Silos kill, no question about it.

They kill innovation, retard product development, and encourage reinvention of the wheel.

Some companies encourage silos; some have no clue on how to break them down; and a very few don’t have them.

Instead, they have collaboration across not only departments, but also divisions.

3M is such a company, with collaboration embedded deep within its DNA.

3M is one of the few companies in private industry that is still active in basic research; it pays off because the results are immediately available to the R&D groups.

What’s the secret to fostering this kind of culture; to getting disparate individuals and organizations working together?

Collaboration doesn’t happen by accident.

• The company maintains a “…database of technical reports written by the more than 7,000 scientists at the company. Those scientists are spread between a corporate lab devoted to basic research, 40 division labs that essentially form a bridge between that basic science and the market, and 35 international labs.”
• It enables “TechForum, an employee-run organization designed to foster communications between scientists in different labs or divisions.”
• “Three years ago, 3M also created the “R&D Workcenter” networking Web site, which Mitra describes as a “LinkedIn for 3M scientists.”

But 3M knows that all the technology, all the meet-ups and all the talk aren’t always enough—the wrong kind of competition will quickly kill collaboration.

“Such sharing of resources is almost impossible when different units of a company feel they are competing against each other to deliver better financial results or the next breakthrough technology. But at 3M, employees are expected to collaborate—and are evaluated on their success.”

3M clearly tells its employees at all levels that they are expected to share across all boundaries, but just telling people doesn’t always work. It’s easy to share information without the added intelligence that makes the information truly valuable.

So they measure the success of the effort, not just the act. That is very different—it puts the money where the mouth is and taps into employees’ vested self-interest.

Image credit: Wesley Fryer on flickr

This is innovation week and today’s story is about a company that almost committed corporate suicide before changing its ways.

I’m talking about IBM.

If you’re old enough, or you like business history, you’ll remember how what started as one of the most innovative companies to ever exist turned inward, building up a stifling culture that dictated everything right down to the length of socks worn by its sales force.

The company trusted no, one including it’s own employees, and development was spread to different facilities so no one except a chosen few knew how product were developed or built.

IBM’s cultural turn around started with Lou Gerstner and has continued apace under current CEO Sam Palmisano.

In spite of the economy, IBM hasn’t cut its basic research staff numbering 2000 in the US and another 1000 around the world. It dwarfs Microsoft’s (1000) and leaves HP a distant third.

Its newest initiative is collaboration on a scale that’s never been seen.

I call it extreme innovation.

“IBM, meanwhile, is prowling the world to set up what it calls “collaboratories,” which match up its researchers with experts from governments, universities, and companies.” John E. Kelly III, director of IBM Research, says, “The world is our lab now.”

This is way beyond the open innovation other companies are doing “by making collaboration with outsiders an essential piece of its research strategy.”

Will it work? No one knows.

Is it a smart move? Yes, if your goal is to be a corporate leader decades from now.

Does it make sense?

The brain power to solve the world’s problems has no boundaries, transcending geography, race, religion and is gender neutral.

Is there a choice?

Image credit: hyku

Image credit: danzo08 CC license

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a discussion going on at Business Week, offering readers the chance to weigh in and comment on serious workplace topics. My error was in misreading that June 30 was the last day to comment—the discussion is still going on. Additionally, there’s a place to offer up stories, pictures and videos of your own wacky experiences in the workplace or just to enjoy others’.

Whether I’m socially disabled or just plain antisocial I’m the last person you want to ask about social media tools and whether/how to use them—but I keep getting asked. So when I accidentally fell into a dialog with Stephen Collins, Founder and Chief Troublemaker at acidlabs, during a thread on LinkedInBloggers (a yahoo e group) I asked him if he’d be willing to share some of his knowledge and he said yes.

According to Stephen, ‘he’s a frequently self-appointed tricky problem solver driven by a need to help people and organisations effect change in their capacity to retain, distribute and share knowledge.’

Without more ado, here’s Stephen.

Why you should be using social tools in your organisation

Just the other day, I read this comment from an accountant on a newspaper article about social networking in business:

‘Interesting info about Twitter – yes I was in that group that thought it would never catch on! Maybe I could send riveting reminders about when [sales tax] is due :)’

The writer’s offhand comment is actually not too far off the mark. This type of use is actually appropriate for a tool like Twitter and matches fairly closely with other emerging business use of Twitter where smart, social network aware organisations are using it as a channel to keep their community abreast of current happenings.

With a growing number of major businesses such as IBM, SAP, Janssen- Cilag and Morgan Stanley using social tools inside and across the wall to manage collaboration efforts, networking and communications, any organisation that simply discounts social tools as an effective medium is doing themselves a disservice. The cries of ‘time wasting’ and ‘not for business’ are ever more clearly wrong and often made by those who are dismissing social tools without looking to understand.

Now, let it be very clearly said that open slather is not the way to go for most businesses. Letting people muck about all day, grooming their Facebook profile is, frankly, less an issue of time wasting and more a matter of good people management.

Appropriate use policies that are very clear on what is and isn’t allowed and careful steps towards use and understanding are the way to go. As an independent consultant this is advice I give to my clients as I speak to them about the opportunity social tools offer them in terms of staff attraction, engagement and retention, for knowledge and information management and for collaboration. A little research is all that’s needed to find a wealth of information to support this position.

My business uses social tools as a core part of the way I deal with clients and peers around the world. Using these tools has afforded me opportunities to become engaged in communities and work that might otherwise never have crossed my radar. In the last year, I’ve presented at a conference in the USA (I live in Australia) and met in real life in excess of 100 new and interesting people I might otherwise never have crossed paths with. Every one of those opportunities was as a direct result of the networking and information and knowledge sharing opportunities opened to me by using social networking tools.

I am a regular user of Twitter (probably one of the most prolific Aussies, actually), I use Facebook to track what my professional communities (and friends) are up to and are talking about, I use LinkedIn for strictly business networking and to ask and answer relevant questions, I use Upcoming to track and note my attendance at various events and I use several other social networks for their specific purposes – Flickr for photos, delicious and Magnolia for bookmarking, TripIt and Dopplr for travel and meeting coordination and BrightKite (a new network) for tracking location and arranging serendipitous connections with colleagues, peers and friends. I also blog and use tools like Google Calendar, BaseCamp and Google Docs to keep track and store information that is important to me and my clients.

There’s no reason your organization couldn’t be doing the same. If it’s good enough for Downing Street, who are officially blogging, using Twitter, YouTube and Flickr and significantly opening up the British government to constituent participation, it’s probably good enough for your organisation. As an Australian, I only hope that our Prime Minister sees what’s happening in Britain and does something similar.

I would be more than happy to have a conversation with you or anyone else reading this post about how social tools can help you build brand and community for you and your organisation. My contact details are very public – you can find them at http://www.acidlabs.org/