Concepts

  • Creating Wealth Collaboratively

    Collaboration is central to creating wealth. Contrary to the myth our star culture perpetuates, people working collaboratively achieve greater success than individuals. While some individuals may walk away with the lion’s share of the spoils, it takes a village to create their wealth. I’m glad that in his excellent page-one story in today’s New York Times headlined “The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age” Louis Uchitelle includes steel baron Andrew Carnegie’s philosophy of wealth creation. You can read the story here.

    The story compares Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and other billionaires with the super wealthy of yesteryear. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the story is that it quotes David Nasaw, author of the book Andrew Carnegie as saying that Carnegie believed “individuals do not create wealth by themselves.” Andrew_carnegie This, according to Nasaw, was fundamental to Carnegie’s gospel of wealth. In Carnegie’s view, the community creates wealth and individuals like him are simply trustees of wealth. Therefore, Carnegie gave most of his wealth back to the community in the form of libraries, museums, cultural centers and foundations.

    Carnegie’s philosophy applies today to how companies create value. As I describe in The Culture of Collaboration book, companies in a variety of industries are achieving impressive results through collaboration. Among the organizations included in the book are Toyota, Boeing, The Dow Chemical Company, BMW, Industrial Light & Magic, DreamWorks Animation, Mayo Clinic, and the Myelin Repair Foundation. In each of these organizations, star culture takes a back seat to collaborative culture.

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  • Collaboration Produces First Boeing 787 Dreamliner

    On Sunday, Boeing unveiled its first 787 Dreamliner at the company’s final assembly plant in Everett, Washington. With former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw hosting the festivities, Boeing broadcasted and webcasted the event in nine languages to more than 45 countries. 787_launch Boeing Commercial Airplanes VP and GM Mike Bair made an important remark for those of us interested in collaboration: "I am so proud of the men and women of Boeing and of our partner employees in the 70 companies that have brought this airplane to the passengers of the world."

    Bair’s reference to “partner employees” is significant in that Boeing is moving away from designing and manufacturing planes by itself. Instead the company is becoming a large-scale systems integrator and collaborating with global partners to produce the 787 Dreamliner and other planes. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I describe the 3 levels of collaboration at Boeing and how CIO Scott Griffin and Sergey Kravchenko, president of Boeing Russia, worked together to create a real-time collaborative design environment and the culture to support it. The environment, culture and tools that Griffin and Kravchenko have implemented have helped create a more efficient and profitable business model for Boeing. 

    The book uses Boeing as a model for the global collaborative enterprise (GCE), which I define as “a collection of interdependent companies that engage in shared creation of value, often in real time.” The partner employees to which Mike Bair refers are the collaborators who comprise Boeing’s GCE. While more and more companies are collaborating internally, very few are in the same league with Boeing when it comes to collaborating with business partners.

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  • Venture Capital and Global Collaboration

    Global collaboration is becoming a hot topic for venture capitalists whose US-based portfolio companies are expanding into China, India and other regions. I’m attending a gathering of venture capitalists this week, and the kick-off session was about how to expand winning companies globally.

    One VC panelist commented that the biggest problem for portfolio companies expanding globally is time zones. He explained that the COO may be in Japan, the CEO in California and the CTO and engineering team in Israel. “It’s so difficult to keep the communication flow among the management team,” he noted. The moderator asked the VC if there were any special tools that help. His response was “getting up early and going to bed late.” Another VC insisted that a range of tools including videoconferencing could close the distance gap for his portfolio companies.

    Paradoxically, distance can create value. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I describe how collaborative companies like Boeing, Toyota and BMW leverage time zones, collaborative culture and tools to compress product cycle time. Clearly, chopping many months off a car or airplane development program creates substantial value. In the book, I also discuss Boeing’s use of mirror zones (see my March 16 post).

    Even early stage, venture-backed companies can turn time zone differences into assets. The key is for entrepreneurs (with guidance from VC’s) to integrate global collaboration into business models. Start-ups have an advantage over many later-stage enterprises, because they can bake collaborative culture into the company’s DNA right from the start.        

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  • 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.

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  • Collaboration Issues at DaimlerChrysler?

    When mergers sour, many factors play a role. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I describe how anticipating, acknowledging and addressing cultural differences are key success factors in mergers. I also discuss how collaboration can bridge cultures, break down barriers and reduce the impact of silos. Against this backdrop, the book covers what went right with Procter & Gamble and Gillette and what went wrong with AOL and Time Warner.

    Now DaimlerChrysler seeks a buyer for Chrysler, and the bids are a fraction of the $36 billion Daimler-Benz paid for Chrysler nine years ago. This merger was clearly a disaster. What went wrong? Tuesday National Public Radio broadcast an excellent story by Frank Langfitt on its flagship newscast, All Things Considered. You can listen to the story here.

    In a nutshell, Langfitt reports that the companies had almost nothing in common. Barriers included language and culture. Daimler was a German company known for luxury brands and Chrysler was a scrappy, price-conscious Detroit carmaker that nearly went bankrupt in the 1980’s. Mercedes engineers had limited interest in the cost-per-unit of components and resisted sharing parts for use in Chrysler-branded vehicles for fear of diluting brand value. In contrast, Ford Motor Company—as I describe in the book—shares parts across Volvo, Ford Europe and Mazda.

    DaimlerChrysler uses collaborative tools, both real-time and asynchronous. The company has standardized on the IBM Lotus suite including Sametime instant messaging. Nevertheless, collaboration has been inadequate to break down barriers and ensure a successful merger. Why? It takes more than collaborative tools to collaborate! As I point out in the book, tools extend and enhance—rather than create—collaborative culture.

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  • Collaborative Leadership

    Matt Villano’s excellent column headlined “Want Recognition? Share the Limelight” in Sunday’s New York Times business section tackles the “I” vs. “we” dilemma in the workplace. Use “I” to describe success, and you’re a selfish narcissist, to paraphrase the column. Use “we” and you get less credit than you may deserve.

    Nevertheless, “I” has no place in a collaborative culture. Few successes are the work of one person. Unfortunately, too many organizations embrace star cultures in which people are rewarded for competing with colleagues. We can create much greater value through collaboration than through internal competition. Fortunately for the bottom line, star cultures are becoming passé.

    And there’s a clear link between tools and culture. Presence is the ability of a person or device to connect with others and to display levels of availability. IM buddy lists introduced us to the concept. Now we can connect with colleagues and business partners directly from spreadsheets, documents and line-of-business systems. We can begin with text chat and, when appropriate, escalate into voice or video interaction.

    As we extend collaborative culture through presence-enabled tools, we are becoming more “we” oriented. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I describe the collaborative culture at the Mayo Clinic. Mayo extensively uses collaborative tools including videoconferencing and web conferencing to extend—rather than create—its collaborative culture. And Dr. Glenn Forbes, CEO of the Mayo Clinic’s Rochester, Minnesota campus tells me that at Mayo people are very uncomfortable using the word “I.”

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  • Collaboration Across Time Zones

    The blogosphere is abuzz with comments about The Daily Telegraph’s editorial that we should eliminate time zones in favor of a single “Global Time.”

    Since the Telegraph is a British newspaper, Global Time means Greenwich Mean Time. The argument in favor of Global Time is that it’s simple and that New Yorkers will get used to the alarm clock going off at what is currently 11 p.m. EDT.

    While a single time zone could solve some problems, it would undoubtedly create other issues—like choosing the time zone that would become Global Time. Another issue is that highly-collaborative companies leverage mirror zones (see my March 16 post) for 24-hour product and service design and development. Shifting to a single time zone would compromise that business model.

    The discussion about time zones points up an issue that plagues many organizations. I have worked with global companies that expect the rest of the world to adopt headquarters-driven, real-time collaboration schedules. This means team members in Paris must collaborate at night with a Seattle headquarters or a team in Tokyo must conference at 5 a.m. with headquarters in New York where it’s 4 p.m. The result is that people in other regions feel abused by the home office and can even interpret such practices as cultural insensitivity.

    The most collaborative companies reject headquarters-driven schedules. In The Culture of Collaboration book, I describe how collaborative organizations solve time zone problems by rotating convenience among regions. This has particular relevance for scheduled videoconferences and web conferences. The convenience of spontaneous encounters should also rotate based on common sense. If one collaborator or group of collaborators stays up late one week, their counterparts across the ocean may sacrifice convenience the next week. Collaborative leaders must consider work styles and lifestyles of global team members when scheduling interactions or collaborating spontaneously.

    It’s time to BREAK OUT of a headquarters-driven collaboration schedule and mindset so that global teams can create greater value.   

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  • Virtual Enterprise Applies The Culture of Collaboration

    I am delighted to see that the principles covered in The Culture of Collaboration book are taking hold.

    Not a day goes by without somebody telling me how the book is helping his or her career, transforming a team or, in some cases, an enterprise. From an author’s perspective, it’s exciting and rewarding to see how organizations are creating value through the 10 Cultural Elements of Collaboration and the other principles that I wrote about in the book.

    This brings me to Wilson F. Engel III, Ph.D. Dr. Engel has posted a detailed review of the book on Epinions.com in which he describes how he and his colleagues read The Culture of Collaboration and successfully applied the principles to their global virtual enterprise.  According to Dr. Engel’s review, "In effect, we used every principle in Rosen’s book—which was required reading for our group—and the principles WORK!"

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  • Mirror Zones for Collaboration

    Mirror zones are time zones that are opposite or nearly opposite. It’s a term I coined in The Culture of Collaboration book. The term has much relevance for collaboration.

    Using mirror zones, companies can compress product cycle time and time-to-market by creating a near 24-hour product development and design environment. When team members in one time zone sleep, their colleagues in the mirror zone work. Collaboration between the mirror zones happens in real time during the shift overlap and asynchronously the rest of the time. Mirror zones can create value in industries including aerospace, automotive, consumer products, healthcare, pharmaceutical, digital effects, advertising and many others.

    In the book, I write about how Boeing is successfully using mirror zones to design the 787 Dreamliner. I also write about how BMW leveraged time zones and set up mirror organizations when engineers were designing the X5. Beyond manufacturing, mirror zones can create substantial value in the service sector.

    Collaboration tools—both real time and asynchronous—are key enablers of mirror zones. But it takes more than tools for mirror zones to work. Bridging cultures is key.

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