INTRODUCTION
HARMONIZING EMPLOYEE EFFORTS
Imagine eight musicians who are members of a renowned jazz ensemble diligently working on a new musical piece. If you could listen in on each of them individually, you would hear highly competent musicians, each practicing his or her part and sounding quite good.
Then they get together and, suddenly, something captivating happens: You hear and feel the piece come alive. It’s no longer just several skilled performers. Their instruments blend into one rich, unified voice. The musicians are in unique dialogue with each other. It’s “musicality.”
Imagine those artisans making up a workplace team. Imagine that amazing collaboration coming together as an iPad. . . or TurboTax . . . or a winning basketball team. Our job—as employees and as managers—is to combine our individual and team efforts to make “music” like that.
Graphic by Eileen Zornow
If they do a terrific job, that music group might transport their audience . . . or win a Grammy. Similarly, that workplace team might make a lot of consumers, employees, and shareholders happy. If not done well, collaboration is a blueprint for a mediocre product or even a failed one. This failure is all too common in organizations. Individuals and teams may be extremely competent in their area of focus, but if they don’t collaborate well with others, the final product will suffer.
During the last several decades, much progress has been made to foster better workplace collaboration. Nevertheless, getting people to work well together remains one of the tough issues that keeps both managers and individual employees up at night. We need to do better. If we continue to use existing tools, we only make incremental strides in addressing this snarly problem. We need a new model.
A NEW APPROACH TO COLLABORATION
Throughout the course of my nearly 30-year management consulting career, I’ve developed a number of specialties. Some came about because organizations needed help in those areas. Others were passions of mine. My expertise in collaboration is a confluence of both company need and my own passion. I’ve helped employees in many companies, across numerous industries, achieve more by working better together. I have received awards for collaboration programs I helped create at both Microsoft and telecom giant GTE (now known as Verizon).
After working with organizations in the greater San Francisco Bay area for a number of years, I began to notice that there is something different about the way their employees work together compared to other companies. There is something magical happening in Silicon Valley. Based on my observation and experience, I crafted the Silicon Valley Approach to Collaboration (SVAC). Then, I had conversations with 28 Silicon Valley leaders to fine-tune the Approach. The purpose of this book is to make that framework available to companies anywhere, to help employees come together and succeed brilliantly.
WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT SILICON VALLEY
The nickname “Silicon Valley” originated in the early 1970s to describe a district in the south San Francisco Bay area where a number of silicon chip manufacturers were concentrated. Over time it has grown. It now covers a much bigger geographic area ranging from the city of San Francisco in the north, to the greater San Jose metropolitan region in the south, and large swaths of the East Bay.
Along with its physical boundaries, its symbolic ones have also grown. Now, it is not only a catch-phrase referring to technology, bio-tech, and other assorted industries, it is also a metaphor for a particular work and life style.
Silicon Valley is renowned for building complex, successful businesses.
It is still one of the leading creators of innovation. It produces more patents per capita than any other region in the world.1
It continues to receive more investment capital than any other metropolitan region.2
It has the third highest GDP of the top 300 metropolitan areas globally.3
It is a big part of the reason why California’s economy qualifies as the sixth largest in the world.4
Silicon Valley has earned its reputation by building cutting-edge innovations that help enrich people’s lives; not just in the area of technology, but in many arenas that touch millions. It encompasses areas such as solar energy, high-quality health care, pharmaceuticals, and more.
Many people want to learn the secret of Silicon Valley’s success. Part of that secret is the unique way that their employees work together. Companies in Silicon Valley have been successful because they did more than simply apply existing business models and tools. Without consciously realizing it, they began to create a new model for collaboration. I will explain that new model and show how any company can adapt it to help achieve its goals.
What makes Silicon Valley’s approach to collaboration distinctive? Many employees there have a pragmatic view of people working together. They value results. They’ve seen these results happen when employees share ideas. They happen when employees adopt others’ knowledge. They happen when employees honestly and respectfully engage in robust conversations that result in better decisions.
People working in Silicon Valley firms are aware of the potential downsides of collaboration. They know that work can sometimes take longer when more people are involved, especially when they have differences in views. They are aware that staff can temporarily lose focus on their own work when they pause to assist others. But, in weighing the benefits against the costs, they realize that when it’s done right, the upsides far outweigh the downsides.
Thankfully, collaboration successes are not limited to companies in Silicon Valley. Lessons from this region can be applied to any firm, anywhere, to make it more successful. This book will set out the SVAC along with numerous examples illustrating how it looks when collaboration is done well.
WHY NOW
A new model for collaboration is particularly relevant right now. The number of people in the United States who feel drawn to those with similar beliefs and cut off from those who differ is growing. Rifts among people holding opposing views are creeping into the work-place. This is creating schisms and reducing trust between staff who used to work well with each other. In some instances, it is increasing an “us versus them” way of thinking, alienating folks from others, and making collaboration more challenging.
People want to fix this. Some think that to improve collaboration the rifts need to be resolved first. Fortunately, that is not the case. Successful collaboration calls for an open dialogue of deeply held views in a way that maintains trust and fuses divergent perspectives into great solutions. The philosophies and practices embedded in the collaboration approach offered in this book will help lessen those schisms and reduce “us / them” thinking while building a collaborative culture.
WHAT YOU WILL FIND IN THIS BOOK
Chapter 1 sets the stage with a definition of collaboration. It explores the importance of collaboration to any company. Chapter 2 reveals several important characteristics and beliefs shared by people who are committed to collaboration. Some of them might surprise you.
Your journey into the world of Silicon Valley collaboration intensifies with Chapter 3, which will immerse you in several examples of highly successful collaborations that the leaders interviewed for this book shared with me.
Chapter 4 rolls out the SVAC. This chapter provides an overview of the Approach and its three levels of focus: individual skills, team tools, and company practices.
The rest of the book offers an in-depth look at the individual skills, team tools, and company practices that will bring this model to life at your company. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 explore the individual skills. Chapters 8 and 9 roll-out the team tools. Chapters 10, 11, and 12 focus on company practices. Chapter 13 shares the secret sauce of the company-wide Collaborative Ethos that will result from using this approach. Chapter 14 wraps up with a suggested process to guide your next steps.
THE SILICON VALLEY LEADERS WHO CONTRIBUTED
In writing this book I interviewed 28 Silicon Valley leaders who were generous enough to share their experiences with me. The book would be less vibrant without their input. Of course, you will want to know who those leaders are. You can find them in the following chart.
Although participants are shown with the firm with which they were associated at the time of the interview, most of their responses incorporated broader experiences collected throughout the course of their careers with a number of Silicon Valley companies. The examples they shared with me reflect their own point of view rather than any official company perspective. A few of the narratives have been attributed to them and their company (with kind permission). The rest are shared anonymously to preserve the privacy of the firms and the people employed by them.
These 22 leaders, and six others who chose to remain anonymous, represent a wealth of knowledge about the ways Silicon Valley companies leverage employee collaboration. These leaders are in a variety of professions, and their ages span several decades. Their current employers range in size from several hundred employees to more than 100,000. Some of these firms are self-contained in the Silicon Valley area. Others have multiple presences nationally or globally. Diverse industries are represented, including social media, entertainment, health care, pharmaceuticals, automotive, finance, electronics, gaming, toys, technology, retail, commerce, and many others.
By the end of this book you will have learned a cohesive approach to collaboration that is practical and adaptable to any company’s needs. What I won’t burden you with are extended exposés of systems and behaviors that kill collaboration. Most of us know the pain of such situations and don’t need a book that stresses what not to do. This is about what can be done.
Let the journey begin.