Have you wondered why you feel sleepy and drowsy while you’re working on an important project? Well, in each of our brains there is something called adenosine and this always is in love with receptors in the brain. The result of this adenosine-receptor romancing leads you to feel drowsy and an urge to take a quick nap. But at work it is barely possible to do this.
Enter coffee. When caffeine in the coffee shows up, the brain’s receptors cling to it, as caffeine looks like adenosine. This leaves no space for adenosine to cling to. Also, caffeine speeds up neuron activity as against adenosine slowing things down. The pituitary gland senses this increased neuron activity, summons the adrenal gland to secrete more adrenaline, which in turn brings out the caffeine high.
Ok, that's enough science. Now, for some history! In 1600s and 1700s, coffee was famous among the English. The first coffeehouse opened in 1663 in London, and the rest of the world quickly followed. Coffeehouses were hubs of social activity, particularly popular with businessmen, politicians, stock market traders and intellectuals, the key words here being “hub of social activity”. Coffeehouses were hotbeds of gossip on current events and so were frequented by journalists. They became important in the sphere of politics too, bringing together influential men to discuss current issues of the time.
What about today?
Modern coffee shops are not so much about coffee but mostly about the culture that they bring along with them. “Coffee shop culture” is all about allowing ideas to flow in from different social groups to meet and mingle. They also serve as a vehicle for circulating information and content. When you want to exchange news, share views and know what the other person thinks, a coffee shop can be a sure bet.
Businesses also need to sip into this culture. Communication, collaboration, the exchange of ideas, the building of networks founded on trust, and the acceleration of the flow of knowledge can all happen over coffee. Your employees can share more content while sipping on a cup of cappuccino than when they meet in a neatly designed meeting room.
Now, here's my leap-of-faith recommendation. If you have a coffee vending machine, you should also have a social network within your enterprise. An enterprise social network tries to focus on creativity.
It drives out-of-the-box thinking, provides a network of peer-accountability, and a platform in which testing is encouraged, and failure isn’t something to be afraid of. A social network can facilitate a great level of collaboration in comparison to the current tool - email.
Team Meetings
Meetings usually are the platform for brainstorming, taking stock of information and a team’s heads up on happenings. However, as most of us know and have often experienced, meetings can also be time killers and be unproductive. If you have an idea and would like to pitch the same, get feedback, co-create and collaborate, then a simple post on a blog or forum in your enterprise social network might help you garner responses quickly and with greater ease. Trust me, this works faster!
Document Collaboration
Very often, presentations and documents are the result of a joint effort of many. Peers or subordinates might provide inputs in the form of data, figures, facts, opinions and senior members might present or compile it.
Usually, this is done through an email, which is cumbersome. A lot of correspondence then ensues to integrate input/feedback. Opposed to this, you can upload the file on your enterprise social network and make your colleagues, contributors or editors of the document.
Workflow Management
Enterprise social networks give you the flexibility to create, assign and manage tasks.
This way, tasks are dealt with in prioritised order and any team member can see what you are working on. Sometimes, managers can approve certain work flows for the next action to either people within the team or in other teams.
Employee Motivation
All of us seek recognition and appreciation for good work done by us. A few words of appreciation make a lot of difference. Using a platform such as a private social network to appreciate good work done by a team member helps to build motivation and foster a greater sense of belonging among employees. Collaborative working produces pretty amazing results, and very successful business, most of all “Happy employees”.
It was just a short time ago when email was the backbone of nearly all communication. Today, social networking software is increasingly becoming the backbone of business communication. I don’t anticipate email going away altogether. Rather, email will be used as a notification tool to alert users. However in the long term, there appears to be generational shifts to a virtual space for collaboration. Early adopters of these new social applications will see benefits in the long run.
(The writer is Senior Marketing Analyst, Zoho)