 Work closely with line management
 Initially natural collaborators, later seed detractors
 Deep expertise or new to company
 Draw from distinct silos (e.g., geographic, functional)
 ~20% previous participants for continuity

9. HOW WE SOLD IT TO EXECS
 Quickly create / capture content
 Decrease costs
‒ Reuse existing knowledge / techniques
‒ Reduce time to find information and
get help
 Increase revenue
‒ Reduce on-boarding time: quicker time to revenue
 Increase customer satisfaction
‒ More consistent sales & delivery methods
‒ Improve quality via broader use of recommended practices

10. WHAT ELSE WE ACCOMPLISH
Increasing Connections Building Trust
Breaking Down Silos

11. WHAT WE SEE AFTER THE EVENTS
 Stronger sense of community
 Greater:
‒ Feeling of ownership
‒ Participation
‒ Engagement
‒ Comfort in use of Jive platform
 Translates to increased likelihood of knowledge sharing
by answering questions, uploading content

12. FEEDBACK FROM PARTICIPANTS
“The face-to-face interaction was
“I am glad to meet the global priceless. We were able to
professionals and sharing our exchange ideas and determine
experience and knowledge. It does best approaches in real-time.”
help me to develop my career and
make my life way easier in Hitachi!”
“In my many years at HDS, the [barn
raising] event was the single most
significant exchange of ideas with the
“I have been at HDS for 10 expertise brought in from different
years, and this was the most geos.”
worthwhile one-week event that I
have been part of.”
“One of the most
collaborative events I've
“I came away from the participated in at HDS!”
session with a renewed
energy and enthusiasm
for my job.”
“I believe the most sustainable benefit from the Barn Raising is not the volume of [knowledge]
captured during the limited time available, despite the value of that. It is the cross-geo relationships
established and the increased likelihood of on-going cooperation.”

13. FEEDBACK ABOUT JIVE
“Although I was already a “I quickly found that this can
convert of [Jive] before I got reduce my workload
here, I didn't fully appreciate significantly allowing me to
just how important the need to focus on the more important
change the way we work is to aspects of my role. Too often
our future. [Jive] is the only I've just been the 'document
way we will truly empower our repository'!”
employees" ”
“For me it is really opened
“I had no idea how my eyes to what can be
powerful this tool is and achieved with [Jive] and also
how it will improve our when it works people feel a
efficiency.” real sense of ownership for
groups/spaces that they
contribute to.”

14. EXAMPLE APPLICATIONS
 Professional / Managed Services
‒ Recommended Practices
‒ Reference Architectures
 Sales
‒ Expert contact lists
‒ Selling guides
 Product Management
‒ Frequently Asked Questions
 Human Resources
‒ New Hire Onboarding

15. RECOMMENDED PRACTICES
 Keep tracks intimate (4-5 participants + facilitator)
 Keep event intimate (no more than 5 tracks)
 Ensure participants represent distinct silos
 Best held off-site, but good network access is key
 Don’t over-structure the event
 Make it fun!

16. COLLABORATION RECOMMENDATIONS: CHINA
 Focus on face-to-face
communication
‒ Face-to-face contact preferred
even if against procedure
‒ Knowledge best learned face-to-face
‒ Relationship is key and needs to be established before
knowledge can be shared
 Rewards
‒ Small extrinsic rewards e.g. small gifts
‒ Rewards can also be a warm “thank you”

17. ALIGNED TO LEARNING PREFERENCES
Source: Ipsos, M. (2007) Great Expectations of ICT: How Higher Education Institutions are Measuring Up. Research Study
Conducted for the Joint Information System Committee Report June 2008

18. How well are we sustaining competency
in an ever-changing work environment?
Concept & Continuous
Task Mastery On-the-Job Improvement
Competence
Reference &
C
Critical Skills
O CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Training
M
IS ENABLED BY PS
P
E
T
E
N
C
Y
TIME (Average 50% reduction in Time to Competency)
TRAIN TRANSFER S U S TAI N
Performance Support (PS)
Source: Ontuitive 2012

19. COLLABORATION PART OF CORPORATE VALUES!

20. THANK YOU
Jeff Maaks
Director, Communities & Collaboration
Hitachi Data Systems
jeff.maaks@hds.com
@jmaaks #BarnRaising
jmaaks