Security and its integration with social media continues to be a topic of conversation amongst my colleagues in Security Intelligence Operations. We observe how “being connected” has become an integral part of many lives around the world: each voice has an opportunity to be heard, provided those voices are given unfettered access to the Internet. It’s somewhat like an electronic ecosystem of democracy. And like a democracy, the results of those voices participating in a global conversation are not always well understood or appreciated. I believe that this is due in part to those conversations being filtered through two unavoidable lenses: national borders and culture. Jean Gordon Kocienda provides an excellent analysis on the challenges faced by nation states. In this post, I’d like to offer up some thoughts on the cultural implications of the global conversations taking place in social media.

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Tags: culture, security, social media

Organizations of all types enter 2013 with one key priority:  how do they move faster and execute with greater agility while still remaining flexible and adaptable to the rapid changes in markets?

CEOs around the world are looking to collaboration as their top strategy to increase the speed of their organizations. Why?  Because collaboration eliminates the friction that slows organizations down — whether that friction comes from people or processes.

The amount of friction in your organization is directly proportional to your ability to speed up your team.  Friction is sometimes purposeful, such as passive-aggressive behavior.  Other times friction comes from processes that create decisions without any clarity or a clear definition of success.

Here are four New Year’s resolutions for all leaders to Read More »

Tags: collaboration, culture, leadership, Ron Ricci Blog, strategy, The Collaboration Imperative

Culture exists in any organization, whether created through careful design and implementation, or through natural development as a company grows.

What exactly is “corporate culture”?

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Tags: Cisco, collaboration, company success, corporate culture, culture, E.H. Schein, economic performance, IBSG, inclusion, James L. Heskett, John Paul Kotter

Collaboration is again on my mind as I prepare to board a giant Airbus A380—the largest passenger jet in service today—for the long flight from San Francisco to India via Frankfurt.

I think about the various problems reported about the A380 program. The plane was essentially built in France and finished in Germany. The two locations used different versions of engineering software to design the aircraft’s incredibly complex wiring and electronics. Needless to say, the designs were not compatible, leading to an enormous amount of rework and production delays. This resulted in higher production costs, canceled orders, and billions of euros in lost revenue. It is doubtful that the A380 program will ever be a commercial success for Airbus.

Could more effective collaboration and communications capabilities have prevented this scenario? I think so. In fact, the business case for improved collaboration has never been clearer. Read More »

Tags: benefits, business case, Cisco, collaboration, culture, IBSG, metrics, visuality

In my previous post, I described the challenges senior management faces in scaling collaboration capabilities to address business needs and the way work is done today.

Electronic and whiteboard displays, lean practices, and collaboration tools by themselves are clearly not enough. Management needs to take a holistic approach to develop and integrate capabilities in three areas to address the challenge of capturing the next wave of productivity gains: culture and leadership, extended workplace visuality, and pervasive collaboration.

Organizational culture and leadership are probably the single most important factors in enabling gains in employee productivity and innovation that result from knowledge work. Morten Hansen, in his book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, provides an excellent perspective on what management can do to identify barriers to collaboration and design solutions to overcome them. Most of these barriers are cultural and particularly severe in large global corporations with multiple business units, complex matrix organizational structures, and operations that span multiple countries. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, culture, IBSG, knowledge work, leadership, lean techniques, Morten Hansen, networked organization, productivity, visual workplace