On The Smarter Office, I posted some reflections on the Working in Collaborative Environments conference in New Zealand last week. Here’s an abstract:

“What can we learn from this case study?

First, results matter, and they can influence the willingness of leaders to be involved and invest further. Second, in this age of giving everyone a voice, there’s a temptation to think that you get a free ride. Not so. Your leaders may give you a temporary pass to try out some new social or collaborative approaches in your organisation, but getting the tools installed is not success. Delivering meaningful results is. Third, it’s useful to know in advance which results will resonate with your leaders, and how their ears are tuned. There’s no point talking about “greater social collaboration” if that’s a meaningless phrase to your leaders (and believe me, it is meaningless). Faster on-boarding of new employees and reduced time to employee profitability may be the essential result. Or reducing unnecessary duplication of research by consolidating previously separate research projects. Or by speeding time to decision making in the face of relentless competition. Finally, when leaders see improved results from people in their part of the business, that means a whole lot more than examples from other places.“

Read more: The Power of Demonstrating Results, and Collaboration Beyond SharePoint