Comments on: Fostering Collaboration

By: Sarah Droid

Sarah Droid — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:15:58 +0000

I think offering opportunities to work away from the office is great. I find it much easier to get things done at home independently and in my own time, managing to get a lot done especially late at night. Unfortunately I think in smaller organizations this is viewed suspiciously as it is assumed as you say, that when you are away from your desk you aren’t working.

By: Telesaur

Telesaur — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:07:11 +0000

There is something to be said about physical presence. It does make creative collaboration easier at times. However, I’ve found that restrictions, such as location, force us to develop new ways of collaborating. Lloyd Alter wrote about his experience with overcoming isolation in a blog comment here: http://tinyurl.com/agpxls

Wendy, I enjoyed your Cisco comment about paper reduction… I wonder what other kinds of side benefits come from a mobile/telework team.

By: Creative Class » Blog Archive » It’s Easy Being Green - Creative Class

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:28:35 +0000

[...] amount of paper their printers churned through. But that’s exactly what happened.As mentioned last week, Cisco knew that employees were only at their assigned office or cubicle 35% of the time – an [...]

By: Now Reading: “Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: No Schedules, No Meetings, No Joke–the Simple Change That Can Make Your Job Terrific” (Cali Ressler, Jody Thompson) | Ted Eytan, MD

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:05:40 +0000

[...] At the same time, though, I have been in a lot of conversations with a lot of personal and professional colleagues over the past 3-4 years or so, where the question we’re asking ourselves is, “Is this how work life is supposed to be?” Spoken or unspoken, the answer is “we don’t think so.” Various companies’ data also show a trend toward less vacancy in their physical locations. [...]

By: Wendy Waters

Wendy Waters — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:24:15 +0000

Great questions. Some of these have some well-researched answers, which I’ll report on in subsequent posts.

One point I’ll make now — or touch on now — is that transparency tends to go along with the collaborative and more fluid workplace. Everyone tends to know what you’re doing and why at any given time (required to collaborate effectively). So, someone not producing will be obvious and not just to their “team.”

Storage consequences of the new workplace has a great “green” story actually. As Cisco Systems found, if employees don’t have a permanent desk to pile paper on, and can take their lap tops everywhere including to meetings or home, there is a tendency to print less.

By: Zoe B

Zoe B — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:07:27 +0000

How do these collaborative efforts measure productivity? Is it straightforward? How does one arrange to detect and award merit? Can the boss distinguish between team members who are deadweight, and those who get a bad rep because a colleague or two don’t like them? The more these questions have clear answers, the more likely that the new work style and space will function well.

Also, how do Capital One et al. organize workers’ on-the-job storage needs? Not everything can or should be stored on computer.