I've tried to argue that the mindset that is encouraged by both Word itself, and the way that many companies use it, is a whole world away from the tools that are needed for effective collaboration. I've gone beyond that to try to show that encompassing Word is actually counterproductive, in that it makes people focus on the documents they generate at the expense of the ideas they contain, the relationship between those ideas and the audience, and also on communication of the physical files, rather than sharing and building on the content.

So, what can we do about this? I guess one thing you can do is get your boss to read this article. If he likes the ideas offered, get his boss to read it too, and start to evangelise collaboration as a way to differentiate your company in the marketplace.

My experience of working in a company that has embraced collaboration in a big way is that it does indeed make a difference; it makes a difference in the way the employees see their place and contribution to the enterprise. It makes a difference in customer service and customer service attitudes. It makes a difference in their morale, and it makes a difference in the way customers see the company. I'd be arrogant to claim that collaboration does this by itself, but it's a non-trivial part. And by the way, we aren't a big Word user.

Next, look at the collaborative tools you have in place. I'm assuming you have Lotus Notes and Domino installed, after all, you're reading DominoPower.

How do you use Notes?
Look at how you're using Notes. Do you just use it for email? Do you use discussion and documentation databases for departments, teams, projects, the whole company, and are they indexed and searchable? Do they contain directly readable content, or are they plagued with Word attachments? If Lotus Notes vanished tomorrow, how would your projects fare? If the loss of Notes means you'd feel that your hands had been cut off, then you're probably making good use of Notes.

How much of the Lotus toolset do you use? Sametime? The Learning Management System? Domino.Doc, or whatever they call it now? Look at how other companies use them, and ask them what it does to their ability to perform in their marketplace. How have these tools changed their culture? And of course, ask them about their use of Word. Lotusphere is a good place to ask these questions. If your company operates round Word documents, you really need to find out how to make it "get" collaboration.

Making a business case for collaborative tools is tough. But there are ROI (Return On Investment) studies out there. It's a pity that the really good Notes ROI studies are now 10 years old, but there are more recent ones for Sametime, which in a large organisation can pay for itself in travel reductions in a few months, if the cultural part of the implementation is done as well as the technical one--and there is a cultural part to all implementation of collaborative toolsets.

You can also start small. Look again at how you use Notes. Are you using it for more than mail? If not, why not? Can you show the company how you get value from Notes personally? Can you put a figure on that? Think not only of how much time you save by having everything at your fingertips, but also think about how much better informed you are and what the value of that is. Look also at how you use the Web--is it easier to find information that you need outside your company than inside, and why is that? And of course look at how you use Word, and whether it ever really helps you do the job at all.

Anything else? What would happen if you actually removed Word from your computer? Can you actually write content straight into emails, or Notes documentation and discussion pages, or onto the Web with tools like Domino or Wikis, and enable your coworkers to get straight at the content?

Is Word the reason that many companies fail to grasp collaboration? I think it's a big part of it. What do you think?

Mick Moignard has been working and traveling with Lotus Notes since Release 2.0 in 1991. Mick is a DominoPower Senior Technical Editor and a Principal CLP with Unipart Expert Practices, a Lotus Advanced Partner in the UK. If you want to discuss anything to do with this article, or indeed anything else to do with Notes and Domino, contact Mick at Mick_Moignard@unipart.co.uk. Unipart Expert Practices will also happily discuss any opportunities you may have with any Notes and Domino application development or infrastructure projects you need help with. Unipart Expert Practices can be found at http://www.unipartep.com.