Done Right, Collaboration Overload Could Be Alleviated by AIDone Right, Collaboration Overload Could Be Alleviated by AI
The problem is too much information and too many interactions spread across too many apps. The solution may be to let an AI agent do the work of pulling all these disparate elements together instead of expecting people to do it.
September 19, 2024
The 1999 cult classic movie Office Space has a running gag throughout about a manager who bedevils the film's hero about putting the correct cover sheet on the TPS reports. What comprises a TPS report is never explained; the point of their existence is to demonstrate how dumb discussions around make-work like cover sheet formats can be. But there's a secondary point to this scene: a lot of managerial work centers around ensuring a team get the information it needs in order to complete organizational deliverables.
In 2024, the managerial conversation could be an automated reminder in Slack or Teams -- a message that pops up every four weeks reminding people to turn in TPS reports and to use the cover sheet template that's been helpfully linked in the reminder. When done right, collaborative technologies can boost managerial efficiencies.
However, collaboration gone wrong can cost organizations. According to Zoom's Global Collaboration in the Workplace study, released yesterday:
Over one-third of leaders reported spending an hour or more a day resolving four distinct issues related to bad collaboration — spending just one hour on any of these tasks could cost organizations up to an estimated $16,491 a year per manager in inefficient productivity. For an enterprise of 1,000, that cost for just one-third of managers could add up to more than $874,000 annually in wasted time.
How does the study define bad collaboration? There were three criteria: difficulty finding time on colleagues' schedules to connect, not receiving responses from colleagues in a timely manner, and not having enough time between meetings or chats to get things done.
The consequences of bad collaboration include misunderstandings between teammates, lack of alignment between teams, and lack of engagement or inattentiveness from colleagues. In other words -- information is not getting where it needs to go and people are not acting on it. They're not putting the correct cover sheets on their TPS reports.
The contributing factors to bad collaboration were too much time in meetings, too much time in email, and too many collaborative apps to use. Zoom ran down different collaborative product categories, including email clients, asynchronous audio and video messaging, asynchronous brainstorming and ideation platforms (for example, Zoom Whiteboard, Miro, Mural, Figma), project management software (like Trello or Asana), and shared office-type apps (Coda, Microsoft's office suite, Google's Docs).
The overall problem is that people spend a lot of time trying to track down which important bit of information is nestled in which conversation or comment or shared document in which app.
This is one reason so many UCaaS vendors are pushing for shared workplaces -- also known as canvases -- as a way to make collaboration more efficient. By capturing interactions and information in one place, it's easier to discover and there's less drag on one's attention as they switch between apps.
And there's a strong use case for generative AI as a way to streamline things. AI excels at structured, rote tasks, from sending automated reminders to triggering workflows based on queries and prompts. Let it handle putting the right cover sheet on the TPS report and free up human attention and energy for something else.
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