If you have been following the Delhi state's political situation, you would know that the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his party are constantly at logger heads with the political powers at the Center. Given the nature of how the capital state is governed, not everything is under the Chief Minister's hierarchical control. It's a bit like matrix structures in large organization. There have been many public spats between the Delhi Chief Minister and the Police Department (which is under Central rule). There is a widespread acrimony between the two. There is a constant one-upmanship going on between the two, with each trying to do better than the other. Even though each is trying to show other as inferior (and corrupt, and inefficient), they are doing this by improving their game better than the other. In the process, both are providing better service to the public at large. This is different from the situation where opposition party trying to pull down the ruling party in parliament, wherein the strategy is primarily to point out negative things without any accountability of the opposition to deliver (whilst they are not in power).
What happens when we see similar acrimony at workplace? I observed that each person tries to prove themselves in their role. There is constant push to do better than the other person. Email responses are faster and there is a clamouring to provide better customer service.
Is it possible that acrimony in team can lead to higher performance?
Of course the side effects of acrimony is low trust amongst team, fewer ideas generated in open discussions, fewer open discussions, and in general, not a fun environment to work in. Unless the people are stuck in the jobs (like the Chief Minister and the Police Dept), there is a good chance that people in the team will just give it up and leave the organization.
In the recent few months, I have encountered situations that required multi-location teams to collaborate and customers requiring almost real-time status update. I have tried to encourage usage of the “cloud” for the team spread across locations working on the same documents/spreadsheets. We have SharePoint Server as an option but that’s mostly used as file storage, if at all. I have explored Google Docs and Zoho. However for some reason working on the cloud just hasn’t take off. Here are the challenges I face with cloud computing:
- INERTIA: We just aren’t really used to working on the cloud. Change is always hard and we just fall back on ways of working that we are comfortable with. It is always easier to simply email the document. It is easier to work just double click the document and start editing it rather than log on to the separate system in the browser and then navigate to the folder to edit the document.
- NO INTEGRATION WITH EXISTING SYSTEMS: Using Google Docs or Zoho was hard because of lack of integration with existing systems. For example, we don’t always have a list of Gmail IDs for everyone in the team. This means an additional step to make the collaboration document accessible to all. Each cloud service requires a different login ID and password than the regular network sign-on on the machine.
- ACCESSIBILITY AND SPEED: Many of our team members are traveling and are on the road so to speak. They don’t always have access to the Internet. So having documents on the cloud severely handicaps their ability to access the documents when there is no Internet connectivity. And working off the Net is slower than working off the local machine.
- SECURITY FEARS: While we explored Google Docs and Zoho, there were fears whether we should actually store our company and client data on the cloud. While I am personally very confident that Google and Zoho will safeguard data stored on their server, there is still an inherent fear of putting up company and client data on their servers. Perhaps this fear is to do with the added responsibility that the individuals don’t own the data. There is no problem in having personal emails and chat on these servers, but putting company data on the cloud is just too much added responsibility.
- LACK OF OFFICIAL ITS EVANGELISM: While we have SharePoint Server available to us, it is primarily used as file storage (if at all) rather than a real-time collaborative tool. Even with our SharePoint Server installation, there’s very little official ITS support available. There’s no one really evangelizing cloud collaboration as the new way of working. I would look for the ITS team providing awareness about official tools available and training on how to use them. This has to be driven by having cloud collaboration as part of the ITS strategy. I think this is the biggest hurdle to cross if cloud computing is to be embraced.
What happens when we see similar acrimony at workplace? I observed that each person tries to prove themselves in their role. There is constant push to do better than the other person. Email responses are faster and there is a clamouring to provide better customer service.
