Six months ago I announced that I was working on a book for McGraw Hill.  The book is the first and only comprehensive strategic guide for executives and decision makers who are looking to deploy emergent collaboration tools and strategies within their organizations.  To date the book has over a dozen guest contributors who all share short bursts of their ideas, insights and advice in their respective chapters (each contributor wrote a few short paragraphs) and as of now the book is around 75,000 words and over 300 pages of solid content.  Each of these contributors is a practitioner at organizations who are actually making emergent collaboration work.

The book also features unique models, frameworks, and approaches to emergent collaboration that I have not shared yet and that I have not seen anyone address or discuss in the past (and I do a lot of reading).  Over the next few months I will slowly start to share some of these things as well as announcing who the contributors are.  I should also point out that several executives and practitioners have provided tremendous amounts of feedback for this book and I feel comfortable knowing that it has met the approval of every practitioner and executive who has read the manuscript thus far.

Over the past six months I have spoken with and researched more organizations than any human being should ever have to do in that time period. I did it because I wanted to create a complete and valuable resource that currently does not exist in the marketplace.  I have seen expressed frustrations of many who are tired of conceptual discussions and non-actionable ideas and presentations that don’t really tell organizations how to do anything.  Hopefully when this book comes out it will solve that problem.

I’ve spent the past six months not knowing how to refer to these 75,000 words that I have put down on paper but I finally have something to call it.  The official title for this book is going to be:

The Collaborative Organization: A Strategic Guide to Solving Your Internal Business Challenges Using Emerging Social and Collaborative Tools

Why this title?

I did a lot of debating back and forth around the title of “The Collaborative Organization” but in the end I really did grow attached to it.  To me it speaks to exactly what the book is about, not building “social” companies but building “collaborative” companies.  I thought the title flowed well and it made a lot of sense especially when put in context with the subtitle.  The subtitle in my opinion clearly describes exactly what the book is about.  It’s not about solving a specific problem it’s about walking organizations through helping them understand and identify what their problems are and then developing solutions for those problems.  The only real concern I had with the book title was using the word “social tool.”  Originally that is what the publisher had recommended but those of you that read this blog will know that I’m not a big fan of using the term “social.”  So, I said I was comfortable using the term “social” if we were able to add the word “collaborative” in there so it became “social and collaborative tools.”  I completely acknowledge that the term “social” has become quite pervasive in this industry we are in which is why I was ok with giving it a minor role in the subtitle without overly focusing on it.

Right now we are in the editing process, McGraw Hill editors are now tearing apart my book into tiny little pieces and are going to send it back to me in a few weeks time to fix their edits.  A process I’m eagerly awaiting scared to death of.  I’m also currently reaching out to CxOs and decision makers who either run or support emergent collaboration at their organizations for quotes which will be included on the back cover/inside flap of the book. I have received tremendous support in this area and am excited to announce who some of these quotes are going to come from (however I’m always looking for more so if you know of someone who would be a good fit let me know, ideally not a vendor and hopefully working at a recognizable organization).  I’m also told that the book jacket is in the process of being designed so I can’t wait to see what that will look like!

Once all of this is done the next step is going to be marketing/promotion of the book before its release which will come around June of 2012.

So there you have it, six months in and I finally have a title, thanks for all of your support!

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