The Culture of Collaboration

Telepresence and Formality

Cisco’s use of TelePresence last Monday to announce its Unified Computing System sparked an interesting reaction on the New York Times Bits blog. The Times republished the blog post in today’s print edition.

 

The post by Ashlee Vance takes aim at Cisco for the “scripted” feel of the 14-site TelePresence session for reporters and analysts. You can read the story here. Some reporters who showed up at Cisco headquarters for a news conference were apparently frustrated that Cisco CEO John Chambers was in another suite upstairs rather than in the same room with the media. Vance also writes that the question-and-answer session that followed the two-hour event also felt scripted in that Cisco apparently muted microphones and prevented follow-up questions.

 

OK. It’s time for a discussion of formality and telepresence. First, let’s separate the event from the technology. I did not attend the event, so I can’t comment about its execution. However, I did participate in a launch event and news conference last October for Cisco’s public TelePresence suites. You can read about it in my October 15, 2008 post.

 

Like last Monday’s Cisco event, executives at the October 15, 2008 event were in a separate TelePresence suite from reporters and analysts who were in the same building. This worked well, because the local group was relatively small, and each participant had a seat at the TelePresence table. Also, the approach was particularly appropriate in that the subject of the event was TelePresence itself. During the event, which linked about six sites, I had no problem asking follow up questions and engaging in an extended dialogue with Cisco senior leaders.

 

In contrast, holding a 14-site news conference like the one last Monday certainly can increase logistical issues and reduce the question time per reporter. The benefit, though, of using TelePresence for the event is that it significantly increased media participation globally, so that a reporter in Asia could gain the same access as a Silicon Valley-based reporter for The New York Times—access to Cisco CEO John Chambers and other participating CEO’s including Paul Otellini of Intel, Joe Tucci of EMC, Paul Maritz of VMware, and Bill Green of Accenture.  

 

Despite increased access for geographically-dispersed journalists, there was clearly a disconnect between Cisco and at least some reporters who showed up at Cisco headquarters expecting a same-room news conference. Here lies the problem. Some reporters may have felt that Cisco was insensitive to their needs, and these reporters failed to grasp the benefits and potential of TelePresence. Consider the potential power of this tool…people coming together regardless of level, role or region and interacting in an immersive virtual environment that approximates across-the-table, same-room interaction. Some reporters missed this, in part because of formality.

 

This disconnect highlights the need to ensure that the use of telepresence mirrors in-person interaction and preserves in-person etiquette.  Reporters on deadline get restless and frustrated if they must wait two hours before asking questions, and they always want the option to ask follow-up questions. Otherwise, they feel controlled at best and muzzled at worst.

  

It would be unfortunate, though, if New York Times readers confused any concerns about event execution with the technology itself. The greatest potential for telepresence and TelePresence (the spelling with capital letters is Cisco’s brand of the technology) is for informal, spontaneous interactions. Currently, telepresence is used primarily for scheduled meetings and events. The most collaborative organizations use real-time, interactive video for on-the-fly encounters. I profile some of these organizations and describe specific ways companies can create value through informal, spontaneous interactions in my current book, The Culture of Collaboration.

 

Since the publication of my first book, Personal Videoconferencing (1996), my team and I have been conducting research on—among other aspects of collaboration— using visual communications for spontaneous, informal interactions. Recently, I formalized this research effort by establishing The Culture of CollaborationÒ Institute. My future books and derivatives will leverage the Institute’s research. If your organization is interested in supporting our work, let me know.

 

Organizational culture, environment and business processes are key to enabling spontaneity and informality. Tools including telepresence—used effectively—are critical enablers in extending and enhancing an informal, spontaneous culture. I highlighted the role of informality in collaboration during an interview with CNBC’s Donnie Deutsch on the “Collaboration Now” primetime special. You can view a video clip here.

 

Telepresence is a key element in collaborative enterprises and will soon become available at much lower price points for consumer use. Without informal, spontaneous uses of the tool, vendors run the risk that people will view telepresence as a tool only for formal, scheduled events and meetings. The real value of telepresence is enabling on-the-fly encounters, sort of a virtual water cooler.

Abandon Herd Mentality to Avoid Post-Digital Dark Ages

There’s a dangerous—and convenient—misconception that collaboration is about stampeding with the herd. The misconception is convenient, because often people in organizations and neighborhoods figure out which way everybody’s running, and they follow suit. This tendency leads to mediocrity at best and can poison teams, organizations, industries, the economy, and our collective culture.

 

In contrast, collaboration often requires constructive confrontation, one of the Ten Cultural Elements of Collaboration that I identify in my book. Rather than running in a pack, we can—through collaboration—come together in real time and hash out issues, improve processes and create better products and services.

 

Unlike collaboration, herd mentality is choking off innovation and ingenuity, two cornerstones of the collective culture and consciousness particularly in the United States. Running with the crowd created the dot com bubble, the real estate bubble, mortgage crisis, and arguably fed Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

 

In much the same way the herd embraced and artificially ran up dot com stocks and real estate and plunged the world into a deep recession, the herd is now embracing the downturn with abandon. Media, legislators, regulators and stakeholders that were complicit in the dot com and real estate bubbles are now condemning the behavior they embraced. It’s easy to pile on, but where were these voices during the run up and creation of these unsustainable bubbles?

 

In San Francisco, every day I see a couple of more empty storefronts on my flight path. And it’s the same story in New York. I was walking up Madison Avenue several weeks ago, and shuttered stores lined many blocks. People I know who eight months ago insisted on following the herd to the latest trendy restaurant are now eating take-out tacos or microwaving macaroni and cheese, even though they can well afford to eat in restaurants. Being cheap now propels the herd, so the herd is feeding the recession rather than a recovery. John Maynard Keynes, the economist, called the tendency to hoard rather than spend the paradox of thrift. His point, while controversial, was that unnecessary savings during a recession ultimately lowers savings because of the decrease in economic growth.

 

Businesses faced with a credit crunch are slashing research and development budgets, cutting the meat rather than just the fat, and jeopardizing their futures. With bad economic news monopolizing computer screens, the downturn is feeding on itself.

 

The period between the fall of Rome in the fifth century and the early Middle Ages in the tenth century is often called the Dark Ages. It was an era marked by cultural decline, ignorance, lack of enlightenment and societal collapse. The course on which we are headed as we follow the herd to avoid risk, innovation and investment is towards what I call the Post-Digital Dark Ages. While fiscal prudence and frugality make good business sense even in boom times, many companies are sacrificing long-term opportunities for short-term concerns.

 

A Chevron spokesperson recently told me that the company has a dearth of people in their 40’s, because Chevron imposed a hiring freeze for ten years in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. The idea was to cut costs, but that strategy provided short-term benefits with long-term repercussions.  The ultimate result is a talent and knowledge gap.  As experienced team members retire, there is a lack of people with long-term institutional knowledge to replace them. Chevron wants to avoid a similar situation in this downturn and will reportedly continue recruiting regardless of short-term economic concerns.

 

Exigent circumstances provide an opportunity to collaborate, think creatively, innovate, and create incredible value. But opportunity must be seized! The downturn is undeniably an exigent circumstance. Rather than succumbing to the herd mentality, we must reject a Post-Digital Dark Ages and engage and challenge one another to define and refine common goals, innovate, reinvent, invest for the long-term, and pave a path towards economic recovery.

 

We now have access to tools and technologies that we could only dream about during previous downturns. Our challenge is to use these tools to strengthen rather than undermine traditional values of innovation and ingenuity. We must harness a range of real-time and asynchronous collaborative tools plus same-room collaboration to enhance real relationships sustainable in person or at a distance. As we build trust, we must strive to improve shared ideas through constructive confrontation and broad input regardless of level, role or region.

 

More broadly, we must change the conversation from doom and gloom to growth and recovery. Let’s change our approach from hibernation and indecision to collaborative action. People are hibernating, because of across-the-board cost cutting and management edicts banning many necessary business expenses. The result is that team members are lying low, unable or unwilling to perform necessary functions. Therefore, management’s attempt to improve balance sheets is actually leaching value out of companies.  Also, we must find and employ collaborative problem solvers who can rethink how we’re doing business.  

 

If we continue stampeding with the herd, we risk the onset of a Post-Digital Dark Ages. Through collaboration, we can ultimately exit the downturn with a more sustainable, long-term focus throughout business, government and society.

 

Toyota's Collaborative Leadership Involves "See it for Yourself"

In selecting Akio Toyoda as its next president, Toyota is reaffirming its commitment to collaborative culture and methods. A key tenet of Toyota is genchi genbutsu which means "see it for yourself.” This is related to the leadership method practiced by HP’s David Packard and Bill Hewlett beginning in the 1940’s and later dubbed “management by walking around.” The idea is that to figure out what’s really going on in an organization, a leader needs to get out of the office, go to factories and loading docks and retail outlets, and get his or her hands dirty.

 

That’s exactly what Akio Toyoda did when he visited a Toyota dealership in Ann Arbor, Michigan last summer. He wanted to personally investigate a pickup truck recall. A story by Micheline Maynard on February 15, 2009 in the New York Times says Toyoda made a trip “so secret that Toyota’s public relations staff didn’t know he was here.” While at the dealership, he reportedly got down on his hands and knees to examine the undercarriage of a truck. At the news conference in January announcing his appointment, according to the Times, Toyoda announced he would pop up everywhere as he did in Ann Arbor.

 

Genchi genbutsu or “see it for yourself” fits squarely into collaborative culture and methods. However, it’s not always possible to fly across the world to see what’s happening. That’s where collaborative tools come into play. Through unified communications, we can find one other and connect regardless of level, role or region. We can escalate IM to voice, web conferencing or videoconferencing and spontaneously hash out problems and make decisions. Visual communications is a critical enabler. An ideal solution is telepresence, which makes people feel practically as if they’re sharing the same physical space regardless of distance.  

 

Our research at The Culture of CollaborationÒ Institute has shown that almost all highly-collaborative companies have integrated some form of real-time, interactive video into their operations. As I describe in The Culture of Collaboration book, Toyota uses a custom-designed visual communications system coupled with product lifecycle management and advanced computer-aided design tools that has become essential to its operations. The system links people at design facilities, plants, and at business partner sites and provides a rich virtual environment for developing and producing vehicles.

 

Two other areas involving collaboration that Akio Toyoda will likely re-emphasize:

1)     Making decisions based on long-term goals rather than on short-term developments

2)     Nemawashi or making decisions slowly by consensus

 

While collaborative culture is never about one person, Akio Toyoda is certainly one role model for collaborative leadership.