Category Archives: business
Overcoming human nature to deliver success
If the human brain performs best in situations of conflict and the human psyche thrives on competition, how do we reconcile this with the human race’s dependence on cooperation for survival?
Even organisations where we would expect individuals to work together for a singular common aim, such as healthcare, have been permeated by competitive tendencies, whether this be the personality of the major decision maker or in the tendering for the provision of services. Will this human instinct to incentivise by prize ultimately lead to our demise?
Or could there be a better way?
If you were to take a look at The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies 2011 list, and spent some time drilling down into the narrative for some of the organisations, you will find some common themes:
- Inspirational leadership
- Employees who feel valued and that they have a voice
- A common ownership of purpose
- Excitement in the direction the organisation is taking
- A sense that ‘doing it right’ is as important as the drive for profit
All of these boil down to just two key factors: listening and ownership.
But if you have 20,000 employees/associates/partners, how can you possibly deliver this? How can you pick out the important bits from a multitude of conversations? How can you ensure that people having the same conversation in different geographical locations are brought together?
Once upon a time it would have been nearly impossible. Virtual technologies have changed the status quo.
Revolutions need revolutionary thinking
At the height of the Industrial Revolution, which began in the UK in the 18th Century, the greatest need was not for more raw materials, investment or manpower, but for the effective and speedy transfer of knowledge.
The key to success was collaboration and cooperation.
Back in the time of the Victorians some of this important knowledge transfer happened in exactly the way it does today: by the fluidity of employment where an individual takes their skills and contacts to a new organisation, which hopefully is open to their ideas. Study tours were also a big part of the process, one which today we have replaced with specialist business media and exhibitions, though it is unlikely these activities are approached with the metholodical zeal shown by our ancestors.
Where we have diverged from the Revolutionaries of 200 years ago is in the formation of open collaboration, often with direct business rivals. The network of informal philosophical societies, like the Lunar Society of Birmingham, in which members met to discuss ‘natural philosophy’ (i.e. science) and often its application to manufacturing flourished from 1765 to 1809, and it has been said of them, “They were, if you like, the revolutionary committee of that most far reaching of all the eighteenth century revolutions, the Industrial Revolution”.
It was this collaboration that enabled the leading industrialists of the day to continually make progress, adapting ideas created, tested and developed by others to make their own processes better rather than trying to create solutions by spinning solely in their own orbits. By knowing what others had trialled and tested, it meant that much going over new ground was avoided, mistakes remained unrepeated and progess rapidly made.
Collaboration and effective networks have never been more important in our changing economies, but how to build and sustain them in a culture of information overload? By creating virtual spaces that facilitate networking across boundaries, where information can be shared, action plans created and outcomes measured, again and again…
Virtual set to become the norm rather than the exception
Six months ago, if you mentioned the word virtual event 5 out of 6 people would shrug, look sceptical or even splutter at your naïvety. Like all new innovations, trying to explain the capabilities and opportunities created by this technology was easily lost in the objections.
Not any more.
While technology companies and those used to employing disparate, often home-based, workforces were eagerly embracing this new way of communicating, professional protectionism has held other sectors back in terms of both understanding and implementation. Areas of business that could benefit hugely from the ability to disseminate large amounts of complex information, with the ability to receive live feedback and action plans were either unable to see the possibilities or quite frankly were singing with their hands pressed over their ears.
But the economic, business and learning opportunities offered by the very best virtual solutions platforms have been hard to ignore. Recent research by e-learning consultant Jeff Cobb among associations in the US showed that nearly 20% had already held a virtual conference with a further 45% planning to do so. Although it is the big organisations that have been the early adopters, this research showed that the smaller groups are also able to see the benefits that this could deliver to them and were looking to follow suit.
While virtual events can’t replace that impromptu chat, where they do win hands down is in their attendance figures. Just as many exhibitions are currently struggling to convert more than 30% of their registrations into actual visitors, virtual events are seeing conversion somewhere in the region of 70%. In fact we have one commercial event where 1300 registered and 1297 logged on to participate in the event.
But it is when you start to see organisations like the American Nurses Association adopting the technology to enable them to deliver one of their six-monthly meetings virtually and saving approximately $80K (and all those greenhouse gases) that you should understand how communicating this way removes cost directly from the bottom line, and yet affects service delivery not one iota.
Which is probably why no one is singing any more when virtual events are mentioned.
At last the internet lives up to its early promise
Since then, we’ve been having lots of fun creating masses of content for this beast, it has enabled more open access to information and there is no doubt that it has helped save a lot of people a fair amount of money on their car insurance.
But has it lived up to its promise?
Arguably no, because although the Internet has allowed everyone to become a publisher and a spectator, the collaborative element has been very much the poor relation. While there are social networking sites and intranets which do, to some extent enable two-way interaction, the difficulty is that these are all micro conversations happening in splendid isolation.
Good business, medical science, research and project management of course do not run like this. The conversations need to be linked, decisions made on sound judgement and a clear intelligence trail left behind should steps need to be retraced. While there are many technologies that do individual bits, like TelePresence, online conferencing and networking groups, these hoover up precious time rather than creating it.
But the virtual solutions created by 6Connex finally address this issue. They bring all of the communication and social networking tools together in a single, easy to use interface that mean at last the idea that Tim Berners-Lee had nearly 20 years ago of transparent collaboration is now a reality.
The best things are always worth waiting for.
