4

THE SILICON VALLEY APPROACH TO COLLABORATION

Think again of that jazz ensemble I told you about in the Introduction. Each musician (for instance, a trumpeter), has to be able to play his or her part superbly. In addition, every musician in a section (for example, the horn section) must coordinate their part with the other members of that section and with the other sections. Finally, the band leader helps bring together the products of those individual musicians and sections into a unified sound.

APTITUDES FOR WORKING WITH OTHERS

The saxophonist, drummer, and other musicians know that when they accept a job as a member of that musical group their role is not just to be a soloist. They are being hired to learn their piece brilliantly and then come together with others and blend their work into a great performance.

We should know the same thing when we accept a job with a company. We are not being hired for a “soloist” position in which we only perform work on our own. Instead, we are hired to do our job as an individual at times, and “flip a switch” and blend with colleagues at other times.

Working alone requires a different skill than working with others. We use our expertise, figure out how to perform a task, and apply critical-thinking skills and judgment to make the right decisions and produce the best result. Working with others means we have to let go of being “totally in charge” of our work. We bring our expertise and initial ideas. We intend to meld those ideas with others to come up with the best thinking. We give up the ability to unilaterally decide what to do and how to do it. In return, we gain the diverse expertise of others.

Most of us are taught skills related to our expertise before we take a job with an employer. We have not, necessarily, been trained to work with others. Once employed, we get thrown into situations with other employees and are told to get the task done. We limp through our group work, trying to twist and turn our individual skills to that task. Often, that doesn’t work very well.

We need to be taught key skills to make us better at the portions of our jobs that involve collaborating with others. That is the primary goal of this book. In this chapter I will discuss individual skills, which we personally use when we are working with others, and team tools, which are processes we can apply as a group to meld our individual intelligence into collective intelligence.

In addition to these two skill sets, we also need our company to support us in working with others by maintaining a collaborative culture. Although this is not a set of skills like the first two elements, it is a set of practices that is vital for collaboration to thrive. We’ll call this company practices.

Together, these three factors—individual skills, team tools, and company practices—are the Building Blocks of Collaboration.

INDIVIDUAL SKILLS

There are fundamental skills and attitudes that individuals need to use to be successful when collaborating with others. They include communicating in ways that others understand and that will engage others, listening for deeper meanings in what others are saying, and respecting and trusting others.

If I do not respect your expertise and your cognitive abilities, then I am not likely to place much value on your thoughts and views. If I don’t trust that you are being honest and sharing what you know, or I don’t believe you’ll deliver the things you say you will, then I am similarly not going to put much stock in the things you say and do. Without mutual respect, trust, openness, and effective communication, we cannot achieve effective collaboration.

These skills and attitudes are table stakes (they are essential; you cannot succeed without them). Because they are central, most of us learned them before we arrived at the workplace. In addition, many companies conduct trainings to enhance employees’ abilities in these areas. (I will refer to some of them briefly in other parts of the book because of their importance.)

Beyond those fundamental skills, I want to offer what are likely to be four other skills for you to practice as an individual. These four skills are at the heart of the SVAC.

1. Being True to Yourself: Realizing what is important to you as you work with others. Being aware of the values that you hold dear and how can you be true to them. Keeping your biggest goals in mind. Knowing the role your emotions play and how to best manage them.
2. Being True to Others: Having a genuine connection with your coworkers—that is, caring about them, being open to them influencing you, and supporting and defending them when they’re right.
3. Being True to the Work: Working with others to explore and agree on the best ideas and the right work for the project. Recognizing that the best result is far more important than any one person being able to claim the idea as theirs.
4. Being True to the Company: Staying focused on company goals and how you can best contribute to them with everything that you do.

THE TAKE AWAY

Though all four of these skills make sense to most of us in abstract terms, in practice we usually focus on one or two of them—the ones that resonate for us the most. In reality, though, the four skills are intertwined. If we are not committed to the success of our coworkers, they will be less likely to support us. In that case, the team will often be divisive and achieve much less. In addition, it is much harder to achieve goals if the staff isn’t committed to achieving the best work for the project and the company as a whole.

Considering these four skills in juxtaposition with each other gives us a different perspective. We move from just advocating for our own goals or our personal views regarding what is right for this project to also considering ideas suggested by our colleagues and especially the needs of the whole company. It allows a level of insight that cannot be attained when we are focused on only one or two of them, and enables us to see things differently and make better decisions. (I will offer details for understanding and using these four skills in chapters 5, 6, and 7.)

TEAM TOOLS

Working with others means organizing and performing our work differently than we do when we are working alone. We need three elements:

1. A process: When we are coordinating the activities of a number of people, we need a method to help organize and manage the work.
2. A shared taxonomy: When we are working together, we often have different definitions of the project or particular topics within it. We need to articulate subjects clearly and precisely to get people on the same page and focused on the right aspects.
3. Effective decisions about uncertain futures: We regularly have to make projections about the future. This is relatively easy to do in a stable environment. It is much more difficult when we’re operating in an environment in which things are changing rapidly. I will offer a tool that can help you make more knowledgeable decisions when the future is uncertain.

Let’s take a look at these three Team Tools.

A PROCESS

When more than a few staff members are involved in the work, organizing and guiding them means making things more explicit. For instance, we need to determine:

   Who is responsible for doing what work, by which deadlines.

   General guides for how staff should communicate and interact with others.

   How to document important aspects of the work.

Many people believe that we don’t need a process to coordinate our work. They assume that employees will naturally come together and make things happen. This is not always the case, especially in complex projects. As one Silicon Valley leader told me: “The mere fact that you have well-qualified people working together to achieve a project doesn’t prevent problems. Having a framework that organizes what people are doing makes it much easier to prevent problems and solve the issues that do come up.”

Why don’t most companies have a framework that they share with employees when they are starting a new project? There are several reasons, which we will explore in Chapter 8 when I provide you with an excellent process that can help guide a variety of projects. Until you get to that chapter, know that there is an excellent method called Agile. It’s been used successfully for about 15 years to manage software projects.

There are a few people (myself included) who have realized that Agile can be just as useful to guide virtually any project in organizations, not just software development work. Based on this realization I have re-purposed Agile from its narrow niche and software lingo into a general project management methodology.

A SHARED TAXONOMY

It is relatively easy to understand a project or a specific topic within a project when we are working alone. If we are unclear, we can ask the person who assigned the work or we can research it on our own. We don’t have to worry about creating a definition that a lot of people understand and buy into.

Doing work in groups is a whole different story. We each come to the table with our own internal dictionary and lexicon of meanings. Furthermore, we assume that others share our definitions.

Imagine being in a crowd. Someone suddenly shouts the word duck. What would your first reaction be? Would you dive under the nearest table for some protection? Or would you look around to catch a glimpse of Donald? Similarly, if someone mentions the word head during a presentation, you depend on context to help you figure out whether she referring to “a leader” or “the uppermost part of the human body.”

If these two common words have such different meanings, imagine the miscommunication that can occur when talking about complex topics. It’s important to be clear and precise. Articulating things so others can understand them is known as framing (which we will explore in Chapter 9).

EFFECTIVE DECISIONS ABOUT UNCERTAIN FUTURES

Our work with others often involves making predictions about what will happen. When we are determining what features to include in the next version of our digital camera we are guessing about the future. It would be great to have a crystal ball that could reveal what our competitors are creating for their next version. It would also be wonderful to know what new technological innovations might be just around the corner. Additionally, it would be helpful to know what governmental regulations might be on the horizon.

Most of us just sigh and realize that these factors are unknowable. Because we cannot know them with certainty we assume it’s better not to guestimate what might happen. Or we pretend that we know what things will be like and create a plan around our one best theory. Neither of those two options is particularly useful. However, there is a third option: We could factor in potential changes as possibilities. Using those possibilities, we can arrive at decisions that hold-up much better as we move toward that uncertain future.

As one Silicon Valley interviewee remarked: “We have to throw ourselves into the fray. Ask what is really going on. What is driving this to happen and why? Sometimes the world is not the way I thought it was 12 months ago or even 12 minutes ago. I’m often not able to see that until the group helps me to see it differently.” There is a tool that can help us do this in an organized way. It is called scenario planning. (I will share it in Chapter 9.)

COMPANY PRACTICES

The individual skills and team tools we’ve been discussing are building blocks that contribute to effective collaboration. They’re available for any of us to use at any time. The third building block is one that we, as individual employees or lower-level managers, have less direct control over. This building block consists of three critical company-level practices that either enhance or inhibit employees’ ability to collaborate effectively.

The three practices are management practices, employee incentives, and access to each other. Because they are crucial to successful collaboration, these three Company Practices are an integral part of this book. Although you cannot enact most of them on your own or just in partnership with other members of your team, you can talk with your management about their importance. (A suggested process for having such a conversation with management will be supplied in Chapter 14.)

MANAGEMENT PRACTICES THAT SUPPORT COLLABORATION

Management is considered both art and science for a reason. At some point, we wisely realized that where human behavior is concerned, it is impossible to manage work and people in a singular way that applies equally well in all circumstances. Back in the early 1900s, when big organizations first came into being, we hadn’t realized this yet.

In those early years, more than a century ago, management experts tried to systematize exactly how employees should do their work and how managers should supervise them. It was management’s job to create the goals and strategies. It was also their job to determine what work was needed to achieve those goals. Then they delegated that work to specific employees. They told employees exactly how to do their job, and made sure they did their job in those ways (and did nothing else).

At first, that worked reasonably well in the manufacturing industry when most employees were unskilled and worked on the assembly line. It worked less well in industries where the work was less well-defined or where employees were more skilled.

As more and more companies have sprung up in industries that are less well-defined, systematizing employee and managerial behaviors has become increasingly less effective. As a result, the roles of managers in most companies have evolved significantly over the last 50 years. In the wise words of one Silicon Valley leader who worked at a major corporation for many years and now consults internationally: “People don’t want to be ‘managed.’ You can manage a budget. You can manage schedules. You need to lead people.”

There are a number of management practices that foster a collaborative environment in which employees want to and are equipped to work with others. This book will identify and discuss those practices. They include: strategies and goals that support collaboration, organizational structure, management philosophies and values, inspiring employees, supervisory practices,and corrective practices. (I will discuss all of them in Chapter 10.)

EMPLOYEE INCENTIVES

It’s not that we humans are selfish. Quite the opposite. We prove every day that we care about and want to help others. We willingly assist our friends, neighbors, and coworkers, and are generous to strangers. Experts confirm that we humans are indeed social animals. The majority of us get huge psychological rewards from living and working in groups, and assisting others.¹

We may not be selfish, but we are self-interested. That is appropriate. We work for many reasons. We have a desire to succeed, a longing to contribute to something meaningful, or a need to achieve something notable. We want the financial rewards. If we feel our compensation may be compromised by working with others, then we are less willing to collaborate.

A company’s employee incentive package is a primary mechanism that leaders can use to encourage staff to work well with others. Most companies ignore this opportunity and base their pay package on individual achievements, rather than including team or organizational achievements.

It’s easier to determine how much work someone has done on their own than to figure out how to apportion part of an employee’s pay to group or whole-company results. But this is one of those cases in which taking the easy route is not the same as taking the effective route. If a company is only rewarding the work employees do by themselves, that’s the work that staff will concentrate on doing well. Companies need to base part of their rewards on how well employees do the “group work” portion of their jobs.

There are many different ways to do this. Every company needs to craft financial packages that are right for them. We will explore some of the ways that Silicon Valley companies approach this topic to give you some ideas. In Chapter 11, I will show how Silicon Valley deals with: compensation, bonuses, deferred compensation, vacation policies, and other benefits.

ACCESS TO OTHERS

The final company practice with enormous influence on collaboration is whether employees have easy access to others with whom they need to work. If employees don’t have a way to work together it’s going to severely limit the effectiveness of collaboration. Wrapped up in the concept of employee access are:

1. Physical office design. Are offices configured in a way that enhances interaction between employees who can most benefit from that interaction?
2. Geographic dispersal. How do people interact with others when they work across the city, across the country, or even across the world?
3. Telecommuting (work-at-home) options. Is remote work an option? If it is, how do employees access others who are not physically present or at another office location equipped with technology that allows them to work together?

These three aspects of employee access are critical. They either contribute to effective collaboration or inhibit it. I will cover them in Chapter 12. You might be surprised by some of the findings in this area.

VISUALIZING THE SILICON VALLEY APPROACH TO COLLABORATION

As the previous sections outlined, the SVAC is comprised of three building blocks: individual skills, team tools, and company practices. This book will teach you tangible skills and tools to help you apply each of these building blocks even more effectively. It’s a lot of material. Because it covers a lot, it might help to see it visually. The following graphic brings the SVAC together into a coherent picture.

When you successfully combine these three building blocks, people act differently. They act differently because they value working with others. They act differently because they know it often results in amazing ideas. They act differently because they know their company expects it of them, and will reward them for doing it.

When every employee and manager acts in accord with these areas, then you have built a Collaborative Ethos. That Ethos differentiates the Silicon Valley leaders and their companies from other companies.

Graphic by Eileen Zornow

It may sound magical; the results certainly can be, but the process is not. It happens when you find people who agree about the philosophy of collaborating, teach them additional skills, give them team tools, and ensure that company practices support and encourage them to work together.

I asked those leaders if they could put into words how they turn a set of very practical tools into the magic of a Collaborative Ethos. What follows is a sampling of their responses.

One Silicon Valley leader with many years of executive level experience explained, “We are pretty unique here. In other organizations, managers and individual employees compete with one another. Here, we are a unified group. We don’t vie to be better than our peers. Sure, we want to be the best; and strive to be. As an organization. Not as an individual.”

Another leader who worked at less collaborative companies in the past said he realized that “life is too short to stay at the low end of the collaboration scale. If not at the top, then this place is definitely near it. It’s not perfect, by any stretch. But there’s a different level of trust here. You can take chances, voice your opinion.”

A third leader, who has led several successful start-ups, described his current firm’s secret as “a willingness to sacrifice ego for intellectual curiosity and excellence.” He acknowledged that “there is a healthy amount of ego here, like everywhere. But it is combined with a willingness to be open-minded enough to listen and consider new ideas and not feel threatened.”

Now that you have read all about the Silicon Valley Approach, and seen a visual depiction of it, I will offer a virtual tour of one Silicon Valley company whose thinking and practices exude a Collaborative Ethos and mirror the SVAC. I will refer to this company as Superb Software (SuSo) to preserve their anonymity.

SUPERB SOFTWARE: ONE COMPANY THAT PERSONIFIES THE SVAC

Superb Software has colossal goals. They don’t want to just succeed a bit more than their competitors. They are making big bold bets. They want to change their whole industry. They see their company as unique and want their employees to feel the same. They run their company with this perspective in mind.

INDIVIDUAL SKILLS FOR WORKING WITH OTHERS

Employees at SuSo live this company’s values. Whereas values are nice platitudes at some companies, they are guiding principles at this firm. Those values start with high performance. Then they move to autonomy with responsibility, high pay, context rather than control, and staff who are aligned with their colleagues.

Building from those general principles are a number of behaviors that are expected and rewarded at SuSo. Those behaviors include: 1) making wise decisions; 2) listening well before reacting; 3) accomplishing remarkable things in important areas; 4) learning quickly, broadly, and eagerly; 5) finding practical solutions to hard problems; 6) saying what you think even if it’s controversial (and not just saying it, but also doing what’s right); 7) inspiring yourself and others on your quest for excellence; 8) being candid and direct; and 9) seeking what is best for the company rather than just yourself or your group.

Superb Software knows how important it is to find employees whose values and behaviors fit the company culture. They know that problems arise when there is a mismatch between individual and organizational values. They believe their culture of high performance attracts staff who thrive on hard work, excellence, candor, and change.

TEAM TOOLS: THEIR THOUGHTS ABOUT HAVING AN ALL-PURPOSE PROCESS

They have thought long and hard about processes and rules at Superb Software. They believe that as companies grow and staff size increases, most firms become too dependent on processes and rules. They understand that most companies craft policies to help employees be more effective and efficient. In their eyes, however, elaborate procedures and rules end up thwarting employee productivity. Contrary to those other companies, leaders feel their success depends on employees having the flexibility to remain creative and the incentive to work hard. As a result, leaders go out of their way to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy. They also know that they don’t want the opposite: chaos. So they work to create a balance. They don’t reject all process as some companies do. They believe that having frameworks to guide complex projects is desirable. They work hard to find and use processes that guide employees without unduly restricting them.

Rather than adjusting to complexity, they try their best to minimize it. They feel that keeping things as simple as possible is a better way of helping employees know what to do than establishing burdensome processes. This even affects their products. Their business model is to sell a few big products rather than a lot of small ones.

They do not spend a lot of time looking for efficiencies that restrict how people get things done. They consciously avoid “rule creep” (the way that rules seem to take on a life of their own and increase until they become unmanageable).

It’s not that they don’t appreciate efficiency. They do. They expect individuals and groups to be highly efficient. They just choose not to back that expectation with long lists of do’s and don’ts. Because they don’t use a lot of checklists and guidelines, they realize that errors happen. They’re okay with this, as long as those errors are discovered and corrected quickly.

It’s important that employees learn from each error. If employees make different errors in the future, that’s okay as long as the errors are reasonable ones, and as long as they are fixed as soon as possible. They’re not okay with the same errors being repeated because folks didn’t learn from their mistakes.

COMPANY PRACTICES

MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

SuSo’s management values context over control. They believe that providing context (the why) and treating employees as intelligent adults will result in more sound decisions than putting lot of controls in place.

Leaders make sure that employees understand Superb Software’s goals and that employees can link their individual and group work to those goals. If employees use faulty reasoning or make bad decisions, leadership feels the responsibility falls more on them than on those individual contributors. They suspect most poor decisions could have been prevented if leaders had provided more context to staff.

Superb Software’s management philosophy around collaboration is that groups need to be highly aligned with others with whom they are working. They expect staff to share information that others might need to do their jobs well. Many of their meetings are focused on getting and keeping that alignment. They don’t tend to use meetings for one-way information flow. They generally believe that is better done through email or other means.

Leaders encourage behaviors that build trust between employees; behaviors such as going out of one’s way to offer assistance to others and not waiting to be asked.

EMPLOYEE INCENTIVES

SuSo strives to hire the best and brightest people. Some firms hire one or two stars and build their teams around those individuals, much in the same way that many sports teams do. Those people have higher status. They get the ear of leaders more often. Other staff are expected to heed and support them. Because Superb Software strives to hire stars in every position, it creates a different kind of team.

There is an explicit expectation that staff will work together and assist others. Hoarding and cutthroat behavior are not only not rewarded, they are not tolerated. Leaders at SuSo encourage employees to help others be great and reward employees who do this.

Whereas “C-grade” (adequate) performance is acceptable at some companies, it is not at this firm. Leaders make it known that “just adequate” performance at this company earns employees an invitation to leave. This does not mean that Superb Software does not believe in loyalty. If a great employee is facing challenges, the company will cut them some slack for a period of time. But not forever. They don’t feel it’s fair to ask other employees to carry the load for low-performers indefinitely. In the same way, they would not expect employees to stay with the firm indefinitely if the company gets into financial trouble.

They believe that in companies like theirs, the difference between what really hard workers achieve and what average performers accomplish is enormous. One of the yardsticks managers use to assess employee performance is to ask themselves, “How important is this person to our company’s success?” You can answer this question if you understand what that employee is doing.

Performance reviews at Superb Software measure how hard employees work and what they accomplish. Managers do their best to assess employee efforts and results rather than the number of hours they’ve worked.

The company also assesses how each employee works with others. Some firms only look at bottom-line results and not work relationships. It is important whether those results enhance collaboration and the successes of others.

This company has a philosophy of continuous, honest feedback. They believe that no employee should be surprised by feedback they receive during a formal review. They should have heard that feedback before. Performance feedback is seen as a dialogue. Employees are not only encouraged to ask managers for feedback, they are expected to do so.

SuSo promotes employees only when the group and company need someone in that higher-level position. They believe that other companies use promotions as part of the reward system that indicates to staff that they are doing a great job and valued.

Leaders at this company feel that gives the wrong message. They believe that salary and other benefits should be used to reward employees who do a great job and that promotions should occur only when the organizational requirements indicate it. When a position is opened, people are only considered for promotion when they are a star in their current role and an extraordinary role model for others.

Company policy around salary is simple: They pay at the top of the market for every position, in keeping with their expectation that employees have a drive to succeed and are willing to work very hard. They conduct market surveys annually to determine pay levels for key positions so they can keep paying at the top of that range.

With this philosophy, the company does not give raises and bonuses based on a generic formula. They feel this is a plus because, in their view, generic formulas for annual employee rewards do not tend to have the intended effect at most companies.

SuSo offers benefits that they hope employees will enjoy and that make them feel even better about working there. They offer very good food and have even better offerings at their occasional parties. They try to maintain really nice offices—places that employees want to come to and like spending lots of time at. They do these things in order to attract and retain wonderful employees.

Employees at Superb Software are encouraged to take as much vacation as they feel is appropriate, as long as it fits with the company’s needs for their services.

SuSo used to have standard vacation packages. All employees received a certain number of vacation days per year. At some point they realized this policy no longer made sense because employees often work evenings and weekends (at least checking emails), and occasionally take personal time during the work day. When an employee pointed out the contradiction between tracking vacation time but not hours worked, they realized that their policy no longer made sense.

In keeping with this philosophy they did away with the vacation policy that doled out a certain number of days to every employee. They did not do away with their expectation that employees should use their judgment regarding vacation time. They want all employees to take significant vacation time to enjoy life and return to work refreshed and renewed. As with most things, they just ask employees to act in the company’s best interest as well as their own.

Superb Software prides itself on continually “trying to get better at seeking excellence.” When you see it in its entirety, the policies and practices make sense, fit together well, and are a terrific example of a Collaborative Ethos.

THE TAKE AWAY

You may have noticed the overlap between Superb Software’s guiding principles and the Individual Level of the SVAC as well as the six Characteristics of Collaborators. (The four individual skills of Being True to Yourself, to Others, to the Work, and to the Company. The six characteristics of having a drive to succeed, the desire to contribute to something meaningful, persistence, acceptance of differences, desire for genuine communication, and connection to company-wide goals.)

Additionally, SuSo’s team tools and company practices largely reflect those of the Silicon Valley Approach to Collaboration.

It’s not coincidental that there is such direct overlap between this company’s principles and practices and those suggested in this book. The content of this book was not adopted solely from this particular company. In many ways, this company is like the other 27 companies whose leaders shared similar information to help develop this thinking.

The SVAC Model is practical and is being carried out in companies across this region every day.

With this bigger picture in mind, let’s explore the details of the Silicon Valley Approach. Chapter 5 immerses you in the four individual skills that form one of the crucial building blocks of this approach.