Divulgación: Cisco es cliente del autor.
Cisco (in collaboration with Forbes) convened a panel of experts this week to discuss the future of collaboration. Panelists included Mike DeFrino, CEO of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants; Edward Wagoner CIO Digital at JLL Technologies; Shari Slate, Director of Inclusion Collaboration and Vice President of Strategy and Inclusive Futures at Cisco; and Aruna Ravichandran, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Cisco Webex. Typically, with these types of roundtables, the most interesting comments come from executives representing clients; the seller usually just wants to promote the product. This time, however, the most insightful feedback came from the folks at Cisco, especially Slate. Most people know what a product does, but don't spend a lot of time thinking about what it might do; When it comes to communication and collaboration, people who are more focused on human behavior should have a better idea of what to expect. Two of the concepts that Cisco executives developed were empathy (by Ravichandran) and inclusion (by Slate). So let's talk about these two ideas and what they mean for the future of collaboration tools in general, and Webex in particular.
Inclusion and teamwork
I have observed that when a team often works together, it is the oldest and most outspoken employee who leads the effort, regardless of background. Winning an argument is more important than getting the answer right. Work groups suffer - ironically often hurting a leader's career - and women in particular are often ignored or excluded from the discussion. In online meetings, the leader is usually the moderator. It's not unusual for them to silence dissenting voices or people who understand what's being discussed better than anyone. It often seems that those with the least knowledge on a topic are the most disjointed, which can waste team time and lead to poor decisions. Cisco Webex can capture and report who is speaking and how often, providing insights that the employee and manager can use to try to resolve this issue. I hope this leads to AI-based speaker ranking, where the AI, by checking a speaker's background, assesses their skills on the subject and can warn the speaker. To go down (or tell the moderator to mute the person). A variation of this feature could also rank people on the call by experience. Then the moderator, who would also be measured, would know how to target these people for comments, increasing the quality of the conversation and ideally leading to more inclusion.
empathy in business
One of the things that seems to motivate Cisco is this concept of empathy. For many workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, the balance between work and life was affected. People were struggling to cope with children and spouses at home, older children were suddenly dropping out of higher education, and parents were sick or elderly. Yes, productivity increased, but the personal cost was sometimes significant. A company generally understands which employees are susceptible to stress. And AI can increasingly do behavioral analysis looking for people who are no longer engaged; angry outbursts or tears; or other changes that mean problems at work or at home. Using these tools to flag a problem for HR management and tracking helps mobilize company resources to help those who need it most. Without divulging details, a smart manager might even advise the team to avoid certain topics and let the employee share more if they wish. Being able to spot stressed employees, along with targeted remediation using company resources, could prevent someone from losing control. This feature is something I hope to see in the future.
Envelope
Transforming a video conferencing system into a more comprehensive management and collaboration tool for employees and care will be essential to enable people to continue working from home. As a manager, you don't have the same access to people as you do when you're in the office, so you need a tool that tells you about problems before they cause irreparable damage. A company already has employee information and already captures interactions between employees with tools like Webex. Cisco seems to be pivoting to cover those bases and, based on what panelists said this week, will ensure that future versions of Webex result in more inclusion and empathy than we've seen before.
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