The GroupSwim Diving Board

One of the advantages of my position at GroupSwim is I get to see lots of customers and their sites.  It affords me the opportunity to observe what works and what doesn’t work.  I’ve concluded that there is one thing that is very effective in getting people to collaborate effectively – using very specific groups to guide people on where to post discussions, documents or wikis.

I know this sounds simple but it isn’t.  For example, if I’m creating a collaboration site for a professional services project, I might use these groups:

1. Project Management Meeting Notes
2. Executive Interview Results
3. Technical Infrastructure Issues
4. Gruntmaster 2000 Training Documents

Instead of:

1. Project Planning
2. Technical
3. Training

I see this over and over again where customers using specific groups like the first list see significantly higher volume and more value than those using groups like the second list.  There is a psychological barrier that people need to overcome when using a collaboration tool like GroupSwim.  As I’ve discussed in previous blog posts, it is so easy to fall back into the habits of using email or nothing at all.  What I’m observing is if you are very proscriptive in how you want employees or customers to collaborate, they will respond.  I’m not saying limit their options.  If they want to create additional groups and collaborate more, by all means turn them loose. However, when getting things started, the more specific you can be, the better results you will achieve.

The first list is a good example of internal collaboration; it is the same thing with external customer collaboration.  One of our clients created an external community and the groups they use are very detailed.  They don’t just go by products, but have different groups for specific modules.  They also have groups for roles and technologies.  What this does is make it very easy for users to see where they should post content.  EVERYTHING we do to encourage collaboration should remove friction from the process.  This is one very easy way to do it.  It reminds me of a golf swing; if you set-up correctly over the ball with the proper grip and alignment, you have a higher probability of hitting a great shot.  The same thing holds true for collaboration.  If you structure your groups and tools correctly, you have a higher probability of achieving great results.