Daily Lessons from Life 05 August 2010 - Technologies and Collaboration

No news headline to comment on today.

Instead I want to reflect on an article I read on the McKinsey Quarterly on the 10 Technology Trends that will change our world and how leaders should be responding to them to profit from them!

Almost half of the 10 trends lauded on how them can increase collaboration in an ever more efficient and effective manners as the Internet get connected and expanded at breakneck speed and scale, how people are constantly and wirelessly hooked up anywhere and anytime and anyhow, etc.

Lessons for me are:

1. technologies are merely enabler. Many of these thoughts on how people can collaborate more efficiently and effectively using technologies had been around. e.g. the knowledge management craze, the team problems solving creative processes, etc. Still, many organizations and individuals do not really collaborate efficiently and effectively!;

2. the missing link is the Personal Integrity and Proper Usage of Collaborative Tools. By Personal Integrity I meant do people really behave as if they believed that the power of diversity is about creating a greater good for more people or is about self-interest? Proper usage of collaborative tools like the oft-mentioned and most fundamental technique: Brainstorming - are people listening to each other or are simply trying to impose their own ideas onto the others?;

3. I recognized that altruism alone cannot work as we need to understand the diverse motivational needs of the people involved with collaboration work. At the same time, it cannot work without this personal integrity. So, by all means ensure that the people involved in the collaborative efforts get their motivational needs matched. Just don't forget to work on Personal Integrity.

Knowledge management can still work. Brainstorming can still work. Even with these touted advance in technologies of faster/bigger/more powerful computing power and storage capacity!