Collaboration Workforce Trends

From a recent McKinsey Report:

I know some might think this a a broad definition of “collaborative worker” , but I’m not sure it is. Collaboration is not necessarily about formal teams (although teamwork is a valued skill in collaborative organizations).

Here’s two things that stick out in the report. First, the productivity differences in collaborative enterprises are huge:

Yet there are wide variations in the performance of knowledge workers, as well as in their access to technologies that could improve it. Our research shows that the performance gap between top and bottom companies in collaboration-intense sectors is nine times that of production- or transaction-intense sectors.¹

And to address that problem, companies are turning to technology:

Just as important is deciding how to support interactions with technology—in particular, Web 2.0 tools such as social networks, wikis, and video. There is potential for sizeable gains from even modest improvements. Our survey research shows that at least 20 percent and as much as 50 percent of collaborative activity results in wasted effort. And the sources of this waste—including poorly planned meetings, unproductive travel time, and the rising tide of redundant e-mail communications, just to name a few—are many and growing in knowledge-intense industries.

Which brings me to this brilliant  flash animation which describes the collaboration technologies people in different careers are going to have to master if we want to start narrowing that 9-to-1 gap.

It’s probably the most important thing you will look at this week, and it’s not from a slick Web 2.0 shop – it’s from the great boring McKinsey: View It Now.