Organization Building & Community Building
by Harry Stevens

Initial solutions via Computer Aided Communication (CAC)
within corporations are likely to be motivated by specific
cost-cutting or revenue-generating purposes, in order to
justify costs of introducing such systems. It is equally
important, however, that

organization building

be recognized as at least a secondary purpose, whenever CAC is
introduced for some primary purpose such as

project coordination, sales management, or
customer service to improve productivity
and cut costs; or

online marketplaces, interactive
journalism or distributed education to
provide added value and generate revenues.

While cost-cutting and revenue-generating solutions motivate
the introduction of this technology, its more sustained use
requires recognition by top management that their
organizations will be changed and can be strengthened -- only
if they personally become involved in its use. The
organizational changes that will occur, if not to top
management's liking, can doom the sustained use of CAC and
otherwise harm the organization.

Top management may not have to go online themselves, although
their doing so would make CAC success in their organizations
more likely. Print extensions of CAC can and do facilitate
involvement. For instance, in one large company, out of over
10,000 computer conferencing users, nearly 80% participate
through print extension as so-called batch users, who seldom if
ever go online themselves.

Lack of keyboard dexterity is no excuse for non-involvement by
top management. When the head of a large bank looked down at
a keyboard for the first time, he observed, "The keys aren't
even in alphabetical order." He need not worry, since
many-to-many communication is not like one-to-one mail where
writing is done almost as much as reading. Whether or not he
ever touches those keys, he can get what he needs from CAC to
manage well.

Electronic mail sounds like something that top management
might think should be relegated to their Mail Room.
Electronic organization, by definition, cannot be ignored by
executives.

So, when the V.P. of R&D decides he wants to use CAC for
purposes of project coordination, sooner or later the Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) must be sure his Director of
Management Information Systems (MIS) and his Director of Human
Resources become involved in organization building by using
CAC.

MIS and Human Resources are the two corporate-level types of
support that are most needed in order to assure the long-term
success of CAC, even if introduced at first in some division
such as R&D, Sales & Marketing, or some product or service
division of a corporation.

Information Centers, which are now seen as important to the
future development of most MIS departments, need CAC to
succeed. Quality Circles or other approaches to improving
employee involvement, similarly, can use CAC to make corporate
Human Resources programs more successful. And, the
interconnecting of Information Centers at the core of any
corporation with Quality Circles on the periphery may prove to
be what top management now refers to as a Critical Success
Factor. Employee involvement programs quickly lose
credibility if the the output from such efforts is not used as
input for strategic planning by the CEO and other members of
top management. This interconnection between central
strategic planning and employee involvement programs can be
clearly established through MIS-supported Information Centers.

An Information Center might choose to experiment with
electronic organization to support its own Help Desk function
before corporate-wide organization building is taken on as a
CAC application. Personal computer users throughout any
corporation turn to their corporate Information Center for
assistance in using software packages and in accessing
corporate databases. The Center's Help Desk typically uses
phone hot-lines to answer questions from computer users spread
through their organization. The Center also typically holds
training seminars about hardware, software, and databases.
The Customer Service and Distributed Education solutions,
discussed previously in this paper, can readily be applied to
improving any Information Center's Help Desk operations.
Through that experience, an MIS department can prepare for
more extensive organization building more generally.

Human Resources and MIS directors need to work closely
together when CAC organization building is introduced
corporate-wide. In addition to formal corporate planning
topics being introduced online by top management and
facilitated by middle management, there need to be informal
forums online as well. Interactive corporate newsletters,
suggestion topics, and even the equivalent of watercooler or
cafeteria discussions need to be encouraged online. In a
sense, informal community building needs to precede more
formal organization building online.

Although the payoffs from cost-cutting solutions (e.g.,
project coordination, sales management, and customer service)
and revenue-generating solutions (e.g., online marketplaces,
interactive journalism, and distributed education) are more
obvious, the payoffs from organization and community building
solutions are even higher when done well. Doing them well
requires the attention of top management.

-----
Author's note: This article and the next are part of an
online version of Harry Steven's paper on new ideas about
computer conferencing. You can participate in in these
discussions on The Source and NWI in a topic called, "Beyond
Conferencing".