When thinking about the power of virtual collaboration, the emphasis is usually on creating opportunities for collaboration between geographically dispersed groups. And rightly so: virtual collaboration’s most significant asset is that it enables groups that would not be able to collaborate (at least without re-locating) to work together.
However, there is another feature of virtual collaboration that is also empowering, even for teams that are co-located: the ability to hyperlink content, enabling the fusion of information in a meaningful sense. Think about Wikipedia, and why it’s so much easier to browse than a traditional encyclopedia: it’s because there’s just so many available links in a given article (so many in fact that you rarely have to use to the back and forward buttons on your browser). And there are clear lessons to be drawn for collaboration in a professional environment from this practice.
More than Search Engine Optimization
Links do more than provide “Google juice” (admittedly, however, this is important, especially as more and more organizations are turning to Google to power internal enterprise search).
- Links provide context: Links have the distinct benefit of allowing people to read more information if they choose and/or need to do so. So again, thinking about Wikipedia, if I want to get some quick background about a given topic, I can go there and read just that article. However, if I want to get a bit more context, I can read through the given article, as well as a few other key articles that are linked to the main article that I’m interested in.
- Links assist in the analysis of data: Given all of the hubbub around link analysis (and social network analysis), hyperlinking content together helps to further analysis. Again turning to Wikipedia for an example, you can look at all of the articles that link to a given article. I can see the hundreds of articles that link to the article about Steve Jobs, for example: on that list are a number of connections that I never would have thought of that I can explore: Why does the “Walt Disney Company” link there? What’s the relationship between Jobs and Larry Ellison?
- Links help to bridge gaps: An especially valuable use of hyperlinks is to bridge gaps between collaborative constituencies (a topic that will be the topic of the next post…). In the professional world, collaborative environments are usually segmented and walled off by specific job functions/types (i.e. different Sharepoint sites or team rooms). It’s true in almost all organizations: accountants work in a different collaborative environment than consultants; developers use different collaborative tools than marketers; and, FBI agents don’t work in the same environment as intelligence officers. However, links can help to break through these walls, primarily by linking to content outside of the walled confines of more limited environments. Linking to this content makes it helps people think more strategically and enables more collaborative thought, while also being a strong alternative to pulling content into closed environments (making content more discoverable).
Tying it all together
Linking is a simple, yet under-utilized tool/technique: most times, out of laziness, constrained time, or other reasons, we produce digital content (be it an email, document, or other) and don’t use the power of linking to it’s full extent. Linking gives us the power to enable our audiences to be as smart as they want to be, while also enabling us to demonstrate diligence in research and knowledge of key sources. Put simply, linking is, in many ways, what drives discoverability and integration of information in a digital environment.
