Collaboration

Idea No. 1: Collaboration

One phrase: The Internet. Obviously, this is 2010, not 1999 with the dot-com bubble around us. With the BlackBerry, iPhone and 24/7 access to the Internet, any collaboration solution not only has to be Internet/Intranet accessible but in real time-no lags or delays. Collaboration has to take into account multiple communication models: Web, e-mail and smartphones. This is the age of 140-character Twitter tweets and instant Facebook updates-not mail order catalogs.

If we are going to set up a collaborative system for employees to succeed, any collaboration initiative has to take into consideration the interconnected nature of the real-time Web. The real-time Web enables ideas to spread virally and at warp speeds-if they are good. It has the ability to propel good ideas independent of rank or structure and has a great democratizing effect.

Throw away those once-a-year "Employee Listening Surveys" and put a system together for your greatest intellectual asset to realize its potential-in real time, daily, 24/7. Surveys are one-time, single-minded and do not lend to any form of collaboration. Keep the flow of ideas in real time and on-demand. While some of you may shake your head on my clich??«d use of the "real time" and "on-demand" terms, I have seen firsthand how very large organizations have been able to pivot themselves by making an effort to map these terms to their reality of day-to-day operations.