Kahootz’s guide to a digital first culture

kahootzlogoKahootz is a cloud based project collaboration platform, which looks pretty good – and their blog is full of useful stuff.

Recently their CEO John Glover posted about “Creating a ‘Digital First’ culture in your public sector organisation“. In it he mentions four main points, which are well worth reflecting on.

1. Involve staff at the outset

While there are organisational purposes for going digital first, it’s staff who will make the change happen, so you need them to be onside.

2. Don’t assume management understand digital

Having management buy in is vital – but you need to make sure that it is at a deep level that demonstrates true understanding of the full potential of technology to transform working culture.

3. Start small – and give staff freedom to innovate

Taking an agile approach to implement a digital first strategy is most likely to succeed. Let staff try stuff out and see what works for them, rather than procuring a gigantic platform that you’ve no real idea will take off or not.

4. Be clear about what you want to achieve

You need to know why your doing what you’re doing. Unless you have specific objectives, how will you know if you are succeeding? Everyone needs to be pulling in the same direction, and to make that happen you need a shared vision across the organisation.

Some great advice there – would you add anything?

Do you produce documents, or do you do work?

I really rather like this video interview with Rod Drury, CEO of the cloud accounting company Xero. I’ve been a happy Xero customer for a few years now – the system makes accounting comprehensible to the non-accountant, which is great!

In the interview, Rod talks about Xero’s switch from traditional Microsoft based systems to using Google’s offering, with all the social and collaborative stuff that entails. He describes how the availability of truly collaborative technology has helped to drive a culture change at Xero, around nimbleness and flexibility.

In one great line, Rod asks “do you produce documents, or do you do work?” – a question we’ve probably all asked ourselves at some point in our working lives.

Watch the interview below – or here’s a link – it’s well worth it.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Vf9nA4YOQ]

WorkSmart!

worksmartJust to let Kind of Digital readers know about a new blog I’ve launched, called WorkSmart.

It’s all about how we work in organisations and will cover stuff like use of technology for personal productivity and better team working, and also other non-techy tools and tips and thoughts on organisational culture.

You can follow WorkSmart in a number of ways:

I’m also trying something a bit different with the site itself. I’m offering a free membership system on the blog, which gets you the email newsletter but also access to member only resources which I will be adding over time. If there’s demand I might also add some kind of community forum – but we’ll see.

In the meantime though, do check the blog out – there’s a few interesting posts up there already – and subscribe using whichever is your preferred method.