The Culture of Collaboration

Bill Gates, Jeff Raikes and Collaboration Microsoft-Style

“The PBX is almost like the mainframe was,” Bill Gates told customers and business partners yesterday at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Gates was referring to the private branch exchange, the device that links businesses to the public switched telephone network. Gates added that the shift from the public switched telephone network to unified communications over Internet protocol is “as profound as the shift from typewriters to word processing software.” Later, Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, insisted that unified communications will transform business communications as much as email did in the 1990’s.

Gates and Raikes were speaking at a launch event for a suite of communication and collaboration products: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Roundtable. Microsoft Office Communications Server makes multiple collaboration and communication modes available right from business productivity applications. Collaborators can see instantly which colleagues are available and can connect on the fly through instant messaging, voice, web conferencing or videoconferencing. This capability is called presence. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 is the client software, while Microsoft Office Live Meeting is the latest version of Microsoft’s web conferencing software.

RoundTable (see image) is a table-top video and audio communications system that provides a 360-degree view of meeting participants plus tracks the speaker. The most compelling aspect of RoundTable is the ability to capture meeting audio and video and review key portions later.

Microsoft and fifty partners participated in the event. And although “unified communications” is the label these companies are using for the new, merged approach to communications, this effort is as much about enhancing collaboration as about communication. And, in fact, Microsoft customers appearing in a video shown during the event and futurists presenting on Microsoft panels later in the day repeatedly referred to improved collaboration.

Collaboration and the New York City Subway

Collaboration enhances efficiency and innovation and keeps the equipment maintained and the trains running on time, literally, for the New York City subway system. In the 1970s, the New York subway system was in a shambles. I know, because I rode the subway to school in those years when I was growing up in New York. System delays and breakdowns were commonplace.

(Above image: A New York subway car in 1979. Photo by Doug Grotjahn, collection of Joe Testagrose)

Part of the problem was that the transit system rarely maintained subway cars and instead bought new ones when it had money, which was rare. This, according to a story by William Neuman headlined “After 45 Years, Subway Chief Has Reached His Stop” in the October 13 edition of The New York Times. You can read the story here. Neuman writes that in the 1960’s, a transit system mechanical engineer named Doug Tilton believed there was a better way and developed a plan to perform scheduled maintenance on subway cars, which was then a novel concept. In those days, according to the article, “most managers at the transit agency were not interested in new ideas from their employees.”

In the 1970’s,Tilton gained traction for his proposal by collaborating with Michael Lombardi, an instructor and manager at the transit system. Lombardi saw an opportunity, because the transit system had hired a consultant to address subway breakdowns. Lombardi and the consultant promoted Tilton’s idea and gained the support of top transit officials.

In 1981, the state of New York authorized a multibillion dollar plan to overhaul the city’s transit system. This helped institutionalize the program which is now known as the Scheduled Maintenance System. The transit authority has extended the program to the bus fleet, and transit agencies in other cities have adopted similar programs.

Lombardi told the Times that in 1979, subway cars broke down on average every 4800 miles traveled. Today they break down every 149,000 miles. Collaboration certainly has created value for the New York City subways. Next month, Michael Lombardi will retire as the senior vice president for subways at New York City transit. By collaborating with Tilton and the consultant, he accomplished more than he ever could have alone.