usemisuseguide

1
Use Misuse
of Collaborative Technologies
A Distillation of Best Practices, Good Formand
Correct Behaviour for Corporate Well-Being
Leading Edge Forum Executive Programme
September 2006
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Questions
Calendaring
Email
Messaging
Sharedfiling space
Audio/Web conferencing
Video conferencing
Discussions
2
Questions before you start
Do you know what kind of collaboration you will
beengaged in? Are you clear about
whatspecific benefits you areseeking from your
choice of technologies? Do you use
collaborativetechnologies with therecipient in
mind?
Collaboration takes different forms and different
technologies work better for some types of
collaboration than others. Which types of
collaboration are important to you
Co-development, Coordination, Co-decision, or
Commitment? Collaborative technologies can be
used to achieve avariety of different benefits.
Among these are wider participation,
discipline, efficiency, information use and group
dynamics. Have you made a conscious choice
orare you doing it from habit? Collaboration
depends on the voluntary exercise of
discretionary time by participants. The
attention of your fellow collaborators is not
free. You have to compete for it. Have you made
iteasy for them to understand what you said and
what you want them to do?
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3
Change from instinctive habit to premeditated
choice
Click on ? for suggestions in each box
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4
Is your team ready to collaborate?
Can you state the goal? Can everyone else
state the goal? Does your team have the right
network of contacts to achievethe goal? Do
team members feel energizedby working
together? Do you and they know what happens
if the team achieve the goal?
Clarity of purpose is not just a nice idea, it is
vital to effective collaboration. The best
technology in the world will not compensate for
the lack of a clear goal. If the team members do
not know what they are trying to achieve, you
cannot expect to get full value from their
contributions. Teams will need to reach out
beyond the team for ideas and assistance. Often,
that means reaching beyond the boundaries of the
firm to create what Hagel and Brown call
productive friction. Research by Rob Cross on
social networks shows that if youfail to be
energized by your interaction, you will try to
avoid it, dislike it when it happens, and feel
the need to complain aboutit to others
afterwards. Collaboration works best when you
have all eyes on the prize.
5
Calendaring
Dont assume that if the calendar program
says someone is free, they have nothing better
to do. When updating your calendar, remember
that other people will read it. When forming a
new team, agree how the calendar may be used.
Calendar programs mislead us by labelling
uncommitted timeas free. Dont compound the
problem by sending emails that say I notice you
are free next Wednesday .... A blank in the
calendar does not mean a person has nothing
important to do. Include helpful information,
not just bare facts. For example, the calendar
entry for an all-day sales meeting might include
a note saying that you may be available at
lunchtime or late afternoon. Include not only
hard rules, like who can read and write to your
calendar, but also softer principles describing
your availability to be interrupted for specific
kinds of meetingswhen you have marked the time
as unavailable.
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6
Calendaring continued
Use the calendar to negotiate when a
meeting should take place, but first make sure
you need a meeting. Dont use a
broadcast meeting invitation to gauge interest in
a topic. Enrich calendar entries by linking to
other information.
Unless the need for a meeting has already been
agreed by the participants, give them opportunity
for example, in a discussion space to comment
on its purpose, and value, before sending out an
invitation. Start the discussion in a shared
space and send out a hotlinked email. This way
you can discuss the intent and the preparation
needed for the meeting, and also target the most
useful participants. Hotlinks to meeting
summaries, telephone numbers or active
discussions dont just save time, they
demonstrably increase involvement.
7
Email
If you want action from several people, send
each one an individual message. If you expect
discussion on an issue, dont send it
byemail. Dont say anything in an email that
you wouldnt want to commit permanently to
writing. Dont flame, and dont retaliate if
others flame you.
Most people unconsciously give lower priority to
messages addressed to lots of people. And if
there is any ambiguity about who should respond,
youll get no replies. If you email the same
thing to more than one person for comment, youll
have version-management problems. Use a
discussion space or shared filing space
instead. Email technology may be more secure
than most media, but email culture is less so
because forwarding and copying areso
easy. Email lacks the instant feedback of a
live meeting, and the deliberation of formal
letter-writing, so strong language is dangerous.
If you receive a flame mail, dont respond,
except by telling the sender that you found their
communication upsetting.
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8
Email continued
Mark your message Urgent only if you
believe that the recipient would thank you for
doing so. Use the subject field to add value to
the email, not just as a label. Think more
about saving the readers time than saving your
own.
Over-using Urgent not only dilutes its impact,
but may beread by others to mean
self-important. Think carefully about what
to put in the subject field. It can help the
recipient to prioritize the response, track a
conversation of multiple emails (including the
progress made), or retrieve itat a future
date. You may save a second or two by writing
your emails in all lowercase letters or cutting
words short, but it dramatically increases the
time your readers take to understand them.
Questions
Calendaring
Email
Messaging
Sharedfiling space
Audio/Web conferencing
Video conferencing
Discussions
9
Messaging
Start an instant messaging or VOIP session by
saying Hi and why you are calling dont
just launch. Always assume thatwhatever you say
by IM will be seen by others. Do make use of
the presence indicator to let others know your
availability. Look for software to become more
intelligent at inferring your availability.
Dont assume that the other person is ready to
engage. Establish contact, verify that it is a
good time for them, then proceed. VOIP tools
have text chat as well as voice. Use chat
first. To meet regulatory requirements, many
systems keep logs of all IM traffic. You dont
know who else might read the receivers screen.
And remember that what you send may be copied and
pasted into another IM, document or email. Your
phone may work worldwide, but it does not say if
now is a good time to call or not. A major
strength of IM is that it can signal your
availability for different kinds of
interaction. Most IM implementations are still
primitive in the extent to which they are aware
of your availability. Most do not let you
distinguish who is asking. Watch for this to
change as IM becomes more important and
integrated in the enterprise.
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Messaging continued
Do use IM for negotiating things like the time
and date of meetings. Make use of the
away message to let others know how and when
you will become available. Do be sensitive to
the time zone of the recipient when sending an
SMS. Use IM to share links to documents, sites
and services important to a conversation.
While you can do it in email or voicemail, the
semi-synchronous nature of IM makes it possible
to exchange a number of quick back-and-forth
suggestions and counter suggestions, shortening
the elapsed time needed to set up a meeting. The
unobtrusive nature of IM lets you do this when a
telephone call would be disruptive. Let others
know when is a good time and a good method to
contact you. For example, you may be in a
meeting all afternoon, but can be reached on
your phone via a text message. As appropriate,
you may want to include a link to your
calendar. Although an SMS is less obtrusive than
a phone call, it still may wake someone out of an
otherwise sound sleep. If you are unsure what
time zone they are in, see if they indicated
their presence on IM. Often you may need to
refer to other materials during a conversation.
Pasting the link into IM for others to use moves
the discussion along.
11
Shared filing space
A shared filing space can perform multiple roles
dont get them mixed up. Archives dont have
to be easy to use, but they must be
complete. Establish the owner of any reference
document and the process for keeping it up to
date.
We look at three generic roles below archive,
reference and knowledge-sharing. As they use the
same technology (though there are also
specialized products), the roles are often mixed
up in a single system. This is dangerous because
they have very different management needs. Users
expect an archive to contain everything they
might reasonably want to retrieve. One missing
document is enoughto damage credibility. Whereve
r you use a shared filing space for reference
information (such as pricing, products or a
directory), make sure that each document has a
nominated owner, and devise an explicit process
for ensuring that it is regularly reviewed and
updated.
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Shared filing space continued
Extract the re-usable knowledge from a document
when you file it. Dont expect the retriever to
do it. A good structure guides the creation of
content not just its retrieval. Prune the
dead wood in order to promote new growth. Restru
cturing is a management task, not a clerical task.
Most knowledge repositories fail because the
knowledge is deeply embedded in highly contextual
information. If you believe that a document
contains ideas or experiences that may be useful
to others, take the time to extract that
knowledge and turn it into more generic form
before you publish it. A structure for a shared
filing space defines not just what we have and
how it fits together, but what we dont yet have
and need to create. The value of a shared
knowledge space is enhanced as much by what you
take out as what you put in (another reason why
it must not be confused with an archive). Prune
all material that is out of date, never used, or
where the knowledge is not explicit. More
radical than pruning is periodic restructuring as
the business environment and priorities change.
This is often seen as a massive chore, but if the
knowledge base isnt worth a regular review by a
manager, it probably isnt worth keeping.
13
Discussions
Dont discourage trivia displace it. Use
the power of anonymity by design not by
default. Aim to close as many discussions as
you open.
Discussions frequently go off at tangents or into
trivialities. These play an important role in
both teambuilding and creative thinking. If the
original discussion thread is in danger of being
lost, simply cut the digression and paste it into
a new discussion where it may lead to
serendipity. There are situations where
anonymity can be valuable (such as getting
employee feedback on a major business change).
But anonymity can encourage flippancy. It is
best to require all entries to be signed, and
reserve anonymity for special situations in which
it is valuable (such as brainstorming and
uninhibited feedback) where all entries should be
anonymous. When an issue has reached the point
where it can be resolved, announce its resolution
first through the discussion database, not via
another medium. This rewards those who
participated in the discussion, and sends an
important signal about the purpose and value of
the discussion.
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Discussions continued
The moderators role is to ensure that the
discussion achieves its intended outcome. You
need to know whether or not you are progressing
towards the outcome. Take the time to
learn common conventions, or invent your own.
Every discussion space needs a moderator, not
just to enforce standards, structure and
etiquette, but to ensure that the purpose is
understood, and that the outcome is ultimately
achieved. If the participants are not able to
achieve the outcome by themselves (for example,
they need budget approval), the moderator must
get the help they need. Whether the desired
outcome is a decision, an action, a development
or buy-in to an idea, you need to be able to
monitor progress, and alert participants to that
progress, or lack of it. Newcomers to online
discussions (newbies) may make the mistake of
typing in capitals, which by convention is
equivalent to shouting (as is emboldened text in
discussions that support font attributes). Using
emoticons (such as -) for happy), or
different-coloured text for different
participants or points, may seem quirky, but adds
to the richness of the communication, as well as
building a feeling of community amongst the
participants.
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Discussions continued
If you want to be able to find key internal
information, let your people blog. Be
deliberate about whatyou blog it may last
beyondyour lifetime. When you blog, be clear
for whom you are speaking. If your entry on a
corporateblog provokes discussion,consider a
wiki to resolve it.
In the course of blogging, people will reference
many files and ideas that others would probably
not find without the blog links. Search engines
work well at scanning blogs. In effect, blogging
creates meaningful meta-data and helps people
find important internal information. It has
always been good practice to be careful about
what you say in emails or instant messages. The
combination of the public visibility of blogs and
search engines which cache material for long
periods means that what you put in a blog may
last a very long time. If you are in doubt, ask
yourself what will your grandchildren say if
they read this? A companys brands are among
its most valuable assets. When you blog, be
clear whether you are speaking as an individual
or as a representative of the company. Blogs are
great for stating points of view, but they
typically do not facilitate the resolution of a
debate. When resolution is needed, wikis provide
a way for everyone to contribute to the creation
of a shared point of view.
16
Audio/Web conferencing
Be an active moderator. Ensure that the audio
conference is audible. Make sure the
conference has a clear beginning. Direct
questions to nominated participants. Use
reflexive listening.
Because the medium is blind, manage the
conference from beginning to end with more
formality than a face-to-face meeting. Before
you start, check that all the participants can
hear and be heard clearly, and that they know how
and when to use the mute button to cut down on
background noise. Before launching into the main
discussion, spend a few minutes explaining the
purpose, expectations and length of the
conference and tell the participants who is
online. Open questions (such as Does anyone
have a view on this?) seldom work except in
small conferences. Rephrase what the
participants say in simpler terms (So what you
are saying is ) as reinforcement and
acknowledgement.
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Audio/Web conferencing continued
Summarize from time to time. Give occasional
quick status reports. Wind up the
conference formally.
(I hear a number of you saying X. Perhaps we
could addressY as we go forward ) This is
both to ensure that you are making progress and
to maintain interest. (Weve been talking for
the last 30 minutes about X, and Id like to
pause here and ask if there are any questions.
Then, in the 60 minutes remaining, well move to
Y and Z ) This,too, maintains momentum and
interest. Thank people for their participation.
Give them a chance to express any final comments.
Experience shows that a good close to a
conference creates a good start to the next one.
18
Video conferencing
Get training in video conferencing
techniques. Zoom in as close as you dare.
Then zoom in closer. Look into the camera,
not the screen, when you are speaking.
For all the use that most people make of the
video in a video conference, they might as well
be in an audio conference. To make full use of
the relatively costly medium, you need training
and conscious practice. People are naturally
reluctant to zoom in, but it is demonstrably more
effective. The face on the screen should be at
least as large as a face in the room. If you
have multiple participantsat one site, appoint a
dedicated camera operator to switch between
them. It is unnatural to look into the camera
rather than the screen,but until the equipment
manufacturers address the eyeline problem, you
must learn to do it. If not, you will dilute the
effect of your communication and encourage
inattentiveness. At worst, people unconsciously
interpret the lack of eye contact as insincerity.
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Video conferencing continued
To appear natural, you must practise unnatural
acts. Starting a video conference promptly is
harder than with a face-to-face meeting and
more important. Use a moderator, and have
pre-agreed signals that will ensure
the conversation flows well. Dont use the video
channel to screen documents.
Watch how newsreaders move their heads to provide
emphasis and variety. In a video conference,
both talkers and listeners should exaggerate
expressions to enrich the communication and
provide feedback. Small-talk can be used to
mask a staggered start to a physical meeting, but
feels awkward by video conference. Test the link
and familiarize everyone with the controls well
in advance so that the video conference can start
cleanly. Video conferences have an unavoidable
lag that prevents the normal overlapping of
conversations, and hinders interruptions. A good
moderator turns this from a disadvantage into the
advantage of reasoned, sequential debate. The
video channel provides poor resolution for
documents as well as displacing the important
visual image of peoples faces. Pre-circulate
documents electronically, or use a parallel web
conference. If a document is critical to the
meeting, think carefully about whether audio
conferencing plus web conferencing might be more
effective.
20
Suggestions

• The following pages list suggestions of the type
  that youmight provide for your users in each of
  the 20 combinationsof collaboration type and
  benefit sought listed earlier (page 3).
• In each case, provide the information relevant to
  your organization your requirement, your
  suggestions for meeting this requirement, notes,
  technologies and contact names that are specific
  to your installation. We provide examples to
  help you start.
• The following page has a template you may wish to
  use.

21
ltCollaboration typegt and ltBenefit soughtgt
ltrequirementgt

• Suggestions
• Notes
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

22
Co-development and improved discipline
Needed to ensure that members are working on
current versions.

• Suggestions Use well-structured shared filing
  spaces and ensure that all members are using them
  correctly. Each new version should have a new
  sequence number. Take advantage of check-in and
  check-out facilities.
• Notes Increased discipline is a function of
  adherence to a clearly defined process. This can
  range from workflow to a carefully defined and
  monitored agenda, circulated in advance.
• lt Example of how the suggestion might be tailored
  to your organization gt
• Technologies available at your site Windows
  Sharepoint Services V2.0 is available today.
  However, it only allows check-in/out on the
  server. V3.0, scheduled for the end of CY 2007,
  will allow you to check it out to your personal
  machine, enabling you to take it with you when
  you are travelling.
• Contacts for assistance Steve Harrington
  (GMT1) at 44 (0)1438 264171, steve_at_livingonthewe
  b.biz, Steve.Harrington on AOL IM.

23
Co-development and wider participation
Needed to get input from the best people,
wherever they are.

• Suggestions Use audio conferencing plus web
  conferencing to reach out toothers and to focus
  attention on the deliverable being created.
  Ensure that allteam members can actively
  participate by giving them cursor control.
• Notes When working together at the same time,
  audio/web conferencing works well, especially
  when multiple participants can make changes.
  When working at different times, use wikis,
  discussion forums or shared documents with change
  control turned on. RSS can be used to alert
  participants to new posts as well as changes.
  Event recording can be used for both reference
  and to provide information to those could not
  attend.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

24
Co-development and improved discipline
Needed to ensure that members are working on
current versions, as well as time, task, risk,
issue and change management.

• Suggestions Use well-structured shared filing
  spaces and ensure that all members are using them
  correctly. Each new version should have a new
  sequence number. Take advantage of check-in and
  check-out facilities.
• Notes Increased discipline is a function of
  adherence to a clearly defined process. This can
  range from workflow to a carefully defined and
  monitored agenda, circulated in advance. Use RSS
  to make the work of team members and leaders
  visible so that time, task, risk, issues and
  change can be managed.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

25
Co-development and increased efficiency
This may be less important than encouraging a
free flow of ideas to develop the best solution.

• Suggestions Efficiency can be increased by
  deliberately matching thetechnology to the
  situation and the goals. You need to assess the
  relative importance of innovation and delivery to
  schedule in your situation. First improve the
  capability of individuals and then focus on
  improving the efficiency of the team. It starts
  with reliable tools and access to information.
• Notes Sometimes the disadvantage of being
  scattered across the globe can bean advantage.
  For example, one group can hand off the days
  work to the next group in another time zone.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

26
Co-development and better use of information
Essential for developing the right solutions.

• Suggestions Use an intranet, portal or team
  rooms to deliver informationfrom internal and
  external sources to team members provide
  discussionspaces or wikis for developing ideas
  and deploy internal search engines to
  findadditional information.
• Notes Blogging inside the enterprise leaves
  tracks and effectively creates meta-data that
  make it easier for search engines to find
  internal information.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

27
Co-development and enhanced social dynamics
Needed to create and sustain ego-less team
spirit.

• Suggestions Use live meetings to initiate a
  project, then video conferencing,then audio/web
  conferencing as the team get to know each other
  better.Refresh team spirit with occasional live
  meetings.
• Notes Consider using a blog to share the teams
  progress and to highlight individual
  contributions. The team leader could populate
  this blog with items from the blogs of
  individual members. Making the blogs widely
  available mitigates a typical project management
  problem which is that others in the organization
  dont know what is going on. It also creates a
  platform for letting team members show case their
  accomplishments.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

28
Coordination and wider participation
Needed to avoid having several coordination
meetings at the same point in a project.

• Suggestions Use audio conferencing plus web
  conferencing, as not all team members may have
  access to video conferencing facilities and
  because in this case comprehensiveness is more
  important than emotional bandwidth.
  Personal/team blogs for both team members and
  team leaders help keep everyone up to date.
  Support for off-line and mobile use will increase
  participation.
• Notes Make sure that all team members and team
  leaders have RSS readers installed and
  auto-subscribe them to the blogs of other
  members. Where there are multiple teams,
  auto-subscribe members of all teams to the blogs
  of all the team leaders.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

29
Coordination and improved discipline
Needed to ensure the team covers every aspect of
the project.

• Suggestions Use shared filing spaces for the
  project planning and control documentation. Make
  project plans and status visible to others in
  theorganization so that they can contribute.
• Notes Project management software can help, but
  be careful it does not become so burdensome that
  it is ignored.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

30
Coordination and increased efficiency
Needed to avoid travel and accommodation costs
and loss of production by taking people away from
their workplace.

• Suggestions Use audio plus web conferencing
  the richness of video conferencing is not
  needed. Use shared calendars to keep track of
  meetingsand deliverables.
• Notes Consider discussion spaces, wikis or
  blogs to surface issues before thenext meeting
  or when too many time zones are involved for live
  meetings. Record the meeting and create
  podcasts so that those unable to attend can hear
  what was said.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

31
Coordination and better use of information
Needed to ensure that there is no time wasted
arguing about facts.

• Suggestions Monitor the documentation in the
  shared filing spaces for completeness before the
  meetings. Surface issues before the meeting,
  notby reading during the meeting.
• Notes Consider sharing your calendar with team
  members and rolling upkey individual dates into
  a team calendar.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

32
Coordination and enhanced social dynamics
Less important because coordination is an
objective ratherthan a subjective activity.

• Suggestions (Although this need is less
  important, coordination sessions often involve
  some commitment building.) You may need to make
  and track commitments or promises during
  coordination discussions.
• Notes If all eyes are on the prize,
  coordination is easier to achieve since each
  group will be actively looking for ways to
  coordinate. There may be individual goals, but
  if there is a shared, over-arching goal then that
  will help coordinate. Blogs are a great tool for
  loosely linked people to coordinate their
  activities, especially when one person links to
  the blog of another. When you spot an issue in
  someone elses blog you may comment on their
  blog. If it is really important you can add it
  to the team blog.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

33
Co-decision and wider participation
Needed to get the participation of as many of the
key people as possible, often at short notice.

• Suggestions Post the subject in a shared
  discussion space and use email to invite
  comments. Post not just the background data, but
  also details or links on the nature of the
  decision that must be reached. Make sure that
  the technology can be used offline when
  participants are travelling.
• Notes Real participation means more than just
  being present at the meeting. All too often,
  organizational hierarchies prevent participants
  from saying what needs to be said. Consider
  tools that let participants surface issues and
  even vote anonymously so that you get the full
  benefit of their perspective.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

34
Co-decision and improved discipline
Needed to ensure that a meeting is not dominated
by oneor a few members.

• Suggestions Use web conferencing for voting
  (with anonymity if this will give a truer
  response) and record results at the time and
  online so that everyone can see them (rather than
  in minutes prepared offline).
• Notes Some systems permit anonymous comments to
  be shared. This has been found useful by
  financial institutions trying to get a better
  handle on risk in advance of a major decision.
  While anonymity may give a truer response, formal
  voting and recording of votes can promote
  accountability for decisions.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

35
Co-decision and increased efficiency
Needed if the decision is urgent.

• Suggestions A rapid exchange of emails, IMs or
  SMSs is more efficient than trying to contact
  people by telephone. Encourage use of the away
  message inIM and the out of office reply in
  email to provide information on presenceand
  availability.
• Notes More considered use of presence
  information is developing. Some organizations
  use their directory systems to provide different
  levels of presence information depending on who
  is asking. This makes it easier to use IM to
  reach out to sources of expertise during a
  meeting, thus avoiding the I will have to get
  back to you problem.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

36
Co-decision and better use of information
Needed to raise the quality of the decision by
making all the relevant information readily
available.

• Suggestions Use hotlinks from the decision
  item in the discussion space to the data in
  shared filing spaces. Anticipate questions and
  provide links to backup detail.
• Notes Increasingly, decisions are based not
  just on an interpretation of data, but the
  interpretation of models. As this starts to
  happen in your business, be prepared to run and
  re-run models online during the meeting with
  varying input assumptions. Use web conferencing
  so that all participants can see you running the
  models.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

37
Co-decision and enhanced social dynamics
Needed because although decisions should be made
objectively, subjectivity usually comes into
play, especially in implementation.

• Suggestions Use discussion spaces and emails,
  because they allow people time to reflect before
  they decide, but also use live, video or audio
  conferences to deal with the subjective element.
• Notes Successful follow through of decisions
  requires active support, not just grudging
  acceptance. Recognizing the social dynamics and
  providing an appropriate space for alternatives
  to be presented and evaluated increases the
  legitimacy of the final decision and reduces
  resistance. One on one follow up discussions may
  be needed to overcome opposition to group
  decisions.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

38
Commitment and wider participation
Important because commitment is built from a
senseof togetherness.

• Suggestions Use a live meeting or video
  conferencing, but organize an audio conferencing
  channel for those who cannot access video
  facilities. Pause frequently and explicitly ask
  audio participants if they have a comment. Use
  active camera control to zoom in on the current
  speaker. Record the session for those who
  cannot attend. Post it on an internal blog for
  comments and follow up questions.
• Notes They key is to use technologies that have
  a high emotional content. Sending out an email
  to build commitment will reach many people, but
  it is the wrong thing to do because it has low
  emotional content.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

39
Commitment and improved discipline
Of little relevance. To achieve buy in, it is
better to take aslong as it needs.

• Suggestions Reiterate points and divert from
  the planned agenda if it is important to get the
  message understood and accepted. Periodically
  test to see if you have gained sufficient
  commitment for your purpose.
• Notes Difficulty in achieving buy-in may be a
  consequence of lack of information. If that is a
  problem consider making it easier to get the
  information by creating blogs and
  auto-subscribing the participants. You might
  have separate blogs for objectives, milestones,
  responsibilities and dependencies. Key
  stakeholders should be automatically subscribed
  to these blogs.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

40
Commitment and increased efficiency
Of little relevance. Process needs to give way
to individual needs.

• Suggestions If it is important to gain
  commitment, people willingly spendmoney on video
  equipment, an off-site gathering or a series of
  live meetings.
• Notes Emails are often misinterpreted since they
  dont express tone very well. Your voice is much
  better at conveying tone. A misunderstood email
  can create great inefficiencies by failing to
  adequately convey your tone. Consider using a
  voice mail attachment to your email instead of
  text
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

41
Commitment and better use of information
Needed to prevent people avoiding commitment by
arguingthe premises.

• Suggestions Use discussion spaces to set out
  the subject matter and invite comments, then use
  multimedia to present facts and findings at live
  meetings. Surface facts before the meeting and
  have them at hand during it.
• Notes Instant messaging can be an effective way
  to reach out to experts as needed. They can even
  take over the screen and present additional
  material.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance

42
Commitment and enhanced social dynamics
Needed to engender the emotional connection that
leads people to commit themselves to a policy or
a project.

• Suggestions Use video clips, preferably with
  music, to add impact to live meetings. Use video
  conferencing (plus audio conferencing for those
  unable to use video) where live meetings are not
  possible. If the group is small and the
  commitment or proposed change is large, then
  dinner with a table layout that lets everyone see
  and hear everyone else may be best.
• Notes Web conferencing and screen sharing can
  be used briefly to highlight some facts or draft
  a consensus statement, but take care to make sure
  it does not distract from the personal impact of
  the meeting. DVDs, with theme music, are now
  easy to produce in-house. High Definition video
  with striking detail can now be captured with
  lower-cost cameras and replayed on PC or
  projection screens. High Definition DVRs are
  starting to arrive on the market.
• Technologies available at your site
• Contacts for assistance