My regular readers know I'm currently infatuated with understanding the process of True Collaboration: The creation of a collective
work-product by a highly responsive, interactive, iterative
give-and-take process that yields something greater than what any set
of individuals working alone could produce. My archetypal
example is the work of the Beatles (the four of them plus their
producers and other collaborators). Contrast the magic of the suite of
songs on the second side of Abbey Road with the vapid drivel they have
produced singularly since they broke up. True Collaboration is in
evidence in music (particularly jazz and other improvisational forms),
in improv theatre, in writing (Eliot & Pound, Whitehead &
Russell), in science (Nobel collaborations), in technology (Open
Source), in art (Van Gogh & Gauguin), and in some sports. I've been
wrestling with how to create that magic in business.
This past weekend, we went to a Christmas choral concert that the
daughter of some good friends was singing in. I've always loved choral
music and used to sing in the choir in junior high and high school. You
may not think of choral music as collaborative -- after all, the
composer and arranger tell you exactly what to sing, and the director
tells you exactly how to sing it. But if you've ever sung in a choir,
you know there's a lot more to it than that. Just as a flock of birds
can dive and swoop almost like a single organism, never colliding or
getting out of sync with the collective formation, so too does the
choir (a noun that is conspicuously singular
rather than plural in form) acts as a single organism, picking up on
the nuances of the rest of the members, constantly adjusting tone and
volume and shape of the sound each expresses, to the collective will
and energy and vibration of
the whole. I've even witnessed tug-of-wars for power between a choir
and a director who doesn't like what the choir is doing collectively.
If the director is wise, he or she will defer to the wisdom of the
choral 'crowd' -- they always know best. Good directors know their job
is to be a benchmark and sounding board -- gently reminding the choir
of the tempo, the key signature, and what's coming next, and letting
the magic happen. And tactfully pointing out individuals who aren't
'with the program' that the collective has created.
One of the songs this choir sings is an innocuous little children's song called Wood River
by Canadian artist Connie Kaldor. The lyrics are pretty monosyllabic
and juvenile, the kind of thing a clever child herself would write:
Oh won't you come with me, Where the Wood River flows,
We'll watch it meander slow-ly As the sky turns from red to dark.
And as that sun goes down, We'll throw our arms around
Each other and tell the dreams That are deep in the heart
Because the heart is bigger than trouble
And the heart is bigger than doubt
But the heart sometimes needs a little help
To figure that out
So won't you come with me Where the Wood River flows
The little Wood River knows That it goes to nowhere but
That doesn't stop it going Or them willows growing
Or all the lovers showing Their hearts to each other there
Because the heart is bigger than trouble
And the heart is bigger than doubt
But the heart sometimes needs a little help
To figure that out
So won't you come with me Where the Wood River flows
The little Wood River knows...
The artist has put three subversive ideas in the lyrics that only
emerge when, instead of being sung by young children, the song is sung
by teenagers. All of a sudden, throwing our arms each other in the dark
takes on a different tone. The 'help' in the chorus is no longer
maternal, it's peer-to-peer. And the lovers 'showing their hearts to
each other' out in the wild at night as nature watches wisely and
smiles, conjures up completely different imagery. And then there are
the chords: Not simple major and minor chords, but cascading runs of
ninth chords, expressive of anxiety, anguish and rebellion.
Now layer on the harmony, with some resultant major seventh and
suspended fourth chords added to the mix, and listen to a whole chorus
of teenage voices filling the room with this song, feeding off each
other, moving together. Pure collaborative magic. I dare you to hold
back the tears when you hear that chorus, a collective confession, a
personal message, a plea for understanding. An anthem. [If you like choral music,
you can buy the CD with this song here]
The biggest challenge in applying all of this to business, and to
public organizations, is that True Collaboration is all about emotion,
passion, love and complete honesty and trust. These are not attributes
of most organizations -- in fact it's considered kind of inappropriate
to even talk about these
things in a business context. These are things you hide away until you
come home at the end of the day. At work, they're dangerous.
And so is True Collaboration. I'm not talking about coordination,
the scheduling and assignment and organization of tasks that are each a
part of a project and are each done by individuals on the project
'team'. The vast majority of so-called 'collaboration tools' are really
just coordinating tools. That's not to say coordination isn't useful --
it's vital to many large projects that involve many players. And it's
not hard to do -- coordination is programmable.
True Collaboration is not. It's spontaneous, unmanageable, visceral,
impossible to control. Improv groups will tell you that sometimes what
works for one performance fails spectacularly at the next, for no
logical reason. If coordination is physics, True Collaboration is
alchemy, chemistry with no real knowledge of the ingredients. It can't
be programmed, but it can be enabled -- through study, teaching, encouragement, example, and, most of all, practice.
My research has got me to the point where I believe I could teach
people enough about the process and the necessary environment to
increase the likelihood of True Collaboration occurring. I believe I
could facilitate the process. But no one is going to pay me to do so
until and unless there's a sense or urgency around a problem that only
True Collaboration is likely to solve. No organization will take the
risks of allowing emotion, passion, love and complete honesty and trust
into the workplace if there's an easier answer. So now I need to frame
the Value Proposition for True Collaboration: A simple statement that
describes when and how it provides critical value that can't come any other way.
It all comes back, alas, to instinct. We live in an age when the
Internet and other networking and communication capabilities allow the
assembly and coordination of project 'teams' that don't even need to
know each other, let alone meet and work face-to-face. Traditional
organizations will only survive, only have value, if they can offer
something that 'virtual project teams' (with no overhead and a vastly
greater talent pool to draw on) cannot. My instincts tell me that True
Collaboration is that offering, that value. As hard as it is to do
anywhere, True Collaboration is much easier in an organization where
people know each other and can easily work together face-to-face, than
in a virtual project team. And my instincts tell me that True
Collaboration is the most effective way to turn a great idea into a
successful innovation.
My instincts tell me True Collaboration is therefore a do-or-die
proposition for organizations of every type in the next generation, if
they do not want to become unnecessary and irrelevant, relics of the
information age. My problem is that knowing this intuitively doesn't
sell it to anyone. Hell, I'm not even sure I can demonstrate that it
would be profitable.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
