On The Smarter Office blog, I posted about The Power of Turning Up:

“In a recent client engagement I have been reminded again of the importance of turning up in person when you are exploring possibilities for how people work together through new collaboration technology. A phone conversation is fine as a starting point, and even a meeting in a meeting room is productive and helpful to some degree, but when you actually ask someone to “show” you what they’re doing you get the real story. Asking the question in their office or other place of work gives the richest way of seeing work and various work processes through their eyes. Words that mean something to you mean something different to them, and it’s only by asking to see what they mean that there can be a meeting of the minds through a common vocabulary.

Let me give you a couple of examples.“

Read more: The Power of Turning Up