As part of the work around the digital transformation of IBM, I was asked to record a two minute video, answering two questions:
1. How have digital interactions improved the way you work?
2. How might they be made better?
I thought I'd share my answers with you, outside the IBM firewall. I would love to hear answers to the same questions from people in other organisations - feel free to answer the questions yourself as a comment below.
1. How have digital interactions improved the way you work?
I couldn’t do my job without the ability to interact digitally. I am part of the IBM corporate digital team but I am located remotely – on the other side of the planet in Sydney, Australia. (IBM's Corporate HQ is located in Armonk, New York.) A colleague made the great point, in a 2 minute video from her kitchen, that digital frees us – we are no longer bound by physical location. To me, this means I can do a job that I love, while living with my Australian husband and our two golden retrievers in Sydney.
A lot of people ask me how I can do a corporate IBM role from here. Well, I can receive emails from Armonk as fast as anyone else! I can beam up presentations to people’s computer screens all around the world in real time via Smart Cloud meetings (Lotus Live). Our team meetings occur via video, so I get to ‘see’ the team I’m part of. I don’t get to chat with my team mates around the water cooler, but I do chat with them on Twitter and I comment on their blogs – and that allows me to build rapport and strong working relationships.
So digital gives me freedom in terms of location - but it also gives me more choice. Instead of having to engage with the people in one physical location, I can engage with the people, the content and the ideas that interest me from anywhere in the world.
I can pick a subject – identify the keywords and find active groups of people – or constituencies - who are talking online about that topic. I think this has huge implications for how we learn, influence and collaborate.
2. How might digital interactions be made better?
While there is value in improving the technologies that allow us to interact digitally, I believe there are huge potential gains from using existing technologies better. We could put a lot more rigour into how we use digital to interact internally and externally, through better integrated planning. I could talk on that for hours, but my time is up.
Thank you for listening!
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