“We’ve tried collaboration technology before and it didn’t work.”
Is that something you’ve said, or heard said in your company? We’ve heard it from many of our clients and potential clients, and doubtless, most of us have experiences with collaboration attempts that started out OK, but somehow, well, fizzled out.
For example, perhaps someone set up a wiki for a group project. People probably started piling stuff into it, but quickly it became disorganized, and hard to find what you wanted, so it fell into disuse and people went back to the old email-blast collaboration technique. Or perhaps you had an idea management tool that was designed to capture everyone’s new ideas whenever they had them. But it was always unclear what, if anything, happened to the ideas, so again, people stopped using it.
We’ve heard all these stories and many more, and often get asked “how is crowdsourced collaboration different?” The answer is in the process. If you’ve followed Chaordix, or attended any of our webinar series, you know we believe strongly that the crowdsourcing model, or process, that is applied for a specific crowdsourcing objective is as important as, if not more important than, the technology that supports it.
Successful crowdsourcing is way more than just getting people to suggest ideas to a common online area. It’s a well thought-out (ahead of time!) process where there are specific stages of idea submission, enhancement, and selection by the crowd, a panel, or combinations of both. It requires having specific goals for the crowd to accomplish. It involves communication mechanism that provide just the right amount of information to keep people in the loop and participating, without overwhelming them. It incorporates incentives that make participating rewarding and fun. And its also about making the goal, process and incentives transparent, so everyone knows how it’s going to work, how long it’s going to take and what the outcome is going to be. It’s about getting the crowd to collaborate with a specific purpose in a specific period of time, with a technology platform and moderation that provide the essential ingredients.
Successful collaboration doesn’t happen by just bringing people together and saying “collaborate”. Successful collaboration happens by good design, knowledgeable implementation and ongoing moderation/oversight.
And the best part is, it feeds on itself. If you run a successful crowdsourcing engagement, and the crowd sees the progress and results, the crowd members are that much more motivated to participate again, and again.
So, if you’ve tried collaboration technologies in the past and they haven’t worked out the way you thought they would, think about why they might have failed and think about the process used (or lack thereof). But certainly, don’t assume that crowdsourcing is the same. Crowdsourced collaboration, implemented correctly, is truly different (and it works.)
