Enhancing collaboration through technology
Leadership & Capabilities
Defining new ways of working
“I was looking for a sparring partner early this year to help us challenge and define new ways and practices for the workplace in the future. So a group from my team worked closely with LEF to explore all angles and perspectives on this topic. It was a hugely positive interaction and the topics touched helped us progress our plans.”
Rudi Schmandt
Head of IT Strategy
Deutsche Bank
Many enterprises say workplace productivity is stifled by the complexity of workplace technology, coupled with undeveloped digital behaviour. Combining mature working practices with smarter technology use in a digital workplace will improve collaboration and business performance.
Using smartphone dictation to curate emails on the move, and mining spreadsheet intelligence using voice query instead of complex formulas, can liberate human potential. But using collaborative technologies effectively often presents a huge challenge. As the digital workplace becomes more porous and agile, it’s simultaneously getting harder to read. In this workshop, LEF draws on our research and real-world case studies to show your workforce how to work smarter and collaborate effectively.
Redefine social contracts for the digital workplace
Employees who are enabled by, and invested in, the latest technology can still cling to old habits in the absence of new working norms and social contracts. This can be reinforced by many organizations who continue to measure and reward individual performance over collaborative performance. Evidence shows that new technologies can only be transformative when organizations define appropriate rules of digital engagement, enabling staff to interact productively.
LEF help organizations rethink social contracts and working practices, making them fit for purpose in their particular digital workplace and context. It takes a fundamental shift in attitude and agency to close the gap between perception and reality – and keep it closed. This workshop helps your people consider how they individually present and perform in digital team spaces, moving from ‘digital me’ to ‘digital we’.
Deconstruct work done in virtual spaces
For teams that are already proficient using digital tools and virtual spaces to conduct work and meet goals, there’s value in deconstructing how and where their time is spent. In the workshop, delegates chart how they typically spend their time, be that finding information, in meetings, collaborating on specific projects, or in their own space getting things done. LEF uses mapping techniques to scrutinize individual habits, and surface larger, company-wide trends that might be impacting performance.
The virtue of this particular conversation is that it encourages reflection. People are often shocked at how little time they allow themselves to concentrate and get work done, and how effectively they use tools to improve productivity. Comparing notes with colleagues provides an opportunity to identify unhelpful practices, surfacing misalignment across teams, and common distractions that consume energy.
Apply frameworks to support new thinking
It can be a liberating and morale-boosting exercise to unpick problem areas and agree healthier digital working conventions with colleagues, such as time allocated to meetings or misconceptions about whether people are being effective; are they actually working or simply enjoying downtime?
In the digital era, there is increasing comfort with emerging technology, especially among IT staff, but the basics of developing compatible practices are often overlooked.
Workshop agenda
Organizations will discover how to get the most from mobile and flexible working patterns and styles and start creating a peer–to–peer learning organization. Participants gain insights into becoming more productive and effective team workers in the digital workplace, equipped to manage their collaborative presence proactively, and become digital advocates.
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Workshop session
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Outcome
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Introductions & objectives
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Set expectations
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Set the scene: OneAppmanship
Structured conversation about mobile phones to establish shared highs & lows; the demands placed on the digital self
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Better understand challenge around tech advancements & shared learning; spark curiosity
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Agitate: disruption in the collaboration landscape
The challenge of increasing porousness; understand anxiety associated with fluidity; review opportunity to embrace it
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Establish bigger picture for how productivity needs to play out
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Activate: build confidence with digital tools & situations
Being my best digital self. Handling information overload in a digital world; learning with AR; digital to your detriment
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Develop fast/practical skills to apply in work & home context; overcome fear & inertia around use of technology
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Activate: collaborative practices: create shared clarity
Set a shared intention; manage our collaborative presence in virtual settings; clear & protect space to think
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Identify how we collectively want to work better together, set up conditions for new behaviours to root
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Accelerate: working as ‘me’, & as ‘we’
Identify behaviour changes to adopt; establish ‘manual of we’; understand & negotiate the I/we boundaries
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Build call to action & blueprint for participants to take back into business
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Action: become digital advocates to develop new habits
Review insights & actions. Agree who you can take this to outside the room & help them get started
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Establish social contract for the group & accountability partners to drive further action
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Deconstruct how employees spend time in the digital workplace
Agree more productive work practices around collaboration tools & new technology
Learn how to socially contract with colleagues
Create a manual of we & me
