united states department of state

  • Cross-Sector Collaboration for Sustainable Development

    Accomplishing massive goals requires massive collaboration—far beyond collaborating within an organization or within an industry or among government agencies.

    Making meaningful progress on issues including eradicating global poverty and protecting the global ecosystem requires collaboration among governments, non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), private industry, farmers, indigenous peoples and unaffiliated individuals with ideas. This cross-sector collaboration is driving the agenda for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development which happens this June 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The conference, dubbed Rio+20, marks the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The 1992 conference established the Rio Declaration, which includes 27 principles mostly addressing sustainable economic development.

    Last Friday, at the invitation of the United States Department of State, I attended a planning meeting for Rio+20 at the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The purpose was to distill ideas from cross-sector collaborators on how to bridge connection technologies with sustainable development. In a brainstorming session on “sustainable economic growth,” we tackled wasted talent and connectivity.  Think of the many people in developing countries with talent and ideas who have no outlet to connect and collaborate. This is our collective loss as global citizens until we tap that talent.

    The world’s wasting of talent in developing countries is analogous to the command-and-control organization that pays “knowledge workers” to think and pays everybody else to carry out orders. See my January 11, 2011 column for BusinessWeek.com on this topic. Such an organization squanders talent. This is because people throughout the organization—from the loading dock to the call center—have knowledge to contribute.

    One participant noted that wasted connectivity involves using the Internet frivolously, perhaps for pirating movies and other content, rather than for working together to eradicate poverty, create new markets and protect the environment. Similarly, wasted connectivity within organizations involves using networks and tools for chatter rather than for developing and producing products and services.

    Since the 1992 Rio Declaration, the Internet has grown from less than 16 million users to over 2 billion users, according to internetworldstats.com. Mobile phone users have grown from less than 23 million in 1992 to more than 6 billion in 2011, according to nationmaster.com. The current level of connectivity creates an opportunity for a more distributed, peer-to-peer (read inclusive) approach in collaborating for sustainable development. 

    Old models of cross-sector collaboration were minimally effective, because they involved “decision makers” or “thought leaders” shaping ideas and developing solutions which they would hand down to people impacted by the decisions. Now people in developing countries without affiliations can shape ideas with ministers and private sector leaders globally. Well, at least this is technically possible.

    As important to cross-sector collaboration as global connectivity and enabling technologies is a cultural shift in which governments, NGO’s and private industry embrace input from people regardless of affiliation or location. This is analogous to organizations adopting more collaborative cultures and tools so that people far from the home office or from executive corridors can participate in making decisions. The State Department has chalked up success with an emerging collaborative culture and tools including Secretary Clinton’s Sounding Board. For more on this, see my September 14, 2010 post.

    One of the people hashing out ideas in the sustainable development brainstorming session was Rio+20 Secretary General Sha Zukang, who is also the UN Under Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs. Zukang, who demonstrated particular talent at defining and outlining sustainable development issues, brushed against a live wire as the workshop concluded: intellectual property. The brainstorm was exactly three weeks after the collapse of U.S. House of Representatives support for the Stop Online Privacy Act and Senate support for the PROTECT IP Act backed by media and entertainment companies and opposed by Google and Wikipedia among other online interests.

    Zukang described the need to “find a balance” between protecting intellectual property and disseminating information. This balance impacts cross-sector collaboration in that people in developing countries often lack access to the same information accessible to their collaborators in developed countries. Providing affordable access will help level the playing field. Contrary to some viewpoints, collaboration—cross-sector or otherwise—by no means requires eliminating or dismantling intellectual property protection. IP protection creates incentives for people and organizations to collaboratively develop and produce products and services.

    Cross-sector collaboration takes collaboration beyond organizational and sector boundaries to create value on a global scale.

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  • U.S. Embassy Vatican Gains Influence by Sharing

    After delivering a keynote speech for the Tagetik User Conference 2010 in Lucca, Italy late last month, I wanted to experience first-hand the collaborative movement in the United States Department of State.

    So, I visited the United States Embassy to the Holy See. With only six diplomats plus local staff, the embassy is undoubtedly one of America’s smallest. Unlike every other U.S. embassy, Embassy Vatican represents the U.S. government not just to a sovereign nation, but also to the largest single organization on Earth. That organization is the Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion Catholics globally.

    With a geographically-dispersed constituency, Embassy Vatican requires more than a physical location to accomplish U.S. policy objectives. That’s where virtual or eDiplomacy plays a role. Sure, there are often reasons for U.S. diplomats to press the flesh with Church officials, but Embassy Vatican need not be physically located in the Vatican. And, in fact, it’s not. The embassy is across the Tiber River in Rome, Italy.

    To reach the embassy, I made my way to Aventine Hill, an upscale neighborhood of Rome. What distinguishes the villa housing Embassy Vatican from the other mansions on the tree-lined block is the soldiers and small artillery across the street, security at the gate plus metal detectors at the entrance to the building. I waited in a converted living room decorated with portraits of former U.S. ambassadors and pictures of popes with U.S. presidents ranging from Reagan to Obama.

    Vatican Embassy - Julieta Valls Noyes In time, I was shown into an elegant office with a view of the embassy’s lush garden. Julieta Valls Noyes, Deputy Chief of Mission, extended her hand. She then introduced Mark Bakermans, Embassy Vatican’s point person on collaborative tools. After brief pleasantries, Julieta was ready to embrace the informality so necessary to collaboration. “I’ve already greeted you, so I can remove my jacket,” she smiled.

    Our conversation focused on the challenges of representing the United States to a global constituency. “We’re a small embassy, but what happens here has universal interest,” according to Julieta. To encourage information exchange and collaboration, Julieta had advocated building a Microsoft SharePoint portal for the embassy. However, according to Julieta, the tiny embassy lacked the necessary bandwidth. So, the State Department’s eDiplomacy team sent people to Rome. In May of 2009, a Diplopedia wiki-based internal site went live. For more on Diplopedia, see my September 14, 2010 post on “Taking Collaborative Risk at the State Department.”

    Clearly, Embassy Vatican’s use of Diplopedia is raising the embassy’s profile within the State Department. On an average month, the site gets 300 to 400 visitors. But that number spikes considerably when issues involving the Catholic Church hit the news. As the Catholic Church sex scandal bubbled up to banner headlines last February, Embassy Vatican’s Diplopedia site became a State Department clearinghouse for information on the scandal and the Church’s reaction to it. Most of the staff at Embassy Vatican contributes to the Diplopedia site, but Mark noted that the challenge is getting people across the State Department to comment on posts and share knowledge. For Diplopedia to enhance collaboration, consumers of information must also become contributors to information.

    I asked Julieta whether she would provide an inside view of the State Department’s internal ideation tool called Secretary Clinton’s Sounding Board, which is based on a blogging platform. For more on Secretary Clinton’s Sounding Board, see my September 14, 2010 post. Julieta invited me to sit on the edge of her desk (more informality!) as we viewed spirited debate from employees on topics ranging from recruitment of Hispanics to paying interns. Notably, one of the State Department’s most senior officials participated in the discussion and helped shape the ideas.

    The State Department has used Secretary Clinton’s Sounding Board to create workplace improvements. These range from installing showers for team members who ride bicycles to installing donation boxes so that employees can deposit left-over foreign currency from trips. The State Department then uses the money to aid families of Department people such as those who were Haiti earthquake victims. Ultimately, the State Department may use the ideation tool to craft diplomacy. Julieta insists that a separate ideation tool for diplomacy hosted on the Department’s classified site makes more sense than integrating diplomacy with workplace issues.

    Like so many organizations, the State Department still faces cultural issues that impede collaboration. These include rank-consciousness, unnecessary manifestations of hierarchy and silos among levels, teams and regions. Nevertheless, collaborative culture is starting to take hold—and tools like Diplopedia and Secretary Clinton’s Sounding Board are extending and enhancing that culture.

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  • Taking Collaborative Risk at The State Department

    Shifting from command-and-control to collaborative culture involves what might be termed collaborative risk, but some organizations are realizing that there’s greater risk in clinging to old ways of working.

     

    State Department Logo One organization that is recognizing the need for taking collaborative risk is the United States Department of State. “We’re a very risk-averse culture,” notes Duncan MacInnes, principal deputy coordinator for the Bureau of International Information Programs. State Department professionals fear that misstating policy or saying the wrong thing could become a diplomatic crisis. This parallels the fear in companies that trade secrets or market-moving information could leak. Nevertheless, the State Department has determined that the benefits of collaborating internally and externally outweigh the risks of resisting work style change.

     

    Change agents across the State Department are guiding the culture towards embracing collaboration. These change agents have wisely realized that eliminating disincentives to collaboration is as important as creating incentives. Therefore, the Department has updated its policies to eliminate disincentives to taking collaborative risk. “People will make mistakes, and those who have made too many mistakes have not been dinged for it,” according to MacInnes. This approach is critical to shifting the culture, because people must feel that the organization values collaborative risk and will provide the cover for them to try new ways of working.

     

    Externally, the State Department enables embassies to broadcast their own events including speeches by ambassadors on the Web with input from the public. The State Department uses ConnectSolutions Podium high-definition webcasting, which lets users ask live text questions, text chat with each other about the event, and leave video comments. The ConnectSolutions Real-Time Collaboration Platform enhances and extends Adobe Connect web conferencing. Embassies are also using the tool to collaborate internally. At first, embassy staff resisted the shift. “We’re showing them a new way to work, and we’re meeting in the middle,” says Tim Receveur, a foreign affairs officer coordinating global use of the tool.

     

    Aside from real-time collaboration, the State Department is also chalking up results in collaborating asynchronously. Over 3500 State Department team members have contributed some 12,000 articles to Diplopedia, an internal online encyclopedia based on Wikipedia. You can view an amusing video on Diplopedia here. The Department has also seen compelling growth in the use of an ideation tool. Ideation means developing and refining ideas so that people can make their organization better. The tool, dubbed Secretary Clinton’s Sounding Board, is based on a blogging platform. The tool lets people across embassies, bureaus, regions and levels of leadership brainstorm, make process improvements and create value collaboratively.

     

    In the last eighteen months, people have contributed 1800 ideas. “What in the past would have been water-cooler conversation that went nowhere is now [getting results], because the person who can make it happen is part of the conversation,” explains Richard Boly, director of e-Diplomacy. The ideation tool lets a person hired locally who’s working in a small West African consulate to collaborate, brainstorm and develop communities of interest with counterparts globally.

     

    One success factor for Richard and his team as they guide the work style shift is focusing on “the how rather than the what” for starters and saving the “thorniest issues” for last. By thorniest issues, Richard means U.S. policy and diplomacy. Meantime, he and his colleagues are encouraging culture shift and emphasizing use of collaborative tools for brainstorming improvements in “how” policy can be crafted. As the culture warms to the new way of working, the change agents believe diplomats will more collaboratively create policy itself.  

     

    Private industry is now looking to the State Department for clues regarding how to engage people effectively through corporate ideation tools. Increasingly, companies collaborate through ideation tools with their customers, but lag in collaborating internally. A big factor is fear. Companies often fail to give people cover so that they take collaborative risks. In this case, the Federal government may clear a path for business.

     

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