We are very excited for a new approach to managing enterprise collaboration that we have developed with Four Groups and described in some detail in our recent publication Actions for Enterprise Collaboration.
Collaboration is a key issue for enterprises whether their challenge is innovation in an increasingly competitive global economy, organizational integration as a result of merger and acquisition activities, managing internal and external skills and scarce resources, or delivering ever-increasing level of process consistency and improvement.
The inclination for most managers when faced with collaboration as a challenge, and indeed collaboration tools account for perhaps one-fifth of corporate software spending. New tools may indeed be needed, but it is putting the cart before the horse. Collaboration is a human activity, and the first step is to understand the human barriers and conducts for collaboration within the corporation. This understanding has to be objective and and lead to actions that are firmly rooted in the corporate strategy, the organizational structure, and the business processes.
The publication describes our approach for achieving just that, proposes a well-defined and practical first step in the Team Assessment offering, and shows examples of the type of actions and results that it generates.
We will talk more about this approach and offering in the coming days. Meanwhile, I encourage you to go and read the report, and I would be very interested in hearing your comments and suggestions.