Cathexis

Small Pieces, Loosely Joined: Enterprise 2.0 Conf. Case In Point

Sometimes combining basic tools form powerful collaboration mechanisms.

I’ve been surprised that the concept of mind mapping wasn't  discussed as a relevant and powerful mechanism for collaboration at Enterprise 2.0.   I’ve been a user of mind mapping through the use of MindJet’s MindManager product for some years, and have mentioned to various people at MindJet that their desktop application would be extremely powerful if they brought it into the Web 2.0 world. At the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston last month,  I saw that SnapXT has done just that.

Using MindManager as the user interface, a non-technical, knowledge worker can create web pages and mash-up applications. The MindManager tool allows the simple structuring and visualization of a web page, or a project portal and SnapXT joins,  or snaps the applications and data elements together. 

When I used MindManager in a corporate enterprise workplace a year ago, I found it useful to help a team outline a support process between the company and a partner organization. In other cases, I used it to help a team brainstorm the structure of a proposed online community. While MindManager itself does have many points of integration with other desktop applications, SnapXT enables simple mashups that would integrate with other enterprise business systems.

These type of tools can give knowledge workers greater access to   collaboration and ability to create their own project specific application, almost a "disposable"application, useful for the duration of a project without the immense lead time and cost of more traditional applications development models.

Here, in map format is an outline of the MindJet/SnapXT combination.

 

 

Collaboration-So What?

It's a big deal when the balance of economic value of American public companies shift from tangible to intangible assets.

A recent Economist profile, entitled "The Battle for Brainpower," quotes that intangible assets are now more than half the market capitalization of U.S. public companies, and, according to their citing of an Accenture study, the shift is up to 70% in 2006, from 20% in 1980.  Those intangible assets reside predominantly in the domain of what is described as "tacit" interactions. 

Dan Pink, in his book, "A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future," refers to this as the transition to the conceptual age, where the ability to form relationships, sythensize concepts, and engage in complex, problem solving, is more to the fore as a key set of skills for the modern company or organization.

The Economist article focuses on the issues of the dearth of talent as an emerging business issue, and as a primary resource issue of nations.   Yet they note that high talent individuals often decline in productivty for up to a year when they move from one company to the next and don't bring elements of their work teams with them (their productivty context).

Companies often continue to organize and relate to their workforce as if it was still predominantly "tranformational" * or "transactional.**"   The Economist defines talent simply and powerfully as "the ability to solve complex problems or invent new solutions."    Lawrence M. Miller calls this talent broad-slicing in his book, "The New Capitalism" (in contrast to Malcolm Gladwell's thin-slicing concept), and articulates how broad-slicing functions at a leadership, capability and operational levels in organizations.

Talented individuals don't exercise their talent in a vacuum, but often in the context of conducting their work in a team or collaborative process, whose members often represent diverse disciplines and cultures, and are often part of a global team or supply chain.

Collaboration practice enables talented knowledge workers to effectively connect with their team, creates a context for and fosters an ability to synthesize to analyze complex problems to allow individuals able to "see" all the elements of a problem.  A high functioning team of talented individuals can then build on their collective experience and wisdom to be even more productive on the next set of problems or innovations.    Collaboration tools support those business and organizational needs.

*Transformational:  extracting raw materials or converting them into finished goods.
*Transactional:  transactions that can be easily scripted or automated.

The High Performance Workplace is the Virtual Workplace

The Economist published a special survey in January 2006 on Collaboration and the High Performance WorkPlace.   Two quotes from that survey seem especially compelling.

• "The speed and efficiency with which effective teams can be brought together to resolve problems is crucial to the success of the modern organization,"

and

• "The more workers interact with each other often, the more likely they are to solve the problems of complexity of the modern organization." 

Advancing technolgies in knowledge management, Web 2.0 collaboration and social software, web-based meeting services, workspace and portal software are all evolving to address the potential needs of the modern knowledge worker who must, to be effective, work in a collaborative and team-based manner.   That work puts a premium on efficient methods of assembling a team, getting quick access to proper resources and accelerating results through enhanced interactivity.   

The workplace software of the 90s focused on making the individual productive, and giving them simple to use, yet robust presentation, word processing, presentation and calculation and e-mail communications software. 

We're in an era now evolving to advance team productivity and it's rapidly becoming a key construct.

Knowledge workers today:

• often participate in teams with members that are external to a core organization: customers, partners, alliances, members of out-sourced business function, suppliers.   
• members of  multiple, dynamic, shifting teams, with shifting reporting structures as well
• cope with teams whose members are often  cross-time zones, cross-cultural, and operate from disparate IT infrastructures.

Web 2.0/Office 2.0  whatever the nomeclature.  the tools needs to address these business needs.