Great Collaborators: Nature vs. Nurture
“To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” - Henry David Thoreau
For technology companies, demonstrating how its solutions yield benefits to potential customers is a powerful motivator for adoption. In the field of Communications and Collaboration, it is critical.
Consequently, in December 2008, Cisco conducted one of the first comprehensive studies on the factors associated with successful adoption of network-based collaboration. The study, Collaboration: Know Your Enthusiasts and Laggards (.pdf), surveyed 800 people in a wide variety of U.S. medium-sized and enterprise organizations who:
• Spend at least 20% of time at work using a network-connected computer
• Use a mobile phone or handheld device
• Participate in two or more collaborative activities per month
Our objective was to identify habits and characteristics of high-performing collaboration groups. In addition to pattern matching, the study found evidence that contradicts some common perceptions about today’s collaborators. For instance, it proved that good collaboration is more of a planned management strategy than an organic occurrence.
Over the next few weeks, I will share five distinct findings that emerged from this study. Today, let’s look at the first finding.
Finding 1: Collaborators Fit into Four Distinct Segments
While previous studies considered the personal or cultural factors influencing successful collaboration, our research showed that collaborators could be grouped into one of four segments based on their habits, attitudes, behaviors and their organization’s policies and practices. These four segments reflect collaborative behavior in descending order of success:
• Collaboration Enthusiasts
• Comfortable Collaborators
• Reluctant Collaborators
• Collaboration Laggards
Collaboration Enthusiasts – Enthusiasts, the most successful collaborators, include a majority of professionals in mid- to upper-management. These respondents view collaboration as critical to their job role. Indeed, in this group:
• Employers have formal collaboration processes.
• Employers have reward systems that track collaboration effectiveness.
• Employers provide tools and training.
• Individuals have held their job role 6-9 years.
• Organizations are for-profit vs. non-profit.
• Individuals use, on average, 22 technology tools (both traditional tools like email and voicemail as well as Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis).
Comfortable Collaborators – Collaborators in this segment are primarily supervisors in their late 30s. They also view collaboration as essential to their job role, but may not achieve the same level of results as the Enthusiasts.
• Employers have some formal collaboration processes.
• Employers provide tools and training but do not necessarily reward collaborative behavior.
• Individuals use more traditional technology tools than Enthusiasts, including email, conferencing, and calendaring.
• Individuals have held their job role three to five years.
• Organizations are for-profit vs. non-profit.
• Individuals use, on average, 16 technology tools.
Reluctant Collaborators – Reluctant Collaborators are both supervisors and individual contributors who view collaboration as useful, not essential, to their job roles.
• Individuals tend to collaborate only with those at the local site.
• Employers are less likely to have formal collaboration processes.
• Individuals have held their job role one to two years.
• Organizations are both for-profit and non-profit.
Collaboration Laggards – Laggards tend to be individual contributors. They also view collaboration as useful, not essential, to their job roles.
• Individuals tend to collaborate one-to-one.
• Employers may not provide many technology tools or training.
• Employers are unlikely to have formal collaboration processes and do not directly reward collaboration.
• Individuals have held their job role an average of 16 years.
• Organizations are both for-profit and non-profit.
If I could be so bold, the big question is this: Do good collaborators seek certain organizations and environments or do collaborative environments breed good collaborators? In either case, it is possible to determine which kinds of organizations and workers are likely to succeed in collaboration and to plan for success in this area.
It’s Not “If” You Collaborate but “How” - VoD
Collaboration: Know Your Enthusiasts and Laggards – White Paper
Posted by Alan Cohen at 03:41PM PST
Kristin Zimmerman Jun 18, 2009
Really appreciate you sharing the findings. We at Cisco know this works, but it is interesting to hear about the study at other companies. I guess culture, process, and technology all matter!