Synergise IT

Previously, I conducted an experiment and it didn’t work out very well. I have since started another experiment at the request of a close friend.

Let me tell you abit more about this. I wanted to increase collaboration among two different teams across two geographical locations. It is not possible for these teams to have regular face to face meetings and they are both working on the same thing.

So I encouraged everyone on the team to get onto a Wiki, pre-populated the Wiki with some important information and structure. When the team first logon, they commented they wanted this and that and I accomodated the requests accordingly. As 90% of the team has never contributed to the Wiki before, I spent 10 mins explaining to concept of the Wiki and “best practices” to them. I did not enforce any rules on the wiki and let them do whatever they wanted.

The outcome was the total opposite of what happened previously. Everyone started playing with it first and one senior staff said “its easier than I thought”. Within a day, everyone on the team was contributing their part of the puzzle to the Wiki. What I found was that different people used it differently. Some was commenting alot, some were uploading their completed Word files to the wiki and using it as a document repository, some were afraid of commenting on the wiki and sent comments via email. I must say these are not best practices for sure. However, I am not too bothered - at these they are using it.

I was invited to re-educated them again. I reiterated the same story I told them on the first meeting and more questions arose (mainly conceptual and technical questions). Most of them were much more attentive and the meeting was more interactive as well. They were hooked for sure. Its been a while now and EVERYONE loves it. I get emails of satisfaction for implementing this for them.

Just for everyone’s curiosity, 1/2 the team were baby boomers! This time round, I got the technology right as well!

Have you ever wondered how much data can your brain hold in bytes? I just did while lazing in bed (and yes I hear you say “Geek”). I didn’t have the answer but Google return this and this. I do not have much understanding of everything but somewhere did say something like 3 terabytes.

A silly Saturday arvo rant. =)

I have just finished reading Wikinomics and I must say its a truly fantastic book. The main focus is on collaboration and it goes into detail about how collaboration can work with your customers, your suppliers, the general public, the world and most importantly, within your own organisation. This book provides alot of examples and strong cases of evidence of how collaboration can work. However if you are looking for a 3 step answer to successful collaboration, go somewhere else and before you go, let me say “good luck”.

The authors provided some guidelines to implementing the different aspects of collaboration and I must say that they are guidelines only. As every company’s structure, culture, environment and capability is different, different approaches needs to be taken. This book has provided me with a better understanding and heaps more examples I can take with me to my clients. =)

I am currently halfway through this book and I must say that this is extremely insightful for people who are in the consulting industry. Even though I am an IT consultant, I feel that this book is target for any kind of consultant. Its about problem solving skills and the method to go about solving an complicated and complex problem. It studies ex-Mckinsey consultants and survey them on the way a Mckinsey consultant operates.

I have gone through advanced academic research and found alot of the ideas present is very similar however with a business twist to it. For example, academic research is really about getting the stats and the information spot on. However, its written in the Mckinsey Mind that ballpark figures can be accepted. Everything makes alot of sense and it really helped me apply my academic research skills to business research and problem solving.

I do recommend this book to anyone who wishes to advance their business problem solving skills at a high level.

Below are some of the books I just bought over the last couple of days from BookDepository - Free shipping worldwide and the books are roughly about half the price of what I pay in Australia after exchange rate conversion!

Sorry I can’t give any reviews on the books at the moment but once I am done, when I am done, I will post something.

1) Freakonomics - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

2) Naked Finance: Business Finance Pure and Simple

3) Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

4) Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning