What is Collaboration?What is Collaboration?

Does UC encourage multitasking? And does multitasking hurt productivity, rather than helping?

Boarding a plane back to BWI from UC Summit, I sat next to an HMO executive and exchanged views about technology, productivity and collaboration. This person shared with me, "I'm not sure that UC is productive; in fact, I think it's counterproductive, and the performance of employees suffers from multitasking."

While I don't disagree that employees' performance suffers from multitasking, I do call into question--What is collaboration? Then, looking at the tools, specifically the UC client regardless of the offering--Is the industry encouraging multitasking over performance? And are we expecting great UC tools to drive productivity/performance increases as employees and outside parties collaborate? Are our expectations simply a two edged sword? Doesn't UC encourage multitasking?

My belief is that multitasking is a learned behavior, especially with younger generations. I told my HMO friend on the plane that I think lack of discipline or focus decreases with age, inferring that multitasking is a youthful behavior.

While I don't have answers, I do have a pretty good definition for what collaboration is supposed to be. According to Wikipedia, "The effectiveness of a collaborative effort is driven by three critical factors: communication, content management and workflow control."

The communication element I think is what we can brag about as an industry--when we can communicate in multiple places, using a device (or an app in other devices) to promote availability and accessibility. This seems to be the current strength in UC offerings.

Content management, at least on an outbound direction, probably scores high--yet most security leaks and breaches are found to be from the inside, suggesting that content management can fall short in this aspect.

Similarly, what can companies do to protect themselves and their employees from socially unacceptable behavior from consumers or other employees? How does one go about managing the inbound video content from a customer? When an employee or customer rightly calls out a company for bad company management, behavior, policy or product but does so using a socially unacceptable method (Mooning the bosses), what is your company prepared to do? I challenge you to pick apart and then provide how you can manage any inbound content via collaboration tools.

The third element--workflow--is one that I've touched on in the past. Companies from Mom-and-Pops all the way up the ladder to global enterprises operate differently. Some employees wear many hats as they carry out duties, while others' roles are segmented, even regimented by company policies and procedures. While we know we must improve business processes including workflow, how can we encourage workflow with so many distractions (Voice, email, chat, video, conference, desktop sharing)? Are we saying that communications workflow is more important than assigned tasks and projects that require employees' attention?

There's an interesting research paper: Why Do I Keep Interrupting Myself?: Environment, Habit and Self-Interruption, and in their paper the authors state:

"There is increasing evidence that fragmented working patterns are harmful to knowledge- intensive work."

Personally, for me I know a ringing phone must be answered. This is arguably a product of my environment; and in our household growing up, it was considered bad behavior not to answer the phone. Some might debate my belief that answering a ringing phone is an opportunity in business, but it's still my belief. Then, multitasking to me is akin to dating several girls at the same time, and that's not cool. As old as my beliefs are (or ancient), I'm wired or self taught to focus and concentrate on one job at a time.

While I'm not suggesting the study is conclusive, I am suggesting that the tools we provide may be somewhat self-defeating by handing over the communications reins to employees and empowering them to communicate. I am also suggesting that companies cannot simply hand over UC without training and setting expectations; and now I confessedly admit to sounding like the IT department. How and what are companies doing? Are employees being set up to positively use UC--or simply being handed the tools to render themselves less effective and productive?

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