[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDoTz_OWuHc&hl=en&w=425&h=355]

Among the tribes of northern Natal in South Africa, the most common greeting, equivalent to “hello” in English, is the expression: Sawu bona. It literally means, “I see you.” If you are a member of the tribe, you might reply by saying Sikhona, “I am here.” The order of the exchange is important: until you see me, I do not exist. It’s as if, when you see me, you bring me into existence.

This meaning, implicit in the language, is part of the spirit of ubuntu, a frame of mind prevalent among native people in Africa below the Sahara. The work ubuntu stems from the folk saying Umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu, which, from Zulu, literally translates as: “A person is a person because of other people.” If you grow up with this perspective, your identity is based upon the fact that you are seen – that the people around you respect and acknowledge you as a person.

[Taken from ‘The Fifth Discipline‘ : Peter Senge, et. al.]

Social networking is growing from strength to strength. As it does our ability to ‘see’ each other expands. Time pressures are forcing us to use more virtual means to sustain connection. This means large and far-reaching implications for how we establish, build and maintain communities- both on-line and off-line.

Second Life may be a bridge too far for some people (right now) but I am meeting more and more parents who’s greatest hope is that they are cool enough to be included on their kids Face-book. I know I am dating myself when I admit that when I was twelve years old I didn’t have a Face-book page – I had a vinyl record collection with three Charlie Pride LPs in it – how cool is that?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54OxQeZtvsk&hl=en&w=425&h=355]

The inventor Buckminster Fuller was fond of holding up his hand and asking people, “What is this?” Invariably, they would respond, “It’s a hand.” He would then point out that the cells that made up that hand were continually dying and regenerating themselves. What seems tangible is continually changing: in fact, a had is completely re-created within a year or so. So when we see a hand – or an entire body or any living system – as a static “thing,” we are mistaken. “What you see is not a hand,” said Fuller. “It is a ‘patterned integrity,’ the universe’s capability to create hands.”

Extract from ‘Presense – Human Purpose and the Field of the Future’ (Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers)

‘What seems tangible is continually changing: in fact, a hand is completely re-created within a year or so.’ This same observation could be made of business and organizations. When we look at teams we are tempted to think of them as concrete stable things – when in fact they are constantly changing. Even the bodies making up the team are being continually replaced. Trying to keep a team in fixed state is like a person rowing a boat furiously in an attempt to stay in the one place in a river. Eventuly they tire and have to allow the flow to carry the boat. We should remember that although we can’t hold the boat in the same place – we CAN steer the boat – and that is what collaborative leadership is.

Dealing with change  is one of the biggest challenges most business and team face. Google ‘dealing with change’ and you will get almost 9 million results. The concept of the learning organization enabled Peter Senge and his various collaborators articulate a way of looking at change and it’s connection with learning.

When we look for a definition of ‘life’ we find it best described as something with the capacity to learn. In other words anything incapable of learning is (by this particular definition) as ‘dead’.  Is your team dead or alive by this definition. The team and organization most capable of learning is going to be the most capable of coping with the rapid rate of change occurring  in the business (and global) arena. Developing the Collaborative Intelligence of a team is a really good way to encourage the learning that is so vital to it’s health.

Taken from ‘The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook’ Peter Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard Ross and Bryan Smith:

‘If there is one single thing a learning organization does well, it is helping people embrace change. People in learning organizations react more quickly when their environment changes because they know how to anticipate changes that are going to occur (which is different than trying to predict the future), and how to create the kinds of changes they want. Change and learning may not exactly be synonymous, but they are inextricably linked.’

Check out this great resource for collaboration tools.

YouTube – Team Motivation

Click here to view a brief video about Collaborative Intelligence:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2grwlHKPjc&hl=en&w=425&h=355]

‘Competitive Success Depends on Enablement‘ doesn’t specifically mention Collaborative Intelligence but the concept of spreading ‘enablement’ throughout the team structure certainly could also be a description of how CQ is developed within business.

(from the article) ‘Among the conclusions the study reaches are:

• The more a company empowers its employees to make decisions, the more likely it is to perform better financially and competitively.
• True enablers use technology to improve collaboration, encourage risk-taking, and optimize decision-making.
• Companies categorizing themselves as “true enablers” are three times more likely to be more profitable than their competitors.
• Compared with other types of firms, companies described as “true enablers” have a higher proportion that are more profitable than their competitors.’ Read on….

Thanks to Ty Franks for this reference.

Collaboration is an Inside Job (Article #1)

Have you ever found yourself wondering “How can I keep up with all of this?” You
have 35 emails to reply to, 12 voice mails and three meetings scheduled
for the day. Then a close colleague pops into your office and asks for
your urgent help.

There is no denying our society is changing
rapidly. One of the most obvious and life-impacting areas is our
workplaces and work practices. A senior manager in the
social services lamented to me recently the amount of email he had to
deal with each day. I asked him what was the most stressful part,
without hesitating he replied that he missed the ‘authentic connection’
with other people. He felt severely stretched between the three
channels, email, phone and face-to-face meetings.

These three channels are presently in a three-way
struggle for our attention. No matter which channel triumphs we are
still frequently left feeling as if we are losing ‘authentic
connection’.

Virtualization

We all realize that the quality and quantity of
connection in the work place is shifting rapidly. But is
communication-technology and the associated changes in the workplace
really enabling us to be more effective? This process could be referred
to as ‘virtualization’. The virtualization of teams and
groups is changing the way we achieve our team and individual
objectives. It began when we developed language (or earlier), then the
emergence of the Guttenberg press, followed by radio, telephone and
most recently the internet and email technology.

My definition of ‘team virtualization’ is any
process that is introduced or expands to replace more traditional ways
of communicating with other people. For example when phone calls
replaced some or all face to face conversations, or when
teleconferences replaced some or all physical meetings.

Interestingly the challenge of how we connect to each other has inspired the creation of a foundation – the ‘Peer2Peer Foundation’.
Created by Michel Bauwens, the P2P Foundation is a meeting place for
people interested in exploring peer-to-peer communication alternatives.
This foundation is small but growing fast as the challenge of
virtualization continues to grow.

Two Kinds of Growth

In his book ‘Chaos Point: The World at the Crossroads’ Ervin Laszlo states
that our species is changing in how it develops. He claims that we are
moving from an era where the three “C’s” of conquest, colonization and
consumption are giving way to connection, communication, and
consciousness. Laszlo claims that these “C’s” constitute two kinds of
growth and that we are presently transitioning between the two.
Connection and communication are on the up swing, for sure.

The proliferation of cell phones and internet
access is making sure of that. What is not so certain is the shift in
consciousness that we also need to make. The question I hear so often
in my consulting work is “How can we continue to embrace technological
changes and maintain ‘authentic connection’ with both clients and
colleagues?

Obviously there isn’t an easy answer to this.
However, one of the most useful assumptions we can adopt is that
building a highly collaborative work environment is everyone’s job. It’s
first an ‘inside job’. But how do we do that? A list of some of my
solutions to this tricky question can be found in an article at this
Blog.

Below are ten ways to increase collaboration in the workplace:

1. Raise awareness of the importance of shared
assumptions. Assumptions cause us to run on ‘autopilot’. Individuals
are not the only ones who operate this way; teams do it too.

2. Check your own assumptions before and during
the project planning phase. Your own assumptions will effect how you
interact with others and deal with the inevitable challenges of working
with other people.

3. Intention is the keynote. Just as a team’s
attention is important – so is your own. Intentions have an eerie way
of manifesting into reality.

4. Encourage team members to find out about each
others’ roles. The more they know about each others’ perspectives, the
more likely they will empathize with them when the going gets tough.

5. Establish a reward system for innovation and
creativity. Ensure that rewards are equally available for ideas and
innovations that don’t work as for those that do.

6. Plan to use all of the experience in the team.
Think of the years of life experience represented in a room of 15
people with an average age of 35. It represents over 500 years of life
experience.

7. Celebrate your successes along the way.
Celebration acts to reinforce the progress being made. When it done at
the team level it empathizes the importance of the team process in
reaching desired objectives.

8. Invest resources in your own learning and when
possible encourage others to do the same. Continuous improvement is
only possible when individuals and the team as a whole are embracing
continuous change with continuous learning..

9. Real change only comes when people change how
they behave as well as think. This is just as true for the workplace.
Never was it truer that we need to be the change we wish to see.

10. Model what you want to see more of. Providing
our colleagues and clients real-life demonstrations of collaboration at
work is the strongest incentive and inspiration you can provide to
others.

There are things you can do to change the level of
collaboration we experience within your team. Of course there are no
‘silver bullets’ that will create over-night results. By taking collaborative intelligence as a principle to live by you can change how your team operates. That’s why I say collaboration is (first) an inside job.