Sharing what we know vigorously might is the only we can move our society forward - patent lawyers will only make the ‘commons’ impoverished while benefiting a small percentage of the population. People have to be able to benefit from what they produce and I believe the Creative Commons is a great solution to this dilemma.

I’ve ranted before about how bacteria are outsmarting us because they are more ‘collaborative’ with their information. I also realize our society is much more complex than that of a colony of Ecoli - however the question remains - how can we become more like Ecoli with it’s amazing adaptability and resilience?

Images of the China earthquake on the New York Times and those of the situation in Myanmar are reminding us that we human live on ONE planet and it is getting very small - smaller by the day. What happens to others across the planet increasingly is impacting everyone else. The Chinese government have a reputation for keeping events like these very quiet - they seem to prefer to save face and deal with the situations themselves. However by listening to the reports of the scale of this event it is hard to imagine how they will cope without the help of the international community. Keeping up appearance whether for the benefit of the 2008 Olympics or because of national pride becomes a secondary considerations when people are dieing for lack of clean water, and shelter for example.

Both events happening so close to each other will place a strain on the international communities ability response. It also invites us to ask what if some natural disaster affected our homes, children, and communities? wouldn’t we expect other people around the world to care? - of course we would.

Everyday we are seeing evidence that it is time for us to really get serious about international collaboration and beginning to look with new eyes - and see one species on one planet with one goal - a happy, productive life. Knowing that we have the support of everyone on the planet for that goal. In North America we have (along a a few other places on earth ) the challenge of living more simply so others can simply live (Mahatma Gandhi). Earth Day was a great opportunity to think about what sort of things we can do to enable everyone on this beautiful little planet (its the only habitable one I know) to live together sustainability.

Another project which is also using film / video for great effect in this way is the Global Oneness Project.

The Global Oneness Project uses an enlightened way of spreading it’s message - it gives its DVD away for free. The only caveat it applies is that when they send the DVD to you - you ‘pay it forward’ by showing the movies to friends or family. Another aspect of this brilliant approach to creating social change and deeper collaboration is they have published all of the films under a ‘Creative Commons’ license. In this case the licence means that you can share the movies with anyone you like and as many people as you like as long as you do not sell or attempt to profit from the sharing. Just a note - I published my book ‘Teaching an Anthill to Fetch : Developing Collaborative Intelligence @ Work’ under the same kind of licence - it does not have the normal ‘All Rights Reserved’ warning that most books have.

I can’t resist sharing another of the videos found at the Global Oneness Project site. (I really think you should go there) - this one is about another great way to build deeper collaboration in the world - random acts of kindness - using ‘Smile Cards’ as a way to encourage the recipients of your kindness to ‘pay-it-forward’.

In case you missed it - the site is Helpothers.org and it rocks!

The story begin the creation of Pangea Day is interesting - Jehane Noujaim made a film entitled ‘Control Room’ . Jehane was awarded a prize by the TED organization and along with $100K she was also given one wish that would be granted. Pangea Day was Jehane’s very enlightened wish.

You can watch all 18 films from the Pangea website, along with 25 others that there was not sufficient time to air on the day. What I find so interesting and encouraging about this initiative is it’s ability to bring people from all around the world together into one virtual space / place and allow them to voice their dreams for a better world.

There is even a Pangea Day YouTube channel - check it out.

The term brings up the old debate about competition and cooperation, and which is the most useful for our species / communities / businesses etc. , right now.

The recent dramatic rise in food prices forces us to think about grabbing or sharing. Depending upon our world-view we will be reaching out our hands to snatch a scarce commodity or stretching out to share what we already have. With 5% of the worlds population residing in N. America and consuming 30% of the world’s resources we face a stark dilemma.

John Renesch describes this dilemma as a ‘maturity’ issue. Renesch compares the short-term desires and wants of a child with the delayed-gratification and long-term consequences considered by an adult. I can’t agree with him more. The world is shrinking and if we can’t find a way to get along and ‘play nice’ as a global community, then we must expect to have problems.

Here is John Renesch talking very briefly about the need for us to ‘grow up’ as a species:

As we move from the ‘command and control’ model within businesses there are some adjustments to be made. Getting someones cooperation is not a matter of whether they report to you or not. Often as not you have no official ‘power’ over the other person from whom you need help. Being able to influence people has suddenly become very important.

Emotional Intelligence is the skill of using emotions as a source of information about the social environment. EQ is quickly becoming a desired skill within flattened organizations. However EQ and IQ are necessary but no longer sufficient to enable people to adapt to the ‘new workplace’. You probably know where I’m going with this - we need to develop our ‘CQ‘ - Collaborative Intelligence.

I realize that’s a tall order and that you may require some assistance that is a little more uh..immediate. So for those of you in need of ‘office politics first aid’ here is a link to ‘How To Win at Office Politics‘ courtesy of BNET.

Everyone who has to work in an office environment also has to deal with the politics of that place. Dealing with difficult people also becomes part of that process - which is why I will be posting about difficult people, politics and CQ in subsequent days. Meanwhile stay calm and play nice even if others don’t know how to do that yet.

Imagine this – you arrive to work on Monday morning and find that your team has won the right to handle the company’s most important client. As a result the team will be expanded to deal with the extra workload.

There is already a huge list of well qualified and high quality applicants for the expansion – your team has the ‘pick of the litter’ because everyone in the company knows your team develops their people to their highest potential.

Mondays are a great day of the week for your high performing team. Members arrive refreshed from the week-end and look forward to meeting up for another challenging but rewarding week. There is a palpable sense of clarity and focus on the team objectives. Balanced with a playful approach to learning something new everyday and towards overcoming the evitable set backs and challenges. By the end of the week you know that team will be a little wiser, a little stronger and the sense of community a little deeper than before.

Then the alarm clock goes off. And you awake to your real world. And it is Monday morning and you have had such a lovely dream you were sad to leave it. Ahead of you is the commute, the pile of ‘stuff’ that will greet you when you get to work. The silent, trudging along, colleagues trying to conceal their quiet desperation about another Monday morning and a week ahead of sporadic at best, team-work.

There will be the evitable ‘crises during the week leaving you feeling physically and emotionally spent by the weeks end (or even earlier). A good portion of your week-end is spent ‘recovering’ form the effects of the week. Rinse and repeat.

What distinguishes these two scenarios? Simple – collaborative team work.

If building a collaborative team (one with high Collaborative Intelligence)was easy everyone would belong to one. That’s the bad news. The good news is that with the right tools people can do to develop their team from the ‘inside out’. Articles on ways to improve teamwork point to the fact that a great team never consists of an assembly of unmotivated and dysfunctional individuals.

‘High Performing Team’ (HPT) rule number one: HPTs are made up of well-developed individuals.

Conclusion: to grow great teams – grow great people

Training that grows people and teams in tandem is the secret of most successful organizations. You are frying two fish in the one pan. Beyond growing the individual the team requires a reason to exist and know its prime function. High perfuming teams are self-aware.

‘High Performing Team’ (HPT) rule number two: HPTs are very aware of what their team ‘does’. The role it plays in the overall success of the business or organization.

Conclusion: to get the best out of your team provide them with a challenging but achievable objective and never let them forget their role in the overall success of the enterprise.

A literature review on employee motivation provides some insights about how employees become motivated and part of a cohesive team.

1. They like to be treated as human beings – not parts of a big machine
2. They want to know that their work is appreciated
3. They like to know how their contribution fits into serving ‘greater good’ of the company
4. They want to have input into how their work is done
5. They want a sense of community – one to which they belong that they provide support for and in turn provides support them, when they need it.

How difficult is it to provide these things in the workplace? Well it doesn’t have to be ‘rocket surgery’. There is a seven point system that paves the way toward that high performing team you visited in your dream at the beginning of this article. It is presented in a series of questions:

A) What are the shared assumptions your team is using to generate the ‘team-effect’ they presently have?

B) What does your team think is possible?

C) What would it take for you and your colleagues to develop a deeper trust of each other?

D) Is leadership concentrated in a small number of the team?

E) What would it take to have that leadership spread throughout the entire team?

F) What changes in the culture of your workplace would have to take place for your team to be able to function more like a network and less like a hierarchy?

These are not easy questions and creating a high performance team is not always an easy process but it must start somewhere. These questions can act as a catalyst to conversations within your team that can have far-reaching implications.

Articles on ways to improve teamwork frequently imply that personal development has no place in the workplace. This is a delusion – you cannot develop an employee in sustainable way professionally, without helping them to grow personally.

A literature review on employee motivation often displays approaches toward employees as troops being sent into battle, rather than people who have personal as well as professional aspirations. A more rounded view of employees enables us to grow high performance teams that are connected and effective at many levels.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that running things with many layered, and expensive, chains of command is failing. Information flows in two main directions within a organization. Top-down and Bottom-Up. The transition from hierarchy to network is taking place but the pace of change will have to accelerate. Increasingly I bump into leader who are at their wits end trying to keep their team responsive to the rate of change in the market place and society in general.

Here are just some of the changes (ref: Thomas L. Friedman’s ‘The World is Flat’):
1. Fall of the Berlin Wall – tilting the world toward free markets
2. Netscape IPO – creating a massive investment in fiber-optic cables (connection!)
3. Work flow software – enabling people from all over the world to collaborate on-line
4. Open-Sourcing – free software creating massive collaborative and self-organizing communities
5. Outsourcing - the migration of business functions to third world countries
6. Off-shoring – the proliferation of contract manufacture to China
7. Supply-chaining – the development of resilient networks of to achieve business efficiencies between retailers , suppliers and customer demand (e.g. Wal mart)
8. In-sourcing – logistics companies (e.g. UPS) enabling small companies act big through enhanced distribution networks
9. In-forming – the growth of information on the net e.g. the emergence of ‘Google’
10. Wireless – further enhancing the effect IT is having on business collaboration, personalization and mobility accelerated

Friedman goes on in his book to admit that the world really isn’t ‘flat’. It made for a great title. The field is very much tilted toward those parts of the world that can afford the technology and so forth, required to make the advances he talks about.

One of the most publicized factors in the ‘flattening process’ is outsourcing - and yet how this will play out is not clear.

I’d prefer to call the world ‘bumpy’ and it’s only going to get ‘bumpier’ as time passes - the inequalities that underpin the world economy are going to jeopardize the fantastic world Friedman envisages.

…and yes you’ve guessed it - I think we need to exercise a deeper more profound degree of collaboration to make the transition into a ‘flatter’ world.

A video about the ‘other side’ of outsourcing.