Monthly Archives: Oktober 2011

The Digital Workplace – Building Blocks

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This is the final part of a mini-series giving a preview on our whitepaper about the Digital Workplace. The whitepaper which covers all the topics in detail is available for download from Friday (Oct. 14th) and you can pre-register for it using the link that you will find at the bottom of this post.

 

The previous posts looked at the vastly changed nature of work in organizations today and the massive problems this has brought along with it. It is now time to look at the instrument to change this situation a bit more in detail.

As already mentioned earlier, the Digital Workplace is not primarily an IT-system. While technology ultimately is the indispensable enabler a Digital Workplace is made up of, it can only be effective when completely embedded into all aspects of an organization. This of course is only possible if fully backed by management and accompanied by substantial change management activities. Both work and management practices need to adapt for the better in order for the Digital Workplace to live up to its full promise. Furthermore, a “logical infrastructure” (e.g. enterprise-wide information architectures) has to be in place just as much as the technical one.

 

Supporting all aspects of information work

Today’s situation in information work can be compared to an ill organized workshop where tools lie about all over the place and workers constantly have to look how and with which tool to best do their next task. What we should be having instead is a highly automated assembly line with everything in place and manual activity focussed on what human intervention is required for.

In order to deliver on that promise, the Digital Workplace has to support information work from end-to-end instead of just being a repository that can be accessed when needed. Given the broad spectrum that information work has in organizations, also the scope of the Digital Workplace needs to be comprehensively covering that spectrum.
This “holistic” approach can make it hard to grasp what the Digital Workplace actually is.

In order to make sense of the multitude of disciplines and functionalities involved in the Digital Workplace, it should be seen as a framework that is made up of different building blocks. Organizations can make us of these in accordance to their respective needs. There are three types of building blocks:

  • Work Performance Building Blocks: there are 4 building blocks in this area, covering all aspects directly related to performance in information work. They include personal performance, team performance, organizational performance and process performance.
    Personal performance for instance is about having a central place where all the information and functions relevant to a person come together. This includes having a single repository for all personal and team or project tasks combined, seeing at a glance what is currently happening in all the projects and activities you are associated with, having overview panels for all metrics relevant to you (from target achievement to expenses reimbursement status) or direct access to information from any sources important to you whether in- or external. It also provides resources to draw upon in regard to continuous learning, organizing information relevant to you, getting paper-based information in and out of the Digital Workplace and many more utilities that enable a true one-stop-shop experience for everything a person needs to get their job done.
  • Generic Building Blocks: this includes 2 areas only indirectly related to performance and tasks, namely “Communication & Information” and “Culture & Relations”. Both are aimed at providing resources for all things not directly embedded in an employee’s work tasks, like for instance everything relating to corporate culture.
    In the Digital Workplace this will become even more important, as the tools we do our work with are an integral part of our day-to-day experience of the company we work for. Naturally, a professional, well-designed, ergonomic tool will allow for a more positive experience than one which is unpleasant to look at, cumbersome to use and frequently frustrates you as it doesn’t support you in your tasks as it should do.
  • Foundational Building Block: this provides the structures, context and services that build the foundation of the Digital Workplace and that are offered to and used in the other building blocks. This is the “engine” below the components described above. Unlike in current systems (where for instance the intranet has its own distinct search engine) it provides its services to all the components. This is a key distinction in order to make services available truly cross-system. Without them, a unified user experience and “single-point-of-working” is not possible.

 

The report contains detailed descriptions and sample scenarios for all building blocks.

 

A place for all your information, messages and notifications

While the Digital Workplace consists of many parts and pieces, some such elements that are key to the success of the Digital Workplace are outlined in a separate chapter of the whitepaper. One such key element is the Universal Inbox.

There is a strong motivation behind this, as it is not sheer information volumes alone that impact employee productivity and frustration most, but diversity of channels, information types, systems and media. In that environment, today’s number one information management tool, the e-mail inbox constitutes but one of many channels that employees constantly (have to) check for messages, news and notifications of all sorts. And with each new system an additional place to check is introduced, further impacting productivity and stress through constant system change.

Rather than further adding to the already high levels of information sprawl, the Digital Workplace needs to do away with that burden by bringing together all messages, news streams, alerts and notifications an employee receives across all systems, channels and devices in a single place.

This place can be thought of as a personal, fully customized “Universal Inbox”. It is likely to be one of the most important factors for employee acceptance of any Digital Workplace as its benefits are clearly obvious upon first use. All information relevant to a person is aggregated in a single place with rich capabilities for filtering and acting on the respective messages and notifications.

Until now the role of the universal inbox has been delegated to the email software for lack of alternatives. Many systems for instance send emails to users to notify them about news and changes that occur in that system (e.g. a workflow system sending a notification about a new task a person has been assigned with). Lack of integration, interactivity and control make this concept no longer an option in the Digital Workplace.

 

The next step

I hope this series of teasers to the whitepaper “The Digital Workplace – Redefining Productivity in the Information Age” has sparked your interest in the topic.

From Friday, October 14th, you can download the full whitepaper free of charge from the website of Infocentric Research or order a paper copy there. Pre-registration is already open.

Link: The Digital Workplace – Redefining Productivity in the Information Age

The Digital Workplace – the problem with information work

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The 1st part of this series gave a brief introduction into what the Digital Workplace is and why new approaches to managing information and designing information work are desperately needed. This post will look at the overwhelming problems organization have today because of information mis-management.

Organizations of all sizes and sectors are quick to admit that they have a problem with information. Few, however, can name the root-causes of the problem or quantify its size, reach and impact. In fact, most organizations just take information related problems, such as information overload, for granted (i.e. as a problem they just have to live with) and think of it as an issue with only minor relevance for the business.

They couldn’t be more wrong!

In order to realize the full impact that the problems with information have on a business, one has to look at the very nature of work in organizations today. The last post gave some insight into this and the report will elaborate on this in more detail. In short it can be said that information work constitutes the most relevant kind of work in organizations today both from a quantitative and qualitative perspective. There is proof that information and its flows are the number one factor to enable a business achieve its strategy and goals. Yet, information work is probably the most underestimated and worst managed kind of work that ever existed in organizations.

“If the CEO only knew …”

For this whitepaper we looked at more than 2 dozens studies available on the market that cover problems in information work form different perspectives. And while information related problems come in many shapes, the issue of “looking for information” seems to be the one best analyzed by research. In fact, “searching” in all its forms is the most ubiquitous activity that information workers perform in their jobs.

Being very generic, we often don’t recognize “searching” as such. And it is not only “using a search engine” (or any other kind of navigation mechanism for that matter) but includes emailing or asking around for information, assigning someone else to gather information, checking whether the version you have is the current one, trying to locate that email, browsing the web, etc.

Productivity is affected in two main ways by issues related to this omnipresent task:

  • time loss in searching and finding information (and related effects such as employee frustration by long and unsuccessful searches)
  • quality loss by not having the right information, where, when and in the appropriate format and detail needed (e.g. incomplete, inaccurate, untimely, too complex, … information) for the respective task (and therefore for instance making a bad decision)

This has drastic effects on employees, managers, organizational performance and even the economy as a whole. While the report will present many (rather shocking) facts on this, I want to use just one analogy here: if we take the time that the average information worker is wasting in “looking for information” and spread it out over the time span of a year, then from October 1st to December 31st he would be doing nothing else but searching for information.
I wonder how many CEOs would think of this as an acceptable situation if its full impact would be known to them?

And to make things even worse, “searching” is of course only one of many problematic areas in information work. It can be estimated that activities like for instance recreating already existing information, having to deal with different versions of a document or secondary effects due to wrong or not up to date information will often turn out to have even more negative impacts on employee productivity than even that of searching.

As already noted, information problems of course don’t exist in isolation but directly affect those who use the information and their respective work results in mayor ways. Information problems therefore also substantially affect the performance of an organization itself. Some sources estimate this impact to be as high as 29% of the overall performance.

“How can it be, with all our IT…?”

Lack of awareness is one of the key root-causes for information related performance issues. As a “mass phenomena” information work is relatively new and current work practices are highly immature and largely unmanaged. Information work is also distinctly different from the dominant forms of work of the past and therefore has to be approached in a different manner. For instance, even most information systems are still based on the logics and restrictions of paper handling instead of the possibilities of digital media. The same goes for current approaches to leadership which typically are still based on industrial age principles. These often fully contradict the work reality and requirements of information based work.

Being so fundamental in nature, these problems of course cannot be addressed by simply introducing an intranet, a collaboration platform, social media or any other tool. It is the organization and the “way of working” that has to adapt in order to stop wasting time and resources.
Unfortunately, problems with information aren’t even on the agenda in most organizations, as they turn a (giant) blind eye on them, so far.

Current information management systems don’t come to the rescue, either, as the way technology is designed and put to use today is also part of the problem. Some of the key shortcomings in this area include:

  • Lack of logical, enterprise-wide architectures
  • No clear distinction between tool and business need
  • Users not educated in information management
  • Technology not embedded into the way of working

 

The report will give more details on these points and their importance in addressing the problems in information work.

 

The final part of this mini-series of blog posts will look at the building blocks of a Digital Workplace. It will be published here on Monday, Oct. 10th.

The Digital Workplace – just the next generation of your good old Intranet?

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This is the 1st part of a series of three blog posts giving a preview to the business whitepaper “The Digital Workplace: Redefining Productivity in the Information Age” due for publication on October 10th (rescheduled from Sept. 30th). Please also see the introductory post for more information.

 

What is a Digital Workplace?

It can be quite a challenge to describe what the Digital Workplace really is about (thanks to the initiative of Mark Morrell we now at least have a first definition of the term in Wikipedia). For instance: is the Digital Workplace just a cooler name for the next generation of intranets? Or is it simply the sum of all (digital) systems you use at work (and consequentially, have we all been working with Digital Workplaces for years)? Or maybe is it the ability to work anywhere and on any device?

While all these aspects have their place, they don’t represent mayor steps forward in relation to the problem to be solved. Therefore, from the point of view established in the whitepaper, the Digital Workplace has to offer a new approach which actually has the potential to substantially impact how work can be done in a better way in the digital age.

So, instead of trying to give a definition, let’s approach this by asking: what business problem is the Digital Workplace going to tackle? The answer to this is surprisingly simple: the Digital Workplace is going to solve the huge problems organizations of all sizes and industries currently have in information work.

To fully appreciate what this means, we have to talk a little bit about what information work really is. And that’s where the problem begins. There is an almost total lack of awareness for the relevance, scale and impact this type of work has in any given organization. Without much notice, Information work has become the most universal, most relevant and most impactful kind of all work types. Whether it is management taking a decision, a product responsible analyzing competitive data, a nurse checking the latest medical regulations or a sales rep preparing for a meeting with a potential client– all this is based on information, all this is information work. Whenever human cognitive processes occur in a work task (e.g. communication, decision making, reading, analyzing, solving problems …), information is involved (as an input, as a output) and what you have is information work.

With information work being such a ubiquitous element, it should be obvious that information is a key organizational resource. This resource needs to be properly managed just like any other resource in organizations (like for instance managing money, machines, employees, etc.). But the sad truth is that information is not managed like these other assets but rather left to its own fate (and the “care” of technology) instead.

Further lack of awareness exists when it comes to the effects that problems in information work have on productivity and work outcomes. Also the extent of these problems is largely unknown. The next post will look at these points in more detail. But the situation is so serious that senior management worrying about their employees wasting time on Facebook and Twitter is nothing short of ridiculous in contrast to the productivity lost in information work.

A new approach for information work and information management

Intranets have hardly ever been positioned as instruments to optimize information work. While they of course provide information that is used in information work, they are rather information repositories than tools that directly support information work, let alone help to design information work in a better way.
These characteristics are something that intranets have in common with the many other information management tools present in organizations today. They all suffer from a number of fundamental shortcomings, for instance:

  • They address information work with isolated solutions and without a common, organization-wide architecture
  • They try to support information work in isolation from the work processes in which information is used
  • They (passively) hold information available for access by the user instead of delivering it in the context in which it is needed

There are many more reasons why the approaches to information work and information technology that were applied so far have led us into a desolate state of affairs. The report also looks at how the persistence of industrial age business principles in organization plays its part in this as well.

In addressing these issues, the Digital Workplace will represent a fundamental shift for organizations. Mike Wing, VP of Strategic Communications at IBM put it this way: “Your goal is not running the intranet, but rather unleashing the capacity of the organization”. Up until now, this hardly ever was the focus of intranets and other information management initiatives. Intranets et al. have enabled better communication, better information provisioning etc. but not considerable better organizations or ways of working. Tools typically have been at the center of information work. Instead, work processes and business logic have to be there. It is not better information technology that is going to solve information (work) issues but better information management and better information work practices.

The Digital Workplace is the “master key” to information work

If we take a pure “tool perspective” to get a grip on the scope of the Digital Workplace, then it encompasses all systems and technologies used to handle information of any kind. This includes not only unstructured information (as typically present in intranets, collaboration tools, document management systems, etc.) but also semi-structured and structured information or data (as typically present in databases, business intelligence systems (BI), customer relationship management systems (CRM), etc.).
This already is quite a change in perspective: instead of asking “what kind of information is this?” (to determine whether it is something that for instance has its place on an intranet), now the question would be “what information and functionality do we need in this step of the process (or to execute this task)?” (and then delivering it independently of format and source when needed).

In order for the Digital Workplace to be successful (i.e. solve the problems of information work) things have to be approached in a very different manner: we need to start designing information work from the ground up, from a holistic viewpoint and with information management (and not information technology) playing the mayor role.

This also implies that the Digital Workplace should not be thought of as an IT-system but as a work ecosystem. From an organizational viewpoint there are four dimensions to this:

  • Work practices (how we do work)
  • Management practices (how we lead, what the culture should be like, …)
  • Logical infrastructure (what enterprise-wide elements have to be in place, like e.g. a master information architecture, governance, roles, …)
  • Technical infrastructure (e.g. systems, integration, physical work environments, …)

This is critical. And current approaches typically have addressed work practices, management practices and logical infrastructure only to a very limited extent (if at all), especially when viewed from an organization-wide perspective.

So, what will the Digital Workplace really be like? Information will come to you in the context that you need it in order to do what you are currently working on. You will spent the dominant part of your time in just one user interface (that will seem to be just one system) in which you have full control over all your work tasks, all information needed and all functionality required to do your job in the best possible manner.

The report presents concrete examples how the Digital Workplace supports people in various typical work areas. Also, the third part of this blog series will give more insight into this. Before that, however, more light has to be shed on the problems in information work and information management. Look for the next post towards the end of this week.