Tag Archives: enterprise 2.0

we don’t need another mailbox app

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it feels like there’s an arms war going on surrounding email apps. which one is best? which has the most features? which will help you reach inbox zero? one of the latest—and most hyped—entrants into the email app arena is mailbox app.

but to me, it seems like we’re fighting the wrong kind of war. the reason so many people feel inundated by email is because we’re not using it for the right reasons. i wrote about this before.

why do people hoard emails and keep 400 of them in their inbox? why do we have overly complicated tree structures of file folders in our desktop mail applications when you need lewis and clark or holmes and watson to help you find anything once you put it there?

we’ve been using email as a means of passing and storing information for way too long, and it just doesn’t make sense. at work, files and information belong in a shared, open environment, not to be stashed away and hidden in some ridiculously named folder like “stacy” or “jim”. at home, personal email either needs to be saved (website registration information… something else?) or deleted. there is no in between.

we don’t need another mailbox app. we need to rethink the way we use email.

the stranger: why openness scares the shit out of people

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image from wikipedia

a friend and colleague asked me a question regarding some internal communications within our firm last week. during our conversation, she said, ‘i don’t know why [my team] won’t just ask everyone on yammer.’ i said it’s because on the internet, no one knows you’re a suit.

every day, in corporations all across the world, people go to work wearing a mask — sometimes more than one. like the billy joel song, they’re the faces of the stranger but we love to try them on. the marketing specialist. the associate. the senior vp of sales. but when you’re on the internet, no one can see that mask; all they can see are the contributions that you make. to put your ideas out in a public forum is to open yourself up to all kinds of criticism.

in business, you used to be able to hide behind your title. the senior tech said this is why we’re taking a certain approach, and that was the end of discussion because who would stand up to him? now the first-year analyst out of college can raise questions about, and disagree with, that approach. the person from accounting can share her thoughts on the marketing specialist’s ideas on the name of the redesigned newsletter. these enterprise 2.0 systems like yammer cause a flattening of the hierarchy and a cross-pollination of teams that we have never before seen in business.

and that scares the shit out of people.

but if we’re going to get the most out of our organizations — if we’re going to really excel in what we do — we’re going to have to become more agile and we’re going to have to look for solutions outside of our normal channels. each person has to pull on the same rope. the only way to really accomplish that is if we put down those masks, get over the fear, and go into work tomorrow as ourselves ready to work openly with each other.

i’m john scardino. i have a few ideas that i’d like to explore.

i hope i can explore them with you.

when humans are more powerful than machines

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a colleague asked me to help him find an example of an after action report (that final step in a project or project phase that everyone seems to ignore). i spent over 2 minutes looking for an example on our enterprise search engine. i performed a general search, and even a detailed search to look for only word documents followed by only pdf documents.

i got nothing.

after that failed, i sent a question out on our yammer network to my colleagues and friends asking the same question. roughly 2 minutes and 30 seconds later i had a colleague of mine forward along an example document with exactly everything i was looking for. this was a colleague whom i’d have never even known existed if it weren’t for social networking within the enterprise.

but here’s the kicker…

the enterprise system we’ve developed has cost the firm countless thousands of dollars (probably millions), meanwhile the yammer network we’re using is the free version — no cost at all to us. using this high-cost technology outfit provided me with no answers at all and was actually a time-suck when you look at it, meanwhile a free system available to anyone was able to connect the person who needed information with the person who had the information.

the moral of the story is this: business needs to rethink where it’s spending its money. high cost IT departments in organizations don’t have to be high cost anymore. there was once a time when machines could do things that we mere mortals couldn’t, and so we developed these new systems to supplant humans. the problem is that that paradigm has shifted.

the focus needs to not be on what the technology is capable of, but on what the technology enables us to do.

at the end of the day this change in focus is better, faster, cheaper, and more efficient.

not easier, but better.

simple science

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image by Alvin K, flickr artist

here’s a simple science experiment:

count how many emails you get today from advertisements. also count the number of spam messages that get filtered into your junk email folder. in addition, count the number of emails you get that have attachments to them, especially large ones. then finally count how many emails you currently have across your folders that are unread.

now, you tell me if email is really a good tool to use or not.

life without email

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this post is being mirrored at my other blog: thisisjohnny’s posterous

monday morning was a morning like all the rest, for a little while at least. i woke up at my normal time—6:40a—ate reese’s puffs for breakfast, and headed out the door to the office. (fear not; i did get showered, clothed, and brushed my teeth in between.) when i arrived at my desk and opened the screen on my laptop, that familiar “boop” from the internal speaker of my firm-issued lenovo thinkpad rang true just as it has every morning since 2009, and i quickly pulled up microsoft outlook to check my email.

as i scanned my inbox for unread items, i had an alarming feeling overwhelm me: “there’s not a single thing in here that i want to read.” that’s not to say that i don’t like my job (in fact, my current tasking is probably as rewarding as my current role has ever been and i’ve learned a great deal from it) but the emails clogging up my 675 megabytes of exchange server space really didn’t need to be there. i pondered for a moment: how much of this is my own fault? how many of my emails are other people looking at right now thinking the same thing: ‘this is worthless!’ ? so right then and there i decided my goal for the week:

don’t send a single email.

one of my friends, astonished, asked, “…are you off [from work] all week?” nope. i just wanted to live more intelligently, so–boom–i cured it with my brain. shortly after, my brother sends me an email about going to a phillies game in april and i promptly reply on my iphone. doh! i convince myself that was unfair, i mean… i just started this thing, so i pull a kramer, “alright. starting.. now!” and the rest of monday goes off without a hitch. one day in, this isn’t bad! i was able to coordinate what i had to do in work with some simple, more engaging, phone calls and face-to-face micro-meetings. any and all other communication happens via text message, yammer, twitter, facebook, and online forums.

tuesday comes along with its own challenges (namely the fact that it isn’t friday yet). now people are asking me for tangible things! ‘that file’ and ‘that sql statement’. woof! even still, with people asking for powerpoint presentations and txt files, i’m able to use our corporate enterprise 2.0 system—based on microsoft sharepoint—to upload and store files on our team site and verbally tell folks, or drop an instant message, about where to go in order to get to it. four phone calls, two uploads, a handful of face-to-face conversations, and a circumvention of the rule by asking a coworker to email one particular file for me instead (hey, i still didn’t send it.. delegation of duties ftw!) and i’m through my second day of the week. confidence grows. i can do this.

on wednesday, this article about reply-all storms from the wall street journal crosses my yammer feed (thanks, nathan!). i’m convinced now more than ever that what i’m doing isn’t just good for me, but good for the whole company. i also convince myself that being able to fly is probably the one superpower i’d really like to have if i could only have just the one. i spend the vast majority of my time at client site for the rest of the week where email isn’t really available to me in any normal capacity. the vast majority of my work continues to use shared network services, face-to-face, and telephone calls. my personal communications are strictly through facebook, micro-blogging, lunch with a friend and colleague at taco bell, text messaging, and xbox live.

and here, as i type this on sunday evening, i have yet to send a single email since the one i sent to my brother on monday morning. so to the question, “what’s it like to live life without email?” let me just answer with one word:

awesome.

in sum…

pros: it’s far more engaging to work with actual people and not an inbox; not having to worry about “how is this going to come across?” or “does this make sense?”; it actually takes less time to call someone than to email them; using shared resources and e2.0 platforms (a) keeps version control, (b) lets everyone connect, not just those folks on the to: line, (c) keeps everything organized.

cons: some information doesn’t need to be persistent but for a while. using a wiki or other 2.0 tool is overkill, and a phone call or face-to-face meetup doesn’t provide the kind of fall-back reference needed; i miss signing my emails “- dino”.

overall: i’m not saying that email is completely worthless, but it’s mostly worthless. :D there’s not much value you get from email that you can’t get from any other means. i won’t say that i’ll never send another email again, but i’m certainly going to keep moving forward with this new perspective on the ageless tool of the digital age: less is more. why don’t you join me? do what i did… just try it out for a week.

ideas do not occur in a bubble

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image by Reini68, flickr artist

when was the last time you had a good idea?  one of those eureka moments?

i remember back in college my roommate and i were discussing which of the honey bunches of oats ‘flavors’ we enjoyed the most.  after trying pretty much all of them, i told him with conviction that hbo with strawberries was my favorite.  i said:  ”the thing i love about it is how your milk turns strawberry-flavored afterwards.”

immediately i thought, ‘hey — they actually make that stuff!’ and i shouted out with such joy, “dude!  what if i make strawberry milk, and then pour that into my hbo with strawberries?  it’s double the strawberry!  how awesome would that be?!”

the very next time we went to the grocery store i bought some strawberry nesquik mix and put my theory to the test.  naturally it ended up being horrendous, but it was still a good idea at the time.

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the difference between participation and adoption

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image by dharmabumx, flickr artist

i was listening in on a social media community of practice presentation today that a colleague of mine was giving about social media in the enterprise and individual performance.

while i feel that my colleague has done some great work — and really took a rather large bite to create a conceptual model for promoting participation in online networks which is itself valiant — i think it’s important to make the distinction between participation, and adoption.  it’s a distinction that i feel is greatly overlooked.

mike’s model talked about awareness, self-efficacy, organizational trust, and this notion of perceived improvement potential all being drivers of participation.  and i think that’s wrong.  in fact, i think it’s exactly backwards.

you might think that i’m splitting hairs right now; toe-may-toe, toe-mah-to, right?  but participation and adoption do have rather different connotations despite the fact that often times you’ll hear those two words used interchangeably.  i think, however, that you’ll find one is far more desirable (and much harder to come by) than the other.  in fact, one leads to the other.

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a challenge to all those in enterprise security

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i’m tired.

i mean it.  i’m really fed up.

i can make bank transfers, and pay bills, and shop online from my cell phone.  why then can’t i access a file stored on a sharepoint installation from that same device?  why can’t i access the latest updates from members of my team on our project from an enterprise 2.0 solution?  why can’t i do it all pain free — just as i do my online banking (or my shopping at express)?  don’t tell me there are security concerns about accessing proprietary information outside of the corporate firewall.  i don’t want to hear it; it’s just an excuse.

i need knowledge when i need it — not where or when you want to allow me access to it.  i’m interfacing with clients all the time — hardly ever at my office — and i need to have the right information available to me so that i can help them make informed decisions.  i can’t be bothered to jump through hoops just to get that information.

i walk around with an iphone in my pocket all day, and i can hardly use it for more than pulling up a lightsaber, finding waldo, and making fart noises.  it’s unacceptable.

if you work in enterprise security, i’m holding you personally accountable.  for far too long you have lagged behind the curve when it comes to the rest of the technology world.

it’s time that you finally catch up.

reduce your frustration: stop using email

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[i started writing this post as a comment on megan murray's blog post, actually, but it quickly grew into something more.]

i find email to be a burden to my work.

it’s the hammer in the tool box. the problem is, not every situation is a nail. sometimes you need a screwdriver, and other times you need a wrench. but we’re so dependent on email (i blame ms outlook for it) that we all try hammering in screws and bolts — even when we know it doesn’t work.

even though we have instant messaging, and even though we have enterprise 2.0 tools like wikis and blogs and more, we time and time again return to email.

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