Collaboration station
tools to bring us closer (or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Zoom)
Next week I’ll be in Los Angeles for #DAMLA, and I look forward to meeting in person. But whether Covid super-charged remote work or it’s just life in a global economy, virtual collaboration tools are here to stay.
Instead of the typical office politics and stolen lunches, current “people” issues might focus more on the lack of collaboration apart. So now, the balance of people, process, and technology (the Golden Triangle, or PPT framework) can be a good tool for discussing our new ways of working.
People, Process, Technology venn diagram with Collaboration at the core
How to maintain a company culture without a water cooler
How to brainstorm creatively miles apart in different timezones. While some people have returned to their home offices, many companies in our field continue to work hybrid if not mostly remote to both protect their employees and attract candidates from far and wide.
Since creative operations are focused on building and maintaining tools and platforms to help people work no matter where they are, we should be reveling in finally proving our worth. In a way, what we have been predicting - decentralized departments and collaboration around the world requiring tech solutions - has helped our businesses thrive. In my case, my previous workplace was able to confidently close up our New York City office a week before corporate went remote companywide in part because of the marketing technology (project management, digital asset management, and creative cloud tools) we had installed to enable flexibility. Since we are talking about March 2020 NYC, that most likely saved lives.
What we gained apart
Now, 3 years later, technology has provided collaboration tools to fill in for physical meetings, whiteboards and even socializing, while processes and people still elude substitution. While some tools might have been temporary (RIP virtual happy hour), other tools can help us preserve the flexibility we once required during the darkest days of the pandemic now that some places are returning to “normal.”
From panel talks, snack delivery, team calls, virtual wine tastings, and online Away Day, to swag drops and book clubs, we have found ways to foster community, culture, and collaboration outside of physical office interaction.
But “normal” is a funny thing. What if going back to a typical American workplace means losing what we learned during the past 3 years? Whether due to more flexibility in family time and commute, accessibility for those with disabilities, or relief from racial microaggressions, there are many reasons to reject a full return to a back-to-2019 normal, especially for women who were already dealing with burnout at higher rates even before the pandemic. So how do we keep what's working?
At Thoughtworks, our global workforce and digital culture have helped us to balance the benefits of a hybrid world. Our clients are returning to in-person work too in varying ways and we are learning from their experiences as well.
People Process Technology: AEM
Back to creative operations and the Golden Triangle/PPT, our digital content experience team has been working across the organization to achieve better collaboration. While the public could see the beautifully refreshed Thoughtworks.com site design, it was the framework of the new AEM (Adobe Experience Manager) CMS (content management system) that allowed us to launch the site in 5 languages with thousands of images, documents, videos, and other assets. But the technology can’t be effective without the other 2 legs of the 3 legged PPT stool - the process and the people.
Now post-launch, we can review the process and see how we can improve it. For example, we have expanded the AEM DAM (digital asset management) system to include a brand portal to collaborate with external partners and share brand assets more broadly, while ensuring those assets are current (aka, not what the art director saved to their desktop before going home in 2020) and timely. By reviewing our existing processes, we learned that it would also be a timesaver for our design team to be able to collaborate on assets internally without leaving their other Adobe tools like Photoshop, so we implemented Adobe asset link.
The AEM platform is the backbone that powers Thoughtworks.com, but we can use complementary tools to interact, share assets and teach users - Knak for newsletters, Adobe Brand Portal to collaborate with external partners, Quicktime to create videos, Zoom to talk, and Adobe Asset Link to use DAM assets within Adobe design tools like Photoshop - giving us more value from AEM.
But the most important leg for collaboration is people. How did we learn what these tools needed to do? Only through countless one-on-one Zoom calls, team chats, open office hours, and rare in-person talks could our team see what success would look like. And even now, there is so much more to learn together. Every new process & technology tool opens the door to more questions that only people can answer together. So we are adding more small team training sessions to encourage questions, working sessions to increase confidence in the tools, and newsletters to share tips, updates, training videos, and colleague recognition. By listening, we increase the power of collaboration.
What’s next?
What we have learned through collaboration is that there is still a need for more ways of working together, even when we are apart. In addition to an internal community page on our intranet, the combination of decks, video tutorials, live training, recorded sessions, and 1-on-1 calls can help our coworkers adopt new platforms. As part of a global team, we have a history of working remotely, but today those embracing office life have benefited from and shaped future collaboration tools. While today we have more people returning to working physically together, the lessons we have learned by listening to our far-flung colleagues are too valuable to discard.