Jacob Morgan's Blog, page 41

Friday Vendor Roundup: Podio, Box, Dropbox, and Tibbr

Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space.  I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV.  Obviously I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can.  If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add.  Again, keep in mind this is weekly roundup so the news or announcements need to be from that week.  This is just getting started and I expect it to grow quite a bit but I’ll try to keep it manageable.  Here is the roundup for this week

Podio (acquired by Citrix) Adds Audio and Video

Podio added the ability to talk to and see your colleagues.  It’s similar to using the Gchat interface where you can click on a phone or a camera icon to activate a certain action.  This means that employees don’t need to leave the application to use something such as Skype to have audio or video chats.  It’s all available directly within the Podio application.

My POV

A great addition to an already powerful platform.  However, this feature set is starting to become the standard instead of a differentiating factor.  It can be a bit frustrating to to have to switch applications for audio and video chat and storing those conversations for search later but this solves that problem for all Podio customers.  I’m very happy with this and I’m sure customers are as well.

Link to announcement

Box Named as a Forrester Wave Leader, Hires Top Talent From Oracle and Salesforce

In the recent Forrester Wave report around sync & share platforms, Box was named as one of the leaders.  I follow box in the enterprise collaboration space which is why I am giving them special attention here, however other companies such as Egnyte, Citrix, and Dropbox were also on that list.  This is a unique accomplishment for Box as they are now the only vendor that is recognized as a Leader in the Enterprise Sync and Share and the Online Collaboration markets analyst firms, Gartner and Forrester.

Box also hired senior level leaders from Oracle and Salesforce to run sales and engineering.  See the second announcement link to get a breakdown of names and roles.

My POV

No surprise here as the folks at Box have been hard at work building a tremendous product which is gaining a lot of attention.  Not too long ago Box moved into an office which was MUCH greater than their staff needed.  When I asked Aaron Levie (their CEO) about this, he mentioned that it just goes to show that Box has tremendous plans for growth and expansion.  I believe he said something along the lines of “taking over the world,” and he’s getting there!  Their recent hires accurately highlight their core focus in the foreseeable future; expanding their product features and dramatically increasing sales.

Link to Forrester Wave announcement

Link to hiring announcement

Dropbox Launches Datastore API and Drop-ins

This past week has marked some very interesting and exciting things for Dropbox.  The Datastore API they released basically allows developers to create applications which can be used and synced both offline and online.  The simple analogy that was used is how Amazon’s Kindle knows what page you are on regardless of what device you are using and automatically updates and syncs.  The goal is to have this done with any application whether it be a game, a photo editing app, a to-do list, or perhaps even a shopping purchase.  Drop-ins allows users to attach or “drop in” files from Dropbox into other applications.  For example if you wanted to send an email and directly attach a file from Dropbox (instead of sending a link to that file) you can.  You can also save files directly to Dropbox instead of to your hard drive.

My POV

A very good addition to Dropbox.  In a recent interview their CEO said that users shouldn’t be able to tell whether they are working online or offline.  My favorite example of what this looks like is the TripAdvisor City Guides application which basically downloads packets to your iphone for a specific country or city that you want to visit.  Then while you are offline you can still explore things to do, the best places to eat, and can even write reviews and check into locations; then this syncs once you get online again.  The integration is seamless and their offline app feels very much like their online app.  Being able to do this for virtually any application is a big deal and should greatly improve the experience and functionality of any app that uses this API.  Drop-ins is also a great move but in my opinion not as crucial as their Datastore API.  However, the two work very well together.  This is huge for developers looking to create applications that work across multiple platforms and devices while making for a superior user experience.  I believe Box has similar if not identical functionality focused on files for organizations but I don’t believe they have this for applications.

Link to announcement

Tibbr Adds New Marketplace Apps

Yesterday tibbr announced that they are adding new apps into their growing marketplace for things such as ideation, customer engagement, task management, and several others.  The new apps which include Teamly, Kollaborate, Wazoku, and others; are available in their app marketplace as we speak.

My POV

Tibbr is one of those companies that offers a compelling product that very few people know about; which is unfortunate.  They are slowly but surely moving in the right direction but they seem to always be one step behind where many of the competitors are.  Jive, Yammer, Atlassian, and many other vendors out there have a far more developed marketplace with applications that can do almost anything (and if they can’t you can build your own).  So while I like the tibbr announcement and see it as a step in the right direction; I’d like to see something more substantial coming from them.

Link to announcement

Do We Really Want Data-Driven Organizations?

Big data, lots of data, a whole ton of data, super massive big data!

This seems to be what a lot of people are talking about lately; how to collect and leverage as much data as we can possibly get to make business decisions; aka building the data-driven organization; and it scares the hell out of me.

When I was in college I was always told by my economics and statistics professors that data can be deceiving.  In fact you can pretty much tell any story that you want with the same set of numbers and a bit of careful manipulation.  Nowadays we are getting data from every corner of the web both internally and internally; everything from social media platforms to enterprise collaboration applications to cloud storage providers to customer purchase information (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg).  The amount of data that we get is getting bigger and bigger and it will never slow down; it will only get bigger.  So, naturally organizations are thinking of how they can collect and make the most sense of the data that they have access to from all over the web.

There is nothing wrong with leveraging data to make business decisions.  But that’s very different than having a data-driven organization.  A data-driven organization is one that puts information and data ahead of people and relies on data to tell us what to do and how to do it.  Right now that might not seem like a big deal but eventually we are going to start living our lives the way data tells us to; and at that point we’ve essentially given up what makes us human.

I love sci-fi books.  Actually the Foundation and I, Robot series by Isaac Asimov are probably my all time favorite science fiction books and they all deal with big-data in some way.  The Foundation series deals with a character by the name of Hari Seldon who develops something called psychohistory which is essentially a science that combines history, sociology, and mathematics to make predictions about the future as it pertains to the world (not individuals).  Clearly this Hari Seldon fellow was dealing with massive amounts of data as the fictional population at that time was far greater than 7 billion.  Long story short, Hari creates psychohistory, eventually dies and the “world” is essentially living out what they “think” they should be doing based on Hari’s predictions.  In other words the people are doing things because the data tells them to.

Sure, it’s a bit of a stretch to compare this fictitious novel with a data-driven organization but hopefully you can still see the point I’m getting at here.  Our organizations should always be people driven not data-driven.  I posted this on twitter and Ben Haines the now CIO of Box responded by saying, “people driven with data enabled decisions win win,” and I completely agree.

The challenge that we are going to face going forward is how to keep our organizations “people driven” without giving up too much control to data.  If we spend all of our time trying to build a data-driven organization then eventually we will have no need for managers or employees, just robots who do what the data tells them to.

We don’t need data driven organizations, we need people driven but data enabled organizations.

My Keynote Presentation on The Future of Work at the Social Business Forum in Milan

Last month I was fortunate enough to be asked to keynote the Social Business Forum in Milan.  It was a great event with lots of smart people sharing some terrific insights.  My session was on the future of work and the organizers were kind enough to send me an HD video of the session.  It’s just over 15 minutes and includes some background and personal information on yours truly; just to help you get to know me a little bit better.

Hope you enjoy my talk!

Jacob Morgan – The Future of Work from SocialBizForum on Vimeo.

Friday Vendor Roundup: Jive, Yammer, and Tomfoolery

Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space.  I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV.  Obviously I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can.  If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add.  Again, keep in mind this is weekly roundup so the news or announcements need to be from that week.  This is just getting started and I expect it to grow quite a bit but I’ll try to keep it manageable.  Here is the roundup for this week.

Jive Software New Mo bile Apps

Although Jive has offered it’s product on mobile devices in the past they are now creating native applications specifically for iPhone and Android devices.  Additionally Jive is also creating new applications to better help serve corporate sales teams.  Per the announcement these mobile apps are going to greatly improve the functionality of Jive on mobile but moving from beyond just observing and commenting on content to actually creating content such as a document.  The smartphone apps are free but the new sales application will be $24/user/month and is designed to provide much richer customer data, a more robust mobile CRM if you will.

Link to announcement

My POV:

Glad to see Jive staying so committed to mobile.  Many of the companies I speak and work with are very much focused on empowering their mobile workforce and extending capabilities to these devices is a big part of that.  I haven’t seen the new mobile sale application yet so I can’t comment too much on that, I’m sure the price will be very negotiable.

Yammer Partners with Klout 

Yammer announced that they will be integrating Klout scores into employee profiles.  Not only can an individuals Klout score be displayed internally but organizations have the ability to create a company specific Klout score which reflects how influential an employee is just internally within the organization.  Yammer will also be adding a developer certification program and is actively working on building out their ecosystem.

Link to announcement

My POV:

More of a nice to have instead of a need to have.  This isn’t that big of a deal in my opinion.  It seems like Klout is having some challenges on the consumer side of things so is now trying their luck inside of organizations.  Other vendors have had their own internal scoring and reputation system for a while now.  I like the idea of being able to create and customize your internal Klout score for employees but I don’t see this as a critical or even a necessary feature for most organizations, still…a nice to have should you want it.

Tomfoolery Launches Their Anchor App

Started by former Flickr GM Kakul Srivastava, Tomfoolery is a company created to build mobile apps for work.  Their first app was just released called “Anchor.”  The app as of now is free to download and is similar to what you would expect to see and find from any other enterprise collaboration application.  However, the user experience and design is much improved.

Link to announcement

My POV:

I think that Tomfoolery is going to be an interesting company to pay attention to over the next 1-2 years.  I played around with their Anchor app and while I really like the design and layout it’s not that different then what other platforms are already offering. Perhaps this is better suited for mid-size and smaller organizations but I have a hard time seeing Anchor make its way into larger organizations at this point in time, perhaps in the future.

 

 

Sharing is Caring

In the past few weeks I explored a few themes or concepts which I believe are heavily impacting the future of work.  The first was, Customized Work, the second was Connect to Work, and today I want to talk about Sharing is Caring.  I’m sure we all heard the phrase when we were younger and in fact many of us have used this phrase at some point in our lives.  It may be a bit childish in nature since it was mainly used when someone had something that we wanted and we would jokingly say, “sharing is caring.”  But still, the concept behind it makes a lot of sense in the context of the future of work.

Jeremiah Owyang recently released a report on the Collaborative Economy which explores this very concept in much more detail but it mainly focuses on sharing goods or products and focuses a bit more on consumers instead of on organizations and employees.  However, this concept is very relevant to companies around the world but not as it pertains to good or products.  Instead what is more valuable is the sharing of information internally.

Companies around the world are deploying collaboration platforms for this very reason.  They are starting to understand the value in sharing information across the enterprise and connecting people.  The traditional model of work saw only a few people at the “top” in control of all of the information, these were the same people that made all the decisions.  Now, information is being opened up instead of closed off, the hierarchy is being flattened and communication is becoming horizontal and vertical.  This is a big change in the traditional model of a company and it’s something that is going to take some adjustment.  But I strongly believe that the successful organizations out there are going to be the ones that can get their employees to share across the enterprise.  But share what?  Ah, good question!  Everything!

Sharing isn’t just about providing information when someone asks for it’s also about proactive sharing which means sharing your thoughts, ideas, and what you might be working on without having been asked to do so; this is a very foreign concept to most employees.  This type of sharing allows other employees to join you in helping come up with solutions for problems or identifying potential opportunities.  Of course, re-active sharing is also crucial, that is, responding to someone when they ask you to share something.  Sadly our organizations have been acting like school bullies over the past ten, twenty, fifty, and one hundred years.  We didn’t share and we didn’t care.  Not only that but we also didn’t have the capabilities to share with everyone in the schoolyard, now things are different.

As I’ve stated many times before our organizations today are taking their cues from what is happening in the consumer web where we can easily find people and information, build communities, collaborate, share, and create information at will.

For the future of work sharing is more than caring, it’s survival.

New Forbes Column on The Future of Work and a Month of Travel

For over the past month or so I’ve been doing quite a bit of traveling to LA, Munich, the Republic of Georgia, and Milan.  My family is actually originally from Georgia so I went back there with my mom, grandmother, and now fiancee to see how they used to live.  Nobody from my family has been back in 35 years so it was quite an interesting trip.  With the exception of Milan where I keynoted the Social Business Forum, the majority of the trip was a vacation.  Needless to say this made it a bit hard to post content here but I’m finally back home!

There are a few exciting things happening.  First, as the title of the post suggests, I now have my own regular column on Forbes where I will be writing about the future of work.  In fact, my first post is already live on the Five Trends Shaping the Future of Work is already live.    I should be contributing there once a week so make sure to follow my column there.  The second big thing that is going to be happening is a complete redesign and change of this site.  I’ll have more on that later but basically this entire site is going to become much more focused on the future of work with new branding, a new layout and theme, and a much more user friendly design.  I’m very excited about this and have been working with our team on this for the past month or so.  I’ll still be the regular contributor so nothing will change there.

So that’s it.  I went traveling but am now back.  I have a Forbes column which I’m very excited about and this site will look completely different in the next few weeks so stay tuned!

It feels good to be back.

 

 

 

How Open is Too Open?

Since May 26th I’ve been traveling; first to Munich, then to Tbilisi (in Georgia), and then to Milan where I will be keynoting a conference on the future of work mid June.  Thus far it’s been an exciting trip.  My family is actually from Tbilisi and hasn’t been back in almost 40 years so my grandmother, mother, and now fiancee (who I proposed to in Tbilisi) traveled there to see where they grew up and what has changed.  Georgia is a beautiful place but there is a of corruption and political instability which leads to a high unemployment rate and poverty level.  One of the things that the current president of Georgia did was to create a glass administration building so people could see what goes on at the government level.  It’s not purely transparent from the outside but I’m told that once you go into the building it’s easy to see into offices and rooms throughout the building.  That got me thinking, how open is too open?

We talk about openness, transparency, and sharing, but how far would we be willing to go with it?  Would you feel comfortable working in an all glass building where people can see everything you do and every move you make?  I do believe that organizations need to be much more open and transparent but there’s a balance that needs to be struck here.  There’s a big difference between showing everything to everyone vs making things open to people should they want to see it.  To use an analogy it’s the difference between constructing a glass building vs constructing a regular building that just doesn’t have locked doors.

Can everything always be open to everyone?  I’m talking about product development, financial statements, investor meetings, etc?  I’m not too sure actually; especially at the enterprise level.  It might be a bit idealistic to expect that a company like Apple, Disney, or GE will just open everything up to everyone internally.  This is the key difference between building a present day company from the ground up based on the idea of openness and transparency vs trying to make an existing enterprise more open and transparent.  I’ll explore this more in an upcoming post.

Being open and transparent is a scary yet interesting thing but as with everything else there needs to be a balance.  In a more corrupt country like Georgia, extreme measures are taken to force transparency but this approach would do more harm than good in many other parts of the world.

But, what is the purpose of being open and transparent to begin with?

This topic alone can easily take up several blog posts but simply put the purpose is to:

Keep everyone on the same page
Build trust and foster better relationships
Allow employees (and customers) to contribute ideas and value where they see the opportunity to do so

If the strategy and approach that your organization is taking isn’t doing these things you may be doing more harm than good.

So, let me ask you.  How open is too open?

 

 

Structuring and Building Enterprise Collaboration Teams

In developing enterprise collaboration teams it is common to find that some employees are more involved than others.  David Straus developed a concept called “rings of involvement” that applies to how involved relevant stakeholders are in collaboration.  That concept inspired the chart shown below and I talk about it in much greater depth in my book, The Collaborative Organization.

In looking at how emergent collaboration platforms and strategies get implemented in an organization, it’s helpful to think of several degrees of involvement, as shown in this figure:

 

Implementers

This is the core team that essentially works on rolling things out.  Implementers are the day-to-day employees who do everything from selecting the vendors to developing adoption strategies.  The implementers are usually full-time employees devoted 100 percent to making sure the effort is successful.  They can be thought of as the construction workers responsible for building the organization’s emergent collaborative house.

Enablers

This is an extension of the core team but is not as involved.  The extended team might work on a subset of the core project such as trying to figure who the evangelists within the organization might be or trying to predict certain risks.  Ultimately, the extended team isn’t a part of the big-picture strategic initiative but assists the implementers in making sure the big picture fits together.  The extended team is akin to a right-hand man.  The enablers effectively help make the implementers’ job possible.

Strategists

The strategists work closely with the implementers and the extended team as they help develop the big picture.  The strategists can be thought of as the architects who design the blueprints for the implementers and the extended team.  Often there is crossover from the implementers and the extended team to the strategist role.  All these categories are permeable.  Strategists may not do the actual implementation.

Feedback Providers

These employees attend meetings and receive all the information they need to provide feedback and/or insight to assist in the project.  Feedback providers don’t actually have a hand in the roll-out or strategic decision making but contribute ideas, recommendations, and insights when and where needed.  These employees are great for bouncing ideas off of.

Update Seekers and Advisors

This group of employees just wants to know what’s going on with the initiative.  The group can be large or small, and typically it receives updates via alerts, e-mails, newsletters, or perhaps briefings.  Sometimes certain executives like to be the update seekers; they want to get enough information to know what’s going on and that things are going well.  Keep in mind that we are describing nothing more than involvement.  This doesn’t have anything to with seniority, the size of a group, or importance.  It’s possible that someone senior will be part of the implementing group and an entry-level employee will be part of the update seekers group.

How involved employees are can depend on all sorts of things, such as how much interest they have in the project and whether they have the time to contribute.   Also, these types of involvement groups are not mutually exclusive or permanent.  Employees can be a part of more than one group and can also move between groups; for example, an employee who may start getting updates and information about the project and then realize this is something he or she wants to be part of.  This isn’t meant to be a rigid bucket of employees; it’s merely an overview of how employees are typically involved.  It is something you can easily adapt and modify so that it fits your organization.  Try to identify where and your team fit in this framework.

Connect to Work

Last week I wrote about one of the key themes that I believe are going to make up the future work, I encourage you to read that post titled: The Future of Work is About Customized Work.  There are several of these themes that I’m going to be exploring in the near future and the next one is “Connect to Work.”  The traditional view of working  sees an employee waking up around 6:30 am, having their morning breakfast and then commuting anywhere from  30 mins to over 1.5 hours to get to work.  The employee gets to their office around 8 or 9 am and usually leaves around 6 pm.  This is what it used to mean to “work” or better yet “to GO TO work.”

What does it mean to connect to work?

The notion of having to go to work is dying, in fact for some it’s already dead.  Work doesn’t have to be done at an office anymore.  The only thing that most of us need is an internet connection that allows us to connect to the people and information we need to get our jobs done.  This is what it means to “connect to work.”  The many collaborative platforms out there are making this possible and what is particularly fascinating is the transition towards mobile work!  We can now access virtually all of the same people, files, conversations, tasks, and other types of information on our mobile devices that we can on our computers.  The power of these mobile devices that we carry around in our pockets is, for lack of a better word, awesome and it’s enabling and empowering a new type of employee, the future employee.

Connecting to work means that you can have access to everything and anything you need whether you are at a cafe, in an airplane, in a cab, or sitting somewhere on the beach.  You don’t have to go to work, work now comes to you.

This shift is forcing organizations to rethink some of the core assumptions that were made during the creation of these institutions, for example, do we now need offices or a central headquarters for our company?

I’m seeing more and more organizations implementing flexible work policies and our recent survey on the future of work (which you can still take and share!) is already revealing some very telling results on this which I will be sharing soon.  The giant elephant in the room is that we (including mangers and executives) all know that we have the ability and the capacity to enable this type of work to happen and we all inherently know that it is beneficial to do so.  It’s a virtually palpable shift that we can’t deny when looking at the future of work.

I’ll be exploring this theme in much more detail in the future but for now I just wanted to introduce it and I’m sure many of you are already quite aware of it.

The future of work is “connecting to work.”

 

The Future of Work is Customized Work

The typical career path for an employee starts in an entry level position in a particular department wherein the employee needs to then ascend the corporate ladder and move up the proverbial food chain to a more senior level role.  Most of the time the employee ends up stuck in a particular department or a particular role but occasionally some horizontal pivots are possible.  This is a type of pre-determined work because essentially the career path of the employee is set out for them once they join the company.  If they get hired in the marketing department then they will typically stay in that area.  It’s akin to set-up marriages which used to be common many years ago in some countries.  Before the child was even old enough to know what marriage was they were already paired up with someone.  Thankfully in most parts of the world this custom is now no longer being practiced but we run our companies in much the same fashion.  This is how it has been for many years inside of organizations and it’s starting to change.  The future of work is about customized work.

What is customized work?

Customized work is exactly what it sounds like.  It’s the ability of an individual employee to shape their career path within an organization and allows them to navigate to the roles they are best at and most passionate about.  Employees no longer need to focus on ascending the corporate ladder, they are now building their corporate ladder.

There are two things making this possible within organizations.  The first is technology in the form of collaboration platforms that allow employees to share their ideas and passions while becoming leaders in areas of their choosing.  The second is the changing behaviors we are starting to see in management around following from the front.  We still have a long way to go before this notion of customized work becomes pervasive within organizations but we are certainly moving towards that direction.

We are all still collectively learning what this is going to look like and how exactly it’s going to take shape but it’s a fascinating journey for organizations to be embarking upon and I’ll be doing my best to explore much more around the future of work and collaboration.  Stay tuned as I’ll be exploring several key themes around this!