That’s a great quote from Stowe Boyd, and quite correct. Forgive me for being flippant earlier. I couldn’t resist.

My point was that I think we have the ability to make some game-changing improvements in personal productivity by working smarter and using better tools. Done right, that means less time taken up doing busywork and more time spent on creative endeavors and in collaboration with peers.

http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/41954985/connected-people-will-naturally-gravitate-toward

“Connected people will naturally gravitate toward an ethic where they will trade personal productivity for connectedness: they will interrupt their own work to help a contact make progress. Ultimately, in a bottom-up fashion, this leads to the network as a whole making more progress than if each individual tries to optimize personal productivity…

Perhaps more importantly, the willingness to assist others leads to closer social connections, and increases the likelihood of reciprocal behavior, where an obsession with personal productivity does not.

On a work basis, businesses today want it (or think they want it) both ways. They want their employees to be personally productive, making the classic logical error that if everyone is highly productive personally then the company will be. Nope.”

Technology tools of any kind need to be about problem solving and that’s always going to be on terms users (not organizations) understand best. Solve problems for users without extra drag and adoption won’t be a problem – users will fall over each other to get access to the tools.

That’s what behind the “consumerization of IT” trend in the beginning of E2.0 coming out of Web 2.0 – simply imposing software on an unsuspecting organization is Enterprise 1.0 all over again. Users will inevitably cobble their own point solutions to persistent problems if all they have are abstract tools to work with.

I’m not arguing that we should ignore teamwork and collaboration. But we need to train and equip members of the team.

I’d rather teach star athletes the importance of coordination and collaboration than lead a synchronized team of couch potatoes.