PatronManager

One of the things new technology is offering today is a much better way to collaborate with your co-workers. On the face of it, you can chalk this up as yet another thing that makes business more efficient.

However, it’s a lot more than that. At the Dreamforce conference last week (sponsored by our technology partner, Salesforce.com), I heard the celebrity doctor Dean Ornish talk about just how important human connections are in business.

He said that the “need for intimacy” is more primal than the need for food or water. “Business is nothing more than human interaction – and things bring us together create meaning.”  In another session, the IT director for the Center for American Progress said, “The office is not as important as the connections we make with our coworkers.”

And in a world in which more and more people are working remotely, collaborating, and meeting over Skype video calls, business is becoming an “internal social enterprise”– where the ways we connect with our friends and relatives in our daily lives are now the same as we use in business.

So as you consider the goals of new technology, add “social interaction,” “collaboration,” and “facilitating teamwork” to what you put on your list of requirements. Business was always social– but never more so than now.  

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