The Culture of Collaboration

Star Culture Declining?

NBC announced last week that it’s dropping Dateline anchor Stone Phillips as a cost-cutting measure. Pundits quickly sized up the move as representing the decline of network television news. This may be true, but there is a broader trend at play: it’s the beginning of the end of star culture.

NBC has been willing to pay Phillips a fancy salary, because the network was convinced that Phillips’ star power attracted viewers at least as much as the investigative journalism Dateline provides. I know a former Dateline producer who frequently referred to Phillips as the star and had to make appointments with Phillips’ secretary to work with him on stories.

And for years, local TV stations have promoted anchors as faces you can trust. However, that’s changing. One mid-sized NBC affiliate now rarely promotes its main anchor. I know this, because the anchor is a friend of mine. But other stations are promoting anchors less and instead making news promos about viewers and their interests.

In The Culture of Collaboration book, I write about the Myth of the Single Cowboy and how many organizations embrace a star culture. You can read more about this in the book’s introduction. The point I make is that collaborative culture creates greater value than star culture. While star culture still pervades business, the media and our collective consciousness; we’re starting to see a chink in the armor.

Intuit and Collaboration

Intuit, like many software vendors, has its sites on collaboration. Recently, I had an interesting conversation with Bill Lucchini and Peter Fearey of Intuit’s QuickBase business unit. Bill, the vice president and general manager of QuickBase, is a thirteen-year Intuit veteran. Peter, who handles product management, used to work at Apple.

QuickBase is quietly making inroads into enterprises with a suite of online productivity applications. Reportedly, 45 of Fortune 100 companies use QuickBase. In true Web 2.0 fashion, all users need is a browser. So these applications typically run under the radar of the IT department. It’s easy to input an Excel spreadsheet into QuickBase. Multiple users can then update the spreadsheet, and they can set email alerts so that each collaborator knows when a colleague has made changes. Users can also customize their own QuickBase applications for managing everything from the office coffee fund to inventory. 

Not surprisingly, Procter & Gamble is using QuickBase. P&G, which I wrote about in The Culture of Collaboration book, is a collaborative company that is open to exploring how new tools can create value.

While the QuickBase approach to collaboration has been asynchronous to date, the team is considering adding such real-time capabilities as instant messaging and web conferencing. So if a user is working in a QuickBase application, he or she could spontaneously invite a colleague to join. Such a move could make Intuit a more formidable force in collaboration.

Collaboration on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner

I’m glad to see that Design News published an article in its May 15 issue about how global collaboration is making a difference for Boeing on the 787 Dreamliner project. You can read the article here. The article even includes a photo taken for The Culture of Collaboration book of Boeing’s Global Collaboration Center in Everett, Washington.

The Design News article provides useful insight into how Boeing uses Dassault Systemes’ product lifecycle management tools including Catia, version 5. In the book, I describe the interplay of tools, environment, and culture in Boeing’s global collaborative enterprise (GCE) and delineate three levels of collaboration at Boeing. The book also explains how Boeing maximizes mirror zones (see my March 16 post).

Incidentally, the book defines the global collaborative enterprise (GCE) as a collection of interdependent companies that engage in shared creation of value, often in real time. Boeing is an excellent example of a GCE in that Boeing and its global partners work together seamlessly as if there were no geographical boundaries. But there’s an automobile company that is also setting the standard for GCE’s. Can you guess which company?

Collaboration and Unified Communications

Microsoft invited me to San Francisco’s Le Meridien Hotel last Thursday for an excellent salad nicoise and a preview of new “unified communications” devices. Microsoft and nine partners are officially introducing those devices this morning at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles. The devices are presence-enabled, which means they integrate well with instant messaging buddy or colleague lists and corporate directories.

Chris Cullin, director of product management for Microsoft’s unified communications group, and his colleagues transformed a conference room into three separate work environments for the information worker, the executive, and the mobile professional. The environments included PCs running Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 and presence-enabled devices including IP phones, Bluetooth headsets and monitors optimized for videoconferencing.

Using the tools with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, it’s easy to see which colleagues are available and connect with them on the fly. By clicking an icon, I could escalate an instant messaging session into a voice or video call.

Not surprisingly, the executive work environment offered the most compelling devices including Polycom’s CX700 IP Phone.

 

The phone has an integrated finger print reader, embedded Office Communicator 2007 and many bells and whistles including full duplex speakerphone capability. As soon as the user touches the finger print reader, his or her presence status switches to available and colleagues know that he or she is ready to communicate and collaborate on the fly.

Collaboration requires the right culture, tools and environment. Microsoft, Polycom and other partners have successfully tackled the tools part of the equation and will help countless enterprises take communication and real-time collaboration to a new level. For enterprises to create value through collaboration, however, they must do more than adopt tools. The real challenge, as I point out in my book, is to foster collaborative culture.

CEO's Becoming Collaborative

The word collaboration appeared nowhere in the excellent page-one story by Alan Murray headlined "After the Revolt, Creating a New CEO" (subscription required) in this past weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. However, collaboration certainly plays in the background.

The gist of the story is that the new crop of CEO’s running some of the world’s largest companies are less powerful, less arrogant, and more humble.  One example the story cites is Jim McNerney, CEO of Boeing who is “quick to point out the limits of his own power.” The story quotes McNerney as saying “I’m just one of eleven [board members] with a point of view.”

Boeing is among the companies featured in The Culture of Collaboration book. The chapter on collaborative leadership discusses how organizations that create value through collaboration often develop and promote less autocratic and more responsive executives. This reinforces collaborative culture. Examples include Toyota, The Dow Chemical Company and the Mayo Clinic.

Mayo regularly rotates its leaders including the CEO, who must keep practicing medicine while leading the organization. This keeps the CEO in touch with the trenches and collaborating with other doctors. Mayo, which was founded on principles of collaboration, has deftly integrated collaborative tools including videoconferencing, web conferencing and innovative messaging into its operations.

Effective leadership has always required collaboration, but now collaborative leadership is in vogue.

Pinger for Collaboration?

It seems like everybody is talking about collaboration, especially at technology conferences. At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco on April 17, Google CEO Eric Schmidt proclaimed that “collaboration is the killer app for the way communities work.” 

I spent two days last week at the Dow Jones VentureWire Wireless Innovations conference in Redwood Shores, California. The conference format is that startup CEO’s present to venture capitalists in breakout sessions of 25 minutes or less. During presentations and spontaneous corridor conversations, the word collaboration came up repeatedly.

One startup presenting at the conference is Pinger, which is optimized for asynchronous mobile-to-mobile communication and perhaps collaboration. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I define crossover tools as communication tools that can be used to foster a Culture of Collaboration. Pinger fits this description and delivers a new type of voice messaging. The company is funded by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. Described as “text messaging for your voice,” Pinger lets users send a voice message by dialing a special number, saying the recipient’s name, and recording a message. Hang up, and the message is sent. Recipients get notification of the Pinger via text message. To hear the message, the recipient can use the phone’s auto-dial function. To reply, just hit “1.” Pinger’s web interface allows management of inbox and contacts.

The service is particularly handy for driving. Unlike text messaging, Pinger conveys voice tone and therefore provides more insight into intent and mood. Also, Pinger is easier than using a tiny QWERTY keyboard especially when driving! And it may even be a cure for Blackberry thumb! So why not leave voice mail instead of sending a Pinger? Voice mail often involves time-consuming, complex voice prompts. Also, you may be interrupting the recipient who may answer the phone.

Pinger turns voice messaging into an efficient communication medium. How we use the medium determines whether we’re truly collaborating. Sending a Pinger with orders for a subordinate subverts collaborative culture, but sending a Pinger with a brainstorm relating to an ongoing project enhances the Culture of Collaboration.