The Culture of Collaboration

Empathy and Collaboration: What's the Link?

Are empathic people more likely to collaborate? Or are collaborators more likely to empathize?

 

Dev Patnaik, author of Wired to Care, and I tossed around these and other questions during an engaging discussion this afternoon. “Collaboration allows for empathy and creativity to occur” is Dev’s view. We can argue this chicken-or-egg question either way, but the point is that empathy and collaboration are fellow travelers. While I argue in The Culture of Collaboration book that collaborating creates value, Dev argues that empathy makes money for companies.

 

Almost everything in business has become data-driven. The thinking is...if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t matter. Even traditionally less data driven disciplines such as public relations have become more numbers-oriented. Data certainly provides valuable insight, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. After all, the road is littered with businesses that have used numbers—real or manufactured—to hide destructive practices. Bernie Madoff, who’s not exactly a poster boy for empathy, comes to mind.

 

I’ve been noticing recently some cracks developing in this data-obsessed foundation on which we build and grow businesses. Clearly, Dev’s antenna is up, and he’s noticing something similar. Dev likens the shift to the change in painting (canvases, not houses) that occurred after the adoption of the camera. Expressionism replaced realism.

 

According to Dev, we’re moving into the “abstract expressionist phase of management.” It’s no longer enough to be a great numbers person. We’re now expecting more of our leaders, and empathy and collaboration are among those qualities. Because a collaborative organization creates greater value, there’s an increasing role for collaborative leaders. And the same is true for empathy.

 

Understanding the feelings of others is good behavior, but empathy particularly pays off when companies—that is the people who work for companies-- understand what their customers are feeling. And in Wired to Care, Dev deftly weaves into his narrative numerous examples—ranging from Harley-Davidson to Nike—of companies that have achieved impressive results through empathy.

 

Dev asked me about the relationship between empathy and collaboration, and I’ve been thinking more about it since we talked. The strongest link is that both qualities involve focusing less on self and more on others. The opposite of collaborative behavior is internally-competitive, command-and-control behavior. This is a form of self absorption. Another form of self absorption is lack of understanding how others feel.

 

While reading Dev’s book, I wondered whether its author is empathetic. So I asked him. “I’m not a very empathic person,” Dev insisted.  That struggle with empathy, though drives Dev’s interest in the topic. He points to the reputation of Apple CEO Steve Jobs as technologically-challenged. Jobs and Apple are ideally suited to sort out usability, Dev argues, because of this struggle. It’s not exactly analogous, but I take Dev’s point. And at the risk of treading into blurb-like territory, Wired to Care will make you think and act differently.

Collaboration Curing Multiple Sclerosis

It was definitely unorthodox. Many said it was impossible. But it looks like The Myelin Repair Foundation has done it. MRF, which is working on curing multiple sclerosis, is about to meet its ambitious goal of licensing a discovery for commercial drug development within five years. Through a collaborative research model, the Silicon Valley-based foundation has reduced drug development time from 15 years to 5 years. MRF is negotiating with a biotech company and believes a license agreement is in the works.

 

Intuit Founder Scott Cook, a foundation supporter, suggested I research MRF when I was writing The Culture of Collaboration book.  In the book, I tell the story of how Scott Johnson, who has MS, learned that a cure was taking three or four times as long because of competition among researchers. This prompted Johnson to rethink the culture of medical research and begin changing that culture. Scientists often refuse to share data and information, because they compete for limited grant money and for publishing articles in top medical journals. The answer was to get experts in different disciplines to collaborate. So Johnson raised money, ultimately plowed $20 million into drug discovery work, and built a collaborative medical research foundation.

 

Johnson brought in fellow tech start-up veteran Russell Bromley as chief operating officer. And Johnson and Bromley recruited five principal investigators who head labs.  They proposed a level of collaboration for curing disease that none of the scientists had ever experienced. Their focus was to repair myelin, the sheath that surrounds the nerves, which MS damages. Johnson and Bromley with input from the researchers developed a Collaborative Research Process, which addresses everything from tools to incentives.

 

Since its founding in 2004, MRF has advanced work towards a cure for MS beyond anything anybody else had imagined within this timeframe. “Because of our work, we have a much clearer understanding of how to drive neural stem cells to the site of myelin damage in the central nervous system and instruct the myelin-producing cells to remyelinate,” Johnson writes in his recent president’s message.

 

The Myelin Repair Foundation’s game-changing collaborative approach sets a new standard for medical research. The broader medical research community should sit up and take notice that collaboration among researchers creates greater value than competition.

 

Kaiser’s Garfield Center Enhances Innovation, Collaboration

With the growing use of tools enabling collaboration at a distance, it’s easy to forget the value of same-room collaboration and the role of the physical workplace environment. Environment—both physical and virtual-- is one of the Ten Cultural Elements of Collaboration that I identify in The Culture of Collaboration book.

 

It’s essential to bring collaborative capabilities to people so that collaboration becomes integrated with work styles. Forcing people to walk down the hall or go someplace to collaborate falls short. Therefore, it may seem counter-intuitive that dedicated collaborative spaces not only enhance collaboration, but also are crucial components of collaborative organizations.

 

Our research at The Culture of Collaboration® Institute shows that the most collaborative organizations integrate dedicated collaborative spaces into work flow. The distinction is that these physical spaces are by no means the primary means of organizational collaboration. In some cases, dedicated collaborative spaces bridge physical and virtual environments by including geographically-dispersed team members through telepresence or videoconferencing.  

 

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to explore one such dedicated collaborative space. From the outside, Kaiser Permanente’s Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center looks like a warehouse. In fact, it’s a former check processing center in an industrial park in San Leandro, California. On the inside, the Garfield Center is anything but ordinary. The future of healthcare delivery is unfolding in this 37-thousand square foot laboratory. The Garfield Center includes multiple environments ranging from patient room prototypes to homes outfitted with monitoring and telemedicine technologies.

 

There are lots of gee-whiz technologies and environments including a concept operating room in which researchers are testing tools including augmented virtual reality. But what’s most significant about the Garfield Center is that people from across Kaiser regardless of level, role or region come together to brainstorm, innovate and collaborate. Doctors and nurses partner with architects and technologists to create prototypes for patient care in this “touchdown location for innovation work” as Sherry Fry, operations specialist for the Center, describes it. Anybody at Kaiser can use the facility as long as the activity is interdisciplinary. “The Garfield Center has become synonymous with innovation at Kaiser,” notes Dr. Yan Chow, associate director of innovation and advanced technology for Kaiser Permanente.

 

In developing the 3-year-old Garfield Center, Kaiser researchers studied models outside healthcare, notably the McDonald’s Innovation Center near Chicago. Kaiser also studied Mayo Clinic's S.P.A.R.C. unit, which I describe in my book. S.P.A.R.C. stands for See Plan Act Refine Communicate. Through S.P.A.R.C., Mayo assembles cross-functional collaborators to conduct live prototyping of healthcare service delivery.

 

The value of dedicated collaborative spaces is that they help break down barriers among silos. As doctors engage architects and facilities people brainstorm with technologists, ideas become prototypes which ultimately deliver measurable value.