To be successful and truly collaborative, knowledge-sharing systems require intuitive tools that connect people, reward participation, and align well with existing work and communication patterns. After IDEO's two-year internal development effort to create and implement "the Tube," their enterprise-wide intranet system, we gained new understanding and experience in balancing technology possibilities with behavior realities. The unique success of the Tube comes from the insight that effective knowledge sharing is a social activity that is enabled by technology, rather than a technological solution bolted onto an existing work culture. Now IDEO's Knowledge Sharing Team shares a set of design principles for building online collaboration systems that really work.
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Today's myriad interconnected social networks - Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc - mean that most people are already connected in a collaborative way to others beyond their traditional domain. It's a question of how to leverage that in the office. In their HBR article, Ibarra and Hansen suggest four pillars:
1. Play global connector. "The first piece is really how you yourself build a network that allows you to add value collaboratively because you can connect," says Ibarra. "If you are stuck in your function, in your group, in your business unit, in your country, how can you see what's going on out there? How can you see the array of opportunities that could be passing you by?"
2. Engage talent at the periphery. "How do you think about the talent that you are bringing to the table?" Ibarra asks. "Everybody espouses the value of diversity, but saying it and doing it are very different things. We see very clearly that leaders who engage talent from the periphery - and that periphery could be geographical or generational or gender diversity - are going to be much better placed to collaborate."
3. Collaborate at the top first. "A lot of times, collaborations get mired in politics, or groups have great ideas that don't get accepted because the top is divided politically into turf wars," points out Ibarra. "You cannot encourage collaboration on the front line and then not collaborate with each other as a top team."
4. Show a strong hand. "Collaboration doesn't mean consensus on everything," says Ibarra. At some point, the discussion has to end and someone has to make a decision. "You need to understand as a leader when you step back, and then when you do come back in make sure people know who's got the right to make the final decision."
