The Culture of Collaboration

Multicultural Collaboration Produces Unique Spa

Bridging cultures, particularly regional cultures, produces a broader perspective that gives collaborators an edge. In disciplines like aerospace engineering, team members trained in one country’s engineering tradition may view a creative challenge differently than their colleagues who were trained in a different country’s system. Drawing from their collective global knowledge, cross-cultural collaborators can spark synergies and create greater value. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I call this the Dynamic Dimension of Cross-Cultural Collaboration.

This dimension is alive and well at Archimedes Banya, a spa complex that opened in San Francisco last New Year’s Eve after twelve years of development and construction. People from twenty different countries collaborated on the project. Managing partner Mikhail Brodsky of Russia had the original idea. Reinhard Imhof of Switzerland led the indoor construction. Architect Sam Kwong of China developed the plans. Other partners are from countries including Korea, Israel, Germany, Japan, and Mexico.

The concept began when Brodsky, a mathematician, arrived in San Francisco from Moscow in 1989. A lover of Russian bath complexes or banyas, Brodsky was disappointed to find no such facilities in his adopted city. He longed to start a banya. In the summer of 1998, Brodsky, then a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, applied for a job as chair of the mathematics department at San Francisco State University. SFSU’s rejection sparked Brodsky’s interest in doing something significant in San Francisco while delivering on his banya dream.

Brodsky, Imhof and two other partners formed a company, and in 1999 bought a lot in India Basin near San Francisco’s former Hunters Point Shipyard. Though in an obscure neighborhood, the lot provided sweeping views of San Francisco Bay. To construct the building, Brodsky and his partners would need to recruit more partners. Like many ethnic groups living in the United States, many Russians do business only within their community. Therefore, logic would dictate engaging Russians to finance, design and build the project. But some Russians who Brodsky approached had difficulty seeing past the many roadblocks to the project ranging from building permits and location to construction costs and customer base. So, Brodsky decided to broaden his reach, involving people from as many countries as possible. The common thread was a passion for the Banya project plus mutual trust and common goals, two of the Ten Cultural Elements of Collaboration I identify in The Culture of Collaboration book.

In a departure from the command-and-control approach to business in which “stars” grab the credit, Archimedes Banya recognizes multiple contributions in much the same way Adobe Systems includes a credit role in its software products. When I visited Archimedes Banya recently, the first thing I noticed was a wall near the entrance listing the names of the multicultural collaborators who turned the concept into reality. Also apparent was the amazing art ranging from mosaics depicting bathing traditions to murals and inlaid ceiling tiles. Including art in public bathing facilities is a tradition dating back to the Roman Empire.

Artist Vadim Puyandaev of Kazakhstan collaborated with Brodsky to evoke the right atmosphere. “I
wanted very simple, clear images of emotion,” says Brodsky. And the images also reflect action. “In a Russian banya, people move. It’s an active place. It’s not just sitting and sweating.” The complex is geared to socializing and offers facilities ranging from a rooftop sun deck with a San Francisco Bay view to private reception rooms replete with bars and kitchens.

The Banya offers a spa experience reflecting the cultural melting pot. I checked out two Russian saunas, the Finish dry sauna, the steam room, warm soaking pools, cold plunge and relaxation room. After loosening up in the various saunas, I experienced a Russian venika platza treatment that involved a tall Moldovan fellow clad in a towel and sweat-soaked Banya hat brushing and lashing bunches of Latvian birch leaves on me to increase circulation.

Following this, I laid on a table as an attendant scrubbed me with an exfoliating soap and then rinsed me with buckets of warm water. Then my muscles were relaxed enough for a massage from a masseuse from the United States. Afterwards, I headed to the café upstairs for pelmini or Russian dumplings, stuffed cabbage, hearty Russian beef soup, fresh-sqeezed juices spiked with kombucha, which is fermented tea and housemade kvass, a non-alcoholic beer made from fermented rye bread.

An ambitious spa project that began as one person’s vision ultimately reflects the combined vision and execution of multiple people from many cultures. Collaboration involves marrying talents that are worth far more collectively than individually. Brodsky describes himself as a “starter.” But to make the project a reality, he collaborated with Imhof, a “finisher.” Because of the Swiss tradition of quality workmanship, Imhof shared Brodsky’s values of using the best materials and constructing a banya for the long term. The concept of “starters” and “finishers” has broad ramifications. A starter may have an incredible idea, but creating a company that produces substantial value may require collaborating with a finisher.

As we collaborate, we can create awesome value by engaging and involving people with multiple talents and backrounds and, yes, from multiple cultures. The Dynamic Dimension of Cross-Cultural Collaboration delivers results otherwise unattainable.

 

Cross-Sector Collaboration for Sustainable Development

Accomplishing massive goals requires massive collaboration—far beyond collaborating within an organization or within an industry or among government agencies.

Making meaningful progress on issues including eradicating global poverty and protecting the global ecosystem requires collaboration among governments, non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), private industry, farmers, indigenous peoples and unaffiliated individuals with ideas. This cross-sector collaboration is driving the agenda for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development which happens this June 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The conference, dubbed Rio+20, marks the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The 1992 conference established the Rio Declaration, which includes 27 principles mostly addressing sustainable economic development.

Last Friday, at the invitation of the United States Department of State, I attended a planning meeting for Rio+20 at the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The purpose was to distill ideas from cross-sector collaborators on how to bridge connection technologies with sustainable development. In a brainstorming session on “sustainable economic growth,” we tackled wasted talent and connectivity.  Think of the many people in developing countries with talent and ideas who have no outlet to connect and collaborate. This is our collective loss as global citizens until we tap that talent.

The world’s wasting of talent in developing countries is analogous to the command-and-control organization that pays “knowledge workers” to think and pays everybody else to carry out orders. See my January 11, 2011 column for BusinessWeek.com on this topic. Such an organization squanders talent. This is because people throughout the organization—from the loading dock to the call center—have knowledge to contribute.

One participant noted that wasted connectivity involves using the Internet frivolously, perhaps for pirating movies and other content, rather than for working together to eradicate poverty, create new markets and protect the environment. Similarly, wasted connectivity within organizations involves using networks and tools for chatter rather than for developing and producing products and services.

Since the 1992 Rio Declaration, the Internet has grown from less than 16 million users to over 2 billion users, according to internetworldstats.com. Mobile phone users have grown from less than 23 million in 1992 to more than 6 billion in 2011, according to nationmaster.com. The current level of connectivity creates an opportunity for a more distributed, peer-to-peer (read inclusive) approach in collaborating for sustainable development. 

Old models of cross-sector collaboration were minimally effective, because they involved “decision makers” or “thought leaders” shaping ideas and developing solutions which they would hand down to people impacted by the decisions. Now people in developing countries without affiliations can shape ideas with ministers and private sector leaders globally. Well, at least this is technically possible.

As important to cross-sector collaboration as global connectivity and enabling technologies is a cultural shift in which governments, NGO’s and private industry embrace input from people regardless of affiliation or location. This is analogous to organizations adopting more collaborative cultures and tools so that people far from the home office or from executive corridors can participate in making decisions. The State Department has chalked up success with an emerging collaborative culture and tools including Secretary Clinton’s Sounding Board. For more on this, see my September 14, 2010 post.

One of the people hashing out ideas in the sustainable development brainstorming session was Rio+20 Secretary General Sha Zukang, who is also the UN Under Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs. Zukang, who demonstrated particular talent at defining and outlining sustainable development issues, brushed against a live wire as the workshop concluded: intellectual property. The brainstorm was exactly three weeks after the collapse of U.S. House of Representatives support for the Stop Online Privacy Act and Senate support for the PROTECT IP Act backed by media and entertainment companies and opposed by Google and Wikipedia among other online interests.

Zukang described the need to “find a balance” between protecting intellectual property and disseminating information. This balance impacts cross-sector collaboration in that people in developing countries often lack access to the same information accessible to their collaborators in developed countries. Providing affordable access will help level the playing field. Contrary to some viewpoints, collaboration—cross-sector or otherwise—by no means requires eliminating or dismantling intellectual property protection. IP protection creates incentives for people and organizations to collaboratively develop and produce products and services.

Cross-sector collaboration takes collaboration beyond organizational and sector boundaries to create value on a global scale.

Slow Money Collaboration

In a cavernous, nearly empty room above the Readers Café & Bookstore in Building C of San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center, Woody Tasch sits at a corner table by a lone window looking out on the Bay. It’s the eve of the Slow Money National Gathering, and the organization’s chairman is putting the finishing touches on his opening remarks. He must fend off criticism that his model is “fantasy economics” and impress on the three hundred investors and five hundred or so other attendees that our industrialized food system has become as imbalanced as the financial system was during the depths of the 2008 crisis.

Woody, a former New York venture capitalist who now lives off the grid near Taos, New Mexico, wants to change how we finance food businesses as dramatically as he has changed his own life and career. In the 1980’s, Woody worked as a self-proclaimed “small-time VC” making healthcare investments for Prince Ventures, owned by the Prince family of Chicago.  Ultimately, he transformed himself from a mathematics-driven investor to one with a social conscience with stops along the way as treasurer for a foundation and chairman of an angel investor network called Investors Circle.

“It’s no longer about how much we can take off the table for ourselves,” Woody insists. After getting involved with the global Slow Food movement, the antithesis of fast food in its promotion of sustainability, Woody and his collaborators sought to address the difficulty many sustainable food businesses have getting financing. “It hit me that patient capital plus slow food equals slow money,” he explains.

Woody and his colleagues are enabling microfinance for the food industry and, since 2009, have sparked $6 million in micro loans. Slow Money links growers, restaurants, organic farm suppliers and other food entrepreneurs with consumers willing to lend businesses a few thousand—or even a few hundred—dollars.

“This is not a typical fiduciary model,” Woody explains. “What we are going to be proving over the next decade is that collective intelligence and local knowledge of groups of individuals effectively collaborating will produce positive outcomes both in arithmetic and impact on the community.” In other words, investors can do good and simultaneously get a modest return on investment. At the moment, 3 percent a year in interest is typical.

Slow Money is evolving from advocating individual investments to promoting investment clubs. Compared to angel investing, for which investors must have assets of at least a million dollars or a yearly salary of at least $200,000, the investment club barrier to entry is much lower. As a model, Slow Food organizers point to the No Small Potatoes Investment Club, which provides low-interest loans to Maine farmers and food producers. So far, fifteen investors have each put up five thousand dollars.

After talking with Woody, I stop by the rehearsal for the entrepreneur pitches. These five-minute presentations are not unlike those for technology companies at venture capital conferences. But there is something perhaps more wholesome and genuine and, yes, rougher around the edges, about these pitches.  Some of these food businesspeople have never before spoken at an event. George Weld, owner of both Egg restaurant in Brooklyn and a farm in Oak Hill, New York, speaks of the need to curb the “recurring alienation between rural and urban that plagues the food economy.”

One of the better-received pitches comes from Dr. Hubert Karreman, a veterinarian and founder of Bovinity Health. Hubert’s company manufactures natural alternatives to antibiotics for livestock. He clicks through financials including $250,000 in sales in 2011, provides market share projections and leaves the rehearsal audience whispering "he's gonna get funded."

Slow Food’s goal is for a million Americans to be investing one percent of their money in local food systems within a decade. Meantime, Woody Tasch offers his prescription for the economy. “What we need is rebalancing. Right now we’re lurching towards the global race to the bottom. It’s buy low, sell high, GMO [genetically modified organism], CDO [collateralized debt obligation] capitalism. We have to compete for cheap labor around the planet subsidized by cheap oil and ignoring the medium and long-term social and environmental impact.” Collaborating requires a longer-term focus, and Slow Money is helping enable that evolution.

Non-Profit Collaboration Creating Value

The cost of internal competition plagues almost every company. But the private sector is by no means the only sector that competes. With limited funding, particularly during the Great Recession and the fledgling Great Recovery, non-profit organizations have increasingly competed for shrinking grant dollars. And while the for-profit sector may regard the non-profit sector as populated by less-competitive do-gooders, competition in the non-profit arena can rival that of private industry.

For private-sector companies, competing in the marketplace furthers objectives, namely to increase revenue and market share.  In contrast, non-profit organizations compromise their objectives when they compete with other non-profits that share their mission.  The cynical among us might believe that the first goal of some non-profits is preserving themselves to employ administrators and staff and that their service mission is secondary. Let’s assume, though, that the primary goal of most non-profits is to further their mission. In that case, collaboration among non-profits creates far greater value.

Some foundations have developed programs to encourage non-profit organizations to collaborate. The Myelin Repair Foundation, which is working to cure multiple sclerosis, has recruited five principal investigators from different universities. With input from the researchers, MRF developed a Collaborative Research Process, which addresses everything from tools to incentives. You can read more about MRF in my July 16, 2009 post. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded a collaborative research consortia comprising 165 investigators globally to accelerate HIV Vaccine Development. For both MRF and the Gates Foundation, collaboration is reducing time-to-a-cure.

Foundations are by no means the only funders favoring and, in some cases, insisting on collaboration among non-profits that they support. In some cases, funders use a heavy hand in forcing organizations to share resources or join forces. But ordering people to collaborate misses the point. The most successful non-profit collaborations are those in which non-profits and their funders collaborate to achieve common goals.

This is exactly what’s happening with San Francisco’s Tenderloin Technology Lab, which provides computer and Internet access plus instruction to disadvantaged people looking for jobs. Because most jobs require online applications, people struggling with keeping a roof over their heads are often shut out of the job market. The lab is a collaboration among St. Anthony Foundation, San Francisco Network Ministries and the University of San Francisco. Beginning in 2001, USF was providing computers and other support to the two organizations’ separate computer labs. As demand rose with the economic downturn in 2008, USF collaborated with the two organizations to open a combined Tenderloin Technology Lab. The lab now serves a hundred people a day.

Last Thursday, I dropped into the Tenderloin Tech Lab as the collaborating organizations were unveiling an updated space. Rev. Stephen Privett, a Jesuit priest and president of the University of San Francisco, described the collaboration among UCSF, St. Anthony Foundation and San Francisco Network Ministries as three legs of a stool. “Without the three legs, the stool doesn’t stand. We can get a lot more done together than we can separately.” I chatted with Craig Newmark, founder and customer service representative, of craigslist, which supports the lab. (Yes. Craig’s business card includes both titles.) Craig praised the lab for delivering real results to real people. “One thing you learn doing customer service is what’s real,” he insisted.

Shifting from competing to collaborating can create substantial value for non-profits and the people they serve. “It involves putting down our egos and saying we can do this better,” according to Cissie Bonini, director of programs for St. Anthony Foundation, which began feeding San Francisco’s needy in 1950. And the private sector can take a cue from this non-profit collaboration. When we put our egos aside, we can share more, internally compete less—and create far greater value.

Incenting the Intelligence Community to Collaborate

Instilling collaborative organizational culture often requires changing the recognition and reward system. But internally-competitive entrenched interests will undoubtedly resist changes to how the organization pays and promotes people. Also expect resistance from people who believe there’s no reason to incent people, because they should do as they’re told.

 

Tuesday, during James Clapper’s confirmation hearing as director of national intelligence, Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan) asked Clapper why it’s necessary to incent the intelligence community to collaborate. Levin was referring to Clapper’s pre-hearing questionnaire in which he apparently wrote that, if confirmed, he would achieve progress in information sharing by the “disciplined application” of incentives—both rewards and consequences. “Why do we need incentives,” Levin asked “Why don’t we just need a directive from the President by executive order, for instance? Otherwise, why do we need incentives, rewards and consequences?”

 

Clapper responded, “One way of inducing change in culture is to provide rewards for those who collaborate and, I suppose, penalties for those who don’t.” He added, “And obviously directives are effective too.” You can watch Levin’s questions and Clapper’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Community on C-SPAN here (counter 1:37:06). Incidentally, collaborative organizations achieve more with the carrot than the stick. Penalties for failure to collaborate are anti-collaborative in that they spread fear. Instead, reward and recognize collaborators; then others will get the message and start changing their behavior.

 

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the intelligence community has struggled to shift from a culture of competition and information hoarding among agencies to a collaborative culture in which people share data and information. For background on this, see my December 30, 2009 post. I have advised senior leaders of the intelligence community about the transition. On the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, I gave a speech to the community sponsored by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

 

In the speech, I highlighted four areas. One was aligning recognition and reward systems to encourage collaboration. ODNI, the entity formed after September 11, has been driving collaboration among the sixteen agencies that comprise the intelligence community. Some agencies have balked, ostensibly for security reasons, about sharing their data across the community. While security concerns are valid, perceived loss of control and inter-agency rivalry also play a role.

 

The leaders whom I’ve advised implicitly understand the value of collaboration in developing better intelligence and thwarting terrorists. They also understand institutional resistance. James Clapper currently serves as Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and formerly served as the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). This multi-agency intelligence background gives Clapper an advantage in guiding the shift in the intelligence community’s culture in that an insider committed to change has more credibility than an outsider does. Clapper must draw on his alliances and relationships across the community to help break down barriers among agencies and adopt collaborative culture.  

California Academy of Sciences Collaborates to Discover Mammals

Collaboration requires long-term thinking. That’s where universities, libraries, museums, and research organizations often eclipse for-profit companies. Pressure to generate quarterly returns can compromise long-term value, particularly at publicly-held companies. With less pressure to deliver immediate results, research-driven, non-profit organizations can focus more on creating long-term value. Maybe it’s a new take on history or a scientific discovery. Regardless, the work product may remain relevant hundreds of years from now.

 

That said, competition internally and within fields of study can prove more ferocious in the research arena than in corporations—whether it’s competing for limited grant dollars or for publishing articles in academic journals. Like corporations, the best research organizations mitigate unhealthful competition by thinking and acting towards creating long-term value. In this realm, long-term value can extend into eternity.

 

Knowing the collaborative mindset of the California Academy of Sciences, I accepted an invitation to attend a briefing and preview tour last Thursday of the Academy’s new Extreme Mammals exhibit, which runs through September 12, 2010. For background on architectural collaboration in the Academy’s building design, see my February 17, 2009 post.

 

San Francisco is the Extreme Mammals exhibit’s second stop after opening at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.  Over tea and cupcakes, I had a compelling pre-tour conversation with Greg Farrington, the self-proclaimed “chief penguin” or executive director of the Academy. Farrington, a chemist, is the former president of Lehigh University. “You might think everything in the world has been discovered at least twice, but it hasn’t,” Farrington noted. Touring the exhibit confirmed Farrington’s point.

  

  
The exhibit features extinct, living and recently-discovered mammals including the striped rabbit identified as a new species in 1999 and the gray faced sengi or giant elephant shrew discovered in 2008. Galen Rathbun,  
a behavioral biologist at the Academy and Francesco Rovero of the Trento Museum of Sciences in Italy and other collaborators discovered the gray-faced sengi in the Ndundulu Forest in Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains. It was the first new species of giant elephant shrew discovered in 126 years.

 

Rathbun accompanied us on the tour and later took a small group behind several locked doors to view a collection of shrew specimens shelved inside fireproof cabinets in the Academy’s research collections. The collections include 26 million specimens of animals, insects, reptiles, birds, plants, fish and gems. Rathbun noted that several collaborating research institutions had loaned shrew specimens to the Academy for research.

 

One participant asked birds and mammals curator Jack Dumbacher if we could look inside the special cabinet that contains extinct animals and so-called “type specimens” of newly-discovered mammals. Dumbacher obliged, and we walked down the aisle past many rows of cabinets until we reached a shorter cabinet set apart from the others. As Jack unlocked the cabinet, he unleashed a ripe odor along with a feast for the eyes of preserved birds, rodents, and bats. The treasures also include the largest egg in the world from the elephant bird of Madagascar. A model of the egg is on display in the Academy’s public area.

 

Back to the public galleries and the Extreme Mammals exhibit. Scientists and administrators from global institutions have collaborated on the show, which the American Museum of Natural History organized. Collaborators shared knowledge, pieced together skeletons and gathered skulls, fossils and taxidermy specimens for Extreme Mammals. The result is a compelling experience for visitors who gain insight into the extreme variety of mammals and the awesome biodiversity of our planet.

Collaborating out of the Downturn Focus of Blog Talk Radio Interview

I discussed collaboration with Zane Safrit yesterday morning on his hour-long Blog Talk Radio show. You can listen to the show here.

 

When he was CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited, Zane masterfully used blogging as a marketing and business tool. His small company, based in a rural Iowa community, adopted collaborative culture and tools as an advantage in a marketplace saturated with large players. Zane is a super-capable, collaborative leader.

 

Our conversation ranged from common denominators and motivators for companies wanting to adopt collaborative culture and the biggest mistakes companies make. We also discussed the need to replace star-oriented culture and the role of collaboration in an economic recovery.

 

Zane asked me how companies can balance the need for collaboration with the need for consistency, routines and procedures. It’s a thoughtful question that organizations should consider. I explained that it’s necessary to include collaboration in policies and procedures, so that people are consistently collaborative J.

 

Towards the end of the show, we focused more on the economy. Zane asked me about the biggest trends regarding collaborative culture over the next two years. Here’s what I said:

 

People are going to realize what collaboration is and what it isn’t, and I absolutely believe that collaboration will help deliver us from the downturn. We need to abandon the herd mentality. I blogged about this on March 15, 2009 with a call to action. You can read the post here.

 

There’s a misconception that collaboration is about running with the herd. Real collaboration involves constructive confrontation….coming together to hash out issues, make decisions, improve processes and develop products and services. And it’s much broader than companies. It’s about governments collaborating across agencies and departments, with citizens and with other governments. It’s about people working together to create value in our communities.

 

It’s about changing education so that we’re developing collaborators. The more educated people are, the more competitive they are. Our educational system beats collaboration out of us. That’s changing.

 

I’ve lived and worked in smaller communities where many people get jobs right out of high school. They’re used to working together to cook dinner at the VFW or help neighbors repair tornado damage. It’s this type of attitude that we need to nourish in our country, in higher education, in companies, in and among governments. Coming out of this downturn, star culture and internal competition are unaffordable. Collaboration will drive the recovery.

 

“How will that change our economy, culture, country?” Zane asked me.

I responded:

 

It’ll be back to basics…working together to create real value. The mortgage mess, the financial collapse were rooted in artificial value. We gave the keys to the country and the economy to star competitors… the best and the brightest who went to top schools and competed for themselves without considering the bigger picture. Now we need to entrust our companies, governments and communities to collaborators. And we’re going to build long-term, sustainable value.

Architectural Collaboration and the California Academy of Sciences

As I gazed at the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and other amazingly-clear star formations last Thursday evening, there was no distraction from city lights or from the fog that often defines San Francisco.

I was sitting in the world’s largest digital planetarium, which uses real-time data from NASA plus immersive video technology. The NASA data accurately represents the current night sky, and the immersive video technology makes visitors feel like they’re travelling through space.

 

The star-studded evening program was a departure from the usual daytime planet presentation in honor not only of Charles Darwin’s 200^th birthday last Thursday evening, but also of the launch of NightLife at the California Academy of Sciences. NightLife is a weekly Thursday evening event featuring bars, food plus all of the Academy exhibits. 

 

I walked, Lagunitas India Pale Ale in hand, through the recently-reopened museum and marveled at the four-story glass rainforest with its colorful poison frogs and Borneo bats and the graceful movement of jellyfish in the Steinhart aquarium, which includes thirty-eight thousand animals. Aside from official certifications that the Academy is the “greenest” museum on the planet, I found the museum’s “Living Roof” stunning and unique.   The 197-thousand foot roof features seven hills containing many native plant species. The concept was to blend the building’s environment with that of Golden Gate Park and to reduce the Academy’s energy needs by creating oxygen, capturing rainwater and avoiding the heat-trapping disadvantages of tar-and-asphalt roofs.

 

After a decade of planning and $500 million in expenses, the Academy reopened last fall to much fanfare.

At the time, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an interesting story by John Cote that described how the Academy’s board of directors chose an architectural team for the project. By July of 1999, the board had reportedly narrowed its search to five finalists. According to the story, a British architect arrived with five associates, two trays of slides and detailed mockups of two specific designs. He spoke for an hour and a half.

 

When it was Italian architect Renzo Piano’s turn, he began by rearranging the room chairs in a circle. He then used a blank pad to sketch as he listened to board members describe the importance of nature, biodiversity, and naturalistic forms. Ultimately, Piano and his team got the job because of his collaborative approach. Rather than simply presenting options to the board, Piano engaged and involved his client. The result reflects broad input and the collaborative sessions between architect and client.

 

Too often in organizations, people make decisions in a vacuum. Those decisions are handed down to people who must implement them. This causes a chasm between the decision makers and the decision implementers and many others who are impacted by decisions. Then there’s a lot of talk like “They want us to ….” Or “they’ve decided that we’re supposed to….” So, an “us and them” mentality develops and sucks the motivation, innovation and value out of an organization.

 

In contrast, collaborative organizations make decisions by involving and engaging people across levels, functions, business units and regions. When people have a stake in decisions, “us and them” dissolves. I’ve written in The Culture of Collaboration book and in this blog about the interplay of culture, environment and tools in sparking collaboration. In his initial session with the Academy’s board, Renzo Piano used all three. He changed the culture by involving the board in the conceptual process. He redesigned the environment by rearranging the rooms chairs in a circle. And he used a blank sketch pad as a collaborative tool.

 

It’s a reminder—one that we stress in The Culture of CollaborationÒ Workshop—that collaborative culture can begin with a team gathering or a spontaneous exchange. In the case of the California Academy of Sciences, the result is an extraordinarily functional and “green” architectural masterpiece.

Cisco, Tata and Taj Hotels Bringing Telepresence to Smaller Companies and the Public

As I walked into Cisco’s new public telepresence suites yesterday at the WebEx tower in Santa Clara, California, I was greeted by a video receptionist. “Hi, may I help you?,” the receptionist said. I immediately sensed professional intimacy, because of the quality of the visual experience. “I’m here for a Cisco telepresence session,” I explained. The receptionist then invited me to help myself to the catered breakfast in the outer lobby. I then grabbed a cup of milky, cardamom-spiced Indian coffee, which hinted at the global nature of what was about to happen.

 

Down the corridor were several public telepresence rooms of different sizes. Cisco people including Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of the emerging technology group, were in one room with Peter Quinlan, director of telepresence managed services for Tata Communications. I was in another room with the research director of The Culture of CollaborationÒ Institute plus a few journalists and analysts.

 

Joining from his home in Bangalore, India was Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s chief globalization officer, presumably conducting his last meeting of the day at 11:00 p.m. Bangalore time. In London, Vinod Kumar, chief operating officer of Tata Communications, and his colleagues participated. From Boston, Taj Boston Hotel General Manager David Gibbons joined us from the Taj’s new telepresence public room. From New York, an industry analyst was also connected.  So, our group spanned the globe—six connections in four time zones. However, we felt almost as if we were sitting across the table from each other.

 

Cisco and its partners are challenging the notion that telepresence is an exclusive tool for Fortune 500 executives. “We have found that the largest users of telepresence are the mid-management level in our organization,” says Kumar of Tata Communications, a subsidiary of the $62.5 billion Tata Group. If you’ve been to India, you know that the Tata name is everywhere—on motor vehicles, industrial equipment, and even tea. In recent years,Tata has become a global company.

 

Tata is a highly-strategic relationship for Cisco in that besides its communications business, the Mumbai, India-based conglomerate has holdings in engineering and building, services, chemicals and consumer products. Taj Hotels, a Tata company, is providing public telepresence rooms in Boston, London, Bangalore, Mumbai and other cities throughout India. “Small and medium-sized businesses will be the greatest users,” predicted Gibbons of the Taj Boston Hotel. There will be a hundred public TelePresence (note that Cisco capitalizes the “P” in its trademarked product name) suites globally by late 2009, according to Cisco. Hourly fees currently range from $299 for a 1-2 participant room to $899 for an 18-participant room.

 

Unlike office buildings that typically close nights, weekends and holidays, hotels are open 24/7 every day of the year and provide perhaps the best opportunity to maximize a global business environment through pay-per-use telepresence. It’s a holiday in your city, but you need to connect intimately with colleagues in another region where it’s a regular work day? Hotel-based telepresence addresses that issue.

 

Significant from a technical perspective, Cisco and Tata are providing secure, encrypted conversation through any company’s firewall. “This has not been possible before with any technology,” noted Marthin De Beer of Cisco. Tata Communications delivers converged voice, video and data over Internet protocol (IP). Tata’s strategy is to get companies used to telepresence through public rooms and work on migrating some companies to invest in their own telepresence rooms.

Cisco says it has integrated 300 telepresence systems into its own operations globally. Some senior leaders including De Beer have their own systems, and Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s chief globalization officer, joined yesterday’s telepresence session from his home office in Bangalore, India.

 

While much has been made about videoconferencing and telepresence reducing long-distance travel, these tools can also reduce local travel and commuting. De Beer noted that he saves an hour per day by using telepresence instead of driving to meetings on and around Cisco’s campus. As telepresence becomes more widespread, people will gain the opportunity to work globally while reconnecting with their physical—as opposed to virtual—communities. Telepresence will also allow for better work/life balance and potentially take social responsibility to the next level.

 

After the session, as I said goodbye to the video receptionist, I wondered whether receptionists in Mumbai, Manila and Montego Bay will soon be greeting visitors in corporate lobbies in Memphis, Modesto and Milwaukee. Well, Cisco’s Marthin De Beer, who is based at the company’s headquarters in California, has a video assistant who works from Texas and virtually greets visitors to his office. So, Cisco is clearly practicing what it’s preaching.

Community Collaboration and Recycling San Francisco Style

San Franciscans toss away at least five bicycles a day. When the mountain bike craze ebbed, that number was higher—at times, twenty bikes a day. And SF Recycling & Disposal, Inc. (aka The Dump) also gets ten to twenty pieces of exercise equipment daily—everything from elliptical machines to NordicTrack skiers. Each day the dump also receives about twenty plants, some of which volunteers transfer into the dump’s garden. 

 

I learned many of these statistics Saturday morning from Deborah Munk, who coordinates art and education programs for the dump. Deborah was conducting a public tour, which included a heavy dose of recycling and trash facts. I learned that China is paying top dollar for recycled paper. Every day, the San Francisco dump ships hundreds of bales of paper to China, which helps fuel the country’s growth.

 

This particular public tour was crowded with artists vying for the dump’s Artist-in-Residence program, which gives artists a stipend, a studio, a show, and access to San Francisco’s waste stream so that  they can get first dibs on materials for sculptures, paintings, videos, and other media. Paul Cesewski, former artist-in-residence, turns recycled bicycles among other items into kinetic art. Nancy Calef, who was taking Saturday’s tour before applying for the program, uses recycled objects ranging from eyeglasses to emery boards in her 3D “Peoplescapes.” Peoplescapes are sculpted characters and applied objects on canvas which juxtapose people in recognizable places and situations weaving together a story about contemporary life.  Calef also recycles canvases for a technique called “plane slashing,” which combines two or more paintings into one.

 

The artists collaborate with the recycling sorters, who look out for requested materials. One artist recently asked for some pens, and a few hours later he received hundreds of them. Those pens are now a sculpture. The artists help promote recycling, and they’re one aspect of how people throughout the dump’s ecosystem work together to create value.

 

San Francisco’s recycling program is a study in collaboration. Seventy percent of the two thousand tons of waste a day that flows into the dump is recycled. Clearly, San Franciscans take the time to sort their refuse into bins color-coded for trash, compost and recyclables. And once the waste arrives, union sorters identify items that can be sold as commodities, reusable stuff and electronic waste. The dump makes some stuff, such as recycled latex paint, available for free. Also, more than eighty thousand homes and two thousand restaurants compost their food scraps. San Franciscans get some of their compost back as free soil a couple of times a year, and wineries nourish their vines with soil made from SF compost.

 

Some dump team members are pressing to take collaboration to the next level. “We’re just scratching the surface,” insists Bob Besso, recycling manager for Norcal Waste Systems, Inc., which runs the dump. Currently, San Franciscans pay $107 a ton to dump waste. SF Recycling & Disposal, Inc. sells much of the recycled waste as commodities. All that exercise equipment becomes scrap metal. Besso believes the dump should designate drop-off areas where specialists could evaluate specific categories of items such as exercise equipment and bicycles, furniture and textiles, clothing and other items. Rather than charge for accepting these reusable items, the dump could take them for free and sell them at a higher price than that of a commodity. Garbage Reincarnation, Inc, a non-profit in Santa Rosa, California has achieved success of this sort. Besso believes the San Francisco dump could become a model for large-scale reincarnation of waste.

 

SFRecycling & Disposal, Inc. comprises an ecosystem of collaborators who are striving to create greater value through innovation, education, and brainstorming. The SF Dump’s approach reminds us that rather than letting new ideas die on the vine, our challenge is to improve ideas through collective input so that we achieve awesome results.