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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Your Story: Throwing new tools at a communication problem?

I'm working on a (likely non-43 Folders) piece about a topic that seems to keep coming up whenever I talk with people about how their team plans, collaborates, and generally communicates with one another. I'd love to hear from you in comments if you have a contribution to make.

What’s your story?

Do you have a story about a time when your team or company tried to solve a human communication problem by adding a new tool? In your estimation, how did things turn out?

 

Yours doesn't need to be a horror story to be included here -- there are certainly ample examples in which a thorny problem disappeared by introducing a bit of high (or low) technology to the mix.

But, the anecdotes I hear from worker bees often focus on the frustration they felt when a wiki, a new CMS, a mailing list, or some other tool was introduced into an ecosystem that was suffering from a more fundamental communication problem. A lot of people tell me that this makes matters much worse all around, often amplifying the complexity of the original problem, in addition to piling on burnt cycles that were committed on getting everyone up to speed on the new "silver bullet."

If you have a minute over the next week or so, please share your story here. Redact details that you think need redacting, but please consider telling me how things went for you and your group. And, if you feel like a whole or partial solution to the core problem ever did come along, that would be great to know, as well. Already documented this someplace else? Know of someone else who did? Links to relevant stories are also greatly appreciated.

If things pan out, I may be contacting a few of you offline for more details, and conceivably, an interview or two. Thanks in advance.

Durango's picture

It's only good if IT decides it's good

I introduced Basecamp to our website update project group. Success was limited due to no participation from our IT department (marketing & management were on board and active).

IT had built their own project management system that was bloated, confusing and overly complicated. IT admitted to its poor usability and in looking at other projects within the system (how I even wound up in another project was yet another problem with their system), it was not being used much by their own department because of its failings.

A system is only as good as the participants who are willing to use it. The basic communication component was certainly evident and baffles me to this day how that IT group manages to get things done. Thinking back on it now, they were big IM users. A Twitter-like interface with OmniFocus-like shortcuts for categorizing would have been ideal.

 
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