Recently a CEO suggested I consider doing some short term consulting work for his company.  He wanted to know what questions I would ask to figure out how I could help his product management / products team.

This is what I came up with (what do you think?):

-How do you balance short term improvements with long term innovation and new revenue opportunities?

-How do you make product decisions using different market, portfolio, and client analysis techniques?

-What are the components (including success metrics) you include in a business case or MRD for different situations?

-Which among the many different PRD or requirement documentation options do you use?

-How do you change the organization of a team and its processes based on the stage and size of the product line and the company? (i.e. How agile should you be?)

Andrew McAfee’s (website and blog) is one of the main advocates in the Enterprise 2.0 movement. He actually coined the term and recently he released a book entitled “Enterprise 2.0” which I reviewed here. Enterprise 2.0 is the use of next generation collaboration tools in the enterprise or as he describes it the “use of emergent social software platforms (ESSPs) by organizations in pursuits of their goals”

McAfee believes in the potential impact of Enterprise 2.0: “ESSPs will have about as big an impact on the informal processes of the organization as large-scale commercial enterprise systems (ERP, CRM, Supply Chain, etc.) have had on the formal processes.”

I met him recently and I heard a few things:

-          During the last 5 years collaboration technology tools have gone from bad to good. (However still email is the dominant collaboration tool; and email is “where knowledge goes to die.”) These new tools allow for creativity and less structured interactions.

-          However organizations still don’t have the recipe to rollout these capabilities.

-          Two recipes for failure:
     o   overstructuring offerings from the beginning (need to keep open)
     o    thinking “if they build it they will come”

-          A few ideas for success
     o   need to make sure individuals know why it is good for them (incentives may be good or they may help kill an initiative)
     o   make it very easy to use (which is hard to do)
     o   be patient and adjust user expectations downward
     o   use success stories (ROI is difficult to quantify)

Morten Hansen is a UC Berkeley School of Information professor and a part-time professor at INSEAD, France. He recently wrote my favorite book on “Collaboration” which I review here. Published by Harvard Business Press and written by an INSEAD/Berkeley professor, it is naturally very business focused which is probably why I found its insights so valuable.


Recently I had a chance to meet with him and I heard a few things:

-Diagnose your collaboration goals and problems first; tools aren’t necessarily required to get it right

-Create a business case and then back in to your tool strategy

-Consider changing incentives and creating communities of practice

-KPIs for collaboration need to consider benefits and costs; you can’t just measure volume of activity.  It would be like measuring the number of meetings as a KPI for business success. 

Recently I read a few books on the general topic of collaboration.  The one that was most informative for me was Morten Hansen’s book entitled “Collaboration.”  Published by  Harvard Business Press and written by an INSEAD/Berkeley professor, it is naturally very business focused.  It emphasizes the importance of cultural issues, it suggests several best practices, and it provides many case studies.

Hansen begins by enumerating several collaboration “traps”:
     -collaborating in hostile territory (some organizations aren’t set up to collaborate)
     -overcollaborating (it is refreshing for an author to suggest that his thesis and the title to his book isn’t universally applicable)
     -overshooting the potential value
     -underestimating costs
     -misdiagnosing the problem
     -implementing the wrong solution
  
He suggests that the solution to these traps is “disciplined collaboration … the leadership practice of properly assessing when to collaborate (and when not to) and instilling in people both the willingness and ability to collaborate when required”

The three steps in disciplined collaboration is to:
     1)evaluate opportunities for collaboration
     2)spot barriers to collaborate
     3)tailor collaboration solutions
  
In general, his case for collaboration is that it provides:  
     -better innovation
     -better sales 
     -better operations
which all can lead to sales growth, cost savings, and asset efficiency.
  
The four barriers to successful collaboration are: 
     -not invented here syndrome  (insular culture, status gap, self-reliance, fear of revealing shortcomings)
     -hoarding (competition with colleagues/units, narrow incentives (for own goals), too busy, fear (loss of power))
      -search problems (company size, physical distance, information overload, poverty of networks)
      -transfer issues (tacit knowledge (difficult to transfer), no common frame (don’t know how to work together), weak ties (no strong relations to ease transfer)
  
The three levers to tear down these barriers are:

Lever 1: Unify People - reduce motivational barriers and get buy-in toward a common goal
     One way to do this is to create unifying goals that must
          -create common fate
          -be simple and concrete
          -stir passion
          -put competition on outside
     
     Another is for leaders to emphasize the value of teamwork.  However as they do this, they need to be aware of three “sins” that can happen. 
          sin #1 – small team work kills collaboration. In other words small teams only collaborate among themselves.
          sin #2 – "everyone do teamwork now (except those of us up here)"
          sin #3 – teamwork becomes the point of it all
     
     A language of cooperation also needs to be created.  However, as he has warned earlier, unification or collaboration can be overdone. 

Lever 2: Encourage T-shaped management that rewards both independent results and cross-unit contributions. For example when BP merged with Amoco managers were expected to spend 15%-20% time on cross unit collaboration activities.

     Companies get to this T-shaped management by selection and change:  encourage the belief in T-shaped management, promote and hire those who exhibit this behavior (and selectively fire those who don’t), use pay and bonuses, and provide leadership coaching.

     Collaboration must be measured. SAP has 3 observable degrees of behavior:  “needs development” (misses opportunity to collaborate); “satisfactory” (involves others), “highly effective” (ensures involvement). This data must be must be collected, measured, and have consequences. Employees need to be coached on this behavior, they must be given a way to do it. Performance pay needs to be based on a mixture of individual, business unity, and corporate performance.

Lever 3: Create nimble, not bloated networks across organizations that deliver results
     1)build outward (not inward)
     2) build diversity, not size
     3) build weak ties, not strong ones
     4) use bridges, not familiar faces
     5) swarm the target, don’t go it alone
     6) switch to strong ties, don’t rely on weak ones

Finally the author discusses how you grow to be a collaborative leader
     -put personal goals and interests second
     -involve others (from autocractic to inclusive)
     -be open to people, alternatives, and debate 
     -be accountable