These are heady times for anyone who is passionate about teamwork and empowerment. Elegantly simple networking tools are sweeping the web. People throughout your office and your neighborhood are signing on to Facebook and contributing to the lifestreams of everyone on their “Friends” lists. They might not realize it, but they’re getting comfortable communicating one sentence at a time across vast geographical and cultural boundaries. They’re also worrying about their families’ safety in light the current economic situation. How can they stay safe? How can you turn economic uncertainty into a personal advantage? Read on for some promising examples.
Connect the right people and watch them build the future
Tomorrow night APICS Memphis is proudly hosting a talk by Charles Poirier. As a supply chain management consultant Poirier is leading the manufacturing and consumer goods industries towards a bright future of collaboration. His bio provides an encouraging glimpse into the journey of a passionate enabler:
So where did Poirier’s collaboration instincts come from? He had no formal training in the discipline—there was none at the time. The third of three brothers, he has always shown a knack for approaching things differently—for asking the awkward “why not?” questions…
…In one case, a lab organized by Poirier helped significantly reduce inventories of supplies in the consumer goods sector. The lab brought together staff from a consumer goods company with those of its leading carton supplier. The customer learned that it was paying for carton inventories as soon as the cartons were printed, and the supplier was then shipping them to the customer’s premises where space was at a premium.
The two quotes above are encouraging. I’ve been trying to figure out where traditional education fits in with the future of collaboration and innovation. No college major that I’ve heard of is going to cover everything you’ll need to change lives. If you want to get out in front of today’s wave of community enablement opportunities you’ll have to find your own path just like Poirier did. His “diagnostic labs” are doing a great job of putting the right people face to face and helping cross-team innovations bloom.
Collaboration today and tomorrow
It will be interesting to see how the practical details of Mr. Poirier’s highly successful style of facilitation match up with the newest Enterprise 2.0 techniques out there. A great article last month by Venkatesh Rao (thanks Mary Abraham) illuminated the inter-generational friction between successful knowledge management proponents and the young Turks of social media.
Will technology-enabled networking and collaboration get you through the coming financial slowdown? It can if you start building your own momentum today. Help your team be among the first in your area to flatten its communications strategies. Peel back the low-value processes of mailing lists and redundant signoffs. Spend this week connecting with people. Find the people who are best positioned to take advantage of lean communications and agile business tactics. Learn from them. Build something together.
UPDATE: Mary Abraham points out a well-argued rebuttal to Venkat’s KM vs. SM generational “war”. Mark Gould sees personal traits like family responsibility and political interests as more relevant than birth date. Thanks Mary and Mark.
Image credit: billjacobus1
