The latest pharmaphorum blog post discusses how operating in silos can restrict great ideas from coming to fruition in pharma. Mike Rea writes that “solo within a silo, unable to see what everyone else is doing, you are forced to guess (or presume) what the other silos need of you, or to guess what it is that they know that you need to know. And, if you knew it all already, or were capable of going it alone, those other silos wouldn’t really be needed…” Internal communications is where this lives or dies, and while the big debate when it comes to social media and pharma rests in how pharma can engage external audiences, innovation comes from within. So how can pharma use web applications to improve internal comms?
It’s fairly safe to say that the dominant communications in pharma, and most businesses in fact, are on email, teleconference or face to face meetings. This is a matter of tradition, protocol and familiarity. Quite often, they are the best ways to communicate. However, integrating other systems into a wider team structure can allow you to communicate more effectively when it is appropriate. Here are three simple, and perhaps fairly obvious, ideas for some other ways to communicate internally:
1. RSS feeds: Each team, or ‘silo’ as Mike puts it, could have a dedicated feed, updating the other teams of their progress in a project. They are free or relatively cheap to set up, and enable broadcasts by a team to be sent to a wide range of people who will be updated each time a feed is updated. The advantage of this over email is that you can read RSS content off-line and don’t have to manage a million emails in your inbox from a million different teams – you just tune in when you need to.
2. Instant messaging: Some companies might have this already, but sharing links and having quick conversations with colleagues is far more convenient and time-effective on an instant messaging service rather than over email. Isn’t sending an email sometimes a formal process that requires copying people in and clear explanation when sometimes all it takes is a quick message to get an answer or update somebody on an issue?
3. Bookmarking: If you are brainstorming or looking online for inspiration around a subject, tag the websites on a system like Delicious or StumbleUpon, mark them as private, and then you can share comments on the articles or content and look back at them from any computer at any time. This is ideal if you are looking at a particular issue or subject and don’t want to write a lengthy email with pasted links in and want to keep track of the information in the long-term.
Tags: Delicious, digital pharma, instant messaging, internal comms, internal communications, Mike Rea, pharma online, pharmaphorum, RSS
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