Summary : strengthening ties between employees, increasing the membership feeling, learning to collaborate out of silos are challenges organizations try to meet with limited success and at a quite high cost. But, sometimes, things happen by themselves. Lots of parisian workers made the most of the summer decreasing business activity to compete on frescos made with post its on the windows of their offices. Behind what may be seen as a game or triviality, we witnessed emerging spontaneous team building and creativity programs no HR manager would have even dreamed of, with no involvement from their part.

The need for working out of rigid silos, cohesion, collaboration, engagement are matters I discuss a lot on this blog. Most of times they’re addressed through heavy programs, supported by social software platforms that have an organizational and financial cost that can’t be overlooked. Either we talk about enterprise 2.0, social business, or making things change in more traditional forms of organization does not change anything. As I often witnessed : nothing happens online that would have not happened offline. In other words, if employees have no reason or will to talk to each other, exchange, share, collaborate, help one another, the best social platform or the nicest intranet in the world won’t change anything.

Businesses invest a lot in programs aiming at improving cohesion, in team building activities etc…and are far from always being paid back. But, sometimes, things happen by themselves, like a miracle.

In the first days of July, we saw lots of frescos flourishing on the windows of many offices buildings in Paris. All were made of post-its. According to “historians”, Ubisoft was the first to start the game. Of course, such an initiative is not very discreet as it can easily be seen from the streets and surrounding buildings. So, employees from companies in the neighborhood reacted to show they could do the same. We could even see “well done” written on some windows to congratulate the neighbor company that had made a great fresco. And, day after day, post its started to cover the windows of lots of offices buildings.

Blogs and even traditional media mentioned this phenomenon that quickly become famous as the “post it war”. [Read more...]