Disqus - Latest Comments for gstrzok

Re: Connection between dirty diapers, childhood health

G. Lance Strzok — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 08:24:27 -0000

Seems like there should be a way to introduce the bacteria and microbes that take place during a vaginal birth to a baby that was just born via c-section. In our case, we did not have a choice, and if this study points to that as a possible conclusion, than could a hospital offer a procedure to collect and introduce that to the baby? Seems worth pursuing. Cheers!

Re: A Blogger’s 2010 Resolution

G. Lance Strzok — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:44:39 -0000

Andrew,

This is good news to hear from you, and I think you will come to be glad you made it and followed up on it. I would simply say that you are going to find comments that are confusing, or appear of little value. When you find one confusing or potentially useless (but not outright dumb), you may want to consider simply asking them to refine it into a better question or rephrase the response. This will illicit more conversation, and may bring to light the point they were really taking the time to try to make.

Best wishes on your NYR.

Re: How to Hit the Enterprise 2.0 Bullseye

G. Lance Strzok — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:13:55 -0000

This looks like an interesting comment, is there an update since this was about a year ago? I would love to see what the same survey would say or show now.
-GLS

Re: How to Hit the Enterprise 2.0 Bullseye

G. Lance Strzok — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:29:20 -0000

@McAfee, @Michael Fulton,

Reading through some of the comments, I noticed the Dunbar debate, and wanted to weigh in on that. I would say that in a similar way that the hippocampus has been proven to enlarge in size with mental exercise, so too would our capacity to meaningfully connect with a larger number of people as we use Social Media tools to exercise that capacity.

- GLS

Re: How to Hit the Enterprise 2.0 Bullseye

G. Lance Strzok — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:14:47 -0000

@McAfee,

I find your article largely in agreement with my own observations. I have recently tried to describe some of this concept in http://gstrzok.wordpress.co...

I like your image, and your thoughts are very insightful. If I were to point out a difference between our thoughts, (you presented this issue in your blog well before I began thinking about it) it would be that I encourage knowledge workers to use the wikis at their disposal to find potential colleagues. I suggest scrubbing the history page, who is watching (if available), and who is making frequent, large, and accurate edits. Those people are potentially worth reaching out too.

As always, thanks for taking the time to blog your thoughts and share. - GLS

Re: Colonizing the Outer Rings

G. Lance Strzok — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:11:25 -0000

Andrew,

I do agree with you on the greatest influence taking place in the outer circles. I also agree that made available to the inner circles, it will likely improve communication and collaboration there as well. So in general, making ESSP's available to the entire enterprise enables improvement across the entirety of your target.

If I were to add anything of value to your discussion, it would be that deploying these ESSP's in the outer rings alone is not enough to ensure success. I think a related question that impacts the effectiveness of doing so would be - where and how do you create a culture of collaboration that will utilize these tools? Followed with which one do you put the most effort into and in what order? Do you start with something small but effective, prove its utility, then build the culture of collaboration around that tool followed up with another tool or tools that allow even more growth to take place? Because if you don't see the use of the initial tools, and the culture does not begin to take hold, then further tools may be a waste.

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Email

G. Lance Strzok — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:58:52 -0000

Andy,

I am living the truce with email, but I do think that email will act like a ball and chain on moving toward what could be, and what I think we agree will eventually be.

I think that the mindset for email should be as one to be used as a private communications path, with suggested replacement when possible with private chat and private messaging within chat for asynchronous discussion.

I think one thing we could do to move willing organizations toward limiting email and moving in the direction of other tools would be to disable attachments within email. Replacing them with links to documents in a document management system that is optimized for the media being linked too, (be it images, documents, video etc...). There are some added side benefits to this decision, reduction of the number of the same documents and the associated confusion over updates versions, and changes.

A follow on move may be to declare that email will begin to be indexed and made searchable/discoverable unless it is flagged as personal and private. Encouraging employees to use private chat and chat messages for most of the personal exchanges that take place. This would enable us to start to use the email text strings (now without actual documents embedded). Maybe then email might not be where knowledge goes to die as you so appropriately put it. These emails (now text files) can indexed along with chat room logs (non private) and other text tools as well.

The other uses of email would eventually need to be replaced with arguably better tools as well. Take for example the task list function, or the integrated calendar, meeting makers and the rest of the functionality we have come to love. Until we can point to a better solution in those areas as well, this is going to continue to be an uphill battle.

Then there are the customers and clients, we can change our internal methods and processes, but what about how we interact with our customers?

Re: McAfee’s Hypothesis (plus contest results!)

G. Lance Strzok — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:51:36 -0000

Andy,

I agree with your hypothesis in most cases. I think in some organizations there is a board rather than one person that makes that kind of decision. If not a board, then a small group of "go to" people that the CEO looks to for advice on decisions that may not fall completely into his/her expertise.

However, if the boss wants the email signal, then he/she gets the email signal.

If the boss wants collaboration done by way of email, then I would encourage that we ask him/her what it is they want, and then agree to deliver what they want, but argue that collaboration by way of email is not the way to go. With that I'll say that often you don't directly change the boss's mind on how to do something, rather the boss usually has a number of "go to" people that they seek advice from. Those are the people that need to see the value of the tools and make that argument to the boss. Finding those trusted "go to" people would be key.

As for email as a collaboration tool, of course it stinks, but your points on its ubiquity are true and the death grip on it also true. Why do you suppose that is? I think that part of the reason this is so is that at some point or another in a persons life, they are held to "I sent you an email" and by default it became something we are held accountable for. If it is the method by which we will hold people accountable, then it will not go away anytime soon. How can we change it too, "I posted it to my blog, of which you (and the rest of the staff) were directed to monitor and read when new posts are made."? I of course like to see us get to this point, but I am not aware of a single place yet in my place of business where this is the case yet. (I'll keep working on it).

I would prefer to send an email with a link to the projects wiki page or other technology where the boss can see what is being done, and get what it is that they are looking for. Be it a dashboard on the project, milestones etc...

Re: How We’ll Get Smart

G. Lance Strzok — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:29:33 -0000

Andy,

I am encouraged and pleased with the discussions that are taking place in the IC, and in fact I am a involved with several of many of them.

As for concerns - simply put, I think that the issue we currently face is how do you get that many individual agencies/bureaucracies to make the changes necessary to achieve the provided vision or adopt the enabling tools and practices?

I am not sure there is someone running around with a big enough stick or a bunch of carrots.