This past weekend, the Infiltrators attended PodCamp Toronto . The event was a hit, and we were proud to participate not only as a sponsor, but as speakers for one of the Saturday sessions.

For those who were unable to attend our session, I would like to share what we covered. It was our objective to use our company as a case study, talking over what we do and tools that we use to foster an environment of creativity and collaboration. Why do we do this? Because we fundamentally do not believe we can do the best possible work for our clients if we aren’t bringing the most inventive, strategic, and measurement-focused new information to the table. Rather than having key information primarily in the hands of specific stakeholders, we strive to empower all of our team members with equivalent access. We also believe that with collaboration comes decline in personal ego, which is the sure enemy of an acceptance that all ideas can be improved.

Of course, as with any case study, what we do internally is likely not be a fit for all organizations, and the discussion is intended primarily for illustration purposes and secondarily to open up a discussion on how to optimize collaboration in diverse organizations.

Environment
While there is no doubt that an array of unique personalities and working styles will exist in every organization, a broad-level philosophy is driven from within. Thus we try to design a work environment that has the following elements:

• Learning-orientation. From academic programs to weekend excel workshops, we encourage everyone within our organization to engage and immerse themselves in as many new learning opportunities as possible.
• Stalking-orientation. From unconferences to webinars to new blogs to white papers, we think the challenge in seeking out new, previously unseen opportunities for learning is indicative of the kind of information we have opportunity to access.
• Refutation-guided. We are quite confident that the best ideas are everywhere. We are also quite confident that our original ideas are purely starting points, and we encourage everyone in the organization to challenge the thinking and ideas of others, no matter who they might be.
• Crazy-embracing. We like to have fun with the work that we do and with one another. Frustration impacts work, of this there is no doubt. We really believe that an open environment that allows as much for silliness as cleverness frees people to think as they should.

Tools
It’s next to impossible to put a philosophy like this in place without a set of tools. It’s important to note that we didn’t start with this full system overnight, but built it over the course of a year, one tool at a time. Here’s where we currently are in facilitating the sharing of information and ideas:

• Integrated RSS. Employees at Espresso are encouraged to use RSS readers to find out about all of their favourite topics in one convenient place. Moreover, we actively share these links with one another using the share function built into most reader sites. This allows us to quickly share articles and posts that each individual person might find useful with the entire team. We then take the best of the best, and share it via the Infiltrators shared feed.
• The Daily Grind. A big part of of ensuring we bring the best possible information to the table is constant reading. The other part is telling the story. We think this allows for such a combination quite nicely. It also allows the team to start defining who the company is, simply by becoming a part of it.
• Twitter. This simple tool provides yet another avenue for valuable information, as well as silly stuff. Twitter allows individuals to surround themselves with other people that have similar likes/interests. For example, I surround myself with many individuals that specialize in marketing an online media. This means that whenever someone I am following posts a link, there is a greater propensity that I am going to find that information useful and applicable to my work.
• IM/Email. Strangely, this avenue is often overlooked. It provides a quick and easy means to disseminate compelling information. From a collaborative perspective, we often find ourselves using group IM chat to minimize the number of emails back and forth and to bring everyone onto the same page.
• Internal newsletter. This is representative of the best of the best in relation to the information that we gather. This is then sent out to internally to all employees, including those that may not have an RSS.
• Presentations. We tend to have lunch and learns on a variety of subjects. If one has an expertise in relation to one subject or another, he or she is encouraged to share it with the entire team. Furthermore, if an employee attends an event, they are encouraged to share it internally, either in the form of a presentation or in a blog post.
• Wiki. We operate an internal wiki to store ideas or concepts that do not necessarily come to fruition. This site becomes a living, breathing place to store and modify ideas or strategies.
• Inforum. We maintain a small internal library that helps us store the best of the best in actual written form. This is our newest initiative and still in the works, we have fantasies of handwritten staff library cards. Sometimes the blasts from the past deserve a comeback!

Feedback from PodCamp Attendees
The audience at our session has some great questions that I thought I would paraphase and share:

With having such a strong focus on education, how do your employees find enough time to balance work with research?

• This question relates directly to our priorities. For us, clients always come first. However, here’s the thing: if we aren’t bringing the best information to the table in every endeavour we undertake, we aren’t doing the best possible job, nor being truly accountable to what our clients deserve to expect from us. Thus, yes,  everyone is expected to find the time as part of their job. In reality, twenty minutes is more than enough to get up to speed. In relation to the blog posts, we only make people responsible for two posts per month, which isn’t so crazy when you break it down. The objective certainly isn’t to overbuden people: it’s to get the best from them.

If employees have a lot of work on the go and they can’t spend as much time as they would like on their blog post, what do you do to avoid a “garbage in/garbage out” scenario?

• Fortunately, one person is the ultimate gatekeeper in relation to what we put on The Daily Grind. Although each employee is asked to submit blog posts, these posts do not necessarily always make it onto the site. Having someone with a keen eye for detail and content is a simple step that allows for quality deliverables. Also, we’re okay with short posts!

I work for a company that has a large age gap between the youngest and oldest employee, how would you recommend introducing a similar system in a company where older employees would be more resistant to such a change?

• Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps. My best suggestion was to educate and not force the technology upon them. Ideally you should be able to successfully demonstrate that the value of such tools outweighs the time spend to learn how to use them.
• An audience member had this great solution: create product ambassadors and have them own the respective technology. It is much different hearing how great a tool is from a peer/co-worker than an all-hands meeting. Select product champions at all levels of the organization to promote the use of this new tool.

All in all, the creation of a truly collaborative environment stems from the philosophy you take and the tools that you use. Different tools and technologies work for different companies and organizations. That said, we obviously didn’t start with everything overnight – and trying such a thing would be indeed rather ludicrous. Easing people into things by starting with the tool you see as most potentially impactful on how you do your own work is certainly the best approach. Additional tools are easily added – but it’s hard to take away frustration after trying to force too much, too soon.

I encourage you to explore new methods for improving how your teams collaborate and see which work best for your organization – and tell us about what your company has done to foster creativity and collaboration within the workplace. We’re still learning too!