Page 10 - Telecom Reseller JunJul 2015

10 Telecom Reseller
June/July 2015
Why the Telephone
solve our woes. he onus is on us, because TELECOMReseller
we’ve begged for increased collaboration from
what are essentially new-fangled telephones. If
Bias Has Got to Go
companies don’t break out of today’s “telephone SUBSCRIPTIONS
bias” we risk losing out on higher states of
innovation and the industrious spirit needed Or change address,
How the telephone bias keeps us from working well together
when driving for unparalleled success.
unsubscribe
Call: 800 667-8965
The Telephone Bias
Fax: 360 260-9726
Information has never been linearly passed
Web: www.avayaextra.com O
on from one individual to the next, (a.k.a. rganizations today have a collective McGLAUFLIN
“telephone bias”) but co-created on interfaces, Email: publisher@usernews. interest in “optimization.” Companies
canvases, or conversations between people, com
like Slack and Quip are the venture-
knowledge areas and disciplines. In the short history of “modern” work, telephone bias hasn’t ADVERTISING
backed darlings-of-the-week because these work hacks rid us of email bog and replace it with
by Elizabeth McGlaulin,
been conducive to how we naturally collaborate.
Call: 360 260-9708
a more agile channel. It’s in the professional chief operating oficer of
For example, uniied communications, Zeitgeist to invest in tools and technologies
Bluescape (www.bluescape.com)
ile sharing, and video conferencing are Toll Free: 800 667-8965 that streamline business operations, but as
challenging thing: to stop, think and crystallize
technologies that successfully connect Fax: 360 260-9726 the industry continues to adopt the latest tech what we, as individuals, and as a group, need
individuals to speak with one another, but Web: www.telecomreseller. trends, I’ve wondered if this constant chase has from our collaborative processes in order to
communication alone is not collaboration.
com/avayaextra
actually made us run in circles.
reach our maximum potential.
To collaborate means to work with one New iterations of the same communication We’re going haywire at work because we’ve
another, to cooperate, but sometimes the most mode prevent us from doing a very essential, yet
misplaced trust in the newest technology to
crucial meaning is forgotten. Collaboration also
means accomplishing things simultaneously
– to ideate, discuss, create, decide and inalize
within a cradle-to-cradle process.
What the telephone bias lacks is the ability to
enable digital teams to collectively make real-
time decisions or concurrently engage with the
same content.
Collaboration Solutions Aren’t Cutting It

According to Forrester, for every hour a product team spends on heads-down work, they spend
48 minutes waiting on decisions. hat equates to
more than 3.5 hours of “wait time” in an average
eight-hour workday. If a company cuts wait
times in half, it can gain more than $370,000
annually in productive time across a 25-person
team.
he numbers are real and pain is felt
across global teams. Ninety-seven percent of
employees and executives agree there’s a lack
of alignment within a team, which impact the
outcome of a task or project.
“Collaboration” options still operate in silos,
such as video-conferencing and document
sharing, but they do not have simultaneity
designed into the technology, leaving people
at work to feel limited, disconnected from
the content and stunted from making quicker
decisions.
The Missing Link: Visual Collaboration
When we depend on the telephone bias, we miss
out on accessing our inherent pattern-seeking
abilities at work. he better you are able to
visualize information, projects, and programs,
the more patterns will start to emerge,
heightening your natural ability to transform
your thinking. Creating engaging and visual
environments has also become the imperative
for globally and culturally diverse teams. Visuals
can provide context and break down language
barriers.
At approximately 65 percent of the
population, the majority of people consider
themselves visual learners, which makes
logical sense since the brain processes visual
information 60,000 times faster than text.
Despite the numbers, “visual collaboration” is still unexplored territory in the professional
Zeitgeist.
he practice disrupts traditional collaboration
tools and technologies. Visual collaboration
harnesses the power of people’s natural
learning styles and behaviors to more efectively
communicate and co-create ideas, information,
and content from anywhere, on any device.
he technology we use must provide that
elastic power. As companies wean of of the
restrictive telephone bias, we look to new
horizons that visualize our work and carve out
new career cultures. ■

TELECOMReseller

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