The Culture of Collaboration

Virtual Worlds and Cisco's Evolving Culture

As organizations adopt virtual worlds, there is growing confusion about when telepresence or videoconferencing may fit the bill and when virtual worlds make more sense.

 

Virtual worlds such as Second Life and Qwaq Forums enable geographically-dispersed colleagues to collaborate in a shared, immersive 3D environment. Qwaq is particularly suited for business. For more on Qwaq, see my September 21, 2007 post. Typically, avatars represent each collaborator and there’s audio without interactive video.

 

At the American Society of Training and Development International Conference last month in San Diego, corporate managers packed a session on using virtual worlds in the enterprise. The buzz was that virtual worlds make more sense than videoconferencing in part because people are getting more accustomed to a gaming-type experience. That supposition is debatable, because tools must fit the situation and the culture. For a performance evaluation, virtual worlds would be a poor choice of tool. Telepresence would work, if a team member is a continent away and a face-to-face meeting is impossible.

 

On Friday, I had a broad discussion with Chris Thompson, senior director of marketing for Cisco’s unified communications group.  Chris, a Canadian, joined Cisco 18 months ago after serving as vice president of marketing for Netopia, which became the broadband home unit of Motorola. Our discussion ranged from virtual worlds to collaborative culture, and the conversation flowed easily and informally perhaps because Chris was relaxed and enjoying the informality of his cottage on the lake outside Toronto.

 

“If it’s a casual relationship, video is less important,” Chris noted. Such a relationship might include tech support sessions, customer service calls, and some sales calls. In such cases, virtual worlds may offer better opportunities for branding than videoconferencing. Several years ago, there were many predictions that we would soon be using interactive video for customer service calls. This has yet to materialize in any meaningful way. However, if vendors begin thinking differently about telesales and customer service and start considering these transient relationships as opportunities to build relationships over time, interactive video may be useful.

 

Regarding culture…like many people who work for companies that are adopting collaborative cultures, Chris has had to adjust. He previously embraced the command-and-control approach. However, Cisco has moved away from a competitive, authoritarian culture and has adopted a more collaborative culture in which team members from many functions and regions participate in making decisions.

 

My sense is that Cisco has made this shift for at least two reasons:

 

1) Collaboration creates greater value

 

2) Cisco sells a range of collaborative tools including unified communications and telepresence.

These tools, as I’ve written about extensively, take hold far more effectively in collaborative cultures. So, Cisco clearly wants to set an example.

 

Chris and I also talked about the merging of real-time and asynchronous tools. Cisco is now launching WebEx Connect, which provides a collaborative space through which colleagues can connect in real time through web conferencing plus collaborate after the real-time session ends. Colleagues who may have missed a web conference can search the audio and listen to key parts of a web conference after the fact. Users can also post comments about web conferences.

Making Sense of Meetings

There is certainly a distinction between collaboration and meetings. Nevertheless, one company is laser-focused on bringing efficiency to meetings through collaboration before, during and after meetings. That company is MeetingSense, which has just released version 3.0 of its hosted software.

 

“Meetings are not snapshots in time. They are an evolution of information,” according to Hannon Brett, who founded MeetingSense in 2004 with his brother, Gregg. Hannon managed strategic relationships for the Macromedia Breeze web conferencing unit before Adobe acquired Macromedia. Gregg worked in business development for IBM.

 

Hannon insists that users are saving an average of 15 minutes per meeting by using the software’s agenda wizard, meeting information capture, and meeting summary and action item capture and tracking. MeetingSense, backed by TVC Capital, has so far received $3 million in series A funding. The fee for the hosted service is $19.99 per month per user with volume discounts available.

Lodestar Gets Nearly 700 Nominations for $250K Collaboration Prize

The Lodestar Foundation has received 600 to 700 nominations for its first annual $250,000 collaboration prize. Today is the deadline, and I just got off the phone with Lois Savage, the foundation’s president. Lois tells me that the impetus for the prize is the lack of models for collaboration among non-profits. The prize process creates the opportunity to gather information about effective collaborative practice models that academics and non-profit practitioners can study.  

 

Too often in the non-profit sector, funders try to drive collaboration by forcing organizations with similar objectives and interests to work together. Lois calls them “shotgun weddings.” These usually fail. Similarly, successful collaboration in the for-profit workplace requires more than tools and an edict to collaborate.

 

The Collaboration Prize recognizes collaboration among two or more nonprofit organizations that would otherwise provide the same or similar services and compete for money, clients and staff. The Lodestar Foundation, created by real estate developer Jerry Hirsch of Phoenix, focuses on process and structure of non-profits rather than on specific philanthropic activities. Lodestar’s guiding principle is encouraging non-profits to use efficient business practices. Collaboration fits into that framework by maximizing resources and reducing competition among organizations tackling similar issues. Lodestar has funded cooperative ventures and new organizational structures including coalitions and mergers.

 

Here’s how the prize selection process works: La Piana Associates of Emeryville, California, a management consulting firm for non-profits, will review submissions for eligibility. AIM, the Arizona-Indiana-Michigan Alliance, will review nominations and select eight semi-finalists. AIM is a consortium that includes The Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation at Arizona State University, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, and the Johnson Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Sterling Speirn, president and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, will chair a panel that will choose the recipients from among the finalists.

 

The Lodestar Foundation is one of a growing number of foundations that are embracing collaboration. In July of 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced 16 grants totaling $287 million to fund an international network of highly- collaborative research consortia focused on developing an HIV vaccine. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I write about the Myelin Repair Foundation’s collaborative research model. The model creates incentives for data sharing and collaboration among scientists at different universities working on treatments for multiple sclerosis.

 

While the non-profit sector has focused recently on adopting efficient business practices, the for-profit sector may also look to non-profits for guidance. There is certainly room for knowledge transfer among both sectors to share successful collaboration models.

Collaboration Means Knowing When to Step Aside

“Do you want to be rich or do you want to be king?” That’s the question Mark Perry, general partner with New Enterprise Associates, asks founders of portfolio companies who resist being replaced. Often, venture capitalists like Mark seek to replace founding CEO’s with leaders who are more suited to take a company to the next level.

 

Collaborative leaders willingly step aside when it’s the right decision for the company. After all, many people have a stake in a company’s success including investors, employees and customers. For a founder to remain CEO because of ego and bravado can damage the company he or she has worked hard to create.  And, as Perry points out, the rewards for everybody are often greater when the founding CEO moves on at the right juncture.

 

At the 19^th Annual IBF Venture Capital Investing Conference last month in San Francisco, venture capitalists and executive search consultants debated issues including CEO succession on a panel called “Building a Management Team in 2008.” The panel included venture capitalists Mark Perry of New Enterprise Associates, Cameron Lester of Azure Capital Partners and Mark Sugarman of MHS Capital plus recruiter Aaron Lapat of J. Robert Scott. Recruiter Jeff Kuhn of FLG Partners moderated the panel.

 

The VC’s agreed that it becomes obvious over time if the CEO puts his or her own success above that of the company. This is exactly the kind of behavior smart VC’s seek to identify before they invest. Cameron Lester of Azure Capital Partners recommends asking founders the question, “If this company grew beyond you, would you be willing to step aside?”

 

Stepping aside, deferring to others, and soliciting input are among behaviors key to collaborative organizations of all sizes.  When we use collaborative tools including web conferencing, it’s important to relinquish control and let colleagues take the cursor while sharing applications. In a broader sense, collaborative people understand how their expertise contributes to collaborative work and know instinctively when to defer to those with complimentary skills.

 

Challenges for collaborative leaders include resisting the control paradigm and inviting input from all levels and functions.  Then it’s easier to recognize when changing roles, relinquishing authority, or even leaving the organization benefits the company. The acid test is whether stepping aside creates organizational value.