Collaboration: Greater than the sum of its parts

On June 3, Avanade launched a thought leadership campaign backed by original research of more than 500 C-level executives, business leaders and IT professionals from among the largest companies in 17 countries. This campaign focused on collaboration, where we have a variety of content including point of view, Podcasts, executive summary of the research, our press announcement and so on. Avanade also published a perspective on collaboration in the cloud. You can read that here.

The act of collaborating is as old as cave men trying to work together to catch the meat and start the BBQ. Collaboration is simply working together to achieve something. Modern technologies including the emergence of Web 2.0 has drawn more attention to the role of collaboration as fundamental to business success -- contributing to growth (new markets, new strategies), productivity, innovation, etc.

We timed our campaign to Microsoft's launch of Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 with the intent of riding the wave of increased interest in two dominant communication and collaboration technologies. We used the survey to learn about key issues surrounding collaboration, perceived value of collaboration as well as adoption and collaboration technology investment trends.

What we found most interesting was that while leaders see business value from collaboration technologies, and many organizations continue to make significant investments in this type of technology, employees are a little disillusioned with the act of collaborating (not the technology). It's not that collaboration doesn't yield business benefits, but that collaboration has some perceived drawbacks. Indeed, Avanade's research showed that some employees are skeptical of the benefits of collaborating with others, and in fact feel that it has led some to skirt responsibilities and pass on work to others.

I work remotely. There's no way I could not be effective in my job without technologies that enable me to connect with executive leadership, department leads, colleagues and staff globally at any time. Technology is a powerful enabler. But at times I can also relate to the drawbacks to collaboration. Coming from the consulting business, I admit I am predisposed -- and enjoy -- providing a service in support of a business need, serving others to contribute to overall success. It's in my nature. But, I definitely have been a "victim" of collaboration. And no doubt those that I have worked with could say the same about collaborating with me -- more work handed out (though I deny any accusation I skirted responsibilities). Let there be no mistake ... I am also the recipient of huge benefits through collaboration.

The current research project is Avanade's third collaboration-oriented campaign in the past 3 years. With nearly 60% tier 1 IT press and about 25% business press coverage of our most recent study, as well as the blogosphere and micro-blogosphere discussing our research and viewpoint, we believe we have hit a nerve on the topic ... that there are great business benefits in collaboration underpinned by technology, but a recognition that trying to retrofit the culture with technology doesn't work.