Collaborative Culture + Tools + Strategies = Value

Posted on September 3, 2009 by John

Creating value through organizational collaboration is much like baking a cake – forget a key ingredient and it won’t rise.

In today’s economic climate both inter and intra organizational collaborations are increasing, the potential benefits of which are undeniable. The issue of course is finding the right recipe to successfully bake the cake.

In order for collaborations to work there are 3 key ingredients: strategy to follow, tools and technologies with which to execute the strategy and the organizational culture to support it. (Paraphrased from Evan Rosen’s “The Culture of Collaboration“. Follow his blog )

A prime example of a successful (well, there were a few hang ups) foray into organizational collaboration is the creation of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This futuristic aircraft began with Boeings desire to have only the best of the best working on it’s design. Ordinarily, Boeing would house all the designers and engineers at their site in Washington. However, with several international candidates in mind that was no longer a viable option. So, without comprimising their desire to build the best aircraft with the best people Boeing embarked on a collaborative effort massive in scale and expectation. Rather than simply outsourcing their parts they made several parts designers and manufacturers around the globe ‘partners’ in this venture. With sites spanning several countries and time zones nearly every position was shared with others in opposing time zones thus allowing design and manufacture to occur 24 hours a day equalling a savings of a full year of production time!

Boeing introduced the Global Collaborative Environment (GCE), a set of computer and networking capabilities made available via the Web to every member of the 787 team, no matter what their location. Cutting edge 3D CAD programs were distributed to all participating partners to ensure consistency in design, and regular virtual communication was built into the strategy from the start. Most importantly however, a global culture of collaboration was initiated by having the multipe organizations involved in the 787’s development as co-designers and producers rather than mere suppliers to support the integrity of the process – every participant had a share in the sucess of the Dreamliner.

There were of course road blocks, including material shortages leading to delayed production that had better global monitoring protocols been put in place could have been avoided. But, ultimately that is part of the process. For a first attempt Boeing’s global collaboration effort has become a model for other organizational collaborations.

Are You Leading Creative Collaborations?

Posted on August 10, 2009 by John

I just finished reading Organizing Genius by Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman and was impressed by the frankness with which they approached organizing creative collaboration. So often when deconstructing successful collaborations the ‘needs’ tend to overshadow the equally important ‘need nots’. Bennis and Biederman however extract a series of ‘take home lessons’ from several case studies of successful and not so successful group collaborations.

One of the stand out lessons highlighted in the summary of Organizing Genius is that “In Great Groups the right person has the right job.” This lesson highlights the faulted belief of many organizations that people are interchangeable. Bennis and Biederman spend a great deal of time detailing the importance of not assigning people with unique talents to positions that are not suited to these talents. It is a cardinal mistake in organizing collaboration to try to fit people into roles they aren’t appropriate for just to satisfy an organizational need.

Included in this lesson is also the importance of having the right leader for the group. This is not a unique notion as several works on successful collaboration and organizational structure have outlined the qualities needed to be a collaborative leader. The distinction made in Organizing Genius is the exploration of several specific leadership qualities that squelch creative collaboration.

“Many projects never transcend mediocrity because their leaders suffer from the Hollywood syndrome. This is the arrogant and misguided belief that power is more important than talent. It is the too common view that everyone should be so grateful for a role in a picture or any other job that he or she should be willing to do whatever is asked, even if it’s dull or demeaning. When the person and the task are properly matched, the work can proceed with passion.”

One of the fundamental rules of successful collaboration is transparency and Bennis and Berderman practice it to the letter in Organizing Genius.

Gaming for Learning

Posted on July 2, 2009 by John

At Kingbridge we host conversation forums on collaboration topics with global relevance. In 2007 we hosted Game Change a forum focused on immersive and experiential learning through emergent media. We convened a community of interest including leading experts from academia, business and technology to accelerate the convergence of revolutionary technologies with the science of pedagogy. Gaming in particular has proven to be a force of change in the way people learn today. It has already proven effective in many technical and skill building applications such as surgical training, NASA education and even military training.

One of our partners in design and execution of Game Change was Anne DeMarle, Director of the Emergent Media Centre at Champlain College in Vermont. Anne, in collaboration with the United Nations and The Population Media Centre, is now venturing beyond technical applications of gaming, towards gaming for behavioural change with the UNFPA Game to Prevent Violence Against Women project in Cape Town, South Africa (You can follow the project’s research and development through the team’s blog).

This shift in gaming for behavioural and social change will dramatically change the landscape of social learning. Group dynamics training in the workplace and social change orgainzations across the globe will be able to adopt this new avenue for experiential learning. Particularly, with computer based games the reach of the Internet will allow smaller groups to reach a much greater proportion of the global population resulting in a profound shift in awareness.

We will be watching for these advancements and keep you posted!

Collaboration in Education?

Posted on June 23, 2009 by John

It occured to me today to do some research into what the public education system is doing to better educate children to be more collaborative. Surprisingly – then again perhaps not – I found next to nothing! There are a plethora of initiatives and papers written on fostering collaboration amongst departments and teachers but distrubingly little on educating students in this area.

The education system is highly individualistic. You are rewarded for standing out, for being an exceptional individual and for personal achievment. I’m not for a moment claiming that these are negative traits or that students shouldn’t be rewarded for their personal abilities, I only argue that there should also be some incentive to collaborate with fellow students as well.

I think we will all agree that group projects were a dreaded proposition in school. You were assigned a group, assigned a topic and told to go to it and the entire group regardless of who did what was given the same grade. The individualized point based system does not offer any incentive to collaborate in this situation- especially for the overachiever in the group who inevitably does everything. As we have discussed in past posts, for collaboration to be effective (at any age) there are conditions that need to be met to make it work, you can’t just throw an assignment at a group and say collaborate – poof! It just doesn’t happen that way.

Perhaps we could avoid our current situation of needing to ‘teach’ our organizational leaders how to collaborate in an increasingly ‘flat’ world if the education system was designed to reward collaborative behaviour in addition to individual achievment.

I would welcome any comments or insights you have on this topic.

TED 2009

Posted on February 27, 2009 by John

I’ve just returned from the 25th Anniversary TED Conference (Ideas Worth Spreading) in Long Beach, California. For the non-cognoscenti, TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design” and involves 4 days of presentations from leaders, and I mean leaders, in those fields. Presenters this year included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Daniel Liebskin and lots of giants whose qualification is that they are really good at something, they are eloquent in telling stories or describing it, and they are passionate about their topic. They’re not selling, they’re sharing. This is the big Daddy of a whole genre of meetings it has spawned: Idea City, Aspen Idea Festival, Business Innovation Factory, PopTech, etc. The founder of TED is Richard Saul Wurman, an architect by training who now calls himself an “Information Architect” (he’s authored a book of that name along with 100s of others that focus on creating understanding in many different areas Air Jordan 13 Retro. Google his name). Wurman called it his personal dinner party. The audience is more important than the speakers. And the breaks are nice and long so the participants can really engage.

I’ve gone to quite a few, and the format has changed a bit, but the principle is the same; bringing awesomely knowledgeable, eloquent and passionate people together can stimulate and inspire participants. It can truly raise the bar new balance 642. Many leading companies send some executives to attend (it costs 6 grand, there were 1600 people and it’s mostly sold out for next year). Some innovative companies are creating their own versions internally.

There are some interesting lessons here in this time of great stress and trauma cheap trainers nike air max. We will solve these problems. But we will do it with great and innovative collaboration with people who are stimulated and inspired

Kingbridge Conference Centre and Institute

Open Minds and Expand Thinking "The paradox of real collaboration is that it is not about getting the best minds together – it's about creating a New Mind Set."

Category Archives: Innovation

Collaborative Culture + Tools + Strategies = Value

Are You Leading Creative Collaborations?

Collaboration in Education?

TED 2009