The Culture of Collaboration

Interspecies Collaboration and New York Times letter

Today The New York Times published my letter to the editor headlined “A Monkey With Good Taste.” The letter comments on the Times story on August 14 headlined “Will No Cage Hold Him? Monkey Again Escapes Zoo,” which describes the adventures of a 9-year old capuchin monkey named Oliver  who has escaped twice from the Tupelo Buffalo Park and Zoo in Mississippi. Here’s the text of my letter:

Image: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

To the Editor:

Re "Will No Cage Hold Him? Monkey Again Escapes Zoo" (news article, Aug. 14):

Oliver, the 9-year-old capuchin monkey who has escaped twice from the Tupelo Buffalo Park and Zoo in Mississippi, may be sending his captors a message about diet -- and we'd all do well to take notice.

Kirk Nemechek, the zoo manager, reportedly tried luring Oliver with "chips, candy, Fruit Loops, anything." However, Oliver was spotted looting a vegetable garden. Clearly, the monkey has more sensible food preferences than his human captors. It's a reminder that the best ideas often come from beyond the usual sources.

Evan Rosen, San Francisco, Aug. 15, 2007

The last line ties in with The Culture of Collaboration. Great ideas come from all kinds of sources. For a collaborative culture to flourish, people on the front lines or the factory floor must feel comfortable contributing to key decisions. Too often, however, organizations become mired in silo syndrome, as I describe in The Culture of Collaboration book. The syndrome is that sales people rarely interact with marketing folks, marketing rarely works with R&D, and facilities almost never deals with public affairs, and so on.  

Effective organizations ensure that decisions reflect broad input regardless of department, level, region, business unit, function—and, as Oliver the Mississippi monkey has taught us, species. J

For more on Oliver and his fight for freedom, check out this excellent post on the blog called Baudrillard’s Bastard.

Hierarchy Busters Enable Collaboration

Hierarchy is a huge impediment to collaboration. In organizational cultures that emphasize hierarchy, people feel compelled to go through channels. This prevents front-line people from contributing to decisions and also discourages leaders from getting real-time, unfiltered information from the field. Smart organizations encourage collaboration across levels, functions, business units and regions.

I was glad to read in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal that SK Telecom of Korea has taken fundamental steps to reduce the role of hierarchy. Evan Ramstad writes in his "Managing" column headlined “Pulling Rank Gets Harder At One Korean Company” that SK Telecom has replaced the five ranks that employees used to address each other with one rank, manager. You can read the article here (reg. required).

I live in California, where people in business typically call each other by their first names. For somebody to call his or her boss “Director Jones” would seem absurd. But even in Silicon Valley companies with supposedly reduced hierarchies and relaxed environments, trappings of position exist such as triple-sized cubicles. In other regions, hierarchy is more pronounced. People address senior leaders as “Mr. or “Ms.” and they talk of vice presidents in hushed tones as if they might get in trouble for even uttering the names of big shots.

As growth has slowed, SK Telecom has begun encouraging more debate and input from all levels. The idea is to spark more creativity and risk-taking, which are certainly important to collaborating. South Korea’s business culture has traditionally concentrated decision-making with senior executives “to protect their power” as Ramstad notes. Clearly, SK Telecom has realized that, in Bob Dylan’s words, the times they are a-changin’ and that a hierarchical culture was costing the company money.

Other companies should take notice that reducing the role of hierarchy and instilling the culture of collaboration is in vogue—and will create value.

Collaboration and Star Culture

Collaboration requires collaborative culture. That’s the whole point of this blog. The opposite of collaborative culture is star culture, which our collective culture—particularly in the United States—perpetuates. The media is certainly complicit, because celebrity stories draw audiences. Therefore, the media has a vested interest in manufacturing stars—not just Hollywood people, but business leaders, athletes, entrepreneurs, surgeons, chefs and others. Food writers are particularly culpable, and we’ve certainly seen the celebrity craze spread to winemakers.

Now, apparently, star culture is trying to envelop tequila makers. Last Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a short article by Camper English headlined “Next big thing: Tequila bottle signings.” You can read the article here. The story begins, “Further evidence that distillers are the new rock stars…” We learn from the article that Carlos Camarena, owner and third-generation master distiller of El Tesoro Tequila, will be in San Francisco to sign autographs on $185 bottles of tequila at a liquor store.

Clearly, Mr. Camarena is not alone in contributing to the success of El Tesoro. According to El Tesoro’s web site, making tequila begins with the jimador, the person who hand picks perfectly-ripe agaves and separates the pina, the juicy blue core, from the rest of the plant. “Most other tequila producers use an automated system that processes the entire stem,” the web site notes. Next workers cut the pinas into quarters with a special ax. In the next stage, workers use the traditional method of baking the pina quarters for 36 hours and cooling them for another 36 hours. Next workers use a one-ton stone wheel called a tahona to crush the pinas, extracting their juices. There are three more steps.

The point is that many people with a variety of expertise collaborate to make El Tesoro tequila. While I appreciate the marketing benefits of Mr. Camarena signing tequila bottles during his rock star-style tour, this feeds into star culture and sends the wrong message to the public and to El Tesoro team members. Promoting the CEO as a star may produce a momentary marketing bounce, but a collaborative culture sustains greater business value than a star culture.

Why Ford Should Keep Volvo

As Ford Motor Company refocuses on its core brand and operations, media reports indicate that the company wants to offload Jaguar and Land Rover and may be willing to sell Volvo Cars. These brands comprise Ford’s premier automotive group. For the record, Ford has denied that Volvo is on the block.

Clearly, Ford faces challenges. So far in 2007, Ford’s sales are down more than 12 percent over the same period last year. And Ford has reportedly received initial bids for Jaguar and Land Rover. While Jaguar and Land Rover have been losing money, Volvo is another story. Volvo has been producing profits of $800 million to $1 billion per year, according to a July 17 story in The New York Times headlined “Ford Seeking a Future By Going Backward.” You can read the story here (registration required).

But Volvo’s value to Ford goes beyond sales and even beyond the substantial expertise in safety that the Swedish company has provided to its American parent. The greatest value Ford stands to gain from keeping Volvo is the culture of collaboration. Volvo has a highly-collaborative organizational culture in which hierarchy takes a back seat to results. When they feel strongly about key decisions, junior people are quick to challenge senior leaders.

As I mention in The Culture of Collaboration book, if Volvo’s CEO were to propose a new strategy during a meeting, a junior person would feel comfortable telling him that his ideas require further discussion. Volvo people spend considerable time reviewing, negotiating and discussing until they agree. Then the team proceeds with paced discipline. Some of Volvo’s culture is rubbing off on Ford’s other operations, particularly in Europe, as Ford “commonizes” certain parts and collaborates more across brands.

Ford, which has been stymied in part by hierarchy and lack of collaboration, should keep Volvo and make a concerted effort to apply Volvo’s collaborative principles and culture across Ford’s operations. Volvo derives its culture in part from Swedish culture which is more collaborative than the dominant culture in the United States.

While there are already efforts to integrate more collaborative tools into work styles, Ford needs to focus at least as much on culture as on tools. Meantime, Sweden is proud of Volvo and wants it back. The Swedish newspaper, Dagens Industri, reports that Volvo insiders are trying to arrange for Swedish institutional investors to buy Volvo, should Ford want to sell the unit. You can read the translated version of the story here.

One advantage Ford has is that Alan Mulally has taken the helm as President and CEO. Mulally understands the value of collaboration from running Boeing Commercial Airplanes. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I write about how Boeing has reinvented itself as a large-scale systems integrator and has shifted away from designing and building airplanes by itself. Boeing now collaborates with design and manufacturing partners to produce the 787 Dreamliner and other planes. The term I use to describe Boeing's new approach is global collaborative enterprise. Mulally should draw from his background at Boeing and from Volvo's example to transform Ford's culture into a collaborative one.