• 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.

     

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  • Toyota’s Collaborative Leadership Involves “See it for Yourself”

    In selecting Akio Toyoda as its next president, Toyota is reaffirming its commitment to collaborative Akio Toyoda 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.

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  • 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 200th 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 Rainforest Exterior 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.   Living Roof 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. Renzo Piano 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.

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  • Innovation Value Institute Enhances Collaboration and Unlocks IT Value

    As I stepped into the new “innovation zone” outfitted with leather couches, lounge chairs and café-style tables and stools at Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, California yesterday, ideas were flying. The Innovation Value Institute, a consortium focused on enhancing information technology’s role and demonstrating its value, has set up shop for two days at Chevron and yesterday announced its efforts. You can hear the announcement and see slides here. Collaboration is fundamental to IVI in that:

     

    1) Competitors are collaborating in the consortium

    2) IVI’s framework will enhance collaboration between IT and business units

     

    The core consortium includes oil and gas competitors Chevron and BP, competing consulting firms Boston Consulting Group and Ernst & Young, and software companies Microsoft and SAP. Northrop Grumman is also part of the core group as is Intel. In fact, Martin Curley, Intel’s global director of IT innovation, co-directs the Institute, which is housed at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Each company is sharing intellectual property, and the partners are all getting more out of the collaboration than the IP that they’re investing. Through the consortium, according to Curley, the members are shifting their thinking and approach from “competitive advantage to collaborative advantage.”

     

    IT is evolving from a service to a “business-embedded” role within enterprises. “IT organizations grew up with the service business model… acting as waiters and waitresses. What technology can I serve you today?” notes Natalie Stone, director of business strategy for Northrop Grumman. “We’ve come pretty far, and we’re poised to take the next leap.”

     

    That next leap for the consortium members involves developing an IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF) of 36 interconnected processes—things like service analytics and intelligence, enterprise architecture, and innovation management. The idea is to establish a common language and standards for measuring how IT creates business value.

     

    So, how does IVI quantify the value? Ralf Dreischmeier, partner and managing director of the Boston Consulting Group, says the consortium is focused on “50/50/50.” That means increasing IT return-on-investment by fifty percent, reducing time-to-market by fifty percent, and reducing business costs by fifty percent.

     

    Consortiums often deliver little more than announcements and joint news releases, because of the lack of collaboration. “Five to ten years ago, this would have been dead,” insists Dreischmeier. “People were much more protectionist, thinking only about their little environment.”  IVI is succeeding because of the premium its members are putting on trust, sharing and innovation. These are three of the Ten Cultural

    Elements of Collaboration that I identify In The Culture of Collaboration book.

     

    In parallel, businesses can create greater value if there is more trust between IT and business units. “If you don’t have the trust, there’s no way you’re going to make IT better,” acknowledges Chevron CIO Louie Ehrlich. Environment is another element, and Chevron’s “innovation zone” is designed to enhance collaboration and experimentation. “Chevron likes to do things with quality or not at all, but sometimes we need to lighten up and make mistakes,” insists Jack Anderson, Chevron’s innovation specialist, a consortium participant who is also championing collaboration within his company.

     

    I’ve blogged and written in my book, spoken and advised organizations about how cultural diversity enhances collaboration, enables broader input and contributes to better decisions and products. Culture may be regional, organizational, functional, or departmental. The IVI includes cultural diversity on all of these levels. “Diverse groups work much better together,” is how Edwina Fitzmaurice, partner with Ernst & Young, sums it up. Fitzmaurice, based in Ireland, has a diverse professional background including stints as CEO of Prudential Europe Management Services and CIO of J. Rothschild International.

     

    Many of the consortium members—and many other enterprises and IT vendors—have developed their own frameworks for IT value. Microsoft is no exception. There’s broad agreement, though, that an industry standard framework makes more sense for vendors and enterprises. “We can then talk about our product portfolio in a way that resonates rather than being product-centered,” says Samm DiStasio, senior director for business architecture and optimization in Microsoft’s enterprise and partner group.

     

    Ultimately, ITI’s work will be publicly available—but it will never be finished. The nature of a collaborative framework is that it’s dynamic. As business shifts and IT evolves, ITI’s model will also change.

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  • @GoCollaboration Aggregates Collaboration Blogs on Twitter

    Micro-blogging is transforming how people connect and disseminate information. The most prevalent micro-blogging service is Twitter, but there are many other services that are focusing on micro-blogging within enterprises. Typically, a micro-blog is a sentence or two plus sometimes a link to a blog or other content.

     

    Sensing that micro-blogging has the potential to create value internally and externally, many companies are adopting the medium. Internally, micro-blogging can provide project, function, and subject updates throughout the day plus encourage DM, which is Twitter talk for “direct message” or private message exchange. Micro-blogging is another tool that may potentially enhance collaboration among colleagues. Externally, micro-blogging can enhance brands and create viral adoption of products and services.

     

    Micro-blogging can also be used to aggregate content from multiple blogs and sources. Considering that other bloggers have compelling thoughts and ideas about collaboration and realizing the potential for one-stop-shopping for collaboration blogs, Joe Solomon and I created @GoCollaboration on Twitter. I’ve worked with Joe on numerous projects, and he’s a collaborator extraordinaire.

     

    @GoCollaboration includes more than thirty collaboration blogs including The Culture of CollaborationÒ.  We’re aggregating everything from the Wikinomics blog and the Learning to Collaborate blog to the Cisco collaboration blog and the Intuit QuickBase blog. @GoCollaboration also includes blogs that are focused on key components of collaboration like Keith Sawyer’s informative Creativity and Innovation blog and the Enterprise 2.0 blog. Besides aggregating this and other blogs, I’m also including my own tweets and conversation on @GoCollaboration.

     

    If you have suggestions for non-technical collaboration blogs we should include on @GoCollaboration, let me know.

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  • Early Input Enhances Collaboration

    The most collaborative organizations get broad input into decisions early and often.

     

    President-Elect Barack Obama got into some hot water recently when word leaked out that he planned to nominate Leon Panetta as director of the CIA. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, publicly attacked the decision partly because of Panetta’s lack of intelligence credentials and partly because nobody apparently consulted her about the appointment.

     

    Aides to the President-Elect insisted that they were planning on getting Feinstein’s input regarding the Panetta appointment before going public.  However, getting a key stakeholder’s input late in the decision-making process is less collaborative and less valuable than getting early input. Requesting late input is often political rather than collaborative and provides an opportunity for the decision-maker to sell key stakeholders on a decision rather than really consider their perspectives.  

     

    Collaboration means people participate in decisions regardless of level, region, business unit or function. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I write about how Toyota makes decisions and the role of nemawashi, which essentially means consensus building. Before the automaker changes the wheel base on a car model, the company gets broad input from those who design and assemble the vehicle. The decision takes longer, but implementation is swift because stakeholders have already anticipated and addressed potential problems.

     

    In contrast, faster decisions without broad input may appear more efficient, but such decisions often run into hurdles during implementation and ultimately absorb more of an organization’s resources. Without broad input, people who are impacted often criticize a decision because they had no voice and no stake in the outcome.

     

    Had the Obama transition team involved Senator Feinstein earlier in the process, the decision on the CIA director nomination would have reflected her input—and the transition team would have avoided the resulting perception that the President-elect and his staff are making decisions in a vacuum. Ironically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has been focused on making the intelligence community more collaborative. For more on this, see my December 18, 2008 post.

     

    Getting early, broad input into decisions enhances collaboration and creates greater value whether the organization is a government, a company, a non-profit, a school, or a club.

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  • Virtual Events Becoming Economic Necessity

    Companies in many industries are slashing conference, trade show and sales meeting budgets and replacing traditional events with virtual ones. Publishing is one such industry. According to a story in last Monday’s New York Times, Macmillan will hold two out of three of its 2009 sales conferences virtually via web conferencing. This contrasts sharply with the sales and marketing meeting Macmillan held at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego last month during which participants participated in wine tastings and got massages. 

     

    However, it takes more than adopting tools for virtual events to become a collaborative organization. For many companies, true collaboration requires a wholesale shift. Exigent circumstances can raise consciousness for the shift even in otherwise intransigent cultures. Exigent circumstances include industry realignments, disruptive technology, new competition, and economic downturns.

    Facing market challenges in the current recession, many companies are getting a wake up call. 

     

    Sparked by reduced budgets, many companies are accelerating their adoption or use of real-time collaborative tools to transform their events and meetings into virtual encounters. These tools include virtual worlds, telepresence, web conferencing and videoconferencing.

     

    The right tool choice depends on situations and cultures. For external events such as trade shows and job fairs, it’s necessary to create an experience that will draw people to a brand. To recreate that experience virtually, the 3D immersive quality of virtual worlds like Second Life or Qwaq makes sense. Qwaq is geared to business users and combines an immersive experience with web conferencing functionality. So users can work together while sharing applications in a virtual auditorium or conference room. CNN recently ran an interesting story on virtual trade shows. You can view the story here.

     

    For leadership retreats, strategy sessions and board meetings, detecting subtleties such as eye movement is critical. Therefore, telepresence fits the bill, because of its quality visual experience and the feeling that participants are sharing the same space.  To replace a data-driven sales meeting, web conferencing makes sense because the focus is on the slides or spreadsheet more than people. For a cross-functional meeting that includes, say, sales and marketing people, relationship time is necessary before plunging into data. In that case, telepresence or videoconferencing is appropriate.

     

    For Macmillan and other organizations, creating value through collaboration requires more than holding two out of three sales conferences virtually. So, perhaps Macmillan is considering adopting collaboration more broadly. It’s time to move beyond sporadic, scheduled use of collaborative tools. Value-driven organizations are integrating collaborative practices and tools into work styles and collaborative culture into organizational DNA.

     

    In this downturn, the smart money is rethinking how we do business, reconsidering command-and-control approaches, and moving collaboration to the front burner. This will help organizations survive short term and thrive long term.

     

     

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  • Creating Collaboration Incentives

    Too often organizational culture and processes recognize and reward internally competitive—rather than collaborative—behavior. This creates a significant barrier to creating value through collaboration. Companies may say they embrace collaboration, but the culture and processes often say something different. A key process is the recognition and reward system. Organizations committed to collaboration must reevaluate these systems to make sure they reinforce rather than undermine priorities including collaboration.

     

    Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States Intelligence Community has been making wholesale changes in how it operates. Among the many recommendations of the 9/11 Commission was that the sixteen federal agencies that comprise the intelligence community share information. The challenge was to create ways to share and collaborate across agencies in a culture that embraces secrecy. The impetus for cultural change is the desire to prevent future attacks.

     

    On the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence invited me to speak to the intelligence community. Some senior intelligence officials had read The Culture of Collaboration book and asked me to talk about its key themes plus other collaboration ideas relevant to intelligence.

     

    In the speech, I provided a series of steps the intelligence community could take to institutionalize collaboration. One step is realigning the recognition and reward system around collaboration. I noted that in both corporations and government agencies there is a tendency to hoard—rather than share—information, because people view information as power. If they give up the goods, they feel they become weaker. Information hoarders embrace their role as the “go-to” people on a given subject. This is exactly the issue that the intelligence community and many private sector companies must address.

     

    The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is making progress in multiple ways on the collaboration front.  Regarding incentives, ODNI has publicized a new policy for fiscal year 2009 that makes information sharing a factor in performance reviews. The policy applies to agencies that handle terrorism-related information.  The policy requires agency executives to hold managers and team members accountable for sharing what they know. As part of the directive, information technology departments at these agencies must build or modify systems to enhance information sharing and collaboration across agencies.

     

    The key for the intelligence community—and any organization—is that information sharing becomes proactive rather than just reactive. It’s one thing to share information when it’s requested. It’s another thing entirely to take the initiative to share. In a collaborative organization, people reach across departments, functions, business units and regions to proactively share information so that the organization can pounce on opportunities. For the intelligence community, the opportunity may be thwarting an attack. For a company, the opportunity may be making a process improvement, creating a new market opportunity, making a sale or retaining a customer.

     

    Organizations must ensure that collaboration is more than a buzz word, more than a check mark or mention in a performance evaluation, and is instead part-and-parcel of how people work.

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  • Mentoring Key to Collaboration

    Business is rediscovering mentoring, and the economic downturn is accelerating this trend.

     

    In this challenging economic climate, organizations are realizing that the expertise of veteran team members coupled with the fresh ideas and enthusiasm of younger team members can drive innovation and profitability. Besides developing deep industry and functional expertise over time, veteran team members have weathered previous economic storms—so that experience is an added driver.

     

    Mentoring is essential to collaboration and is therefore a critical component of a collaborative culture. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I identify eleven approaches a leader can use to instill collaborative culture, and establishing a mentoring system is at the top of the list. Mentoring systems can be formal or informal. Intel has established a formal mentoring process that includes an intranet-based system that matches protégés with mentors. Intel has also institutionalized mentoring through job sharing. Two leaders with complimentary skills may co-lead a business unit.

     

    According to an August 18, 2008 story in The Wall Street Journal by George Anders headlined “Companies Try to Extend Researchers’ Productivity,” Texas Instruments is formally matching new hires with mentors called “craftsmen” who coach their protégés. New design engineers, writes Anders, can become “fully effective” in three or four years instead of five to seven.

     

    Some companies that were founded on collaborative principles or have developed a collaborative culture over decades have successfully used informal mentoring. In these organizations, people naturally seek out mentors throughout the organization. Many Japanese companies, notably Toyota, successfully practice informal mentoring. For less-collaborative companies seeking to instill a collaborative culture, however, it’s essential to establish a formal mentoring system.

     

    There are many types of mentoring relationships relevant to organizations. The traditional relationship is between an older, wiser mentor and a younger, motivated protégé. For this approach to work, the organizational culture and HR practices must value the contributions of team members regardless of age and must acknowledge that team members develop at different paces. Some team members contribute the most late in their careers, and typical performance evaluation systems fail to account for this. Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t, addresses the disconnect between evaluation methodology and individual talents. For more on Gladwell’s Outliers, see my June 6, 2008 post.

    Mentoring can transcend the traditional age-oriented mentor/protégé relationship. People with complimentary skills can mentor each other. For this arrangement to work, people must easily morph from the role of mentor to that of protégé in much the same way as a graduate student may teach undergraduates in the morning and become an apprentice to a professor in the afternoon.

    Mayo Clinic’s collaborative leadership model pairs a doctor with a professional administrator for each leadership role. Aside from bringing his or her medical knowledge to decision-making, the doctor’s responsibility is to advocate the patient’s perspective in developing policy. The administrator brings a complementary perspective involving things like business processes. Dr. Glenn Forbes, CEO of the Mayo Clinic’s Rochester, Minnesota campus, told me when I was researching the book that he has had about a dozen leadership partnerships at Mayo. In some partnerships, he has played more of a mentor and in other cases he has played more of a protégé. The mentor and protégé roles are dynamic in a collaborative culture.

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  • Collaboration Requires Systems that Talk

    Recently, I wanted to use some frequent flier miles for a trip on a U.S.-based airline’s international partner. When I called, the representative told me that to use my miles on the partner airline, he would need to enter my requested flights into the reservations system. Then he would need to send a message to the partner airline requesting confirmation that the seats were available using miles. The agent asked me to call back in 24 hours to learn whether the booking would be confirmed. In 24 hours, I called back and learned that there were no seats available. I then selected other dates, repeated the process and got the same result.

     

    After four tries, I decided to call the partner airline directly to find out available dates. The agent informed me that the dates I wanted had wide open availability for miles-based tickets. So, I tried calling the U.S.-based airline again to request those dates. Again, the result was “unconfirmed.” There was clearly a partner collaboration problem, and systems seemed like the likely culprit.

     

    I called senior leaders of the airline. When the partnership manager investigated, he determined there was indeed a systems-not-talking issue. Nobody using miles could book any flights on the partner airline. My call was the first indication to the airline that there was a collaboration issue involving systems. I didn’t send a bill, but I did get the seats.

     

    For that same trip, I submitted hold requests via the Web or automated phone systems for three daily newspapers and the U.S. mail delivered to my home. I entered a hold date one day before my travel date, so that I could make sure the papers and the mail would stop. Of those four requests, only The Wall Street Journal stopped delivery as requested. The other two newspapers plus the U.S. mail came despite my request.

     

    This was a security risk in that a pile of newspapers and mail overflowing from the letter slot is an invitation to burglars. In this case, the information I entered into systems was not reaching the newspaper delivery people and the letter carrier. These were internal collaboration issues involving systems, and the lack of collaboration was jeopardizing customer relationships. An easy way to lose a customer is to compromise the customer’s security.

     

    Collaboration involves breaking down barriers and silos. For this to happen, both people and systems must talk. Unnecessary manifestations of hierarchy, fear and formality create barriers that poison collaboration. I made that point on the first episode of CNBC’s “Collaboration Now.” You can view that video clip from the show here. Sometimes, though, we take the systems part for granted.  Highly-collaborative organizations get the culture part right, but they also make sure that the organization uses common systems and processes. Proprietary systems and processes accessible to a single function or business unit reinforce information hoarding, which inhibits collaboration.

     

    Within enterprises, common systems and processes are key to collaboration. Among enterprises, systems need to talk for collaboration to succeed.

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