We have that in every company: It starts with a rumor, that the new senior sales director already has resigned after just 2 months. But no public announcement, often when you ask your supervisor if its true he will warn you to not spread rumors. 99 percent of these rumors are true. Like they are when a company is to be sold. But bosses always want to hide this information. They have a lot of reasons, but never commit the true one: They want control, and rumors are something they can’t control, so they just deny.
If somebody is resigning in a company, he will tell this usually his coworkers. at list give some hints. Usually and unsatisfied staff is becoming suddenly kind of relieved. That means he delivered the letter to the boss.

People are not so stupid as many bosses might think. That’s why the company is actually successful, because of smart people. The same sense they use to discover company “secrets” they use to research the market for new opportunities. So use this sense and communicate more open with your staff.

Just a few days ago I invited the CEO of a software company to share a google document with me. This company already uses the Google apps for their email account, so I thought they might be familiar with it. But they are not. I got a email with a word document (without any tracked changes) back and the excuse “sorry, I am not familiar with Google documents and so I copied it in word”.

So, if software companies cannot use Google documents, who else? It’s not that Google is complicated. It’s that word is just working fine, and people don’t want to change. Most users don’t see the great advantage of collaboration. They might be because you just want to be on the safe side: Send a document by email and your work is done (for now). Shall other now review it.

What most companies don’t understand and see: Collaboration is the only way to work more efficient and faster. You can fire people like crazy to safe cost, but the work still has to be done. So you need to change your behavior, they way you work together.

Some advise, above all for my Asian friends:
If you want to create something, like a proposal, architecture draft, whatever, and you call for a meeting, then give up hierarchy: The only thing a boss should do in a meeting is taking care that people stay with the topics. Don’t try to lead the discussion when it comes to ideas. Don’t hide information (like someone did in a meeting where he called the client by skype chat and did not invite the others oin the meeting for a conference chat).

If several people need to work on a document, save time while working together like you do in google docs. You can not only save time, you can discuss issues faster and better and you still have an overview about recent changes.

Content first: Sometimes people start with the template first, creating chapters, formatting them, drawing graphs. Bullshit: Text first, make up then.

And: Powerpoint is for presentation, Word is for reading. But most people still use Powerpoint as a kind of landscape word format.

Last but not least: Never send Powerpoint presentations to clients if the animations aren’t really important. Send a pdf and its find. Clients are bored about time wasting animations with flying bullets and text that drops down for no reason.

Part of my work is collaborative work, and part of collaborative work are rules.

In a professional way, there are document creators and owners, who invite others to collaborate on a document. Changes are being seen in the revisions history. But the main part of collaboration is not that you can make changes but to talk about changes. That’s more a technical part.

Collaboration means informing people about changes and discuss it. That’s why I always suggest chat solutions combined with collaboration tools. and by the way, that’s the recipe of success for Wikipedia: The discussions are improving the quality.

So if you are thinking about collaborative tools, think about in total. Use the whole power of it. Because, if you start using this tools alone, then you will fail.

So just think about these steps:

Create a document

Start with some content

Write some comments on critical parts or where you think a discussion is useful

Invite others

Follow revisons

Work together on the document

Supervise it as you are the creator who needs at the end the best quality

Make decisions if needed

Note: Collaboration is a tool, not a philosophy. It should help working together and improving quality of work.

Muhammad Siyab did a great post about why it is important to use the Google Search widget in your blog, additional to for example the wordpress search.

First of all, you’ll be hooking your blog with the most powerful search engine in the world, and use its sophisticated search algorithm, to power your blog’s search.

Second of all, there’s even an option to monetise your search pages, using Adsense, so you can earn money!

The money is the secondary benefit. The primary benefit is that you get to use Google’s power to make your blog better.

Read the whole story about Google Search in your blog

Sometimes I am asked why a company with lets say 40 employees needs an intranet. My answer is, because every company with more then 2 people staff needs it. Why?
Because of a possible lost of knowledge. Have you ever calculated how much it really costs to train a new employee? How much time he needs browsing through the thousands of emails of his ancestor?

Intranets are a perfect solution for knowledge management. Wether it’s a CMS, a Wiki or even a Sharepoint solution: The more data you save on a centralized server instead of PCs, the more this data is available to everyone who needs this information, the better the knowledge skills in your company are.

Intranets must not be expensive. Start something small with one of the fantasic open source solutions like Typo3, Drupal or Joomla. And then watch the organic grow.

Thomas Wanhoff, Issues Management Conference, Wiesbaden, 2006

Maybe you are reading bogs. Maybe you are listening to podcasts. Maybe you have your own personal blog. But what about your company?

1. There is no reason to blog as a company
It might be true, depending on your communication level. If you are a supplier for the military, better be quiet. But if not, think of starting to communicate with your customers or business partners.

2. We need a blog for a better search engine ranking
Wrong. Search engines are looking for relevant content. So better start with good content, follow some basic SEO rules instead of setting up a blog just for search engine reasons. The ranking will come itself, but more important is building up a readership and have a close contact to your customers.

3. I am too busy to blog
Sure you are. It’s a matter of priorities. And human ressources. Have a look if someone in your company is a writer (or have at least some writing skills).

… to be continued