C-Index: a new way to think about collaboration

After toiling and tinkering in our Central Desktop Labs, we’re thrilled to be able to pull back the curtain and introduce you to our Collaboration Index (C-Index), an automated scoring system that ranks Central Desktop users across four dimensions: audience, listening, social and facilitation.

What’s that mean for you? Actionable data. A new way of understanding how your team works together. A roadmap to discovering users with clout and leveraging their unique strengths.

Let’s take a closer look at the four C-Index dimensions:

  • Audience – When someone speaks, how many people listen? Users with a high audience score have a healthy following and are seen as a good source of information, making them ideal for getting the word out about various initiatives, lending support and credibility to projects, rallying the troops and reinforcing team culture.
  • Listening – These users show interest outside their focus areas and have an excellent holistic view of what’s going on in the organization. They can often uncover subject-matter experts and locate content.
  • Social – Top social users are a bridge between collaborative groups, pulling people into conversations and creating a lot of involvement. These users can be extremely helpful in trying to get people more involved in projects or initiatives.
  • Facilitation – Top facilitators make progress easier. Users with high facilitator scores often spur a lot of collaboration after they start participating and help move projects along.

C-Index profile

Looking at Chewie’s profile in Central Desktop, you can see that he doesn’t necessarily command a big audience and may not be the best candidate to lead a cross-departmental project. But he’s a great person – er, Wookiee – to get involved when you’re stuck on something, in part because of his strong understanding of the organization as a whole (the “ninja” score).

“Many companies struggle with making meaningful information out of an overload of data. Data without analysis serves no purpose,” says Arnulf Hsu, Central Desktop’s chief technology officer. “Collaboration is much more than just activity. We synthesize the data to tell a story. We can tell you how many people listen when certain people speak, who has the most holistic view of what’s going on in your company, who can act as a bridge between groups and who makes progress easier. Those insights help companies make better business decisions, from assembling the right project teams to ensure the success of a marketing campaign to getting the right people involved in pushing through an initiative.”

C-Index was inspired in part by our 9 types of collaborators infographic and Collaborator Quiz, as well as personality and behavior assessment tools. C-Index is the first project of many revolving around usage data and content analytics – and is currently available to users of Central Desktop for Enterprise, Agencies and Marketers in the CD Labs settings.

C-Index characters

Post by Adam McKibbin

Adam McKibbin is the content marketing manager for iMeet Central. His writing has been featured in Adweek, the Chicago Tribune and The Nation, and he’s produced content for some of the leading tech brands on the Fortune 500.