Study Conclusions

The above table highlights the major findings from two sets of interviews that I conducted with two distinct groups of individuals.

The "Traditionalists"

Findings from the first set of interviews have been covered in detail in a series of earlier posts. In short, the interview participants from this group possessed the following characteristics:

- Most (8 out of 10) worked for large companies (10,000+ employees).
- All worked on projects in geographically distributed teams.

The first three columns of the table specifically address issues related to the above individuals. I call them "traditionalists" because -- although they are mobile workers -- they are constrained in their use of tools and practices in such a way that many of their interactions with distant colleagues arguably mimic those of traditional, co-located office workers. That is to say that most co-located colleagues prefer face-to-face and email methods of interaction with their colleagues-- and, so do these individuals, as well.

The first column shows that these traditionalists have four basic needs. Their primary needs function at the project level, and have to do with staying in sync and in touch with their fellow team members. Secondary needs deal with the individual's interactions at the departmental (or group) level -- and beyond -- with regards to both staying in sync and in touch.

The second and third columns capture their ability to effectively deal with all of these needs. Not surprisingly, the tools and practices they use for handling their needs are satisfactory at the project level. However, breakdowns occur at the departmental level when they attempt to use the same tools to address their primary needs as their secondary. This makes sense, because using one-to-one communication platforms to target a large, diffuse and loosely connected group of individuals is an inefficient strategy. And, arguably, the tools the traditionalists most heavily rely on are best suited to one-to-one communication, including email. (As a tool for eliciting two-way communication, emails directed to individuals are much more successful than broadcast emails).

The Highly Connected Professionals

Given these findings, I next interviewed a group of highly connected (or networked) individuals. I also reviewed a set of interviews that had already been conducted for a previous study at Novay. My goal was to see if these individuals might incorporate some strategies or tools in their professional lives that might be of use to the traditionalists.

Identifying the gaps, and bridging them

One of the notable differences between the traditionalists and the highly connected professionals was that for the latter group, their needs were less distinctly segmented*. Instead, it would be more appropriate to talk about these individuals' interactions with their networks, as whole entities. Thus, a highly connected professional's principal need is to stay in sync and in touch with this diversely populated network. And, whereas it might be more appropriate to say that the majority of those in the traditionalist group largely associate their networks with people that they have interacted with (at some point) in person, with the highly connected professionals, this generalization does not necessarily hold. Highly connected professionals actively maintain networks that include any number of individuals they have never met face-to-face but who are still considered valuable.

Another striking difference is that in their interactions with their networks, the highly connected individuals employ diverse and experimental methods and tools. Oftentimes this means participation in online communities (e.g., blogging networks, Ning, or forums) and other forms of social media (e.g., twitter). To stay abreast of recent information -- from either individuals or other news sources -- RSS feeds are used to filter information.

Perhaps it seems a bit of a stretch to characterize an individual who actively uses twitter and RSS feeds as "experimental". But consider the following: According to a highly publicized report, there are approximatley 4.5 million twitter users worldwide. In addition, roughly half of the users on twitter have never even updated their status, not even once. However, given the ubiquity of twitter coverage in the media -- and RSS on websites -- it's easy to think of the use of such tools as much more commonplace than is probably justified.

So, it is probably not surprising that the use of such tools is not more widespread among the traditionalists I interviewed.

That said, there are some characteristics underlying the tool use of the the highly connected professionals that might be of use if applied to a solution for the communication breakdowns that occur for the traditionalists.

First, the highly connected professionals make generous use of filters. I categorize these filters in two ways. First are the emergent filters. Imporant information "emerges" from the buzz going on in an individual's network. An example is realizing that Google Wave is a highly anticipated application and perhaps worth investigating because many of one's connections (spanning across various channels) are commenting about it on the day that its preview is released.

The other type of filter comes from the use of information feeds. Using an RSS feed reader, for example, it is possible to process the latest pieces of information from only those sources that an individual feels are pertinent. So, rather than learning about Google Wave from a colleague, I might read about it in an article posted to the ReadWriteWeb feed.

By using both types of filters, there is some redundancy in the system. However, this could be construed as a good thing because it lessens the chance that important information will be overlooked.

Unfortunately for the traditionalists, when trying to stay up-to-date with departmental and organizational level information, comparatively they are at a loss. Not only do they lack the support for developing an adequate departmental-level network (which, in turn can be an excellent source of internal information), they also complained of difficulties directly accessing useful information within the organizations that they worked for.

A solution that provides an easy mechanism for information filtering would benefit the traditionalists because many complained that organizational information depositories were often fragmented amongst a number of databases and applications. Furthermore, they distrusted the relevancy of information from such sources because it was oftentimes outdated. If fresher, relevant information was funneled to them, they could avoid the laborious and frustrating task of having to seek it out.

Inadequate access to internal information is problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which because the real value of reports and documents isn't in their completion but in the discussions, actions, and future collaborations that result from their dissemination. Here, too, the traditionalists can be seen as being at a loss.

Finally, the highly connected individuals embraced open communication -- by this I mean communication that is not necessarily one-to-one, but is instead oftentimes one-to-many. The interactions that occur when people participate in online forums and communities are typically one-to-many. A shift away from one-to-one communication could help the traditionalists nurture in sync and in touch relationships at the departmental level.

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* It's important to note that this difference might simply be an artifact of the way that they talked about their professional connections -- but of course, this is a risk inherent when relying on self-reports, in general.