I allow LinkedIn to send me a short weekly newsletter of interesting technology news. This week, there was a link to a story about a company in France, Atos, which plans to eliminate internal emails over the next 18 months; of course the title of the news story is much more provocative: Tech Firm Implements "Zero Email" Policy
http://news.yahoo.com/tech-firm-implements-employee-zero-email-policy-165311050.html
Now Atos is not small, about 74,000 employees. They're also worldwide, so they're spread across time zones. They calculate the average employee gets 200 emails a day, only 20 of which are useful. Another 40 are SPAM.
You have to read the whole article to get to the interesting bit which is, well, how are they going to do this? They've managed to eliminate 20% of the daily load in six months just by encouraging the use of instant messaging. Not bad! Just stating the goal and blessing the alternative tool clearly made a difference.
They're also evaluating other collaboration tools, such as wiki's, and file sharing tools. Nothing magical in this -- there are lots of collaboration tools available, it just takes picking good tools and having the determination to change the corporate culture to make their use widespread. They do have to be good tools, though. People won't put up with useless or hard to use tools for long. And whatever you pick, it better work well on a smart phone.
Atos, I wish you well. Keeping the focus on collaboration rather than the inbox is the way to go. Good luck!
Beth Benoit | 9 December 2011 03:29:06 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
In 2010 I took and passed the PMI certification test, enabling me to sign my business correspondence as Beth Benoit, PMP®. Like most certifications, this one requires care and feeding: specifically 60 Professional Development Units every three years. I've finally learned that going to the local PMI chapter meetings is a relatively painless way to rack up a PDU or two every month.
This month's topic was on running effective virtual meetings. Some of the statistics were interesting, though I'm not sure I believed all of them (45% of people admit to dozing during virtual meetings? Really?) I liked some of the speaker's ideas for wamup/gathering topics. I was glad when she abandoned the plan to show us interactive features of WebEx, as I'm unlikely to be using that at IBM!
Where things got stirred up was when the mute button came up. She asked us to stand up if we used the mute button. About half of us did. The speaker was firmly of the opinion that no one should ever be on mute, because their attention would wander, they'd start multi-tasking, etc... She wanted everyone fully present in her meeting. If they were somewhere noisy, she'd allow them to use mute, but talk to them privately later about finding a quiet place to participate in the meeting in future.
Well, I disagree. And judging by the buzz in the room, I wasn't the only one.
Ensuring audio quality is one of the most important things a virtual meeting moderator can do to make a meeting productive. It is exhausting to listen to static, beeps, echoes, wind, barking dogs, sirens, typing, and the conversation in the cubicle next to Lenny in Austin. Once or twice a year, somebody puts the virtual meeting on hold while they take another call, and everyone gets treated to muzak. Any of these inevitably leads to multiple rants of "if you're not talking, go on mute please!". And, "whose line is that?" Attention gets directed to the noise, not the topic. Every meeting moderator should know the key-sequence to mute all lines, and know the key sequence for individuals to un-mute themselves one by one.
In my world, we have road warriors, customer calls that have to be taken, sudden pickups of sick kids, people who have to work-at-home to supervise construction, cubicle dwellers...in short, it's rare that any of my virtual meeting participants have a regular quiet environment. I know there's a fair amount of note passing going on by Sametime if the meeting is at all controversial...so there is definitely typing going on; I'm all for that, it often helps us cut to the chase and get things done.
The best way to keep people from multi-tasking or day-dreaming in a virtual meeting is to make it easy to listen, have a plan, keep on topic, keep it fun, and start and end on time. At least, that's been my experience. Your mileage may vary.
Beth Benoit | 28 October 2011 02:40:03 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
This is traditionally a quiet work week in the United States. Lots of people are on vacation, and for most parents the back to school paperwork drill hasn't gotten up the full head of steam yet.
Imagine my surprise when one morning this week I had 200 new email messages. All with the same title, but from different people I had never heard from before.. What was going on? It looked like a major emergency.
This was a wonderful study in human nature. An IT team had recently upgraded a tool that probably thousands of IBMers touch, most of them on an infrequent basis. The IT team did the sensible thing, and generated a mailing list to notify everyone who had access to the tool that there had been significant changes.
The disaster began when one person used "reply all" to say "please take me off this distribution list." Another person thought that was a good idea, so they did the same thing. And then the next, and the next,....
After about a dozen of these messages, the first "Please don't use Reply All" emails entered the conversation. The stream of "take me off too!" emails continued at a rapid clip for the next two business days, punctuated by ever more frenetic emails along the lines of "People, PLEASE don't use Reply all". One person thoughtfully sent along pictures showing what the Reply Button looked like.
The IT team tried to take control, and sent out instructions on how to be removed from future messages. However since the title looked like all the other messages "RE: Upgrade to:....." no one read it, because by this time we were all deleting the messages without looking at them.
Like natural epidemics, this one eventually ran its course. Thankfully! But hmmm, next week when everyone on vacation returns to work -- I give it even odds that we'll have another outbreak.
Beth Benoit | 2 September 2011 03:15:53 PM ET | | Comments (2) | Permanent Link
Last week my family flew to San Francisco for our vacation. Whenever I'm travelling, I'm interested to watch people using technology. I noticed when I checked on our flights the night before that there was an option to download our boarding passes to a smart phone. Interesting, I thought.
When I got to the gate, I actually saw two people use their smart phones at the scanner to board. Wow, I thought. Those people are gutsy. I wouldn't want to be stranded at the gate if my phone had a problem.
My 15 year old didn't think that was risky at all. "Mom, for a lot of people their phones are their LIFE. They depend on them for everything." Five minutes later, as he's suggesting it's time his phone was upgraded, he tells me how his phone has these "weird glitches". And his best friend's brand new phone does as well. Remarkably, this causes him no cognitive dissonance whatsoever.
The engineer in me says technology is getting better all the time and why not rely on it; the project manager in me says if there's something you DON'T want to have happen, make plans to make sure it DOESN'T happen. Like being at the gate unable to board your plane on your non-refundable ticket.
Maybe I'd use a smart phone to board my plane...but I bet I'd have a paper copy in my purse, just in case.
Beth Benoit | 24 August 2011 11:48:10 AM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
The good news is, my new team is consolidating in a single block of cubes instead of being scattered across two floors and three buildings. Which will be nice, to actually sit next to people I work with.
The bad news is, that meant I had to move. That's not terrible. I have less than 3 boxes of stuff in my work office, it doesn't take long to pack or unpack. It took longer to figure out how to order the boxes to move than it did to pack the boxes.
The really bad news was that I found out a week before my move that my new office did not already have a telephone in it. We have a very nice VOIP phone system in the building. Most of the time, I really like them. Till I had to get one delivered. I quickly found the instructions, accessed the appropriate Notes database, and opened a ticket requesting a phone in my office. Whew, just in time I thought.
Day after move day, no phone in my office. Well, I LIVE on the phone. It's the majority of most working days. This is a disaster. The first day, I went home. (Well, I forgot my power cord too.) After that, I found my USB headset, and started using Sametime Unified Telephony again for everything. And thank heavens, because.....
....3 days after move day, still no phone. Finally the phone arrived, from Georgia, expedited delivery. Hooray! But wait, it needed to be programmed before it could be used Another ticket. Another 2 days go by.....
As I write this, I can see my phone is rebooting itself, Hopefully I'll be able to login to it tomorrow. In the meanwhile, thank you Sametime Unified Telephony. If I hadn't had the ability to make my business calls through my computer, I would have either been working from home (bad for the diet) or finding empty conference rooms (which is nearly impossible).
Beth Benoit | 12 July 2011 05:40:14 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
IBM turned 100 years old this week, an absolutely remarkable achievement in the world of business. IBMers have viewed the films and read the books commemorating this milestone, and discovered history we didn't know was in our legacy. I can't speak for all IBMers, but I feel a sense of awe and pride in being part of such an incredible enterprise.
If you've got 10 minutes, the best summary I've seen is a short video, outlining IBM's greatest contributions to our world. It blows my mind. If it hadn't been IBM, it might have been someone else...but who knows when?
IBM Centennial Film: 100 X 100 - A century of achievements that have changed the world
With all the hoopla, I'll admit that on IBM's actual birthday (Thursday, 6/16), I brought up the Google search page, hoping to see something clever recognizing the big event. I should have known better. Between natural market competition, brand name protection, and a litigious society it was not in the cards. . Google sported the regular Google plain but colorful logo. Well, maybe Google didn't say it, but I will. Happy Birthday IBM! Wishing you many centuries more!
Beth Benoit | 17 June 2011 05:24:57 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
Last week I had lunch with a former teammate to catch up on work, kids, and life in the suburbs. I shared how I'm using Lotus Connections in my new role in Services; she's an Operations Manager and definitely a Power user, especially of Activities. Instantly we were swapping tips.
Operations Managers end up creating and executing processes over and over...monthly status reports, headcount updates, approval cycles for travel or capital or... What she's found is that activity templates are an enormous productivity enhancement. She relies on Activities for the vast majority of her day to day tasks now. Every time she gets something new to do, if there's even a hint she'll have to do it again, it becomes an activity template.
Her exact quote on how important the service has become: "If Connections goes down, I might as well go shopping." Followed up by "I'm not kidding." Luckily for her boss, that is a pretty rare occurrence.
Beth Benoit | 27 May 2011 10:53:32 AM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
I've been using LotusLive Engage more and more over the last month. My role brings me into contact with IBM Sales teams world wide. In the last week alone, there have been multiple calls with an Asia Pacific team, one or two calls a day with a Latin American team, and several email queries from Europe. These are IBMers who are using LotusLive in their everyday job. Activities and Files are frequently used.
This week an IBMer in Germany needed a document I am keeping in the IBM Cloud. Rather than email him the file, I shared it with him via LotusLive Files. I didn't really need to share it with him, he already had access since it was flagged as public. . It just seemed the fastest way to get him a pointer to the document. Within an hour, I had an email from him. He wanted me to share the document with other people on his team. Here's the title on that email:
I think of LotusLive as being an application in English, because that's how I use it. Seeing the German message that LotusLive sent to my German colleague initially surprised me; then I thought "well, duh of course it does that." {to save you typing that into your favorite internet translation program It says: Re: [files] Beth Benoit "LotusLive Trials and Pilots 2011 04 14.odp" released to share with you.}
IBM's commitment to globalization and localization is world class. Of course it does that. (I still think it's cool)
Beth Benoit | 13 May 2011 04:17:52 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
In my new position at IBM, I'm helping to coordinate IBM LotusLive Notes Hybrid pilots. Go here for a high level description of Notes Hybrid . Essentially, LotusLive Notes hybrid is a way to put part (or all) of your Notes/Domino email infrastructure into the Cloud (reducing IT expenses), and still be able to use your on-premise internal Domino infrastructure for applications specific to your business. The pilot program gives customers a try before you buy option.
As experienced Domino Administrators can envision, setting up a Hybrid deployment is not quite as simple as typing a few commands. There are a couple of servers to set up, ports to open, and IP information to exchange with IBM. Depending on where you start, the preparation work can be relatively easy, or it can be a major project. If you're still running Notes 7.3 on your desktops and haven't moved up to Domino 8.5.1 either, you've got an upgrade project to do first.
During the course of this week, I've been working on creating a project plan template for the pilots. The goal is to help eliminate the "oops" factor -- as in "Oops, we forgot to test that the finance approval application works on Notes 8.5.2 prior to upgrading the desktops." While tapping the experts, I've stumbled across two different Activity Templates that are under construction.
One is being built by a Technical Sales representative. His Activity Template outlines all the steps in qualifying and closing a LotusLive Hybrid Sales opportunity. When he gets a new prospect he creates a new activity for that potential client from the template, and adds the sales team to it as members. Everyone on the team can access the activity and add to it. His template is amazingly extensive, and he's improving it with each engagement. It contains:
- A Section for each phase in the sales cycle
- An entry to capture contact data
- A place to store the win plan
- A link to qualification review documents
- To-do's ("get approval from Sales Director for X")
- Links to reference materials
- Links to customer facing presentations (Stored in Files, so updates will propagate as the presentation gets updated over time).
The second Activity Template is being built by an ISSL Architect. When there's a potential ISSL Hybrid engagement, our Practitioners will create an activity from that template specific to that customer. They'll add the appropriate IBMers to the activity so the team can read/edit/add to the activity. My project plan will probably become part of this Template, as a file to be shared with customers.
Because these Activity Templates are Public, anyone in IBM can reuse them. They're tagged with keywords, so an IBMer searching Lotus Connections for those keywords will find them. I'm impressed. This is a dynamic way to document best practices and share them widely across our worldwide business. And all without cluttering our inboxes...which makes me even happier!
Beth Benoit | 22 April 2011 03:41:03 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
I took a new job in IBM last week, moving from Lotus Support to Lotus Services. Nothing unusual about that for IBMers. Most of us move around every few years.
My Sametime contact list started growing immediately. I spent a great deal of time in IBM Profiles, figuring out who's who. I got invited to new meetings which used LotusLive to share presentations and data. All of this I expected.
What surprised me was the large number of IBM Connections Communities, Activities, Wikis, and Files I needed to access this week.
I can report from personal experience that the IBM Connections deployment in IBM is being used extensively. It is a great resource for loosely coupled ad-hoc teams. We have many teams like this; they form spontaneously. With Connections in our intranet cloud, it's easy to create a place to collaborate. For a new person on the project, like me, it's a godsend. I can find what I need to come up to speed right away. It's not locked up in inaccessible email folders.
IBMers are using Connections Files to hold draft documents and presentations and record feedback. Customer facing presentations are shared via Files, and made Public so that anybody can reuse them. Tags are extensively used, and make it much easier to find what you're looking for, as well as to discover things you can use that you didn't even know existed.
Community discussion forums are being used to answer questions from IBMers in the field, so they can help their clients. I found I was a member of so many communities I had to "leave"a dozen of them just to make the ones I really need easier to find on the My Communities Tab.
In short, I've touched just about every part of Connections this week, on both the IBM intranet and the LotusLive internet cloud deployment. In fact, I need to start using the Bookmarks feature. My biggest problem right now is tracking down that file I was looking at yesterday. I bet Bookmarks will help me with that.
IBM is drinking our own social business champagne. And it tastes good.
Beth Benoit | 8 April 2011 03:52:35 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
