The Culture of Collaboration

Collaborative Road Code

I travel a lot in developing countries where staying alive on the road requires adhering to a sort of collaborative road code. Since roads are often single or double lane and narrow, a collaborative road code has evolved that represents more than etiquette. The idea is to maximize resources.

In the U.S., when a car wants to pass, too often another car speeds up to block the way. In developing countries, this form of competition rarely manifests itself. Drivers are more likely to collaborate. So when a car wishing to pass moves into the lane with oncoming traffic, cars in both lanes move to the shoulder and make a path for the passing car. This is split-second collaboration in which people who may never have met join together for a common goal—staying alive. When road code collaboration fails to happen, cars collide.

Similarly, companies that fail to collaborate are on collision courses. The fatalities are, at least initially, customers. Customers increasingly expect vendors to collaborate. This means sales and marketing must move in sync. It also means that customers receive integrated, coordinated messages rather than multiple contacts from people in different silos unwilling to collaborate and unaware that colleagues are contacting the same customers..

Companies refusing to collaborate first lose customers and ultimately may lose market share. Survival increasingly requires collaboration whether we’re on the road in any country or doing business locally or globally.

KPIX-TV Story on Collaboration

I’m surprised and pleased that KPIX-TV Channel 5, the CBS-owned station in San Francisco, has taken an interest in collaboration. Maybe the topic has wider interest than I thought.

KPIX-TV is running a story on its web site about The Culture of Collaboration book. The KPIX-TV story is that two San Francisco Bay Area companies and one non-profit organization are among the collaborative companies included in my book. The story describes how Industrial Light & Magic, DreamWorks Animation (which has a division near San Francisco) and the Myelin Repair Foundation achieve impressive results through collaboration.

I really admire the Myelin Repair Foundation for changing the culture of medical research. MRF is getting scientists who might normally compete for limited grant money to collaborate. MRF’s goal is on track to reduce the time-to-a-cure for multiple sclerosis from about twenty years to five. Talk about creating value through collaboration…

Education and Collaboration

Does collaboration begin in the playground?

New York City’s Commissioner of Parks Adrian Benepe thinks so. That’s why the city is partnering with Rockwell Group Architecture and Design to develop a prototype “Imagination Playground.” The idea is to encourage interaction, social play and collaboration. Gone are the monkey bars and seesaws, which child psychologists increasingly believe develop physical skills at the expense of social and interactive skills.

The prototype playground at New York’s South Street Seaport is designed to “suggest options” and provide a flexible environment for many types of play, rather than prescribed activities.  The environment includes what designers call the “raw materials of creativity.” These include such items as sand and water, blocks, buckets, shovels, and a wheelbarrow. Using an idea first implemented in Europe, trained adults called play workers act as facilitators. The city expects to ultimately transform many of New York’s playgrounds into Imagination Playgrounds.

The Imagination Playground echoes the trend in companies to create gathering spaces where people feel comfortable sharing ideas. This helps break down barriers among functions, levels and departments. This, in turn, increases collaboration. Instilling collaborative culture in the playground will likely enhance collaboration in tomorrow’s workplace.

IndustryWeek Features The Culture of Collaboration

IndustryWeek, which provides excellent targeted content to the manufacturing sector, is featuring The Culture of Collaboration book this week. Besides the author Q&A that appears on its web site, IndustryWeek is pushing the content to more than 30,000 email newsletter subscribers. I appreciate IndustryWeek’s interest in the book and the topic.

The Q&A gave me an opportunity to hit on some of the book’s central themes including the shift to real-time collaboration and the move away from the pass-along approach to work and decision-making. IndustryWeek asked me about Six Sigma’s role in collaboration and how to build trust among multicultural collaborators. And I used The Dow Chemical Company as an example of how Six Sigma has enhanced the collaborative culture. I also described how Dow uses tools to extend—rather than create—its collaborative culture.

Dow uses over 300 collaborative rooms called iRooms. These rooms link Dow people in forty-three countries via an IP network carrying video, voice and data. The iRooms provide a range of capabilities including Polycom videoconferencing, audio conferencing, shared digital whiteboard and application sharing. But the point I make in the Q&A—and in the book—is that an organization’s culture must become collaborative before tools can make a big difference.

The IndustryWeek Q&A also describes how BMW and Boeing build trust among multicultural collaborators.

Collaboration's Sullied Past

I’ve been fielding lots of calls this month from HR people who are working on realigning their organizational cultures around collaboration. Collaboration is suddenly the initiative du jour. Seizing on this trend, many marketers are positioning products as collaboration solutions. These products range from copying machines to furniture.

But collaboration wasn’t always a good word. In The United States during World War II, the word meant conspiring with the Nazis. Edwin Black has written a fascinating investigative series for The Jewish Telegraphic Agency called “Hitler’s Carmaker.” The series (registration required) describes the alleged relationship between General Motors and the Third Reich. The words collaboration, collaborate and collaborator appear repeatedly in the series and in spin-off articles that Black has written, namely the one in the January 7, 2007 edition of The San Francisco Chronicle illustrated with an iron cross with the words “GM: Collaboration with Germany was Pervasive—and Persistent.” Clearly, the connotation of collaboration in these stories is different from the word’s current meaning.

While the skeletons of collaboration’s past periodically fall out of the closet, the new positive consciousness for collaboration is significantly impacting business and society. Manufacturers are slashing time-to-market. Scientists are developing disease cures in record time. And through the use of collaborative processes and tools, we can come together in real time to solve problems and make decisions.

Ford and Toyota

Collaborating with competitors may sound like a contradiction in terms.

So why did Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally and Mark Fields, Ford’s head of operations for the Americas, meet with Toyota Chairman Fujio Cho and other top Toyota executives in Tokyo the week before Christmas? Ostensibly, the meeting was to explore environmentally-friendly technology including hybrid-electric and hydrogen fuel systems and ways that Toyota can help Ford boost manufacturing efficiency.

Ford and Toyota have a history of both competition and collaboration. In the 1930’s, Ford allowed Toyota leaders to study its production techniques. In 1950, Toyota leaders including President Eiji Toyoda (yes, the family name is spelled with a “d”) spent a few months visiting U.S. auto plants and studying production. They were particularly interested in Ford’s Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan. Subsequently, Toyota Plant Manager Taiichi Ohno developed the Toyota production system which not only includes “lean manufacturing,” but also emphasizes input from team members at all levels and functions.

Mulally, who until September ran Boeing’s commercial airplanes business, helped implement collaborative product development and manufacturing techniques at Boeing. And besides internal collaboration, Boeing collaborates extensively with competitors. Alan Mulally is undoubtedly interested in applying his collaborative instincts at Ford.

I wrote about Toyota, Boeing and Ford’s Premier Automotive Group in The Culture of Collaboration book. There are some similarities in how these companies collaborate, but also there are distinct differences. Smart organizations consider collaborating with competitors. The acid test of whether competitive collaboration makes sense is whether it creates value for all the collaborators.

Ahmet Ertegun

I’ve been thinking about Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, who died December 14 after falling backstage at a Rolling Stones concert. He was known as a music mogul who profited enormously from rhythm and blues stars including Ruth Brown and Ray Charles and rock and roll greats like The Stones and Led Zeppelin.

If there’s something called the collaborative personality, Ertegun undoubtedly had it. The son of the Turkish ambassador to the United States, he was comfortable rubbing elbows with diplomats, royalty and financiers. But he was equally at home drinking bourbon with musicians, hanging out at recording studios and punk rock dives, writing songs, and even performing. According to Wikipedia, Ertegun wrote many classic blues tunes including “Chains of Love” and “Sweet Sixteen” under the pseudonym A. Nugetre (Ertegun backwards).  Also, Ertegun shouted the chorus for Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”

As he became increasingly successful, Ertegun could have easily embraced hierarchy and the trappings of position. He could have insulated himself from the trenches. Following his passion for music, however, Ertegun effortlessly crossed boundaries and broke down barriers by moving from one scene to the next. One moment he was cutting a deal with a power broker; the next moment he was heading to a dive so he could mingle with up-and-coming artists.