The document is a summary report from a benchmark study on virtual collaboration in organizations. It finds that the biggest barrier to collaboration is engaging others and a lack of collaborative skills and behaviors. There is also a gap between organizations' espoused values of collaboration and how much it is actually practiced. A key finding is that there is a mismatch between budget allocation and what drives productivity for knowledge workers. The report provides an executive summary and details of the benchmark study methodology and findings on trends and challenges with virtual collaboration.

1. Perspectives on Virtual
Collaboration in Organizations
Lucy Garrick, MA WSD
Benchmark Study Fall 2009
Summary Report
Re-imagining Collaboration
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2. Contents
• Impact of Social Media
• Executive Summary
• Key Findings
• How To Learn More
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3. Today‘s Issues Are Global Issues, Requiring Collective Action
And Collaboration On A Grander Scale Than Ever Imagined
Source: flickr.com Zoriah, CC Licensed
Source: flickr.com stitch, CC Licensed
Source: flickr.com Library and Archives State of Florida
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4. . . . Impacting Industries, Work Teams and Work Places
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5. What Is Really Happening
With Virtual Collaboration?
Why Is It Important?
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6. What Do The Words Mean?
• Social Media
– Computer tools used over the internet
• Enable you to find, relate and share
– Information (text, video, sound), relationships & expertise (people)
• Collaboration
– Two or more people coming together to accomplishing
something within a defined boundary
• Lots of different forms of collaboration
– Online and sometimes blending physical and virtual worlds
• More on “accomplishing something” later.
• Social Collaborators
– A variety of formal groups using computer and other
tools over the internet to accomplish a work purpose
with a defined boundary.
• Business, non-profit, government, educational, professional or community
groups
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7. Executive Summary
Wide spread pilots and early production.
Struggle is with user adoption, but more
importantly with user engagement
Tendency is to see social/
virtual collaboration
through the lens of
traditional 20th century IT
approaches to process
and structural change.
Most do not connect
the dots between three
distinct areas for
successful virtual
collaboration
Benchmark Study Fall 2009
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8. Re-imagining Collaboration 8
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9. Virtual Collaboration:
Greater Than The Sum of Its Parts
Why Is This Happening
Human • Approach similarly to:
Relationships! – Knowledge Management
– Web 1.0
– Phone or video online
conferencing
Issues/ Technology!
Projects! – Social media marketing
• Virtual collaboration is a
uniquely different
Social Collaboration environment
Occurs At The ! – Tools
Intersection ! – Skills
– Behaviors
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10. Analogous to the Fisher’s Rotating Tower!
Calls For A Dynamic Design Approach!
To Strategy, Adoption, Engagement and ROI
Source: http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/home.html
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11. Key Findings
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12. Biggest Barrier to Collaboration
#1 – Engaging others in collaboration
• Varying perceptions about meaning of collaboration
• Knowledge of collaborative skills
– Lack of leadership modeling behaviors
– Time pressure: real and perceived
– Competitive attitudes
» Sharing content and getting credit
• Willingness to try new things
– How to use the technical tools with others
– Assumptions about face-to-face vs. virtual
– Cultural differences (ethnic, organizational, generational)
#2 – Rigid emphasis on risk leading to control rather
than design
– Policies narrowly defined by a single group – IT, Executives, Legal,
etc.
– Concerns about privacy and competitive intelligence
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13. Collaborative Behavioral Gap
The organizations’ espoused value of selected collaborative behaviors vs. how much they are
actually practiced in day-to-day interactions. Scale of 1 to 5, with 1 = not at all and 5 = all the
time.
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14. Investment Gap
• Resistance from users,
management, etc. cited as
major and most difficult
challenge
• Mismatch between budget Struggling here
allocation and drivers
• Difficult to measure ROI.
Orgs don’t understand what
drives the productivity of
knowledge workers
Source Slide 12-14: The State of Enterprise 2.0, November 2009
The Adoption 2.0 Council and Information Architected
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15. Is Your Work Force Prepared To
Source: Nasa: Mars Lander
Thrive In The 21st Century?
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16. Complete Benchmark Contents
• Segmentation Research
– Conducted Fall 2009
– Sectors interviewed
• Higher education, aerospace, professional associations, non-profits and
foundations, computer technology, online retail, online marketing, financial
services
– Size
• 40 to >150K employees
• Projects serving hundreds to 1000s of members
– Tools used
• Varied widely from public social sites, i.e. LinkedIn FB and Twitter, custom-built
web communities and proprietary platforms behind the firewall
• Enterprise 2.0 Trends
• Perspectives
– Conclusions
– Challenges to Traditional Thinking About Technology Adoption
– Frontiers for Tools Vendors and Organizations
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17. Thank you!!
For Inquires contact:
Lucy Garrick, MA
Founder and Partner, Radical Inclusion
lucy@radical-inclusion.com
+1-206-335-5635
Twitter: @newsaboutchange or
@radinclusion
Time Zone: PST -8 GMT
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