Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

Register for "The Burton Group Guide to Saving Money On Communication, Collaboration, and Content Technology"

There's still time to register for our telebriefing tomorrow with replay and live Q&A on Wednesday.  Anyone facing budget concerns or trying to avoid them in the future with regard to communication, collaboration, and content technology will find this telebriefing valuable.

Here's the details:

7/7/2009 at 2:00 PM EDT / 11:00 AM PDT / 18:00 UTC/GMT / 20:00 CEST

OR

7/8/2009 at 9:00 AM EDT / 6:00 AM PDT / 13:00 UTC/GMT / 15:00 CEST

The Burton Group Guide to Saving Money On Communication, Collaboration, and Content Technology

07 Jul 2009 2:00 PM ET -- With the economy in recession, enterprise IT departments face pressure to trim their budgets and abandon some of what they wanted to accomplish. Cost cutting has a particularly hard impact on teams that are maintaining or seeking additional investments in communication, collaboration, and content management (3C) technology, given that their contributions to the bottom line are often indirect while their costs are easily quantifiable. This TeleBriefing with analysts Larry Cannell, Guy Creese, Bill Pray, and Craig Roth will describe where cost savings can be found with existing 3C infrastructure as well as how to meet new 3C needs with tighter budgets.

 

Clients can register for the telebriefing here.

Social Analytics: The Key When Splitting Hosted And On-Premises e-Mail?

Blogger: Mike Gotta

I'd like to add some additional context to a recent post by Eric Malwald in our SRMS group. Eric brings up a very good point - that organizations cannot assume that adoption of a hybrid model that splits e-Mail services across a hosted and on-premises topology makes an organization safer when it comes to protecting sensitive information. With relative ease, people can expand the group of message recipients to people whose inbox resides on the hosted system (on purpose, inadvertently, or as part of a "back channel" conversation with a co-worker). That action defeats the intent of keeping sensitive information "on premises". 

Then again - it all depends.

First, e-Mail systems include more types of data than just e-Mail messages. There are calendar entries, task entries, and contact information for example. You might even add unified messaging to the mix as well. Second, while it is true that e-Mail "is information on the move", it is also very true that e-Mail systems are a core piece of an organization's information management duties once it rests in an inbox. e-Mail is also often classified as a type of business document. Not only due to the issue of attachments, but people compose "documents" in e-Mail that make it a critical business artifact. Calendar entries may also have attachments, contain sensitive information regarding appointments and attendees. Workflow information and contact information also make e-Mail systems critical information systems beyond its messaging roots. As e-Mail products have improved over time, many modern topologies are more centralized than years earlier. Increased use of e-Mail and reliance on more centralized e-Mail "farms" has made information and storage management (as it relates to e-Mail systems) a top priority for many organizations. The reason I point this out is that we need to expand Eric's point beyond the flow of messaging. When e-Mail is not on the move - it is at rest. In fact, most e-Mail "rests" more than it "moves" I imagine.

So are we more or less safe with the idea of a split configuration? I think the answer remains "it depends". 

What would Xobni say? That might sound like an odd comment at first but let me explain. Given my research in social networking, I have been examining Xobni (and similar tools) for some time. When this topic came up internally, I looked at my Xobni statistics and discovered that my top e-Mail "partners" where my own team members. I'm pretty sure that held true for me when I worked at Meta Group. I think it might hold true for a lot of people.

So back to the topic - it would make sense to identify and understand e-Mail usage patterns (including calendar, tasks, contacts) before making the decision on a hybrid approach. Eric brings up a good point - you cannot assume that you are better off. Then again, you might be - especially if those groups that would be part of the on-premises e-Mail topology are inwardly focused to a large extent when it comes to their usage patterns re: e-Mail, calendars, tasks, contacts, etc. This still does not eliminate the question Eric brings up - but it may be a minority concern in some instances. You may find that there is a significant amount of email messaging within teams and groups of various kinds that is more informal and reflects “flow of thought” than the type of messaging that is more formal and sent out in broadcast form or otherwise (directed messages) to other teams.

The key point: Perform the email messaging analytics to determine sender-receiver patterns and the type of messaging content being shared. To Eric's point – don’t assume that you cannot shift that group to a cloud and don’t assume that you are safe because email does move around and is stored in a variety of inboxes – but also recognize that intra-group messaging can be more dominant and contain information the team never shares outside their own group.

Security and Risk Management Strategies Blog: Risks Around Hosted Email

Email is information on the move! It is different than information at rest.

In talking to analysts in Burton Group’s Collaboration Strategies Service about one of their talks at Catalyst, I heard a very disturbing idea. We were discussing hosted email and one of the analysts, Bill Pray, mentioned that enterprises that were moving toward using hosted email (email in the cloud) were keeping “sensitive” departments (HR, finance, etc.) on internal email systems. The reasoning was that these departments dealt with sensitive information and therefore should not be included on a hosted system.

But wait! This assumption may sound right on the face of it but it does not hold on further analysis. Back in (ancient) history, information was stored in filing cabinets. Cabinets in HR and finance were locked to prevent unauthorized people from seeing the information. As we moved to a more computerized environment, sensitive departments were given their own file servers so all of the sensitive information was stored together and the number of people authorized to access the files was limited. This worked as the information was at rest.

Email is information on the move and violates this base assumption. You can segregate the email from HR, Legal, Finance, and other sensitive departments to protect it, but as soon as someone sends email out of the protected environment, all bets are off! Most email is likely to be between team members but not all. Just think about HR. Employees may send sensitive emails to HR people and vice versa. The sensitive information exists in the email system – not just within the HR email system. The same is true for any of the other departments as well.

Don’t just assume that the paradigm used for information at rest works for information in motion. You have to treat them differently!

Of course, the bottom line for very sensitive information is: Do not send it over email in the first place. If you absolutely, positively, have to send very sensitive information over email, use some type of encryption mechanism along with a strong authentication mechanism to protect it.

Security and Risk Management Strategies Blog: Risks Around Hosted Email

Google Wave and its Audacity of Scope

Blogger: Larry Cannell

As impressive as the recent Google Wave demonstration was, the most sensational part for me was the breadth of aspirations Google says it has for the platform and protocol. Sure, the product demonstrated has some very cool features, such as the blending of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration (for example, a user can see what others are changing within a page in realtime). But, when Lars Rasumussen says “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today” and we are told Google is open sourcing the protocol and software, then this starts looking like a grand plan indeed.

Call it the Audacity of Scope. This is not simply about a snazzy HTML 5-based application, Google is telling us it aspires to make Google Wave as pervasive as e-mail. However, realizing these aspirations is a long-shot. To have any hope of making it happen Google needs a strong extended-release dose of determination, flexibility, credibility, and lots of luck.

Determination: Google will certainly use its muscle on the Internet to make the Wave platform available and in the hands of as many people as possible. But fostering a federated system as pervasive as e-mail will take time. Ultimately, Google is a business and may not have the patience to see something like this all the way through.

Flexibility (and openness): E-mail wasn’t invented by a single company, but evolved as an idea over time. Although ARPA can be credited with creating and moving forward key e-mail standards. there were many more innovations that built on these simple protocols. If Google maintains sole control over the federation protocols then Wave will remain a Google-based service that many will integrate with, but will fall short of the pervasiveness of e-mail. Google needs to take steps to make Wave a truly open protocol.

Credibility: Getting vendors to agree to a standard is difficult, almost impossible when there is enough at stake (which is the case here). Don’t expect traditional IT vendors like Microsoft, IBM, or Oracle to be lining up behind this effort anytime soon.

Besides Internet-based services, open source is the only other method which has been successful in bypassing or breaking traditional IT-vendor lock-in within most large enterprises. So, another aspect to watch is how involved open source developers, and other open source projects, get with the Wave effort. If Google loses the open source crowd it loses its critical mass.

The key here will be what and how much of Google’s code will be open sourced. Rasumussen said “We intend to open source the lion share of the code we use to build our system.” This is a good start but what does this really mean in terms of code? To some, “lion share” sounds like Google is hedging its bet.

Luck: Google can do all of the right things for years and Google Wave may still not catch on. This is a long-term undertaking and many things can happen in the meantime to derail it (for example, management loses interest, an open source community doesn’t form, better alternatives emerge, or a million other things could go wrong).

But, regardless of all the hurdles Google faces with Wave I am still glad to they are attempting this. It’s great to see new ideas get this level of attention (and Google certainly can draw a crowd). If nothing else, the demonstration starts breaking down preconceived assumptions about how the Internet can support collaboration.

Google Announces Wave to Much Fanfare

For those caught up in the Google Wave announcement, I just wanted to point to postings from members of the Collaboration and Content Strategies team:

• Mike Gotta: "irrational exuberance"
• Craig Roth: "magician’s hand-waving"
• Larry Cannell: "the audacity of scope"
• Guy Creese: "A+ for vision and market impact ... solution for large enterprises expect Google  a solid D, consumers and SMBs, I wouldn't be surprised if it's in B+ territory"

Calendars: A Personal Tool in an Enterprise World

Blogger: Bill Pray

One of the challenges with calendaring and scheduling technology in the enterprise is that people’s time is intensely personal. While the tools are used to bring together what is, hopefully, the right people at the right time in the workplace to get things done… they are dependent upon the individual’s time and availability. As David Allen puts it in his book Ready for Anything, “We’re all alone in this together.” Time is part of the equation for workplace, as it is half of what the employee promises to the employer – their time and their efforts.

Because of this, each employee’s needs for calendaring and scheduling becomes unique, because no two employees spend their time in exactly the same way. As a result, technology struggles to meet the needs of every unique situation. This is compounded, obviously, when trying to bring together workers through scheduling using calendar technologies that are unable to show and account for each employee’s unique needs.

Therefore, technology and worker need to meet in the middle. Calendaring and scheduling tools need to improve in their ability to function across collaboration environments and be more intuitive. The information worker needs to effectively use these tools to manage their time. David Allen quotes Peter F. Drucker in the same chapter as the quote above: “This responsibility for thinking through what one’s contribution should be and one’s own responsibility as a knowledge worker rests on each individual. In the knowledge organization it becomes everybody’s responsibility, regardless of his or her particular job.” Calendars are the tool, time management is the responsibility.

“You’re the only one playing your game.” – David Allen, Ready for Anything.

The Value of Face-to-Face

Blogger: Bill Pray

As travel budgets are slashed and communications technologies become more important for enterprises to complete business transactions, I was reminded this weekend about the value of face-to-face communication.

First, I caught a Dentyne advertisement that touted the "original instant message" (for the romantically inclined only). The campaign is a tongue-in-cheek shot at today's social networking and communications technologies. In fact, the Dentyne website only gives you three minutes to browse their ads in the campaign (on your first visit - also includes a one minute warning) with the advice that life is lived outside of the Internet with other people.

Second, I was talking with an acquaintance who is a commercial construction architect. He expressed frustration that he couldn't get a project moving forward because he needed face time with the engineers, which required traveling to another state. He said that was the only way he could establish a relationship that would move the project out of its stalled state.

Third, I spoke with a friend who is an international director of operations. He lamented that his job was nearly impossible with a ban on travel in his organization and what would only take a few days now takes weeks through e-mails, audio conferencing, and web conferencing.

New technologies, such as online virtual worlds, are whittling away at some of the challenges of time and distance for meetings and providing additional use cases where technology can supplant the face-to-face. For example, Qwaq provides a virtual world solution that many of Qwaq's customers are using to replace travel, according to Remy Malan Vice President of Enterprise at Qwaq. IBM Sametime 3D, demoed in the Innovations Lab at Lotusphere 2009, is another example. 

Video conferencing also appears to be surging in the current economic situation because it approaches, as close as possible, the face-to-face experience. Customers have mentioned implementing solutions like Cisco's Telepresence or Microsoft's RoundTable to cut travel expenses without forgoing the face-to-face visual experience.

However, face-to-face meetings still need to happen. The key for the enterprise is to identify when face-to-face meetings have to happen and when communications technology can be more cost effective. As I mentioned in my previous blog on mandated web conferencing, there are scenarios that may require face-to-face meetings - such as when trust needs to be established. It is the intelligent application of communications technologies that provides the enterprise with effective collaboration and a competitive edge in today's market.

This Week In Collaborative Thinking

Blogger: Mike Gotta

Some recent posts on Collaborative Thinking. Follow the citation links to read the full article(s):

First Take: Microsoft Business Productivity Suite Online - Communications Online

Microsoft announced this week (Monday, March 2, 2009), that its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), was available for trial in 19 countries. It disclosed Office Communications Online would be available in April 2009. I wanted to share some thoughts on the unified communications aspect of the strategy.

• What this is... Primarily (overwhelmingly for that matter), this initial offering will be about hosted instant messaging (IM), presence and web conferencing.
• What this is not... This is not about hosted unified communications or even hosted OCS. It is better to think about this initial effort as "more LCS-like than OCS-like".
• Recommendation... It's hard to really identify a reason for a large enterprise to be interested in the initial release of Communications Online
• Questions and Future questions (note: mostly technical)

First Take: Microsoft Business Productivity Suite Online - Communications Online

Sponsored Conversations: Four Models But Nothing Perfect

ReadWriteWeb touched off a small firestorm of reaction around a report published by Forrester regarding "sponsored conversations". The intensity of the comments tells you how volatile the topic has become. The concept of sponsorship is pretty broad - organizations sponsor a wide range of events, publications, and activities that ultimately align to different objectives related to brand, community, customer, marketing, and so on. Extending the concept of "sponsorship" to social media is clearly going to have its ups-and-downs as everyone learns out in the open. After reading through the article, the comments, and some postings from Jeremish Owyang (Forrester), the following segmentation came to mind. It's not perfect - and I don't pretend to focus exclusively on social media. But the segmentation below might be helpful to people trying to decide on the pro/cons of sponsoring blogs (or other communication/content vehicles).

Models (this is just one example, perhaps incomplete) can sometimes help people be more specific on the good/bad of an approach, and help construction of other scenarios that might actually help people reach common ground. These four examples might result in four others - iteration of the models and refinement of the arguments can ultimately help identify scenarios that might actually be acceptable and build community consensus along the way...

Sponsored Conversations: Four Models But Nothing Perfect

Social Messaging & Socialtext Signals: Before We Get Too Excited...

Update: Actually, the folks at Yammer, Socialcast, ESME, and other "Twitter-like" enterprise vendors or open source efforts should all address these issues...add comments and I'll aggregate them into a summary post. ... Without this type of information (despite the well-deserved media coverage), I'm afraid the product will be virtually dead-on-arrival for most organizations that have these requirements for other messaging/communication systems - they apply to these tools, regardless of what we call them (i.e., micro-blogging).

Social Messaging & Socialtext Signals: Before We Get Too Excited...

Twitter Compared to IM, Email and Forums

Overall, I'm optimistic that Twitter-like capabilities will find their way into the enterprise. In fact, I'm certain they will. The question in my mind is whether they emerge as extensions to existing unified communications platforms, or as a new class of tools (from vendors such as Yammer, ESME, Socialcast, Socialtext) that can sustain a competitive differential over time - and - satisfy the policy controls necessary to meet compliance and other demands. Vendors like IBM and Microsoft may not see enough of a critical mass (in terms of enterprise demand) to focus on social messaging. That leaves perhaps a 1-2 year window for vendors specializing in this area to take messaging in another direction than where traditional collaboration vendors (namely IBM and Microsoft) have brought us.

Twitter Compared to IM, Email and Forums

Don't Touch My Wallet: Convincing Management that Smart Companies in Recessions Increase Spending on [IT, training, advertising, etc.]

Blogger: Craig Roth

The recession has proven to be a boon to writers of articles and blog postings you can email to your executives about how whatever domain they are experts in (like customer relations folks or training people) is critical to avoid cutting and maybe even increase spending on it like other smart companies do.

In researching how the recession is impacting my domain (information technology, and communication, collaboration, and content technology in particular) I was pleased to find articles saying that should really get more budget in tight times. Wonderful! 

... But then I decided to check and see what other domains were saying about recessionary spending. After trolling dozens of sites on other domains like customer relationship management, training, marketing I noticed a familiar pattern - they all say they are smart places to spend too. Needless to say I did not find any articles from domain experts saying "In a recession, our department's budget should be cut" or "Companies that come out of a recession stronger are those that cut spending in our department". Instead every department has become the business equivalent of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon. At Wobegon Corporation every department provides greater than average returns on investments in recessionary times.  Everyone can't be right, so who is right that spending in their domain should increase during recessions (please let it be portals!) ?

The "Don't Touch My Wallet" (DTMW) script

There are arguments and articles that rise above the fray - I'll get to them at the end. But the bulk of them fall into a script I'll call the "Don't Touch My Wallet" (DTMW) script. There are a standard set of key elements you'll find in a DTMW article.

The "Don't touch my wallet" (DTMW) statement

• "Now is not the time to slash advertising budgets.", "This is not the time to cut advertising"
• "Maintain marketing spending"
• "Now is the perfect time to increase your innovation efforts"
• "In a downturn it can actually make more sense to spend more money on training, not less"
• "Customer relationship management (CRM) technology is one of those critical areas that companies need to continue continually embrace, especially during tough economic times"
• " Of course, now is the time to be frugal, but be frugal in areas that don't touch the customer." (this last one, from a CRM firm, is my favorite because it not only makes the "don't touch my wallet" statement, but grants permission for the cost cutters to raid someone else's!)

The metaphor

• " Shoot the moon"
• "If the distance runner is really strong, when the runner hits a hill, the runner is gonna speed up"
• And the winner, for mixing metaphors about belts, frogs, and catapults in the same paragraph: "While others are tightening their belts, truly successful companies use the recession as a chance to leapfrog their competition. My favorite company … increases their investments during difficult times. They know that if they focus on innovation while others are cutting costs, they will quickly catapult past everyone else. "

The motivational pablum

• " The first competitors to take action will be the ones who reap the greatest rewards."
• "Have you ever noticed that many of the big winners in business were willing to make bets that ran counter to the prevailing wisdom of the time? There are countless success stories of leaders who 'zigged' when everyone else 'zagged.'"
• "Smart companies know you can’t save your way out of a recession. "

The survey

The articles often quote a survey that shows organizations who spent more on their domain in a recession did better than their peers. They generally don't reveal enough about their methodology to truly evaluate their findings, but these surveys feel fixed for 3 reasons:

1. They are almost exclusively sponsored by organizations with a vested interest in the domain and would be unlikely to publish the results if they showed cutting costs to be a more effective strategy.
2. The mere fact the surveyed organizations were in a position to increase spending in a recession indicates companies with comparatively better financials (compared to their peer group). Of course companies that go into a recession financially stronger are more likely to come out of it stronger.
3. Just surveying those companies that increased spending in one domain is a self-selecting sample. Companies that increased spending on a particular domain already determined it is important for their type of business. For example, companies that doubled advertising expenditures in a recession are probably those that know they are in industries where advertising gets high leverage (like image-related consumer goods), while those in unimpressionable markets (like mining) would probably not bother to increase the minimal ad spending they have. So blanket statements that say "companies that increase ad spending in recessions do better" are not as universally applicable as they imply.

A good study should be sponsored by an institution that doesn't have a stake in the results and examines both sides of the coin: winners and losers, companies who started in good or bad financial condition, companies that increased or decreased spending in the domain.

Principles about spending in a recession

Reading all these DTMW articles did help me uncover some underlying principles about spending in a recession. These are scary times. I don't begrudge anyone trying to make the case for their domain (and, by proxy, their job). Quite the contrary, it's everyone's responsibility in tough times to think about the value their role brings. Where small investments can provide leverage in these conditions, you should make the case for them, throwing them into the marketplace of ideas with the understanding that everyone else is doing the same. With every experts in every domain publishing a DTMW script, running to your executive with a request for more money attached to an article backing up increased spending is likely to be laughed at when every department is making the same argument.

If you have money to spend in a recession that your competitors don't, you'll get more leverage anywhere you spend it wisely: IT, training, customer service, etc. Industries have different leverage points (elasticity) where a dollar of recession spending added or removed has a multiplicative effect on profitability. Don't accept blanket statements across all industries about where that elasticity exists (e.g., "All companies should increase sales travel rather than cutting it when times get tough"). The key is to understand the dynamics of your industry and firm and select the correct points of leverage.

Recessions can shake organizations up for the better - they force organizations to cut waste, improve efficiency, be more aware of what they are doing and why. That last point (what you're doing and why) brings me to portfolio management. In a recession, as at all times, portfolio management theory applies. This theory says organizations should allocate spending to categories - usually these three: running, growing, and transforming the business. Then all initiatives should be categorized accordingly and evaluated against each other.

So first, keep the lights on. Assuming you have some money left after that, understand there is a portfolio of incremental improvement projects and transformational projects that should be evaluated as a whole. The DTMW articles make the mistake of bypassing reasonable portfolio management discipline to make the argument that one should just jump to spending more on their pet domain without analyzing its relation to other projects in the portfolio. Spending more on domain A may indeed have a high return.  But if spending on domains B, C, and D have an even higher return, spending on A wouldn't be a wise move without money to cover all four domains. 

So how do you do this right?  After hours of reading DTMW articles, it was a joy to finally find one that stated the case for its domain (web design) properly, succinctly, and with a professional level of humility.  This may not grab the attention of the CFO, but it will withstand reasonable scrutiny once investigated further:

Is web design really worth spending money on now, when money’s so short? It depends on your circumstances, but we think you should give it serious consideration.

Conclusion

So my conclusion is that, despite what DTMW articles say, smart companies are not the ones that blindly increase spending in one domain just because other companies do (it's a self-selecting sample) or because a logical argument can be made for the importance of spending in that domain (all domains have differing elasticity based on industry and individual factors). Recessions give smart companies an opportunity to gain an edge by selectively outspending their competition in key domains. They select the domains by digging harder into the data and applying portfolio management discipline.

Back to my domain of IT, I posted previously about a Diamond Management and Technology Consultants study. While it is from a company with a stake in IT spending, I like the fact that they looked at companies that underperformed as well as outperformed. And their high-level advice fits the "be selective" mantra:

The central lesson of our research is that at the very time when a leader is tempted to shorten his or her time horizon and make simple across-the-board cuts, superior performers dig into the data and act more intelligently than the competition.

Web and Video Conferencing - Mandated

Blogger: Bill Pray

Arizona Senate Bill 1001 proposes a mandate that every state government agency and school to purchase Web and video conferencing:

This section applies to all of the following:
5   1. State agencies, boards and commissions.
6   2. Cities and towns.
7   3. Counties.
8   4. School districts.
9   5. Universities, including the Arizona board of regents.
10 6. Community college districts.
11 B. Each entity described in subsection A shall purchase through its
12 normal procurement procedures sufficient web-based web and video conferencing
13 software...

Officials say the state invested about $400,000 on Web conferencing software for 14 agencies in 2008 and, as a result, saved close to $4 million in travel costs to and from meetings. Based on that success, this bill has been drafted to mandate the technology throughout the state.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of thinking that leads to bad decisions. Workers have conferred for years in physical meetings and over the phone. When are those alternatives still better? In several scenarios:

• When trust needs to established: When people are collaborating synchronously, a certain amount of trust is often necessary. It helps if people know each other's foibles and strengths, and the handshakes and visual cues that can help instill this trust only occur in a physical meeting. Therefore, while web conferencing can work in a synchronous collaboration setting once everyone is familiar with each other, a face-to-face meeting is typically better at the first meeting or the beginning of the project.
• When discussions are local: Although this may be stating the obvious, web conferencing can be overkill when all interested parties can gather in a room.
• When the content needs to be initially created: Initially creating content within web conferencing can be difficult for users. The web conferencing feature set does not lend itself to brainstorming activities and the synergies that result from people working together in the same room. However, web conferencing can work well for reviewing and revising content through whiteboarding and application-sharing features.

Good use of web and video conferencing can lead to cost savings, as the savings of $4 million by Arizona can attest (although I would like to understand better the methodology behind obtaining the number). However, good IT organizations know that it is through the application of the technology to specific use cases, the benefits are realized. Examples are:

• Broadcasting information: Sales demonstrations, marketing presentations, webinars, and internal and external broadcast presentations
• Support and training: Customer and internal helpdesks, technical support, and training or virtual classrooms
• Collaborative work: Co-creation of content, small group meetings, and telecommuting
• Process-specific activities: Emergency response and crisis management

For Burton Group customers, more information can be found in my document Web Conferencing: Getting Green with Web Conferencing and in Mark Cortner's document Videoconferencing: Good Business Value or a Mirage?

In an article by KPHO news, a Phoenix official points out:

Nevertheless, Phoenix government relations director Karen Peters thinks the savings would be less and the cost far higher to buy Web conferencing software for the city.

Peters said, "We are implementing web conferencing for our employees that would use it. We don't really need to be training our field workers to use Web conference software, but this bill would require us to do that. "

Peters said, "It you were to extrapolate and to figure out what just the software licensing would be to comply with this mandate, it would be tens of million of dollars."

She added, "We just can't afford any unfunded mandates right now. "

Karen Peters has the right idea. The value of Web and video conferencing is in identifying and using the technology for specific use cases that benefit the organization. This is a classic example of how not to approach technology investments during tight economic conditions. Arizona State Senator Jim Waring (R-District 7), who is sponsoring the bill, could benefit from Craig Roth's advice in his three part blog series on The Role of Communication, Collaboration, and Content Technology Investments during Tight Economic Conditions.

Beating Up the News for $650bn

Blogger: Craig Roth

Over at the KnowledgeForward blog I wrote that I predict that in 2009 there will be an announcement that information overload or unnecessary interruptions cost U.S. workers $1 trillion.  Basex has already released estimates of the cost of information overload being $900 billion and unnecessary interruptions being $650 billion.  The figure is soft to me to begin with, but becomes even softer when it becomes a Rorsch test for info-stress.  To the New York Times, it's the cost of unnecessary interruptions (well, the recovery time mostly) that are mostly of a mundane nature. To BusinessWeek it's the annual toll on U.S. productivity from interruptions.To Henry Blodget, it's the cost of checking email too often. To Read Write Web it's the cost to the nation of inbox overload and task switching.

Now, I strongly believe organizations can and should take concrete steps to help improve the efficiency of information workers by providing attentional technologies and capabilities that can pull important messages forward and push less important messages back from the worker's focus (see A Manifesto-free Definition of Attention Management).  But I don't want to fall into the same trap as Knowledge Management which collapsed in on itself due to overstated estimates of its cost with the implication it could be recovered.  I listed 5 reasons I find these estimates dubious (check out the blog entry for more detail on each):

1. Lumping in social interactions and distractions with interruptions

2. By counting all costs and no benefits (quote “total cost” instead of “net cost”)

3. By ignoring closed-loop analysis

4. By playing loose with the definition of “unnecessary”

5. By comparing against perfect short-term productivity instead of long-term sustainable productivity

But if there's a good cause at stake, what's the harm in crafting numbers that help to shock readers awake and spur action on a problem?  The Economist ran an interesting story about how AIDS researchers at the World Health Organization and UNAIDS are being accused of using poor statistical methods that "distorted priorities for the treatment and prevention of the disease."

... the agencies spent many years overcounting the number of cases ... Dr Pisani cheerfully admits to being a doctor of the spin variety herself—she refers to the process as “beating up the news”. She absolves UNAIDS's researchers of any blame. They did their best to collect true numbers in difficult circumstances and with little money. But so as to rack the world's conscience, she wrote reports that put the worst possible complexion on those numbers.

As Joel Best, author of Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data, said on NPR's Bob Edwards show on 1/10/09, a lot of statistical abuse is introduced by researchers in the social sciences who truly believe in their causes and want to draw attention to them.  He questions statistics that support worthy causes, but are nevertheless misleading, overstated, or wrong. 

Mr. Best is a sociology professor and takes special notice when statistics involve social causes.  Regarding measurements on lost productivity, Mr. Best writes (Stat Spotting, p52-54)

In recent years, it has become very common to hear that this or that social problem costs America so much each year in lost productivity.  These estimates ... typically involve billions of dollars.

The basic idea behind these claims is that social problems interfere with people's ability to do productive work.  Lost productivity is the value of the work that could have been done if the employees had been able to concentrate on their jobs.

Now, fiddling with any of those numbers [that get multiplied by time and value to obtain the estimates] can lead to wildly different estimates of productivity losses.  The particular choices made have everything to do with the resulting statistic.

It is these choices that can distort the information overload and unnecessary interruption cost figures, causing organizations to focus on the wrong problems.  Do I choose a definition of "cost" that is net of benefits, or just all the costs alone? Who defines interruption (does it include social interactions and self-imposed interruptions such as distractions)? Who gets to determine whether an interruption is "unnecessary"?  As most interruptions only benefit one party involved, do you find the net cost to the organization for the interruption or just total the costs for the person who was put out by the interruption?  To make a statement on aggregate costs (e.g., to the U.S. economy, to an entire company), you need to make aggregate judgements about which interruptions count as "unnecessary", not aggregate individual, one-sided judgements.

I encourage any company that suspects info-stress may be occurring or that  poor decisions may be made based on information overload to step back and consider their enterprise attention management environment.  But be very careful about making a numerical estimate of the actual cost because it is interpreted as a judgement on potential savings and risks distorting the view of what should be done to address it.