A man learns how to collaborate more effectively using Lotus Connections Wikis.
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On Monday, my boss told me that the head of our subsection and the vice subsection head would be in town next week, and asked me to plan a full day meeting with the sub subsection heads: Peter, Jan, Greg, Cindy, Bobby and Marsha. She told me to schedule a one hour one-on-one for each sub-subsection head, and a discussion session at the end of the day – and to ask each sub subsection head to provide a short bio, a description of their sub-subsection’s role and goals, charts about one key issue, and one meaty discussion question for the final session by COB Thursday, so we could review everything on Friday.
So I asked our administrative assistant (whose name is Oliver, though people call him Boomer because of the incident with the gas barbeque at the company picnic) to reserve rooms for each session, to schedule time for the one-on-one meetings, and to collect all the materials ASAP – and we set up a status meeting for Wednesday afternoon, so I could chase anyone who hadn’t given us the materials yet.
On Tuesday, I saw Boomer at lunch, and he said that he had all the rooms set up, and some of the materials. One small issue was that all the sub-subsection heads had requested meeting times in the afternoon – but he said that he would sort that out on Wednesday morning before our meeting. He had bought a ring, and was taking a half day off to prepare a special dinner for his girlfriend... so I wished him luck and winked.
On Wednesday when I came in, I heard that Boomer’s romantic dinner had gone badly, and that there had been an accident involving a cheese fondue set, one hundred heart shaped helium balloons, and a set of encyclopedias that had been stacked somewhat precariously. I called the hospital to find out how Boomer was, but wasn’t able to reach anyone who could tell me when he would be back at work… and my stomach started to feel burny.
So I wrote all the sub-subsection heads, explained the situation, and asked them to forward all the materials to me. Because we didn’t have much time left to plan, I also sent them a schedule with assigned times, and told them to schedule around that. Then I called the floor administrators for each floor to figure out what rooms Boomer had managed to book. When I was finished with my calls (which took a while because we have 22 floors), I had a couple of messages with huge attachments from Bobby and Cindy, an angry note from Jan (there was a frowny face in the title) asking why she had been moved to the morning and why we always favored Cindy and Marsha, Marsha, Marsha – and nothing from Peter, Marsha or Greg.
My mail was capped, so I had to deal with the huge attachments first. Bobby had sent three files. His bio was on chart 53 of the first one, his subsection’s roles and goals were on charts 47 and 21 of the second one, and his issue was outlined in the e-mail. So I cut and pasted everything I needed, and deleted the attachment, then moved to Cindy’s message, which was just as convoluted. After that I called Jan and agreed to switch her time with Marsha’s… then called Marsha, only to find out that she was out of the office until Monday with some kind of nose injury, and that Greg was helping her through this tough time. At least Peter was in, and when I asked for the materials he told me that he had already sent them – so I asked him to send them again, but to me this time. After that I called an emergency meeting with Marsha and Greg’s teams, and told them about the situation and what I needed. That afternoon I was bombarded with messages with different versions of the materials that the teams thought might be useful. My mail capped again and I spent the rest of the day going through my in-box, and trying to pick the best version of each document. Peter never sent anything.
That night, I stared at the ceiling and prayed for Boomer’s swift recovery, and on Thursday I was thrilled to find that my prayers had been answered, and that Boomer was fit for duty. His mail was capped, because he’d been CCed on most of the messages I’d gotten on Wednesday, but we put in a long day, and between his materials and mine, we were able to put something decent together. All we were missing was a bio from Peter, so I called him and asked him for that, and he sent me something from his resume.
On Friday, I met with my boss, and she was happy except for the fact that everything was in different formats – so told her I would fix that on the weekend.
That Saturday, as I typed away in my home office, my middle daughter – she’s the artsy one – asked me what I was doing, so I told her about my week. By the time I finished, I noticed that she was staring at me with her mouth open. After a bit of a pause, she said, “Don’t you guys have, like, anything more this century than e mail?” And I said “Well, we have IBM Lotus Connections, and I use it sometimes, but…” and she said, “Well, like, this guy that I’m following tweeted that Connections has wikis? So, like, what’s your malfunction?” I had no idea what any of that meant, and found it vaguely disturbing, so I decided to just go back to typing. She stared at me for a while the way the kids do sometimes. Eventually she left.
So the next week I asked the guy who knows about cool things, and he said that yeah, Connections has wikis – which are just web pages with shared authorship that make it easy to collaborate on a documents (like meeting agendas, for example) – and that I could have had a much better week if I’d used Connections. On Monday, I could have set up a wiki with a blank agenda, and a separate page for each session. I could have asked everyone to put their name next to an available slot, on a first come first served basis, and asked Boomer to fill in the room numbers. For the one on one sessions, I could have asked everyone to fill in their own pages, and attach their files there – and I could even have put enough information on each page to guide them, and make sure that everyone gave me exactly what I was looking for. For the discussion section, I could have put in a table with each of their names, and asked each one to put their meaty question there. Then as the week went on, I could have seen what information was missing, and followed up as needed. That way, everyone would be responsible for their own input, and I could have saved myself a lot of stress, mail capping annoyances, phone calls, cutting and pasting, reformatting, and e-mails – and maybe most importantly, I would never have found out that my daughter stalks guys who do bird imitations. Boomer would probably still have blown himself across the room – but hey, it’s only software.
So, yet again, I find myself realizing that this social media stuff isn’t just about being social, it’s about being smart and collaborating more efficiently – and that’s much more than a hunch.