A successful collaboration strategy includes technology, process alignment, and the user experiences. However, organizations tend to focus the most on technology, and the least on people -- when the opposite should be true. As this presentation explains, culture is the key to any successful collaboration strategy.

1. Finding the Right
Cultural Fit for Collaboration
Christian Buckley
Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC
Office Servers and Services MVP

2. Christian Buckley
Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC
Office Servers and Services MVP
cbuck@collabtalk.com
www.buckleyplanet.com
@buckleyplanet

3. CollabTalk.com
CollabTalk provides academic research and community-driven
conversations around key tools and trends in the enterprise
collaboration, social, and business intelligence ecosystem, allowing
you to stay on top of these changes -- and ahead of the game.
Our latest research project:
The State of Hybrid SharePoint
http://hybrid-sp.collabtalk.com/

4. What is your strategy?

5. Turn the Promises of the Digital Workplace to Reality by David Roe
http://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/turn-the-promises-of-the-digital-workplace-to-reality/
“In a recent CMSWire series of interviews
with digital workplace specialists, some
common elements and themes emerged.
One of the most consistent is the belief that
the best digital workplaces take a synergistic
approach to fulfilling the wants and needs of
people through processes and technologies.”

6. Sharon O'Dea, an independent digital strategy consultant, specializes in intranets, social
media and digital engagement. She defines the digital workplace as the place where work
gets done, connecting people through an ecosystem of tools so they can be productive,
informed and engaged, wherever they are.
“First, it’s a means of communication top-down, bottom-up and, increasingly, peer-to-
peer. Content in its myriad forms, from published pages to snippets of conversation, is the
lifeblood of the digital workplace and the digital workplace is what makes that content
accessible, findable and usable,” she told CMSWire.
The digital workplace should also provide a gate to an organization’s knowledge while at
the same time enabling organizations so that intellectual capital to be effectively captured
and shared with others as more of it is produced.
Thankfully, he continues:

7. In The Social Organization by
Bradley and McDonald (Gartner),
the authors talk about the components
of successful collaboration:
 Community
 Social
 Purpose

8. But where do we begin?

12. WHAT IS THE STATE
OF COLLABORATION
IN YOUR ORG?

13. THERE ARE FOUR
COLLABORATION “TRUTHS”
• The traditional intranet has failed
• The standalone ESN is dead
• Real work happens between
the workloads
• Culture directs communication

14. What is your
collaboration culture?

15. Scenario 1
 Meet Stephanie
 Web developer, millennial
 Personalization is important
 Lives on her mobile device
 Very collaborative, in constant contact with her
team, sharing ideas and discussing the state of
customer projects
 Values real-time interactions, having fun while
working, and is very passionate about her work

16. Scenario 2
 Meet Tasha
 Program Manager
 Responsible for several key business processes
 Has worked to develop several form and
workflow-based sites to help automate and
ensure that her team is compliant
 Her team includes a number of attorneys and
financial analysts, who prefer in-person meetings
 She spends a lot of time working in email, and
manages a number of vendors and parallel projects

17. Scenario 3
 Meet Hugo
 Customer Success Manager, business development
 Manages a number of projects and events with
large teams of external vendors and partners
 Very involved in the customer community
 Helps drive their partner and customer portals,
provides online and in-person product training
 Also manages his company’s social profiles,
interacts with customers and partners
wherever they congregate

18.  Real-time
 Team-based
 Persistent chat
 In-person
 Process-based
 Email
 Mix
 Community-based
 Social

19. The reality is that
most organizations
have all three
With differences
across your business
– or even within a
single team or
business unit

20. Which tool to use when?

21. So many options…

22. Outlook Groups
Skype for Business
Yammer
Microsoft Teams
SharePoint Social
ISV solutions

24. BUT IT SHOULD BE PART OF A PLAN

25. Modern SharePoint
and Office 365 Groups

27. WHAT IS THE RIGHT USER EXPERIENCE?
Wants real-time
communication
Wants process
and structure
Wants community
and transparency

33. Conversation-as-a-Service?

34. Conversation-as-a-Service?

35. It
Depends.
What is the right solution for your org?

36. Teams are scrambling to find the right tools
and technologies to fit their cultural needs
What we know is that the traditional intranet
approach has failed to deliver what we need

37. CULTURE IS KEY

38. GIVE THEM CHOICES

39. BUT NOT
WITHOUT
CONTROL OR
GUIDANCE

41. As project complexity increases, the ability for
individual participants to maintain sight of the
larger vision and whole will often decrease.

42. Where is your focus?

43. Focus on Key Business Problems
 Many transformative efforts fail because key users decide to “play with the
tools” rather than take the planning process seriously.
 The lack of goals and purpose quickly leads to low levels of engagement and
superficial usage. Without clear goals and engaged users, you’ll never gain a
clear assessment of the end results.
 Take it seriously. You will be using other people’s time to make your decisions
on how to move forward. Make good use of their time – and yours.

45. What does success look like?

46. If you haven’t defined the
end result, how do you know
when you’ve reached it?

47. How will you decide if your transformation is successful?
 Know your evaluation criteria before you start!
 Set specific goals and indicators related to your business goals.
 Put in place mechanisms to collect data and measure your success (or
failure…) at the end of each phase.
 For example, if one of your business goals is to “reduce internal
communication and email overload” you might measure success by:
 Creating a baseline of current activity
 Measuring email volume today and then again after the pilot.
 Comparing the email open-to-read ratio
 Tracking the volume of “Likes” and other metrics based on the collaboration
features being used within your pilot.

48. • Activity within communities
• Interest in content, keywords, ideas
• Level of engagement
• Overall platform adoption
• Measuring the increase in innovation
• Decreasing the cycle of new
product introduction
• Sharing of content and expertise
What does this mean within enterprise collaboration?

49. Make it part of your ongoing support model
 Due to the fluid nature of enterprise collaboration, organizations today find that implementing
a true change management program to monitor and adjust based on analysis is critical.
 Formation of a ‘Center of Excellence’ to both manage change and administrate your platforms
is becoming the standard approach.

50. Culture is Important

51. Wrap-Up

52. In my personal experience, what works is:
 Focus on specific business problems – and clear outcomes.
 Make governance and change management the priority.
 Look at your systems holistically, understanding both company-wide
and line of business needs – and the gaps between them.
 Be prepared to regularly iterate on your strategy.
 Organic growth through pilots is the most sustainable model for
successful enterprise collaboration.

53. Christian Buckley
cbuck@collabtalk.com
@buckleyplanet
Thank you very much!