Teamrooms: Tapping the Collaborative Learning Advantage
If we put teamrooms to the innovation test, we find that the first three items may be significant barriers to teamroom adoption. While the IT department is implementing the teamroom technology, whose job is it to do the internal marketing to help the perception of the technology's advantage take root in the organization? There is often a gap between the real advantage that the technology offers the organization and the perception of the advantage of using the teamroom technology. If teamrooms are perceived as just another add-on, in addition to phone, fax, email, conference calls, etc., then why bother? Organizations need to develop a strong case for the teamroom advantage and then promote it actively. Also, if the teamroom does not reduce phone and email time, then people will quite accurately see it as just another burden.
Compatibility with current practices means that the design of the teamroom with an email- or threaded-discussion-type interface will help it seem more familiar to new users. Likewise, eliminating unnecessary "clicking around" will help. Thirdly, the MS Office paradigm of folders containing subfolders and files is a format most knowledge workers can manage well; wise teamroom designers will try to build on that familiar taxonomy.
What about all the bells and whistles? Great, but don't expect the typical user to take advantage of even one-tenth of what is available. We are creatures of comfort and habit, and most of us are wise enough to find out what we need to know in the teamroom and keep ourselves up to date on that segment of information. Few will bother to explore all the views, notification, and permission options of the teamroom.
Senior Executives' Role
Efforts to change receive strong support when senior executives reinforce the need and expectations around the new processes, and also use the new ways of working themselves. But, how often can we expect a senior executive to actively participate in a teamroom? They are too busy to get involved in line business processes. Executives are not the answer to teamroom acceptance because they typically do not engage in keyboarding activity or IT skills training. Take the case of GE: When they began their push into e-business, they realized that none of the senior executives knew anything about the Web. A corporate-wide "upward mentoring" program was enacted to assist 1,000 GE senior executives. They spend 3-4 hours a week with e-business mentors who teach them to use the Internet and analyze competitors' Web sites. GE is seeing results in expanded market share and increased customer loyalty due to this training program. Short of making the same level of coaching effort as at GE, however, we cannot rely on senior executives to lead the charge on teamroom adoption. It seems likely that the spread of teamrooms will need to happen at the grassroots level, team by team.
Self-Organization and Facilitation
A well-designed teamroom means that all team members can access and use it anytime from the Web. While this "self-service" feature is one of the advantages, it could also lead to the assumption that teamrooms do not need to be facilitated or maintained. This laissez-faire approach is one of the main reasons teamrooms face adoption hurdles in organizations. If a team member goes to the teamroom and finds that there has been little or no activity, that there's no one watching the store, it's a heavy disincentive to participate because it isn't clear that anyone is "listening." There is no substitute for skilled facilitation in the teamroom to avoid this type of downward spiral in activity.
Skilled facilitation takes the form of archiving aged posts, prompting for input or work products, monitoring activity in the room, and making design adjustments as the team's charter evolves. It is also important to acknowledge and complete discussion topics by aligning them with new or existing projects, summarizing and distributing the outcomes, or making them available to other interested parties outside the specific teamroom. While vendors of teamrooms may claim that they are self-service tools, it takes a concerted effort on the part of the team to make sure their teamroom a vibrant and active meeting place. One note of caution: Don't make the presence of a facilitator an excuse for non-participation by others; the facilitator cannot do all the work of the team.
