Phil Simon's Blog, page 28

Citrix Is (Probably) Buying Wrike

Last year’s Slack acquisition by Salesforce raised plenty of eyebrows. (Listen to my thoughts on it here.) Now, Citrix is reportedly set to gobble up project-management tool Wrike for a cool $2B.

It’s not hard to read the tea leaves. Citrix wants to position itself as a viable internal collaboration hub that competes with:

MicrosoftSalesforce with SlackGoogle Workspace (rebranded for the umpteenth time from G Suite)

In the mad scramble to become proper collaboration hubs, expect many large vendors to bolster their existing offerings. I wouldn’t be surprised if Box.net, Dropbox, Asana, Smartsheet, and others are not independent companies this time next year. Zoom’s eye-popping $111B market cap makes it a prime contender to go shopping.

Simon Says

As I write in Reimagining Collaboration, it’s not hard to connect hubs to different third-party apps and systems that I call spokes. Of course, that nuance doesn’t always resonate with IT decision-makers. Sometimes it’s better to ship with native offerings and integrations. In this case, that feature is evidently worth $2B.

Feedback

What say you?

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Episode 13: Figuring Things Out With Kerry Barrett

Emmy award-winning TV news anchor, consultant, trainer, and speaking coach Kerry Barrett joins me for an illuminating chat about her collaboration world. We talk about the inherent trade-offs necessary for independent folks and why she needs to use different tools—some of which are decidedly old school.

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Should your organization use more than one internal collaboration hub?

Department A uses Zoom. Department B employees are Microsoft Teams loyalists. Developers eschew both in favor of Slack.

Here’s a short video on why this scenario is far from ideal.

Video made with wave.video. The ebook version of Reimagining Collaboration is coming very shortly. 

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Episode 12: No Writer Is an Island With Pete Croatto

Kick-ass writer, Jersey boy, and overall mensch Pete Croatto joins me to talk about basketball and his ridiculously good new book From Hang Time to Prime Time: Business, Entertainment, and the Birth of the Modern-Day NBA. We also discuss the often surprisingly collaborative nature of writing and research.

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Collaboration Hubs and the Future of Work

I’m hard-pressed to think of a business-related topic that’s generating more buzz today than the future of work. My two cents: Internal collaboration hubs will play a pivotal role.  

Video made with wave.video. 

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Win a Copy of Reimagining Collaboration

Reimagining Collaboration has dropped and I’m giving away a few signed copies of the book. Here’s the catch:

You promise to give the book an honest review on your blog/site.
You copy and paste that review on Amazon and GoodReads.
You promise to do so in a relatively timely manner.
You give it a little love on social media.
You live in the United States.1

OK…catches. Plural. You got me.

If you’re interested, then fill out the form below and I’ll be in touch.

Fill out my Wufoo form!

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Why I Wrote Reimagining Collaboration

As it turns out, there was a big idea at the heart of Zoom For Dummies and Slack For Dummies—one that revolved around hubs and spokes. 

Video made with wave.video. 

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Episode 11: Taking Collaboration to the Next Level With Bear Douglas of Slack

Slack’s Bear Douglas pops by for an illuminating chat. We discuss how companies are doing mind-blowing things with her company’s collaboration hub and its spokes. We talk about Hearst, Docusign, Airtable, and other organizations pioneering the moves to automation and more effective collaboration.

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A Simple Model of Collaboration Maturity

When it comes to collaboration, how mature is your organization?

I doubt that it will have the staying power of one of the Gartner models, but here’s my stab at classifying organizations on this dimension.  

Video made with wave.video. The ebook version of Reimagining Collaboration is coming very shortly. 

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Publication of Reimagining Collaboration 🎊

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my eleventh book, Reimagining Collaboration: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and the Post-COVID World of Work. Cue This Is Spinal Tap reference.

The Book in a Nutshell 🌰

Over the past five years, organizations adopted Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams in droves. Think of COVID-19 as pouring gasoline on the fire. The pandemic didn’t start a trend as much as it accelerated an existing one.

Unfortunately, far too many of us mistakenly view these applications as Email 2.0. As a result, we are missing out on extraordinary opportunities to create more collaborative work environments, increase organizational transparency, reduce manual work, make our work lives less stressful, simplify core business processes, and much more.

We have lacked a holistic framework to understand the remarkable power of new collaboration technologies. At least until now.

Blame ignorance, not malice. We have lacked a holistic framework to understand the remarkable power of new collaboration technologies, much less unleash them. At least until now.

In Reimagining Collaboration, I provide this essential framework. At the risk of being immodest, I advance a new, bold, and holistic model of work—one based upon hubs and spokes. No theoretical text, I offer concrete tips for companies and groups on how to transform the way they work.

I haven’t been this excited about a book since The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business. That book did pretty, pretty, pretty good.

A Long Strange Trip

To call the route that my new baby took circuitous is the acme of understatement. Long story short, Reimagining Collaboration went through a number of different versions. In other words, it was the antithesis of my last two books: Slack For Dummies and Zoom For Dummies. Still, I couldn’t be more pleased with the end result. This is exactly the book that I wanted to write. 

Buy it now or I’ll send hired goons to your home.

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