Use & Misuse

1. Use & Misuse of Collaborative Technologies A Distillation of Best Practices, Good Formand Correct Behaviour for Corporate Well-Being Leading Edge Forum – Executive Programme – September 2006 Note: Put in Full Screen mode and click on tabs or arrows to navigate Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing

2. Questions before you start Do you know what kind of collaboration you will beengaged in? Are you clear about whatspecific benefits you areseeking from your choice of technologies? Do you use collaborativetechnologies with therecipient in mind? Collaboration takes different forms and different technologies work better for some types of collaboration than others. Which types of collaboration are important to you: Co-development, Coordination, Co-decision, or Commitment? Collaborative technologies can be used to achieve avariety of different benefits. Among these are: wider participation, discipline, efficiency, information use and group dynamics. Have you made a conscious choice orare you doing it from habit? Collaboration depends on the voluntary exercise of discretionary time by participants. The attention of your fellow collaborators is not free. You have to compete for it. Have you made iteasy for them to understand what you said and what you want them to do? More … Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing

3. Change from instinctive habit to premeditated choice Click on ? for suggestions in each box ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Click here for an example of how you might customize the advice to your site More … Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing

4. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Is your team ready to collaborate? Can you state the goal? Can everyone else state the goal? Does your team have the right network of contacts to achievethe goal? Do team members feel energizedby working together? Do you and they know what happens if the team achieve the goal? Clarity of purpose is not just a nice idea, it is vital to effective collaboration. The best technology in the world will not compensate for the lack of a clear goal. If the team members do not know what they are trying to achieve, you cannot expect to get full value from their contributions. Teams will need to reach out beyond the team for ideas and assistance. Often, that means reaching beyond the boundaries of the firm to create what Hagel and Brown call “productive friction”. Research by Rob Cross on social networks shows that if youfail to be energized by your interaction, you will try to avoid it, dislike it when it happens, and feel the need to complain aboutit to others afterwards. Collaboration works best when you have “all eyes on the prize”.

5. Calendaring Don’t assume that if the calendar program says someone is ‘free’, they have nothing better to do. When updating your calendar, remember that other people will read it. When forming a new team, agree how the calendar may be used. Calendar programs mislead us by labelling uncommitted timeas ‘free’. Don’t compound the problem by sending emails that say “I notice you are free next Wednesday ...”. A blank in the calendar does not mean a person has nothing important to do. Include helpful information, not just bare facts. For example, the calendar entry for an all-day sales meeting might include a note saying that you may be available at lunchtime or late afternoon. Include not only ‘hard’ rules, like who can read and write to your calendar, but also ‘softer’ principles describing your availability to be interrupted for specific kinds of meetingswhen you have marked the time as unavailable. More … Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing

6. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Calendaring – continued Use the calendar to negotiate when a meeting should take place, but first make sure you need a meeting. Don’t use a broadcast meeting invitation to gauge interest in a topic. Enrich calendar entries by linking to other information. Unless the need for a meeting has already been agreed by the participants, give them opportunity – for example, in a discussion space – to comment on its purpose, and value, before sending out an invitation. Start the discussion in a shared space and send out a hotlinked email. This way you can discuss the intent and the preparation needed for the meeting, and also target the most useful participants. Hotlinks to meeting summaries, telephone numbers or active discussions don’t just save time, they demonstrably increase involvement.

7. Email If you want action from several people, send each one an individual message. If you expect discussion on an issue, don’t send it byemail. Don’t say anything in an email that you wouldn’t want to commit permanently to writing. Don’t flame, and don’t retaliate if others flame you. Most people unconsciously give lower priority to messages addressed to lots of people. And if there is any ambiguity about who should respond, you’ll get no replies. If you email the same thing to more than one person for comment, you’ll have version-management problems. Use a discussion space or shared filing space instead. Email technology may be more secure than most media, but email culture is less so because forwarding and copying areso easy. Email lacks the instant feedback of a live meeting, and the deliberation of formal letter-writing, so strong language is dangerous. If you receive a flame mail, don’t respond, except by telling the sender that you found their communication upsetting. More … Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing

8. Email – continued Mark your message ‘Urgent’ only if you believe that the recipient would thank you for doing so. Use the subject field to add value to the email, not just as a label. Think more about saving the reader’s time than saving your own. Over-using ‘Urgent’ not only dilutes its impact, but may beread by others to mean ‘self-important’. Think carefully about what to put in the subject field. It can help the recipient to prioritize the response, track a conversation of multiple emails (including the progress made), or retrieve itat a future date. You may save a second or two by writing your emails in all lowercase letters or cutting words short, but it dramatically increases the time your readers take to understand them. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing

9. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Messaging Start an instant messaging or VOIP session by saying ‘Hi’ and why you are calling – don’t just launch. Always assume thatwhatever you say by IM will be seen by others. Do make use of the presence indicator to let others know your availability. Look for software to become more intelligent at inferring your availability. Don’t assume that the other person is ready to engage. Establish contact, verify that it is a good time for them, then proceed. VOIP tools have text chat as well as voice. Use chat first. To meet regulatory requirements, many systems keep logs of all IM traffic. You don’t know who else might read the receiver’s screen. And remember that what you send may be copied and pasted into another IM, document or email. Your phone may work worldwide, but it does not say if now is a good time to call or not. A major strength of IM is that it can signal your availability for different kinds of interaction. Most IM implementations are still primitive in the extent to which they are aware of your availability. Most do not let you distinguish who is asking. Watch for this to change as IM becomes more important and integrated in the enterprise. More …

10. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Messaging – continued Do use IM for negotiating things like the time and date of meetings. Make use of the ‘away’ message to let others know how and when you will become available. Do be sensitive to the time zone of the recipient when sending an SMS. Use IM to share links to documents, sites and services important to a conversation. While you can do it in email or voicemail, the semi-synchronous nature of IM makes it possible to exchange a number of quick back-and-forth suggestions and counter suggestions, shortening the elapsed time needed to set up a meeting. The unobtrusive nature of IM lets you do this when a telephone call would be disruptive. Let others know when is a good time and a good method to contact you. For example, you may be in a meeting all afternoon, but can be reached on your phone via a text message. As appropriate, you may want to include a link to your calendar. Although an SMS is less obtrusive than a phone call, it still may wake someone out of an otherwise sound sleep. If you are unsure what time zone they are in, see if they indicated their presence on IM. Often you may need to refer to other materials during a conversation. Pasting the link into IM for others to use moves the discussion along.

11. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Shared filing space A shared filing space can perform multiple roles – don’t get them mixed up. Archives don’t have to be easy to use, but they must be complete. Establish the owner of any reference document and the process for keeping it up to date. We look at three generic roles below: archive, reference and knowledge-sharing. As they use the sametechnology (though there are also specialized products), the roles are often mixed up in a single system. This is dangerous because they have very different management needs. Users expect an archive to contain everything they might reasonably want to retrieve. One missing document is enoughto damage credibility. Wherever you use a shared filing space for reference information (such as pricing, products or a directory), make sure that each document has a nominated owner, and devise an explicit process for ensuring that it is regularly reviewed and updated. More …

12. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Shared filing space – continued Extract the re-usable knowledge from a document when you file it. Don’t expect the retriever to do it. A good structure guides the creation of content – not just its retrieval. Prune the dead wood in order to promote new growth. Restructuring is a management task, not a clerical task. Most ‘knowledge repositories’ fail because the knowledge is deeply embedded in highly contextual information. If you believe that a document contains ideas or experiences that may be useful to others, take the time to extract that knowledge and turn it into more generic form before you publish it. A structure for a shared filing space defines not just what we have and how it fits together, but what we don’t yet have and need to create. The value of a shared knowledge space is enhanced as much by what you take out as what you put in (another reason why it must not be confused with an archive). Prune all material that is out of date, never used, or where the knowledge is not explicit. More radical than pruning is periodic restructuring as the business environment and priorities change. This is often seen as a massive chore, but if the knowledge base isn’t worth aregular review by a manager, it probably isn’t worth keeping.

13. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Discussions Don’t discourage trivia – displace it. Use the power of anonymity by design notby default. Aim to close as many discussions as you open. Discussions frequently go off at tangents or into trivialities. These play an important role in both teambuilding and creative thinking. If the original discussion thread is in danger of being lost, simply cut the digression and paste it into a new discussion where it may lead to serendipity. There are situations where anonymity can be valuable (such as getting employee feedback on a major business change). But anonymity can encourage flippancy. It is best to require all entries to be signed, and reserve anonymity for special situations in which it is valuable (such as brainstorming and uninhibited feedback) where all entries should be anonymous. When an issue has reached the point where it can be resolved, announce its resolution first through the discussion database, not via another medium. This rewards those who participated in the discussion, and sends an important signal about the purpose and value of the discussion. More …

14. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Discussions – continued The moderator’s role is to ensure that the discussion achieves its intended outcome. You need to know whether or not you are progressing towards theoutcome. Take the time to learn common conventions, orinvent your own. Every discussion space needs a moderator, not just to enforce standards, structure and etiquette, but to ensure that the purpose is understood, and that the outcome is ultimately achieved. If the participants are not able to achieve the outcome by themselves (for example, they need budget approval), the moderator must get the help they need. Whether the desired outcome is a decision, an action, a development or buy-in to an idea, you need to be able to monitor progress, and alert participants to that progress, or lack of it. Newcomers to online discussions (‘newbies’) may make the mistake of typing in capitals, which by convention is equivalent to shouting (as is emboldened text in discussions that support font attributes). Using emoticons (such as :-) for happy), or different-coloured text for different participants or points, may seem quirky, but adds to the richness of the communication, as well as building a feeling of community amongst the participants. More …

15. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Discussions – continued If you want to be able to find key internal information, let your people blog. Be deliberate about whatyou blog – it may last beyondyour lifetime. When you blog, be clear for whom you are speaking. If your entry on a corporateblog provokes discussion,consider a wiki to resolve it. In the course of blogging, people will reference many files and ideas that others would probably not find without the blog links. Search engines work well at scanning blogs. In effect, blogging creates meaningful meta-data and helps people find important internal information. It has always been good practice to be careful about what you say in emails or instant messages. The combination of the public visibility of blogs and search engines which cache material for long periods means that what you put in a blog may last a very long time. If you are in doubt, ask yourself: what will your grandchildren say if they read this? A company’s brands are among its most valuable assets. When you blog, be clear whether you are speaking as an individual or as a representative of the company. Blogs are great for stating points of view, but they typically do not facilitate the resolution of a debate. When resolution is needed, wikis provide a way for everyone to contribute to the creation of a shared point of view.

16. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Audio/Web conferencing Be an active moderator. Ensure that theaudio conference is audible. Make sure the conference has a clear beginning. Direct questions to nominated participants. Use reflexive listening. Because the medium is ‘blind’, manage the conference from beginning to end with more formality than a face-to-face meeting. Before you start, check that all the participants can hear and be heard clearly, and that they know how and when to use the mute button to cut down on background noise. Before launching into the main discussion, spend a few minutes explaining the purpose, expectations and length of the conference and tell the participants who is online. Open questions (such as “Does anyone have a view on this?”) seldom work except in small conferences. Rephrase what the participants say in simpler terms (“So what you are saying is …”) as reinforcement and acknowledgement. More …

17. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Audio/Web conferencing – continued Summarize from time totime. Give occasional quick status reports. Wind up the conference formally. (“I hear a number of you saying X. Perhaps we could addressY as we go forward …”) This is both to ensure that you are making progress and to maintain interest. (“We’ve been talking for the last 30 minutes about X, and I’d like to pause here and ask if there are any questions. Then, in the 60 minutes remaining, we’ll move to Y and Z …”) This,too, maintains momentum and interest. Thank people for their participation. Give them a chance to express any final comments. Experience shows that a good close to a conference creates a good start to the next one.

18. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Video conferencing Get training in video conferencing techniques. Zoom in as close as you dare. Then zoom in closer. Look into the camera, not the screen, when you are speaking. For all the use that most people make of the video in a video conference, they might as well be in an audio conference. To make full use of the relatively costly medium, you need training and conscious practice. People are naturally reluctant to zoom in, but it is demonstrably more effective. The face on the screen should be at least as large as a face in the room. If you have multiple participantsat one site, appoint a dedicated camera operator to switch between them. It is unnatural to look into the camera rather than the screen,but until the equipment manufacturers address the ‘eyeline’ problem, you must learn to do it. If not, you will dilute the effect of your communication and encourage inattentiveness. At worst, people unconsciously interpret the lack of eye contact as insincerity. More …

19. Questions Calendaring Email Messaging Sharedfiling space Discussions Audio/Web conferencing Video conferencing Video conferencing – continued To appear natural, youmust practise unnaturalacts. Starting a video conference promptly is harder than with a face-to-face meeting – and more important. Use a moderator, and have pre-agreed signals that will ensure the conversation flows well. Don’t use the video channel to screen documents. Watch how newsreaders move their heads to provide emphasis and variety. In a video conference, both talkers and listeners should exaggerate expressions to enrich the communication andprovide feedback. Small-talk can be used to mask a staggered start to a physical meeting, but feels awkward by video conference. Test the link and familiarize everyone with the controls well in advance so that the video conference can start cleanly. Video conferences have an unavoidable lag that prevents the normal overlapping of conversations, and hinders interruptions. A good moderator turns this from a disadvantage into the advantage of reasoned, sequential debate. The video channel provides poor resolution for documents as well as displacing the important visual image of people’s faces. Pre-circulate documents electronically, or use a parallel web conference. If a document is critical to the meeting, think carefully about whether audio conferencing plus web conferencing might be more effective.

20. Suggestions • The following pages list suggestions of the type that youmight provide for your users in each of the 20 combinationsof collaboration type and benefit sought listed earlier (page 3). • In each case, provide the information relevant to your organization – your requirement, your suggestions for meeting this requirement, notes, technologies and contact names that are specific to your installation. We provide examples to help you start. • The following page has a template you may wish to use.

21. <Collaboration type> and <Benefit sought> <requirement> • Suggestions: • Notes: • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

22. Co-development and improved discipline Needed to ensure that members are working on current versions. • Suggestions: Use well-structured shared filing spaces and ensure that all members are using them correctly. Each new version should have a new sequence number. Take advantage of check-in and check-out facilities. • Notes: Increased discipline is a function of adherence to a clearly defined process. This can range from workflow to a carefully defined and monitored agenda, circulated in advance. • < Example of how the suggestion might be tailored to your organization: > • Technologies available at your site: Windows Sharepoint Services V2.0 is available today. However, it only allows check-in/out on the server. V3.0, scheduled for the end of CY 2007, will allow you to check it out to your personal machine, enabling you to take it with you when you are travelling. • Contacts for assistance: Steve Harrington (GMT+1) at +44 (0)1438 264171, steve@livingontheweb.biz, Steve.Harrington on AOL IM.

23. Co-development and wider participation Needed to get input from the best people, wherever they are. • Suggestions: Use audio conferencing plus web conferencing to reach out toothers and to focus attention on the deliverable being created. Ensure that allteam members can actively participate by giving them cursor control. • Notes: When working together at the same time, audio/web conferencing works well, especially when multiple participants can make changes. When working at different times, use wikis, discussion forums or shared documents with change control turned on. RSS can be used to alert participants to new posts as well as changes. Event recording can be used for both reference and to provide information to those could not attend. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

24. Co-development and improved discipline Needed to ensure that members are working on current versions, as well as time, task, risk, issue and change management. • Suggestions: Use well-structured shared filing spaces and ensure that all members are using them correctly. Each new version should have a new sequence number. Take advantage of check-in and check-out facilities. • Notes: Increased discipline is a function of adherence to a clearly defined process. This can range from workflow to a carefully defined and monitored agenda, circulated in advance. Use RSS to make the work of team members and leaders visible so that time, task, risk, issues and change can be managed. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

25. Co-development and increased efficiency This may be less important than encouraging a free flow of ideas to develop the best solution. • Suggestions: Efficiency can be increased by deliberately matching thetechnology to the situation and the goals. You need to assess the relative importance of innovation and delivery to schedule in your situation. First improve the capability of individuals and then focus on improving the efficiency of the team. It starts with reliable tools and access to information. • Notes: Sometimes the disadvantage of being scattered across the globe can bean advantage. For example, one group can hand off the day’s work to the next group in another time zone. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

26. Co-development and better use of information Essential for developing the right solutions. • Suggestions: Use an intranet, portal or team rooms to deliver informationfrom internal and external sources to team members; provide discussionspaces or wikis for developing ideas; and deploy internal search engines to findadditional information. • Notes: Blogging inside the enterprise leaves tracks and effectively creates meta-data that make it easier for search engines to find internal information. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

27. Co-development and enhanced social dynamics Needed to create and sustain ‘ego-less’ team spirit. • Suggestions: Use live meetings to initiate a project, then video conferencing,then audio/web conferencing as the team get to know each other better.Refresh team spirit with occasional live meetings. • Notes: Consider using a blog to share the team’s progress and to highlight individual contributions. The team leader could populate this blog with items from the blogs of individual members. Making the blogs widely available mitigates a typical project management problem which is that others in the organization don’t know what is going on. It also creates a platform for letting team members show case their accomplishments. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

28. Coordination and wider participation Needed to avoid having several coordination meetings at the same point in a project. • Suggestions: Use audio conferencing plus web conferencing, as not all team members may have access to video conferencing facilities and because in this case comprehensiveness is more important than emotional bandwidth. Personal/team blogs for both team members and team leaders help keep everyone up to date. Support for off-line and mobile use will increase participation. • Notes: Make sure that all team members and team leaders have RSS readers installed and auto-subscribe them to the blogs of other members. Where there are multiple teams, auto-subscribe members of all teams to the blogs of all the team leaders. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

29. Coordination and improved discipline Needed to ensure the team covers every aspect of the project. • Suggestions: Use shared filing spaces for the project planning and control documentation. Make project plans and status visible to others in theorganization so that they can contribute. • Notes: Project management software can help, but be careful it does not become so burdensome that it is ignored. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

30. Coordination and increased efficiency Needed to avoid travel and accommodation costs and loss of production by taking people away from their workplace. • Suggestions: Use audio plus web conferencing – the ‘richness’ of video conferencing is not needed.Use shared calendars to keep track of meetingsand deliverables. • Notes: Consider discussion spaces, wikis or blogs to surface issues before thenext meeting or when too many time zones are involved for live meetings. Record the meeting and create podcasts so that those unable to attend can hear what was said. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

31. Coordination and better use of information Needed to ensure that there is no time wasted arguing about facts. • Suggestions: Monitor the documentation in the shared filing spaces for completeness before the meetings. Surface issues before the meeting, notby reading during the meeting. • Notes: Consider sharing your calendar with team members and rolling upkey individual dates into a team calendar. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

32. Coordination and enhanced social dynamics Less important because coordination is an objective ratherthan a subjective activity. • Suggestions: (Although this need is less important, coordination sessions often involve some commitment building.) You may need to make and track commitments or promises during coordination discussions. • Notes: If ‘all eyes are on the prize’, coordination is easier to achieve since each group will be actively looking for ways to coordinate. There may be individual goals, but if there is a shared, over-arching goal then that will help coordinate. Blogs are a great tool for loosely linked people to coordinate their activities, especially when one person links to the blog of another. When you spot an issue in someone else’s blog you may comment on their blog. If it is really important you can add it to the team blog. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

33. Co-decision and wider participation Needed to get the participation of as many of the key people as possible, often at short notice. • Suggestions: Post the subject in a shared discussion space and use email to invite comments. Post not just the background data, but also details or links on the nature of the decision that must be reached. Make sure that the technology can be used offline when participants are travelling. • Notes: Real participation means more than just being present at the meeting. All too often, organizational hierarchies prevent participants from saying what needs to be said. Consider tools that let participants surface issues and even vote anonymously so that you get the full benefit of their perspective. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

34. Co-decision and improved discipline Needed to ensure that a meeting is not dominated by oneor a few members. • Suggestions: Use web conferencing for voting (with anonymity if this will give a truer response) and record results at the time and online so that everyone can see them (rather than in minutes prepared offline). • Notes: Some systems permit anonymous comments to be shared. This has been found useful by financial institutions trying to get a better handle on risk in advance of a major decision. While anonymity may give a truer response, formal voting and recording of votes can promote accountability for decisions. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

35. Co-decision and increased efficiency Needed if the decision is urgent. • Suggestions: A rapid exchange of emails, IMs or SMSs is more efficient than trying to contact people by telephone. Encourage use of the ‘away’ message inIM and the ‘out of office’ reply in email to provide information on presenceand availability. • Notes: More considered use of presence information is developing. Some organizations use their directory systems to provide different levels of presence information depending on who is asking. This makes it easier to use IM to reach out to sources of expertise during a meeting, thus avoiding the “I will have to get back to you” problem. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

36. Co-decision and better use of information Needed to raise the quality of the decision by making all the relevant information readily available. • Suggestions: Use hotlinks from the ‘decision’ item in the discussion space to the data in shared filing spaces. Anticipate questions and provide links to backup detail. • Notes: Increasingly, decisions are based not just on an interpretation of data, but the interpretation of models. As this starts to happen in your business, be prepared to run and re-run models online during the meeting with varying input assumptions. Use web conferencing so that all participants can see you running the models. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

37. Co-decision and enhanced social dynamics Needed because although decisions should be made objectively, subjectivity usually comes into play, especially in implementation. • Suggestions: Use discussion spaces and emails, because they allow people time to reflect before they decide, but also use live, video or audio conferences to deal with the subjective element. • Notes: Successful follow through of decisions requires active support, not just grudging acceptance. Recognizing the social dynamics and providing an appropriate space for alternatives to be presented and evaluated increases the legitimacy of the final decision and reduces resistance. One on one follow up discussions may be needed to overcome opposition to group decisions. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

38. Commitment and wider participation Important because commitment is built from a senseof togetherness. • Suggestions: Use a live meeting or video conferencing, but organize an audio conferencing channel for those who cannot access video facilities. Pause frequently and explicitly ask audio participants if they have a comment. Use active camera control to zoom in on the current speaker. Record the session for those who cannot attend. Post it on an internal blog for comments and follow up questions. • Notes: They key is to use technologies that have a high emotional content. Sending out an email to build commitment will reach many people, but it is the wrong thing to do because it has low emotional content. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

39. Commitment and improved discipline Of little relevance. To achieve ‘buy in’, it is better to take aslong as it needs. • Suggestions: Reiterate points and divert from the planned agenda if it is important to get the message understood and accepted. Periodically test to see if you have gained sufficient commitment for your purpose. • Notes: Difficulty in achieving ‘buy-in’ may be a consequence of lack of information. If that is a problem consider making it easier to get the information by creating blogs and auto-subscribing the participants. You might have separate blogs for objectives, milestones, responsibilities and dependencies. Key stakeholders should be automatically subscribed to these blogs. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

40. Commitment and increased efficiency Of little relevance. Process needs to give way to individual needs. • Suggestions: If it is important to gain commitment, people willingly spendmoney on video equipment, an off-site gathering or a series of live meetings. • Notes: Emails are often misinterpreted since they don’t express tone very well. Your voice is much better at conveying tone. A misunderstood email can create great inefficiencies by failing to adequately convey your tone. Consider using a voice mail attachment to your email instead of text • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

41. Commitment and better use of information Needed to prevent people avoiding commitment by arguingthe premises. • Suggestions: Use discussion spaces to set out the subject matter and invite comments, then use multimedia to present facts and findings at live meetings. Surface facts before the meeting and have them at hand during it. • Notes: Instant messaging can be an effective way to reach out to experts as needed. They can even take over the screen and present additional material. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance:

42. Commitment and enhanced social dynamics Needed to engender the emotional connection that leads people to commit themselves to a policy or a project. • Suggestions: Use video clips, preferably with music, to add impact to live meetings. Use video conferencing (plus audio conferencing for those unable to use video) where live meetings are not possible. If the group is small and the commitment or proposed change is large, then dinner with a table layout that lets everyone see and hear everyone else may be best. • Notes: Web conferencing and screen sharing can be used briefly to highlight some facts or draft a consensus statement, but take care to make sure it does not distract from the personal impact of the meeting. DVDs, with theme music, are now easy to produce in-house. High Definition video with striking detail can now be captured with lower-cost cameras and replayed on PC or projection screens. High Definition DVRs are starting to arrive on the market. • Technologies available at your site: • Contacts for assistance: