Business ParentingBusiness ParentingColumbus Brown

DFW SharePoint Users Group8/16/2011

Business Parenting• Who needs to know about it?

– End Users, Administrators, IT, Decision Makers

• What you will get out of this session?– Some valuable entertainment at my expense– Practical steps to move from parenting to

partnership

About Columbus• Management Consultant – Slalom Consulting

• Education-BSME, MBA, LeTourneau University

• Specialties-Project Management, SharePoint Administration and Governance 2007/2010, Enterprise Collaboration, New Product Development

• Interests – Gourmet Cooking, Jazz Piano, Autocross,

Aviation, Habitat for Humanity

Business ParentingWhen in the early developmental stages of the deployment of a collaboration system, improper approaches lead to a negative and costly parent-child relationship between end users and IT administrators. Users are not children, and IT should not be parents. Partnership across the overall organization is the approach that maximizes the financial benefits and social opportunities across the organization.

DONE!

Questions• Who has kids or has relatives with kids?• Who likes having kids?• Who is a member of an IT organization?• Who uses social media?

Business Parenting• What is Business Parenting? • Why is this so costly?• What are the stages of development? • How do I navigate around common

obstacles?• Moving from Business Parenting to

Business Partnership

What is Business Parenting?

• An approach to developing disciplined collaboration that moves from parent-child relationships to authentic business partnerships.

• Accounts for the collaboration maturity level of the communities within an organization

• Seeks to develop communities to higher levels of collaboration over time

An IT professionals take on her clients kids

“They are demanding, selfish, unappreciative, and cost you a lot of money, yet bring unimaginable joy when they achieve the simplest things that we take for granted”

Sound familiar?

Symptoms of Bad Parenting

• Inappropriate public behavior• Whining• Tantrums• Abusive Language• Lack of boundaries• Disrespect for authority• Hitting, spitting, and quitting• Taking others toys

Symptoms of Bad Business Parenting

• End users are using the system inappropriately

• End users complain about the collaboration tool

• Decision makers give ultimatums for immediate changes to the system

• Admins say end users are not using the system

• Admins get repeated requests for basic tasks like permissions, finding things (nagavation), number of requests are overwhelming

Symptoms of Bad Business Parenting-

Cont.• End users frustrated at constantly have to ask

permission from IT to do simple things quickly• End users can’t find information, and limited

training is readily available• Company has a collaboration tool but people

are still unwilling to: help, seek input, work with each other, or play well with others

• Each side feels like a parent wishing the other would grow up and get out of their house.

Why is this so costly?• No home training, and no rules, leads to

inappropriate behavior. If I don’t discipline you, the police will and I will end up bailing you out.

• No end user training, and inadequate governance, leads to inappropriate usage and IT ends up cleaning up the mess.

Why is this so costly?

• Business strategy can be affected without appropriate governance.

• IT bottlenecks are created without proper training

• Estimated cost of not properly implementing Sharepoint for a midsize company (6000 users). $1-$2 million

• ROI is lost when end users are not using solution fully or appropriately.

What are the stages of child development?

InfantsCommunicate by cryingExplore w/hands and mouthNeed constant nurturing Toddler

Speaks 50 wordsCreeps, Crawls then WalksLoves the word NO Childhood

Speaks sentences, 2500 wordsPlays with othersDoes basic “tasks” independentlyWants to have and be like friends

What are the stages of child development?

PreadolescenceBegins to separate from parentsSilliness rulesPeer pressureClumsiness and rapid growth

AdolescenceRocky path to independence and separationHeavily influenced by their peersSeek out advice from friends instead of parentsFriendship and romance

AdulthoodIndependentSelf-sufficientResponsibleAccountable

What are the stages of collaboration?

• Document Storage- Infants

• Information Creation - Toddlers

• Leveraging – Childhood/Preadolescence

• Sharing - Adolescence

• Process Enablement - Adulthood

How do I navigate the common obstacles?

• Identify the stage of each community

• Empower users to grow their communities to the next stage. Adjust training to target stages instead of just roles

• Push for training and governance on financial grounds

Moving from Parenting to Partnership

• Use the Montessori approach for ongoing training

• Users ultimately are not children, and IT should not be parents.

• Partnership is when the two sides work together as responsible adults to the benefit of the team

Questions?

Recommended Reading

For Business Folks (HERO’s)The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today; Meister, Jeanne & Willyerd, Karie

For IT Folks (GURU’s)Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business; Josh Bernoff & Ted Schadler

CB1492 Columbus Brown