the culture of collaboration

  • Socrates and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s City Hall

    The in-box culture is dead, but that may be news to the mayor and officials in New York City.

    New York’s City Hall apparently never got the message about deserialization. What I mean by deserialization is curbing the in-box or pass-along approach to work and interaction that is critical for collaboration and value creation. But New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has sure received plenty of memos…decision memos, that is.

     

    New York City Hall
    New York City’s City Hall reportedly embraces the pass-along approach to work and interaction

    Before Mayor de Blasio makes many decisions, his staff prepares memos. And before these decision memos reach the Mayor, they reportedly require the signatures of at least eight officials including the first deputy mayor, the law department, the Mayor’s counsel, the budget director, the press secretary, the head of intergovernmental affairs and the deputy mayor with direct responsibility, according to a recent story by J. David Goodman in the New York Times. This is the antiquated pass-along approach.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that a memo on flight rules for helicopters took at least nine rounds of revisions. Nine rounds! This is pass-along times nine. And we wonder why citizens complain that government is mired in bureaucracy. The Times story quotes the Mayor’s chief of staff Tom Snyder as saying the Mayor’s decision-making process is “extremely granular, engaged, semi-Socratic.”

    Actually, Mayor de Blasio’s approach is anything but Socratic. Socrates believed that the way to the truth was through questioning and dialogue. Socrates rejected writing, because writing meant—quite literally in ancient Athens—that ideas were set in stone or wax and that the process of developing those ideas was dead.  Socrates also rejected scripted speeches, because these are essentially the recitation of written words. For organizations making decisions, one form of the truth is accurate information—which is dynamic rather than set in stone. As the situation changes, sometimes hour-to-hour, what can be considered accurate information also shifts.

    Using memos or email to make decisions compromises collaboration and disrupts value creation. This approach is a hallmark of command-and-control organizational structure and culture. By the time each department head or official has signed off on the course of action and passed the baton to the next official, the “truth” or facts have often changed. Socrates would roll over. Yet dialogue and questioning without a structure can also pose problems particularly for complex organizations such as New York City government and large, distributed enterprises. So what’s the alternative?

    My most recent book, The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration, shows how to change the structure of organizations so that they can evolve from command and control to collaborative. And a fundamental element is creating an Open-Access Enterprise which enables the organization for spontaneous dialogue. In the Open-Access Enterprise, everybody has access to everybody else—and that access is immediate.

    Using unified communications, we can see who is available and connect instantly. We can bring key stakeholders into collaborative group sessions (CGS) so we can hash out issues in real time, make decisions and create a work product without getting mired in the pass-along approach of memos and meetings. A CGS can occur virtually using unified communications and related tools or the session can happen physically with all participants in the same room.

    Mayor De Blasio’s apparent goal of getting broad input into decisions makes sense. Embracing the Socratic method has merit. But the structure and processes of the Mayor’s office appear flawed and are short circuiting the goal. This is typical of many organizations that embrace collaboration as a concept but sabotage collaboration with a command-and-control structure that encourages bureaucracy and reinforces hidden agendas and internal competition. The solution is to adopt a collaborative organizational structure that leaves memos and traditional meetings in the dust. The in-box culture is dead.

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  • Collaboration Washing

    It takes more than appearing collaborative to achieve The Culture of Collaboration.

    As collaboration has become a trend, companies and people talk collaboration without being collaborative. Just as greenwashing involves deceptively promoting the perception that an organization’s products and policies are environmentally-friendly, something similar is happening with collaboration. It's called collaboration washing: promoting collaboration as a corporate or product trait without any real collaboration happening.

    When the first edition of my book The Culture of Collaboration® appeared in early 2007, consciousness for organizational collaboration was just beginning. One prominent Silicon Valley company had pre-ordered thousands of copies of the book. A new chief marketing officer disliked the word collaboration, and so the books remained in the company’s warehouse until the following year when more people, organizations and media outlets began embracing collaboration. Then the technology company distributed the books to customers globally.

    Now collaboration is a buzz word. Marketers link myriad products to collaboration, and human resources people embrace the word as a corporate culture label. And guess what? The meaning of collaboration is getting diluted. In The Culture of Collaboration® book, I define collaboration as “working together to create value while sharing virtual or physical space.”

    Many people regard social media use as a mark of a collaborative company. As I’ve demonstrated to many audiences, it’s quite possible to use social media and create zero value. It’s also possible to use any collaboration technology without creating value and, therefore, without collaborating. Some consider a youthful workforce as an indicator of a collaborative culture. But I’ve observed, interviewed and worked with numerous engineers in their fifties and sixties who have designed everything from game-changing software to airplanes. Without significant collaboration, these products would have been dead on arrival. And it’s easy to find internally-competitive, command-and-control behavior among people in their twenties working in technology and other leading-edge sectors.

    Real collaboration requires adopting a collaborative organizational structure as I outline in my most recent book, The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration®. This goes well beyond buzz words and window dressing. The Bounty Effect is the second book in The Culture of Collaboration® series. The first book, The Culture of Collaboration®, is about raising the consciousness for a new way of working. The Bounty Effect focuses on how to achieve collaboration in organizations

    Open-plan workspaces are a current popular marker of a collaborative company. Collaborative workplace design is much more than window dressing. It’s a key practice in adopting a collaborative structure, but it’s only one element. Citigroup is the latest Fortune 500 company to jump on the open-plan workspace bandwagon. Citi reportedly is adopting a “non-territorial” or “free-address” deskless approach similar to the one GlaxoSmithKline uses in its Philadelphia Navy Yard building. In The Bounty Effect, I explain GlaxoSmithKline's approach to collaborative workspaces and culture.

    Citi CEO Michael Corbat told the Wall Street Journal that he is particularly excited about a “town square” space on the ground floor that will increase serendipitous encounters among team members. This, in turn, he expects will enhance communication and exchange of ideas. Also, Citigroup anticipates that the open-plan workspace will flatten hierarchies.

    Essentially, Citigroup is taking a step towards adopting a more collaborative culture and structure. However, transforming a company into a global collaborative enterprise requires many more structural changes than the physical workplace environment. Many organizations such as police and fire departments, newsrooms and trading floors have operated with open-plan workspaces for years. Yet a lack of collaboration still compromises many of these organizations.

    Citigroup and the increasing numbers of organizations adopting open workspaces can create incredible value through collaboration if they go beyond the most obvious manifestation of a shifting culture—the physical workplace environment—to embrace principles, practices and processes of collaborative organizational structure. These include everything from replacing the traditional organization chart and the traditional meeting to changing the recognition and reward system and keeping measurement mania in check.

    Anything short of structural change is collaboration washing.

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  • Lagoons and Collaborative Development

    As the Falcon 2000LX reaches 41,000 feet, Uri Man begins answering questions from real estate developers. “It’s not stagnant. It’s circulating,” Man, the CEO of Crystal Lagoons USA, tells one inquiring passenger.

    Soon we would see for ourselves. Man had chartered the plush jet and scooped up some developers and this author attending the Urban Land Institute’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco last Monday. Now we’re bound for Cabo San Lucas to tour a human-made lagoon.

    “We are a technology company collaborating with developers,” Man explains. This unique collaboration for large-scale real estate development projects had piqued my interest. Crystal Lagoons has 300 lagoon projects underway globally.  Man did a stint as a developer before Crystal Lagoons founder Fernando Fischmann recruited him to accelerate lagoon projects in the U.S. “Right now we’re going to Cabo, because I can’t show you one yet in the U.S.” That’s about to change. The first Crystal Lagoon in the U.S. will reportedly open next summer at Epperson Ranch in Pasco County, Florida.

    Meantime, we’re headed to the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja peninsula to see what a 10-acre salt water lagoon looks and feels like. As Man begins a slide presentation on his notebook computer, I begin

    Crystal Lagoons Diamante web
    A 10-acre Crystal Lagoon at Diamante Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. (Photo credit: K.R. Hirzel)

    visualizing the collaborative potential of lagoons. Resort developers need a new amenity to differentiate their projects. Coastal resorts can increase their waterfront, and inland resorts can gain a coastal experience. A Crystal Lagoons architect and project team collaborates with the developer’s planning team until they conceive a project with a lagoon as the centerpiece. The Crystal Lagoons technology uses disinfection “pulses” that reportedly allow using up to 100 times fewer chemicals than a swimming pool and an ultrasonic filtration system that allows using up to 50 times less energy than conventional filtration systems.

    The Crystal Lagoons business model has nothing to do with construction and everything to do with licensing. The company has a major stake in the success of development projects, because it receives roughly two percent of every condominium and house sale and a similar cut of each time share dollar. For developers, constructing lagoons costs an average of $100,000 to $200,000 per acre.

    The Falcon 2000X lands, and a greeting party boards the plane and passes out hand-blown shot glasses. After a ride through some dusty Cabo streets, we arrive at the Diamante development west of the city on the Pacific Ocean. After we tour the resort, I change into my swim suit and plunge into the salt water lagoon. As I swim laps in a life-guarded area near one of two beaches, kayaks explore the expanse of this man-made mini ocean.

    En route back to San Francisco, Uri Man talks about the future of Crystal Lagoons with the gusto of a bond trader (he used to be one) and the chutzpah of a guy who once hit on Fox News anchor Ainsley Earhardt on live TV (which he did). That future may involve cross-sector collaboration among industry and governments.

    Crystal Lagoons-Uri En Route to Cabo web
    Crystal Lagoons USA CEO Uri Man on board a Falcon 2000LX en route to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. (Photo credit: K.R. Hirzel)

    “Parks are big money losers for states, cities and countries,” Man insists. So why not collaborate with governments to transform parks with lagoons? “Then it’s not just ten people showing up with their dogs,” says Man. “You could have hundreds of thousands showing up.”

    The licensing revenue business model, which the company would likely modify for government work, ties the success of Crystal Lagoons to the achievements of developers and their large-scale projects. Both parties share wins and losses. So Crystal Lagoons enters into collaborations carefully and works with developers to create mutual value. More broadly, business partners can achieve smashing success if incentives and business models foster symbiotic relationships and collaborative value creation.

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  • Millennial Malarkey

    “The people under 30 get it. It’s second nature to them.”

     “We have a bifurcated workforce.”

     “Let’s just turn the keys over to the Millennials. They get it. We don’t.”

    These are some snippets of conversation from well-intentioned change agents who overemphasize generational differences while attempting to transform their organizations into collaborative enterprises. In The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration®, I identify this scenario as the Generation Gap Trap. It’s a trap, because overemphasizing generational differences reinforces fear and internal competition which short circuit collaboration.

    Undoubtedly, younger team members who are so-called “digital natives” are accustomed to using tools such as texting, instant messaging, and social media. It takes more than using tools, though, to collaborate. In The Culture of Collaboration® book, I define collaboration as working together to create value. And it’s quite possible to text, IM, or use social media without creating any value.

    The point is that age is by no means a predictor of collaborative behavior.  Some people right out of college or graduate school internally compete while they use “collaborative” tools and technologies. Meantime, collaboration is baked into the behavior of some team members in their fifties and sixties. Some disciplines like aerospace engineering or animation are inherently collaborative, and therefore experience in these fields is a better predictor of collaborative behavior than age. I have worked with some “boring” industrial companies in which people work together to create value far more easily and often than team members in supposedly collaborative Silicon Valley companies.

    After seemingly endless media reports describing how millennials demand a collaborative workplace, a new CEB study indicates that millennnials—those born between 1980 and 2000—are the most competitive generation in today’s workplace. Among CEB’s findings are that millennials are more driven by performance relative to others than by absolute performance and that millennials are less likely to trust peers and their peers’ input. Trust, incidentally, is one of the 10 Cultural Elements of Collaboration that my colleagues and I have identified. Without trust, collaboration is dead on arrival.

    In an August 1, 2015 “Schumpeter” column in The Economist, the unidentified columnist explores some of these millennial myths and cites the CEB study. The columnist incorrectly concludes from the research that to motivate young team members, organizations should put less emphasis on collaboration. The real take-away regarding the CEB study is that emphasizing generational differences is folly.

    De-emphasizing collaboration because millennials are less motivated by it would pander to a generation without guiding it. Instead, doubling down on adopting collaborative organizational structures and cultures will ultimately motivate team members regardless of generation and create far more value than command-and-control and internal competition.

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  • Accenture Scraps Reviews, Rankings and Joins The Bounty Effect Bandwagon

    Nothing impedes collaboration more than outmoded recognition and reward systems. And replacing annual performance reviews and rankings advances collaborative culture, behavior and organizational structure.

    Many organizations promote themselves as collaborative while simultaneously reinforcing internal competition through annual performance reviews and rankings. This process squanders time and distracts the organization while pitting team members against one another. Performance reviews and rankings incent team members to hoard information and maintain hidden agendas rather than share ideas and work together towards common goals.

    Accenture is the latest major organization to eliminate rankings and performance reviews. “Massive revolution” is how Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme characterized the organizational change as quoted in the July 21 edition of The Washington Post.

    In the Spring of 2013, Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates read an advanced copy of The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration® which demonstrates why ranking team members falls short and how a Collaborative Reward System creates greater value than an internally-competitive system. Replacing performance reviews is the first of seven components of the Collaborative Reward Process (CRP) that I outline in the book.  In November, 2013, Microsoft eliminated rankings of team members. You can read more about Microsoft’s reward system shift in my January 20, 2014 post.

    Many legacy recognition and reward systems are based on the premise that individuals have different goals and must be motivated using “carrot-and-stick” approaches. But in a collaborative organization, people share the same goals so “carrot-and-stick” performance reviews and rankings are obsolete.

    So why do organizations persist in ranking and annually reviewing the performance of team members? The justification is weeding out non-performers and promoting “star” players, but the real reason is clinging to an outmoded command-and-control organizational structure. Remnants of this structure include not only performance reviews and rankings, but also organization charts, meetings and mission statements. These remnants inhibit organizations from maximizing value through collaboration.

    Undoubtedly, more organizations will follow Accenture, Microsoft and other major companies in replacing rankings and annual performance reviews—and in adopting a more collaborative organizational structure.

     

     

     

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  • Coffee and Collaboration

    In San Francisco, where I live, coffee plays a major role in lifestyles and work styles. People stand in long lines at artisanal coffee businesses for coffee that’s sourced, roasted and prepared with care. CoffeeIt has become de rigueur for leading technology and social media companies to make artisanal coffee available to team members. Google stocks beans from the better San Francisco purveyors in snack areas throughout its “Googleplex” in Mountain View, California. Team members can grind the beans, brew a cup, or pull a shot of espresso on demand.

    As the artisanal movement in coffee, often called “Third Wave Coffee,” sweeps the U.S. and infiltrates workplaces, people are becoming particular about what’s in their mug. Commercial brew just won’t do. Yet coffee consumption remains primarily a solitary activity. People fiddle with their smart phones or work on notebook computers as they sip that Yirgacheffe or Antigua drip-by-the-cup in cafes and in workplaces.

    In contrast, workplace coffee consumption in Sweden is primarily a social activity. Swedes embrace the ritual consumption of coffee rather than the coffee itself. So Swedes care less about sourcing, roasting and preparation and more about gathering around a table with colleagues to consume the beverage.

    I recently returned from Gothenburg, Sweden where I gave a keynote speech on collaboration to a group of government leaders, healthcare professionals and pharmaceutical executives. While in Sweden, I engaged in Fika which is an institution in the Swedish workplace. Fika is scheduled twice a day, typically at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Work groups sit around tables in break areas. They drink coffee, eat cake sometimes baked by a team member, and they discuss issues pertinent to their work. Fika helps achieve the consensus that is integral to Swedish business culture (consensus is not integral to collaboration, but that’s a different post). Fika’s limitation is that people share coffee and cake with the same team members every day.

    Both U.S. and Swedish workplaces can enhance collaboration by changing how they consume coffee—but the challenges are different for each culture. In the U.S., the challenge is to put down the devices and engage others while enjoying that artisanal cup of joe.

    In Sweden, the challenge is to include people from other levels, roles and regions so that fika is less insular. Collaborative tools such as telepresence could bridge the distance gap and offer the opportunity for a video fika. Because fika is so engrained in the Swedish business culture, it is a critical channel Swedes can use to enhance organizational collaboration.

     

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  • The Collaborative Value of Getting Lost

    Remember when it was possible to get lost? Global positioning systems (GPS) and satellite-based navigation tools have rendered losing one’s way an anachronism. Something is lost, though, in the inability to get lost. And that something is serendipity.

    So what’s wrong with that? And what does this have to do with collaboration? Travel involves some structure. You may know approximate departure and arrival times. You may have an idea where you’re going and even some sort of a plan. Like travel, collaboration involves some structure. Balancing structure with serendipity is necessary to creating collaborative value.

    Adopting a structure that lets team members use creativity and collective brain power nets far better results than dictating their moves.  Instructing collaborators each step of the way as GPS instructs navigators falls flat. When people get lost, they may discover something new or find a different way to get back on course. They may also determine there are several paths and that options exist.

    Stopping and asking for directions lets us engage people rather than devices. Some months ago, a colleague who is a geographer and I tried an experiment while driving in France. We knew where we were going and we had some sense of how to get there. We skipped GPS and used no maps. Instead, when we veered off course, we stopped and asked directions. My colleague studied GPS in graduate school, but she realizes the technology’s limitations. She equates the “turn left, turn right” approach with command and control. Instead, she prefers to wander and discover new things. We lost our way a time or two with interesting results.

    In one case, a Frenchman retorted “Don’t you have GPS?” In another instance, we stopped at a small- town bar and asked the imbibers for directions. They motioned us to sit down and have a drink, which we did. And they engaged us in a conversation about the differences between small-town and urban culture in France before getting us back on course. This serendipitous encounter connected us with people and ideas in a way that using GPS could never have accomplished. Like collaboration, our encounter offered a richer experience as other perspectives entered the mix.

    The electronic mapping craze is now going indoors. I know a furrier in a mid-sized Midwestern city who keeps getting requests from Google to map the interior of his business. Security is a major concern considering the value of his inventory which includes exotic mink and other fur coats, and he has zero desire to publicize the layout of his store. Best I can tell, no banks have yet provided floor plans to Google.

    The downside of never needing to ask for directions is that our lives and our travels become overly planned and controlled with little room for chance. This mirrors the struggles of organizations striving to become collaborative while their structures hold them back. Enabling serendipity is a key element in adopting a collaborative organizational structure. In command-and-control organizations, formality eclipses serendipity. It’s as if everything is scripted. Organizations on a collaborative path design physical and virtual work spaces with chance encounters in mind, as The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration book details.

    I live in San Francisco where many people ride company buses to work in Silicon Valley. In the morning, they board buses on which Wi-Fi and other amenities are provided. At work, food is available in free campus restaurants and canteens. Haircuts and dry cleaning services are also available. They ride the bus back in the evening. The idea is that without having to think about transportation, food and other services, team members can focus on innovation at work. The problem is that without having to deal with many of life’s necessities, people can become less resourceful. Work days become too scripted leaving little to chance. The lack of opportunity to “get lost” can interfere with progress.

    Spontaneity breaks down barriers and silos among levels, roles and regions. A chance encounter with a colleague in another function or business unit may spark an idea for a process improvement or a new product. If our time and movements throughout the work day are overly planned, we lose the opportunity to engage colleagues on the fly.

    GPS and satellite-based navigation technology have made the world smaller, but we must make sure that these tools and overly-controlled environments have not made our worlds smaller by preventing the serendipity and spontaneity necessary for travel and collaboration.

     

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  • General Motors and the “C” Word

    General Motors CEO Mary Barra is taking aim at the “C” word.

    “I hate the word culture,” Barra is quoted as saying in an article by Joseph B. White in the Mary BarraSeptember 30 edition of the Wall Street Journal. “Culture is really just how we all behave,” according to Barra. The comments are curious in that Barra testified before a Congressional subcommittee last June that she would

    GM CEO Mary Barra outlines new strategic plan  (Image copyright GM)

    not rest until GM’s “deep underlying cultural problems” are resolved. The subcommittee was investigating GM’s failure to recall thousands of cars with defective ignition switches for eleven years.

    It’s myopic to dismiss the word culture. Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s third definition of culture is “a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization.” GM would benefit from focusing on these issues plus the broader context of the word culture. In his Tusculan Disputations, the ancient Roman orator Cicero introduced the concept of culture as cultivation of the soul as a farmer cultivates crops. Culture has come to represent beliefs and customs of societies. Cultural anthropologists study social structure and customs in populations ranging from villages to corporations.

    Culture is inextricably intertwined with collaboration in that how “we all behave” in Barra’s words determines whether we’re working together towards common goals or working at cross purposes. Ironically, in a July 28, 2014 post, The Culture of Collaboration® blog took General Motors to task for overemphasizing culture change without structural change. Culture change typically delivered as an edict often highlights the desired result without providing a way to get there. This common prescription from leaders, pundits and management gurus often fails, because the shift originates with executives without detail, discussion or broad buy-in. Meantime, the outmoded organizational structure stays the same. To achieve collaborative culture and the payoff that collaboration provides, it’s necessary to change the organizational structure. Then culture change can happen.

    On October 1, GM outlined its new strategic plan that focuses on technology and product advances, growth in China, establishing Cadillac as a separate business unit “headquartered” in New York City and delivering “core operating efficiencies.” Incidentally, the notion of headquarters is a relic of Industrial Age command and control. Nowhere does the plan mention structural change, which the automaker sorely needs. Changing GM’s structure requires overhauling everything from how team members share information across levels, roles and regions to how the company recognizes and rewards people as I detail in my book, The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration®.

     

     

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  • Health Insurance Company Experiences The Bounty Effect

    When Presbyterian Health Plan denied Dave Bexfield of Albuquerque, New Mexico reimbursement for a multiple sclerosis treatment trial, Bexfield launched a campaign to recover the $200,000 he spent on the treatment. He contacted media, bombarded Presbyterian with calls and emails, and ultimately lined his garage walls with the insurer’s denial letters, according to an August 1, 2014 column by David Segal in the New York Times.

    The treatment was a stem cell transplant trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. The trial worked in that Bexfield no longer takes M.S. medication and the disease is in remission. But the stem cell transplant was apparently not a covered benefit when Bexfield received the treatment. Ironically, Presbyterian Health Plan added this treatment to the benefits for Bexfield’s plan a few months after he finished the trial. A Presbyterian spokesperson reportedly called the timing “unfortunate.”

    Unfortunate indeed for Presbyterian Health Plan in that Bexfield refused to back down. Presbyterian reportedly insisted that the only reason the company had added stem cell transplants for M.S. as a benefit was that the federal government had mandated it. So Bexfield submitted a Freedom of Information Act request and received documents indicating there was no federal mandate. This suggested that Presbyterian had decided on its own based on the treatment’s merits to begin covering stem cell transplants after Bexfield had completed the trial. After receiving many additional letters and media calls, Presbyterian changed course. Presbyterian Health Plan President Lisa Farrell Lujan agreed to reimburse Bexfield not only the $200,000, but also an additional $198,000 in interest at 18 percent, according to the Times.

    Boom. The Bounty Effect had arrived at Presbyterian Health Plan, and the company seized the opportunity to change. The Bounty Effect happens when exigent circumstances compel businesses, governments and organizations to change their structures from command-and-control to collaborative. The exigent circumstances were groundbreaking advances in stem cell research. Bexfield’s campaign and the resulting media attention drove The Bounty Effect home. In this situation, Presbyterian adopted a more collaborative approach. Often structural change starts small and grows. This episode may pave the way for more fundamental structural changes at the company.

    In my latest book, The Bounty Effect: 7 Steps to The Culture of Collaboration, one of the 7 steps is Processes. And a key process is employing Measurement Counter-Measures which curb the measurement mania that can complicate collaboration and compromise value. The point is that a maniacal focus on measurement can produce the opposite of the intended result. Clearly, Presbyterian’s measurement mania produced myopia in that claims representative had difficulty seeing beyond the numbers.

    The $200,000 for the stem cell transplant would cost the insurer in the short run, but the money produces a living, breathing example of an insurance customer who may potentially avoid further treatment for M.S. and save the insurer plenty. One measurement counter-measure is to perform a common sense reality check. If the numbers defy common sense, that’s our cue to pause and reconsider. Employing Measurement Counter-Measures is often the hardest collaborative process for financial professionals to adopt.

    Lujan, Presbyterian’s president, is the company’s former CFO and was previously an audit manager with Arthur Andersen. She told the Times that the individual decisions Presbyterian made in Bexfield’s case were correct but that consistent policies had to be balanced against fairness. “When I looked at the forest, I came to a different conclusion than those who had looked at each individual tree,” according to Lujan.

    The old reimbursement decision was obsolete, because of scientific breakthroughs. Clinging to an antiquated coverage decision would expose the company to possible litigation, bad publicity, and a hit to its reputation. More fundamentally, the old decision—and the structure that produced that decision—failed the fairness test and the common sense reality check.

    The Bounty Effect prompted Lujan to take a key step—but changing the structure requires much more. If only the CEO can see the forest and use a fairness test, the organization flies blind and the business suffers. In adopting a collaborative structure, the challenge for Presbyterian and for many organizations is empowering people at all levels to consider the big picture, participate in decisions and take action. This requires, among other shifts, changing the recognition and reward system and enabling spontaneous interaction so that all Presbyterian Health System team members share a view of the forest and not just individual trees.

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  • Collaboration Keeps Martini Thriving for 150 Years

    Winemaking, at its best, involves collaboration. Making vermouth adds a layer of complexity to winemaking and therefore requires an extra dose of collaboration along with added alcohol, sugar and botanicals. Martini, also known as Martini and Rossi, is the top-selling vermouth producer globally.

    In the building known as Department 54 at Martini near Turin, Italy, winemakers and herbalists

    Martini botanicals
    Making vermouth involves blending wine and botanicals. (Photo: Gary Sexton)

    collaborate to blend wine with botanicals. These include such herbs as dittany from Crete, a purported aphrodisiac, and the bitter artemesia. Also in the mix are flowers including roses and violets plus such fruits as raspberry and lemon. Martini winemakers and herbalists also include woods including quassia from Jamaica and cascarilla bark from the Bahamas plus many roots and spices.

    Many of these ingredients lined tables at San Francisco’s Dirty Habit restaurant a couple of weeks ago where I joined Martini Master Blender Giuseppe Musso, Operations Director Giorgio Castagnotti and Head Wine Maker Franco Brezza as they explained the intricacies of vermouth blending and production. The Martini team was in San Francisco to introduce Gran Lusso, a new vermouth celebrating the company’s 150 years.

    As Giuseppe described the woods, herbs and other botanicals, twenty or so writers and guests sipped

    Martini vermouth
    Botanicals line the tables at Martini’s vermouth tasting. (Photo: Gary Sexton)

    vermouths. Giuseppe has spent his entire 30-year career with Martini. His emotion bubbled to the surface as he described how Martini people treat each another as family and how the company emphasizes sharing skills and techniques from one generation to the next. Since 1992, Martini has been part of Bacardi Limited, the largest privately-held, family-owned spirits company.

    Most vermouths use white wine. For the new Gran Lusso vermouth, Martini blends red wine from Barbera grapes with white wine from          Trebbiano grapes.  To extract the botanicals, the winemakers and herbalists have created a new method for Gran Lusso. They combine grape must from Moscato di Canelli grapes with a natural spirit, and then they age the mixture for a year before adding botanicals. They then add a “secret ingredient” called “extract 94” which originates from a Martini recipe reportedly from 1904. The result is a bitter sweet vermouth with aromatic complexity.

    What struck me about the Martini team’s formal presentations and informal discussions with guests is the lack of marketing bravado and genuine love for their products and company which they constantly referred to as “family.” At dog-and-pony shows staged by less collaborative companies, people pepper presentations and conversations with empty superlatives such as “Our products are best-of-breed” or “Nobody can do what we do.”

    In The Culture of Collaboration book, I call this Superlative Syndrome. It’s a manifestation of what the Greeks called hubris or excessive pride. Superlative Syndrome often masks defects and can ruin a business as trust evaporates. Customers, financial analysts and the media become conditioned to doubt the company’s messages. Team members learn to cut corners and lie. In contrast, Martini delivers its message with sincerity and cultivates long relationships with business partners, customers and team members.

     

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