Tammy Erickson Associates Building Intelligent Organizations

Hi Rudy,
I think the biggest issue facing OD is the challenge of helping organizations transform to take advantage of the capabilities offered by new social media technology. Here’s my perspective:

New technologies are making their way into the workplace, offering significant improvements in generating, capturing, and sharing knowledge, finding helpful colleagues and information, tapping into new sources of innovation and expertise, and harnessing the “wisdom of crowds.” Over time, these collaborative technologies will change the way work is done and the way organizations function. They will shift the way we interact with people on our teams, find external expertise when it’s needed, and share ideas and observations more broadly.

We are on the brink of an important transformation. Today’s technologies enable a very different level of business performance. The frontier of human productive capacity is the power of extended collaboration – the ability to work together beyond the scope of small groups.

But realizing the benefits of these new capabilities is not as straightforward as installing a document-sharing or Facebook-like application inside your organization. People aren’t necessarily as motivated to share documents at work as they are to share baby photos in their personal lives. Identifying relevant business connections isn’t as clear cut as finding old high school friends. The range of activities that collaborative technologies can take on to enhance performance and drive increased productivity in the workplace is far broader than the activities most of us have explored during our personal use. Perhaps most importantly, many of our existing work practices actually hinder the successful use of extended collaboration.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Best,
Tammy

Related Reading:

Building Organizations to Leverage Collaborative Technologies

Filed under: Innovation | Published: 12/06/11

Dear Tushar,

Thanks for this question – innovation is one of my favorite topics.

I have three practical suggestions for increasing innovation in the workplace.

1. Build trust-base relationships with colleagues.  I call this strengthening your organization’s “collaborative capacity” because my research shows that people do not share ideas – that is, collaborate – unless they trust each other.  And, unless you’re willing to share ideas with others, the likelihood of innovation is limited to only what resides in one individual’s head – usually not enough for sustained success!

2. Introduce diverse perspectives and new information.  Make sure you and your colleagues are continually exposed to fresh thinking – even if it is not immediately apparent that it relates to the work at hand.  It’s impossible to predict where that “ah ha” spark will come from.  Observing and learning from a variety of sources is important stimuli.

3. Ask great questions.  People don’t innovate because you ask them to innovate.  They innovate because they are intrigued by a question or problem that they’d like to solve.  Innovation is fundamentally a discretionary activity – people must be drawn to doing it.  Provocative, compelling, important questions are the magnet.
I hope this helps – best wishes for much success.

Warmly,

Tammy

Filed under: Innovation | Published: 05/12/09