Cai Kjaer, CEO of SWOOP Analytics | I help organizations improve internal communication and collaboration.
Let me know what you think about this: I have an old car that costs me $10,000 per year to maintain and $75 every time I fill it up with gasoline. I’m looking at buying a new electric car, which will cost me $60,000, but it will reduce the maintenance costs and the fuel bill dramatically. It will be far cheaper, so it’s a good investment. Oh, by the way, I don’t plan to drive it anywhere.
As you read this, I can hear you thinking, “Hang on, why is he buying a car that he will not use?” Yes, it sounds mad, doesn’t it? So why are organizations spending billions of dollars on communication and collaboration software which is “left in the garage”?
Forrester Research calculated the ROI of Microsoft’s collaboration and communication suite, which for a made-up company of 5,000 office workers would cost $15 million. (Disclosure: My company’s technology integrates with Microsoft’s M365.) Benefits were estimated to be about $35 million. However, $22 million of that $35 million is directly reliant on people communicating and collaborating better than they did before.
This is exactly where the wheels are falling off. My company provides analytics for workplace collaboration and communication tools, so we know exactly how people are using these tools. The Covid-19 pandemic led to many organizations rushing to implement digital communication and collaboration tools, but for most people, their habits haven’t changed. Email is still their most dominant tool for communication and collaboration, even internally. We have the electric car, but it’s still left in the garage! This must change.
I suggest three major actions:
1. Get a grip on training, governance and metrics.
If you are not getting your equivalent of the $22 million from collaborating and communicating better (and you likely aren’t), you have two options: Cancel your software renewal, or get serious. Given the competitive pressure to work smarter and faster, cancelling is not a real option for many businesses. It’s time to get serious about getting better at collaborating and communicating.
Sort out these three things:
• Training: Make sure people know how to work with each other to use these tools.
• Governance: Ensure people do the right things, and do things right.
• Metrics: Track the data so you know your efforts are paying off.
Do this simple exercise to help you think about your own communication and collaboration practices. Open your email outbox for last week. Count how many emails you sent in total, and then how many of these you sent to people who work in your own team. The first goal is to use the M365 tools or other applicable software tools for your team, thus reducing the need for email.
Governance is next. With your team, agree on how you want to collaborate. There is a symbiotic relationship between governance and training. People need the skills to use the various parts of their software, but without the team agreeing on how they will be using the tools, you will get nowhere. Once you have agreed on how to work, make sure you all are sufficiently trained.
2. Appoint a chief collaboration officer to drive action.
This may not be a role that will exist forever, but companies need someone to drive this work now. We’ve seen this in other fields to kick-start action, for instance, with chief diversity and inclusion officers, chief digital officers and chief innovation officers.
The IT department is rightfully kept responsible for ensuring the technology platforms work, but they are not the ones who should be given the accountability of ensuring ROI. This is the responsibility of the leadership, but who?
It is the chief operating officer’s role to ensure the day-to-day activities of employees are executed in alignment with the organization’s goals, so the chief collaboration officer should report to the COO.
The chief collaboration officer would be focusing the organization’s finite resources on helping the business areas where you can have the biggest impact. For instance, if your organization is project-based, then integrating governance and training of M365 collaboration and communication tools into the project management methodology could be a very effective path.
3. Set KPIs on collaboration for people managers.
As soon as a task cannot be done in isolation, then people need to collaborate. With an overall appreciation that agile work is more efficient than traditional hierarchical structures, the role of the people manager is changing. That means more focus on coordinating people’s work and ensuring people are collaborating within and across teams.
One of the first tasks of the chief collaboration officer is to set KPIs for collaboration. This includes asking people managers to have in place something as simple as a “team charter” where the team sets out the rules for how they want to collaborate and communicate. I think Forbes contributor Darren Menabney summarizes this process very well.
In addition to the team charter, there must also be a goal to contribute to collaborative efforts across teams. In the M365 suite of tools, the best choice for this is Viva Engage (previously called Yammer), which allows people from across an entire organization to form a community about any topic, for instance around core capability areas like project management, process improvement, sales, marketing, etc.
I have seen examples where contributions to Viva Engage were added to people managers’ KPIs to avoid the painful realization that, for example, the 20 hours you just spent on solving a problem had already been solved by another team.
Let’s get to work.
The call to action is for all of us, leaders and team members alike, to embrace a new way of working. Just as the electric car promises reduced costs and environmental benefits, enhanced collaboration and communication promise heightened efficiency and innovation.
It is time to leave the old habits in the past and shift into a new gear of collaboration. Take the wheel, accelerate change and let the power of effective collaboration drive your organization forward. The time for change is now—let’s put those digital tools to work and unlock their full potential.
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