Author: simongterry

Talking Power to Truth

Technology solutions can reinforce or overturn existing organisation power structures. CollabSystems are proud to have been talking power to truth since 2017. In our view, every power structure is one we are happy to reinforce. This is especially the case because we find power structures pay our invoices more promptly and in larger denominations than rebels.

Freedom of communication, freedom of association and freedom of action all might sound good in some utopian fantasy of the workplace (Hi Teal, it’s great you are here). However, every senior leader and their juntas in compliance, risk, HR and technology know that the best workforce is a quiet workforce. Our organisations don’t need more truth and action. They need efficient silence.

Leaders of today’s organisations need tools that enable them to speak power more effectively to the burgeoning sources of truth. Old fashioned brutality is out of touch in this era of social justice, employee engagement and community expectations. Organisations need systems that replace visible force with the creeping fear of an effective secret police.

Control of Rebellion

CollabSystem’s new Control module (TM pending) brings organisations a fully intimidating suite of crowd management solutions to ensure that power has an effective voice and truth is silenced.

• Analytics: Every single action on the CollabSystem platform is analysed, tracked and reported to the junta. Dynamic keyword reporting will alert management to any nascent signs of truth and independent action.
• Surveillance: Our intensive analytics are supported by fullscale surveillance. Our application turns on all video cameras and microphones of devices in which it is installed. Management will have access to all employees environments 24×7. Even outside the workplace conversations can be monitored.
• Collaborators: Other platforms have champions. We have snitches who will use our snitching features to report their fellow employees to management.
• Propaganda: Video, live events, images, wall-to-wall auto-posting of messages, automatic liking and imposter posting will enable a relentless power based display of positive messaging for all employees and easy tools for development of a cult of personality.
• Silencing: Messages can be blocked, deleted and rewritten at will. Employees can be assigned to our gulag feature where they can no longer contribute to the platform as required.
• Disappearances: In CollabSystem Control, an employee can be made to disappear with the touch of a button if troublesome. The fear for other employees when this happens is palpable.
• Riot Control: At the flick of an option, leadership can display a full battalian of black suited helmeted and armoured enforcers and watercannons of trolling to intimidate rebellious users.

A CollabSystems organisation is a safer organisation for all leaders, juntas and traditional sources of power. We have been talking power to truth since 2017. We look forward to supporting your 1000 year reign.

CollabSystem is proud to announce the launch its latest contribution to the workplace of the future – CollabSystem Solo. For too long, organisations have made their collaboration focus the team, instead of the individual. For too long, organisations been destroying productivity by requiring employees to engage in work with others. CollabSystem Solo addresses these issues as the first individualistic collaboration tool built especially for the solo user.

The best form of collaboration is clearly an individual user working quietly and compliantly on their own. CollabSystem solo achieves this by taking each employees work and preventing them from engaging with other employees.

The other benefits of CollabSystem Solo are:

100% Adoption: With only one user, install the CollabSystem Solo client on the employee’s device and adoption is guaranteed

100% Relevance: 0% Noise: Every message, alert and action in CollabSystem Solo is generated by the user’s own work. Our ratio of alerts to user actions is at the higher end of the pain spectrum.

No Broadcasting: Nobody broadcasts only to themselves. At best that’s called ultra narrowcasting or narcissism.

Psychological Safety: If you aren’t safe with your own thoughts then CollabSystem can’t help you.

Bots: We don’t know why either, but people keep asking us for bots so we built lots of them to interact with the user in CollabSystem Solo. Bot interactions are almost human after all.

Complete User Analytics: The user will know everything about themselves at all times.

Private Mode: For even greater security (& a much greater price), all activity will be stored in the CollabSystem Vault where nobody, not even the user can access it. In this way, CollabSystem Solo reflects the most popular features of SharePoint and other solutions.

Dark Mode: Using the latest in smart IoT technology, CollabSystem Solo can control the lights in the employee’s environment, even when working remotely to ensure they always stay in the dark.

New Adoption Methodology: Reflecting the radical rethink of collaboration inherent in CollabSystem Solo we also pleased to announce a dedicated adoption methodology tailored to the CollabSystem Solo user. The Disconnect>Silence>Bots>Why Bother Doing Just Pontificate framework enables users to experience an isolation simulation of collaboration without any of the attendant issues of actual human interaction. Each user will feel like their own thought leader in CollabSystem Solo

Delivering an effective collaborative workshop in an organisation can be hard work. CollabSystem makes it easy with the new CollabSystem collaboration packs. The CollabSystem collaboration pack takes away all the need to deal with messy and unpredictable humans.

The CollabSystem Collaboration pack is comprised of three elements:

1 Pre-prepared Flip Charts

Select your workshop topic and objectives and our digital AI will generate and dispatch to you pre-prepared flipcharts that look like the real thing. Because these flipcharts are meaningless, there’s no danger the workshop output will prevent you from proceeding as you intended anyway.

We have worked with graphic capture specialists to ensure your AI generated flipcharts will be better looking than in any other workshop. No longer will you have to spend the whole workshop scribing the discussion badly in illegible writing. No more worrying about pens that don’t work or how to spell synergistic. As the flipcharts are randomly generated there is no need to type them up afterwards. People describe the CollabSystem AI flipcharts as

‘Just as useful as the real thing but prettier’

2 Hundreds of Scrawled Stickynotes

No collaborative workshop would be complete without hundreds of barely legible and vague sticky notes. We deliver you a box full of these stickynotes for you to decorate the collaboration space that you are using.

We use the topic you identified when ordering your Flipcharts as a guide but know that sticky notes bear only a vague resemblance to the actual topic of collaboration. Therefore you will find your sticky notes include vague platitudes, references to successful companies and meaningless verbs to enliven any post workshop discussion. Many users have commented:

“It would have never occurred to us to mention Apple in our strategy session, but when we found that sticky note it all made sense’

3 Muffins

No collaboration workshop will succeed without a plate of slightly dry blueberry muffins to be served at a critical moment when the discussion becomes difficult. As we are enabling you to avoid all difficult and meaningful discussions, we include in the CollabSystem Collaboration packs, delicious blueberry muffins, guaranteed to stain your conference room carpet with the blue stains of effective dialogue and engagement. When they see the carpet spotted with stains and icing sugar on the clothes of invitees, everyone will know they have missed a great workshop.

A recent user of the CollabSystem Collaboration packs commented:

“When I drank the bitter coffee at the workshop, I had a doughnut shaped hole in my other hand. The CollabSystem blueberry muffin filled that hole and enabled me to say to my fellow participants ‘Mmmm, muffins'”

Collaborative Success without the Effort

Never again will your collaborative workshop require effort or the participation of humans. Never again will the feedback of stakeholders interfere with your plans.

Collaboration workshops can now be held swiftly and efficiently. Why not hold 30 workshops more today. With the Collaboration Packs, our trial clients report a workshop can be held in as little as the 5 minutes it takes to eat the muffins.

You can engage your stakeholders with ease with the Collaboration Packs from CollabSystem. Order today. The first 100 orders will receive a bonus participant visor to prevent unnecessary human eye contact.

At CollabSystem, success is our obsession. We don’t waste our time on real world success. That is beyond our reach. We focus on the success described in self-help listicles. We wanted to share what we have learned in our obsessive pursuit of success.

Here is our list of the five things you need to give up for success:

1. Hope: Success is like hell. You have to give up all hope of escaping from its clutches. Embrace the torment because the pressure to succeed is everywhere around you. Success doesn’t allow for human emotion so give up hope now. If you surrender hope, then everything is upside.
2. Sanity: Nobody who wants to succeed for success’ sake is sane. So admit that early and save the pretence. A strong dose of irrationality will do wonders for your pursuit of success. If you can become a fully fledged narcissist or psychopath, your success is nearly guaranteed.
3. Human Relationships: Who needs others? Seriously. Who does? The hollowed accolades of success are surely enough (editor: Did you confuse hollowed & hallowed again?). Success is always measured at the expense of others. You will need to sacrifice others to succeed, so it’s better not to value them from the start.
4. Spontaneity: Successful people wear uniforms, wake at 5am, follow strict routines, read for 5 hours a week and are disciplined. If success sounds like prison, that’s just its lack of spontaneity. Successful people never react, learn or act on a whim.
5. Soul: We are not literally going to take your soul at a crossroad (though we hear good things about that path to success especially in music). You are just going to shed it as an useless appendage, like an appendix, as you ruthlessly fight your way to the top free from ethics, qualms or any thought for the future beyond success (For a minute, forget that the appendix has a role in the immune system). If you still had your soul, how could success feel so appropriately empty?

Give up these five simple things today and you can start your success journey. Otherwise just give up and enjoy life.

Why have money lying around when it can be flowing in your social networks?

The founders of CollabSystem had one of our bi-weekly strategy sessions recently. Late into the night we realised something extraordinary. We are rich. We can make you rich too. We can get even richer making you richer. If that isn’t a start-up minimum value proposition, what is?

Social Expectations of Value

When you think about it our traditional stores of value are pretty arbitrary.  Who says lumps of gold are worth even their production costs? It is not like the stuff is in short supply on this planet. If we didn’t dig it out of the ground to store it away as a store of value, it would be largely worthless. The value is in the social expectation of value.

Through history we have attributed value in trade to all kinds of weird and wonderful things: tulips, shells, livestock, company stock, start-up options, and more. The value in each case is not inherent in the object. The value is in the social expectation of value.

Fiat currency is similar. We accept pieces of paper and digital records as reward for our work and in exchange for our goods because we think they are valuable. When fiat currency began it had to be backed by gold (See above). Now it is backed by nothing other than government promises of value.  Our belief in these promises is just a social expectation of value.

The ultimate proof of this proposition is cryptocurrency. We value cryptocurrencies because other people value cryptocurrencies. They are the ‘greater fool’ theory brought to life on a fancy blockchain ledger.  Even dogecoin the parody cryptocurrency is worth billions. We at CollabSystem are very jealous of any rich parody founders.

Converting Social Capital to Value

If social expectations of value is the foundation of value, then to get rich we need to hack these foundations. At CollabSystems, hacking the foundations of something critical is our bread and butter.

CollabSystems is beginning a big development project today to convert social capital to value. The Kardashians may have proven you can get rich by acting rich and being followed by a lot of people. CollabSystem wants to extend the value of social capital to everyone.

No longer will conference organisers promising to pay you with exposure leave you hungry. No longer will your boss and colleagues empty words of recognition leave you with the power cut off. No longer will the hours of thought leadership on social media be such a complete wasteful time suck.

CollabSystem is declaring today that Social Capital has value. Social capital is the ultimate social expectation of value. You are rich, powerful and influential because other people think you are. Now we just need to convince the rest of you to believe it. We think this should be easy. If you do start to value social capital, you will be rich.

PS If you would like more Social Capital, we are happy to give you some in exchange for any hard goods, fiat currency or gold (Cryptocurrencies excluded).

Many of our clients have complained that our original collaboration model was too liberal and posed unacceptable risks of effective collaboration in their organisation. We are still struggling to work out how they identified that.

However since the launch of Vault, CollabSystem is the global leader in high security collaboration platforms. As a result we have updated our collaboration model to reflect client demands.

The new model focuses on the core demands of effective collaboration platforms for senior executives, corporate comms, HR and IT Security. Based around four simple verbs, this model delivers risk free effective collaboration for any organisation. The phases of the model are:

• Monitor: it is essential that every single conversation and action on the network is reviewed for risk. Data must be captured on all platform activity. Monitoring is the basis for effective punishment and deterrence. Importantly heavy monitoring will enable the creation of creepy compliance oriented gamification.
• Delete: the next phase after Monitoring is Deletion. As a network matured and conversation volumes increase, it is important to maintain a chilling volume of message deletion. In addition to deleting any messages containing blacklisted words, banned topics, reference to business information, client details, competitive intelligence, IP, documents, gossip, negative tone, comments about executives, strategy or major change initiatives, we recommend deletion of random messages as a reminder of the power of compliance.
• Exclude: the next phase of maturity is to begin to boot users who have violated the policies had excessive number of messages deleted or who seem to be enjoying collaboration too much. Get them off the network and back to work.
• Deny: the final maturity phase is Denial. Not every network comes with Vault’s level of security. However we recommend a complex 4-factor identification model as the final phase of platform maturity. At this point, when your users will have beaten the restrictions and still are collaborating effectively you can deny them access to the platform with a complex security requirement that nobody can satisfy.

The power of this heavy handed model of collaboration is that it helps set a strategy for collaboration in your organisation and also guides your teams on what to do with your collaboration network. Also this highly restrictive approach means people will likely not use your system, enabling you to save costs in the long run. With the CollabSystem Enterprise Collaboration Model you can be sure your employees will be effectively collaborating on a WhatsApp chat group somewhere beyond your control.

The modern digital workplace is a place of risks, fear and crime. Every day malicious hackers, lazy employees and negligent executives are stealing your data, your money, your time and your stationery. As a responsible global technology vendor, CollabSystem is determined to address the vibrant criminal enterprises threatening the future of your digital workplace and the lifeblood of your organisation. To adresss these fearful threats, CollabSystem are pleased to announce Vault, the perfectly secure digital workplace.

Vault is the first perfectly secure digital workplace. CollabSystem can assure the safety of Vault because it is entirely free of human users. Instead of weak human passwords, Vault is secured by 12-inch thick steel doors. No need to worry about hackers, Vault is completely isolated from the internet by an air gap of 12 feet, 12 inches of steel, a metre of reinforced concrete and a kilometre of bedrock. Vault does not rely on fragile two-factor authentication, instead there is simply no access. After setup of your Vault, we destroy the keys, seal the locks and erase all trace that Vault was ever created. With Vault you will never need worry about a loss of data or productivity in your digital workplace. Despite the intense security and prevention of user access, our data shows Vault user adoption is indistinguishable from average digital workplace adoption.

Surveillance

For the truly paranoid, Vault is also available with a total surveillance module. Vault’s Surveillance module uses sophisticated AI, complicated camera arrays and Facebook quiz to monitor your employees frustration as they totally fail to access Vault. You will have terabytes of video and other data that you will never examine that confirms that no criminal and nobody else ever access your digital workplace illegally or in any other way.

At Any Cost

We know security matters a lot. That’s why we charge a lot. Like other high end security systems, we know once we have you afraid then price is no object. We’d hate to underquote your safety.

Our price is so high we can’t say it out loud. We print it on a fine card stock in gothic font. Call us for an appointment for a confidential quote.

John is foreman material. He decided to stand in front of Jane who we were trying to photograph.

Many senior executives have unique needs in a collaboration. CollabSystem is proud to announce its new toolsuite, Executive, all the tools that a modern executive needs to survive in a modern enterprise social network.

Taking the Executive out of Executive Collaboration

Executive has been developed as a result of extensive consultation with senior executives. Actually, they couldn’t make any time to discuss their needs in collaboration but we did get to talk to their assistants a lot trying to set up a meeting. We based our design on conversations with people from HR, Technology and Employee communications who pretended they knew what senior executives need.

Our goal in launching Executive was to ensure that executives could participation in collaboration solutions with minimum inconvenience and to achieve maximum value. We also wanted to support community managers struggling to get executives engaged with a new set of tools to lower the bar on executive participation. We don’t think we could have got the bar lower without digging.

Our design goal is simple. We take the executive out of executive collaboration. Now all those executives who don’t want to participate in their organisations collaboration initiatives get their wish.

Features

They key features of Executive are:

• Video: Executives love video, especially video of themselves talking. Nobody can ask a question of a video and there’s no way you can be interrupted by a difficult idea.  Our proprietary software renders a video of the executive standing in a randomised corporate location spouting management speak.  This advanced AI requires no participation of the executive and has been proved in testing to be indistinguishable from the empty rhetoric of a live executive video.
• Posting Bot: This algorithm will post and like messages on behalf of the executive using exercpts of the executive’s Linkedin profile, business financial plan, family Facebook profiles, calendar, and email as source material.
• Puppet mode: Puppet mode gives the HR and Employee Communications professionals complete control of the executive’s social profile, posting and even the Video tool to enable them to author authentic simulcra of executive communication.
• Log rolling: If multiple executives have the Executive tools enabled the solution will ensure that these executives consistently praise each other and support each other’s posts. HR and Employee Communications executives will be able to trigger the virality option in log rolling to use this feature to ensure messages dominate community discussions.
• Diversity Enhancement: With the simple flick of an admin toggle, HR and Employee communications professionals can switch the gender, sexual orientation and background of executives without requiring the incovenience of change in exective positions or the cost of new hires. The Executive tool will deliver the appearance of both diversity and closing any pay gap simply by flicking this switch. Most importantly the Executives in question will never know that their appearance has been changed as this change will not be visible on their account.
• Empathy Algorithm: The empathy algorithm will optimise any actual posts of an executive to demonstrate actual human empathy. The algorithm is also responsible for corporate message alignment and any compliance or exception approvals for the executive to open their mouth online.
• Ego booster: The Executive tools will also ensure that executives posts dominate the feed algorithm, receive sufficient likes and that flattering messages are posted as replies by other employees.
• Cardboard cutout: A free cardboard cutout of the executive will be provided for use in offline collaboration.

With Executive mode, people will know your CEO is a dog-lover, but nobody need know that your CEO is a dog

A lot of nonsense has been shared by consultants, management gurus, and thought leaders on effective collaboration.  At CollabSystem we have learned from all of it.  That’s why our product solutions represent the one product you need to buy to achieve effective collaboration in your organisation.

Given the large number of models of collaboration in the marketplace, some of them even effective and credible, we have been asked often ‘What is the CollabSystem model of the human behaviour of collaboration?’

The CollabSystem Model of Collaboration

We know human beings are complex and they get more complex when you connect them in networks so we at CollabSystem know that no simple model will result in hours of mystification, total unpredictability and complete lack of science required to meet our customers’ needs.  At CollabSystem we never believe in saying something with four small words that we could say with lots of long and complex jargon. We know that the most complex diagrams generate the most interest.

It is with these key dynamics in mind that we share with you today our complex jargon-rich and consultant-speak model of Effective Collaboration.

We belive we have captured all the key elements of Collaboration in our model.  We know this because we stole them from lots of other people’s models and roughly mashed them together. We added lots of big words too. Some of which we barely understand. You should have seen how much stuff we had on our CollabSystem Wall as we developed this.

FAQs for the CollabSystem Collaboration Model

Q: Can I use the model?

A: Please download this image and share it in all your presentations of Collaboration. It is not essential that you understand the model or be able to explain it. You are looking to achieve in your audience that magical experience of an exclamation of “Ah, Science!”

Q: What do organisations think of the model?

A: Because your organisation will find all its favourite buzzwords, they will find further validation of whatever approach they are currently.  If they do challenge the model, you can simply reply “It’s not my model. Ask CollabSystem.”

Q: How do I use the model?

A: Whenever anyone asks for the logic behind your purchase of a CollabSystem solution, just show them our Collaboration Model. Most of the time they won’t even dare ask a question. If people do ask ‘How do I use the model?’, we have an expensive suite of consulting services that will confuse them so much that they will forgot the question they asked in the first place.

Q: Which organisations have used the model?

A: Yours

Q: Will the model guarantee effective collaboration in my organisation?

A: That is not the point of the model. The purchase of CollabSystem’s products is the only thing that guarantees effective collaboration. The model is to make it easier for you to buy our product.

Q: What is the science behind the model?

A: We find science interferes with faith-based technology implementations.

Q: Couldn’t the model be more complex?

A: It is. This is just the two-dimensional representation of a four-dimension space known as the zone of zones. The topology of collaboration in four dimensions is an entirely different matter. The self-referential and adaptive reflexivity of this topology should be sufficient to address the domain specific issues of determinism while avoiding simplistic answers.

Q: What should I do next?

A:Buy now

At CollabSystem, we believe in supplying your organisation with the tools that enable employees to have fun, cut through to the essential issues and share powerful and productive moments of work together. That’s why we are proud to announce the latest CollabSystem’s Productivity Solution – Collaboration Bingo.

Never again will you be bored to tears by useless, repetitive and dull advice on how to successfully transform the culture of your organisation to ensure success in a digital economy. When you hear someone discussing the future of work, the importance of collaboration or how to achieve effective innovation in organisations you can use this essential tool to celebrate and record the insights.

Complete an entire row or column and you can shout ‘Collaboration Bingo’. Complete the entire board and, as reward for your endurance, you get a speaking gig at the next Collaboration or Future of Work conference . Ask a question using an entire column or row and we will give you a free 90 day trial of our premium collaboration solutions Walking, Talking and Working. Ask a question using the entire board and we will give you a gig on the CollabSystems board.

Most importantly of all use the Collaboration Bingo board to terrorise the poor Community Manager responsible for developing employee collaboration in your organisation. Their work is not hard enough. They need more challenge and to be more widely mocked. Never again will their efforts to help employees be productive at work escape hard questions.

Just think how insightful you will seem to your peers when you ask “Is the Community Manager as Innovation CEO dead given the role of Bots as a Productivity tool?’ or “How do Viral Social Learning Metrics Bots accelerate employee adoption of Future of Work Policies?’  Most importantly of all your depth of insight will stump any inexperienced community manager who doesn’t know that the only real answer to any of these questions is ‘Just Buy Jive, IBM Connections, Socialcast, Yammer, Slack, Workplace by Facebook, Stride, CollabSystem’

 

Note: Like all good collaboration solutions the idea behind this one is stolen.