The Collaborative Organization - Free signed copy, Traction Software Booth 418 E2.0 Boston 2012

I've read an advance copy of Jacob Morgan's upcoming book, The Collaborative Organization: A Strategic Guide to Solving Your Internal Business Challenges Using Emerging Social and Collaborative Tools. I'm very happy that we decided to give Enterprise 2.0 Boston folk a chance to meet Jacob and get their own free, signed copy at Traction Software Booth 418 next week. Jacob says: "The purpose of this book is to act as a guide for executives, decision makers, and those involved with collaborative initiatives at their organizations". I believe he hits the mark with a book of lasting value, as do reviewers including Vivek Kundra, former Chief Information Officer of the United States; Erik Brynjolf, MIT Center for Digital Business Director, and others.

Jacob organizes his book into three parts: The Opening, The Middle Game, and The End Game. The Opening chapters talk to people in organizations who are just getting started with their initiatives. It covers business drivers, case studies, evaluating risk, and getting the right people involved. The Middle Game chapters cover topics including defining goals to match your business, developing a strategy, vendor evaluation, dealing with resistance, rolling out a platform, and developing governance. The End Game chapters talk about strategies for sustaining and maintaining these initiatives in the long term, including a bonus chapter on Enterprise 2.0 with Andrew McAfee.

Jacob's book is based on his own analysis and research, including interviews, case studies and survey responses from 234 individuals around the world, working for companies ranging from 1,000 to over 100,000 employees, with responsibilities ranging from mid-level to C-level executives. The Collaborative Organization is vendor neutral, involving actual practitioners who are implementing collaborative tools and strategies for their organizations - not vendors or consultants.

Each chapter includes analysis, examples and a well-written Summary and Action items section, with actionable advice that you'll turn to often. Chapters include case studies, examples and results drawn from practitioner experience, not hand-wavy fluff.

It's a handbook you'll have on your desk for the next few years. I particularly like:

• Chapter 2 - The First Step to Recovery is Admitting You have a Problem on business drivers and problems (20 pages)
• Chapter 7 - The Adaptive Emergent Collaboration Framework practical advice on choosing and adapting approaches to match your business goals and culture (27 pages)
• Chapter 8 - Resistance is Futile on barriers to success (13 pages)
• Chapter 12 - Measures of Success, practical advice on measuring soft benefits, hard benefits, and defining business value (19 pages)

Traction Software is the only source for full hardbound copies before the book's official ship date in July 2012! Show up in person at Traction Software's booth 418 during E20 Boston 2012 Showcase Exhibit hours. Follow @TractionTeam on Twitter for times when Jacob will be available for signing and to talk with him about business challenges using emerging social and collaborative tools.

Free copies are limited. I'll post rules for an online Enterprise 2.0 Twitter quiz you can use to put yourself first in line for a copy. You must show up in person to claim a book, but the Twitter quiz should be fun too!

Update: See E2.0 Boston 2012 Twitter Pop-Quiz for rules and quiz highlights.

Update: Thanks to the @e2conf staff and everyone who dropped by booth 418 to talk, and pick up a free copy of Jacob's book. After you read it, please post a review on Amazon to let others know what you think. Here's my Amazon review.

Also, after visiting us at Booth 418, don’t miss Robert Morison (@rfmorison), author of Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results at Talent Analytics Booth 232.

See 19-20 Jun 2012 | Traction Software Enterprise 2.0 Boston

The Future of Work Platforms: Like Jazz

Extending the fabric of work, or How to Be Emergent

re: Enterprise 2.0 and Observable Work

Friday June 25, 2010: Observable Work discussion centered on Jim McGee's original blog post Managing the visibility of knowledge work, including a comment and blog post: Observable Work: The Taming of the Flow by @briantullis and a comment and analysis with several well sourced examples by @johnt, including this:

"Yes, the real learning is in all the nuances of how we work, not reading a manual, it’s a skill, a capacity to act….it’s experience. I agree that the digital era has allowed for invisible work to happen, but at the same time there is great opportunity for your work to be even more visible than it was in the pre-digital era. Now anyone (not just people involved on the task) can come across your work if you use social tools rather than email and attachments…indeed raw interactions are recorded (searchable).

I also think that the constraints of geography and time in virtual teams, kind of means that you have to pay more importance to working more visibly, but not just in a synchronous way like tele-cons…we can use other social tools for when we aren’t all in the same room…and I’m not talking email." - John Tropea

Here's a summary of Twitter chat using tag #OWork, including tweets that weren't shown using Twitter's built-in search - arghh!

@roundtrip is me.

? @VMaryAbraham: Open/Visible work? I need to be persuaded. See this morning's post. bit.ly/9VVSVE

@roundtrip: Several differences with Observable Work (#OWork) model:

1) It's discretionary. You don't *have* to watch or follow, you can look or search

? @VMaryAbraham: So it's an optional, discretionary source of additional info?

@roundtrip: More a discretionary way of working "with your door always open, and most of your desk browsable by (trusted) folk"

[That is] an way of working "with your door always open" without disturbing others. They can follow, search or see a link

Observable Work can be an individual or a group norm. At NRL it was the way our branch worked for years bit.ly/qXVyM pre-Web

2) You're opening up your working in progress and analysis process to people you know and trust for a valid business purpose

3) Observable Work - learn by observing - is aligned with traditions of legal, medical and other teaching and learning

4) People who become excellent models based on OWork gain reputation and recognition in a virtuous sense IMO

? @lehawes How does relate to Social Business? (Asking w/o reading/thinking; sorry!)

@roundtrip: We're using as a norm that may be a specific example (perhaps a best practice) for Social Business as a topic

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@TractionTeam: "People learn best by watching what you do." ~ @jobsworth bit.ly/qXVyM nice 2007 refed in trail on Observable Work

@roundtrip: Tom explains why who sits next to whom in your office can make a huge difference in this new video: is.gd/d3BlY @tom_peters !

@roundtrip: Strategy: Space Matters @TomPeters bit.ly/cSu63Q Who you sit next to @ work +++ With and , distance is not a barrier

Next Things Next: Observable Work: The Taming of the Flow @briantullis bit.ly/dmQ3U8 +++