Why Workplace? Why Now?

Why Workplace? 

Workplace by Facebook has the potential to transform communications at MVCC. With 70 percent of adults older than 25 using Facebook, it presents a familiar tool to dramatically change the way we communicate internally. Workplace can help evolve our organizational culture in meaningful ways to maintain and ensure continuity and input among staff and faculty. Everyone has critical insights, and this is a platform to scale and accelerate opportunities to engage with peers and provide key feedback.

One of the most powerful features of Workplace is its search feature that makes it easy for users to find files, old messages, and much more. Being able to talk to each other is one thing, but being able to go back in time and find content is critical. Workplace will provide lasting benefits for us by becoming an ever-growing knowledge base.

One of our core values is “Model the way.” Looking at innovative, collaboration platforms like Workplace helps us create an interesting and creative culture in the organization. Some might feel that embracing a leading-edge platform is a bit of a risk, but I believe it is an approach that is likely to be rewarding. 

There are three significant ways in which I believe Workplace can transform the way we communicate.

More efficient meetings: You’ll notice that many of the initial “groups” that have been created are committees and councils related to governance. Meetings can become more efficient if group members use Workplace to have conversations between meetings and share status reports and perspectives. As a result, the actual face-to-face meetings can be spent on important dialogue and debate versus the typical agenda comprised of mostly status updates and review, which leaves few moments for substantive conversation.

Increase awareness and sharing of ideas: Groups and individual posts can be used to share ideas and observations that stretch the thinking of others. The more we create affinity groups, post announcements, share articles, links, and other resources, the more we can connect ideas and find creative solutions. We can crowdsource our biggest challenges by engaging everyone in the solutions. As multiple authors like Steven Johnson write, great ideas come from a series of creative collisions, and the more organizations can find ways to create space for those collisions to occur more naturally and frequently, the more innovative the place will become.

Strengthen social connections: In this fast-paced society, slowing down enough to connect can be a challenge. Workplace provides an easily accessible platform for people to connect at work. Rather than leaving it up to chance or busy schedules to connect us in the hallways, colleagues also can connect on shared interests via Workplace. As individuals can join affinity groups with social interests via Facebook, they can do the same with Workplace. For example, if one person creates an open group titled “Adirondack Outdoors,” anyone who likes hiking or skiing could easily connect with co-workers who have similar interests — co-workers they might not have a chance to meet otherwise. Similarly, someone could create a closed group only open to a more defined group of co-workers to open lines of ongoing communications on shared topics of interest.

Why Now?

Our community faces a number of significant challenges, and MVCC is at the heart of offering solutions, so we need to be at our very best as an educational and community resource for the region. Society is changing quickly and in significant ways, and education is transforming even faster, with open educational resources, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence advancing exponentially. For MVCC to remain relevant and competitive, we need to continue finding creative solutions and, with limited resources, continue making the most of our efforts. An ever-changing and more complex future requires us to collaborate in new ways that can only occur by embracing the fact that information is power and connection is current to light the way. Workplace by Facebook is the energy grid by which we can accelerate our work together.

We’ve had more than 300 faculty and staff join Workplace in the first week alone. My expectations are that this will be an organic effort that evolves at the pace at which people are comfortable using it.  I imagine there will be some “voyeurs” initially waiting to see who posts what, but I anticipate that the more people post and use the platform to try new ways of sharing ideas and information, the more we’ll all reap the benefits I’ve described in this post.

Let’s get started. 

If you have any comments or questions, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.