Newest in the IT analyst’s arsenal of “power” concepts are collaborative computing tools: groupware, teamware, Knowledge Management (KM), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and even more esoteric technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Consultants are drooling over the potential profits to be made from helping legacy shops implement one of the premier groupware solutions, be it a Lotus, Microsoft, or Novell product or even a homegrown combination.
The IT community is being bludgeoned by such highbrow concepts as Microsoft’s “Digital Nervous System.” According to Microsoft Senior V.P. Bob Muglia, “A digital nervous system isn’t a thing....A DNS is a state of being with certain attributes...that make
it possible for companies to function in entirely new ways.” If a DNS—and by extension, collaborative computing—is a “state of being,” how can it help people work together more productively, which is the goal of groupware?
This kind of hyperbole exists everywhere collaborative concepts are discussed. Nebulous concepts may get groupware consultants jobs translating this technological newspeak to frantic executives trying to keep up with the newest digital revolution, but don’t count on such concepts or even sophisticated groupware packages to foster true employee collaboration. The culture of employee interaction within your business is the most important tool in fostering collaboration.
If you maintain a traditional competitive business model in which employees compete for promotions and recognition by hiding their business knowledge from one another, all the software, hardware, and consultants in the world won’t be able to increase knowledge creation and sharing. The only way to create an atmosphere of collaboration is to change your business culture to emphasize the group over the individual. Friendly competition will always be part of business, but breaking down barriers to true collaboration must precede the implementation of any groupware solution.
At the Lotus DevCon conference in San Francisco in June, the one thing all attendees seemed to agree on was that to create a collaborative atmosphere, the chief
executives of a company must buy into this IT solution. Executives should bring people and departments together to share knowledge. Collaborative tools like Lotus’ LearningSpace, Sametime, and Domino Workflow 2.0 can promote teamwork, but management must also change the way employees view themselves in their business culture. Losing an employee used to be an accepted element of doing business. The employee’s manager merely had to find an applicant whose educational background was equal to the lost employee’s and who desired to learn the company’s business practices. The rationale was that the company was probably better off without the disloyal miscreant anyway. Unfortunately, in this age of increasingly supersonic changes in technology, employees can take thousands of dollars of business knowledge with them when they leave. While the traditional business model of competition between employees is not evil in itself, it tends to separate people and their knowledge rather than bring them together to form a whole greater than the parts. Concepts of groupware, teamware, and KM are driving the development of a new business culture that embraces competition in a fundamentally new way: sharing knowledge rather than hiding it. A new culture of collaborative competition can enhance the worth and security of both employee and employer. This new model of cooperation is based on education, creativity, and common goals.
Web-based education is a good place to start changing your business culture to fit the new collaborative model represented by groupware products such as Lotus Notes/Domino. Lotus’ LearningSpace Anytime, a Web-based training solution, is one example of the virtual classroom. LearningSpace Anytime allows learners to work alone or in groups with live training sessions. As with most Web-based solutions, the key here is mobility: An expert in Europe can mentor students in California.
Mobile education is one example of the future of collaborative software. Although the biggest stir at the DevCon conference was caused by Lotus’ announcement that Domino will now support Microsoft’s Component Object Model (COM), I was more excited by the growing interest in mobile computing. At the conference, Lotus introduced a new technology that allows mobile workers to work offline and automatically synchronize data and application logic once they are reconnected. Code-named Domino Runtime Services, this set of ActiveX controls and Netscape plug-ins is expected to enter beta testing in the fourth quarter of 1999.
I think that mobile computing will become extremely important to collaborative computing as more people work at home or on the road. Apparently, Lotus also recognizes this; the company offers both the Pager Gateway Release 2.03, which works with smart phones, and the Wireless Domino Access, which works on PalmPilots and IBM WorkPads. Of course, Lotus isn’t the only company working on mobile IT solutions, but it’s certainly at the forefront of using wireless technology for collaborative computing. In the not-too-distant future, hand-held computing devices will be as common as cellular phones are today.
Just remember that all the technology in the world won’t help to create and share knowledge unless the humans using it are working in a business culture designed to foster collaboration.
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