Towards more radical collaboration
How might we foster environments where meaningful collaboration happens more often?
Note: This article loosely builds upon one I published previously about communication. If you want to read that one first, here’s a link:
Experiencing the wonders of radical collaboration
Growing up, my friends and I used to hang out at various live music venues in Brighton, one of which was an old jazz club. It was a smoky, dingy, dive of a place and you never really knew quite what to expect when you got there. Sometimes you’d find a jazz trio or quartet playing through a repertoire of jazz standards, but the magic really happened when there were some seasoned jazz maestros simply sitting around improvising together. I remember the bar would go quiet as they picked up their instruments and everyone waited to see what would happen next.
Sometimes the bass player would start riffing on a phrase and then the drummer would begin to work his brushes. After a while, the guitarist and pianist would join in, filling out the overall sound with chords and melodies. It was incredible to witness these musicians in action: how attentively they would listen to each other, share and adapt melodies, and take it in turns to play solos, gracefully fading in and out to make way for others to contribute next. As talented as each player was individually, together they produced something that was greater than the sum of the parts.
In the jazz club, I was merely a passive listener, but at other times I’ve been actively involved with others in highly creative, dynamic, and collaborative endeavors. During such times, one idea often quickly leads to another and then to another. And as things are shared, the group takes them, plays with them, dismantles them, adapts them, and builds upon them. Such times feel special: full of energy and promise, where it often feels like together you could solve anything.
I’ve experienced such moments when I’ve spent an evening sat around a meal table or around a bonfire with friends discussing a topic or planning an event. I’ve also experienced great moments of collaboration during off-site training events with colleagues and in the design studio where I work, as a group of designers has come together to collaborate on a particular brief.
But if I’m honest, such times have still been the exception rather than the norm. All too often I’ve experienced times where people — including me — have got together and, well, not collaborated well at all.
Why is this? What’s the secret sauce that leads to some groups working so well together and producing such great outputs?
1) Environmental factors
I don’t think we can be formulaic about these things, and I’d like to think that great moments of collaboration can happen in all sorts of settings. However, when I think back to times when I’ve experienced great collaboration, they’ve often shared some common environmental characteristics:
- There’s often been an extended amount of time available (e.g. a whole day or a whole evening) so people haven’t felt rushed.
- People have been committed to being fully present (i.e. they’ve been intentional about minimizing distractions from phones, messages, etc.).
- The physical setting has been relaxed (e.g. at someone’s house, in a cozy pub or restaurant, or out of doors, etc.) or somewhere intentionally set up for group collaboration, such as in a design thinking workshop.
- Often as part of our time together we’ve shared food and drink.¹
All well and good. But providing suitable physical environments in which people can collaborate is, in some ways, the easy part. More challenging is how we change our mindsets and behaviors.
2) Adapting our mindset
For the last three centuries, Western thought has been strongly influenced by Newtonian physics — one consequence of which has been for us to view the world as though everything is a kind of machine. And because one can understand how a clock works by dismantling it and studying each component, we’ve tended to believe that if we can but break down other aspects of life into small enough parts and study each one, we’ll understand everything. Furthermore, because we are able to arrive at precise, often binary, answers to questions about the physical world, we often assume that there must be one right way or right answer to any given subject.
A consequence of this mindset is that if you and I are working on something together and we have different ideas or perspectives, we often subconsciously assume that there must be one right answer — and therefore that we can’t both be right. This leads to us becoming overly attached to “our” ideas; we quickly become protective of them and hostile to anyone who challenges them. All too often we assume it’s a zero-sum game, where for one to win, another must lose. When two or more people are acting out of this mindset, it often feels like watching billiard balls being smashed together. We dig in our heels, get defensive, and only listen with the intention of finding weaknesses in what the other person says. It’s hard to overstate how much this holds us back and prevents us from making more progress.
Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be like this.
More recent developments in fields as diverse as quantum physics, ecology, chaos theory, and organizational psychology have emphasized again and again the need for us to look not just at the discrete parts, but also at the picture as a whole.² Systems thinking, as it has become known, teaches us that the relationships and interactions between the parts (or people) within a system are often as, if not more, significant as the properties of those constituent parts.
This is why the design thinking framework encourages us to dispel the myth of the lone genius and to form diverse, multidisciplinary teams and to intentionally generate lots and lots of ideas initially. Then, as we share these ideas, we encourage people to avoid jumping in with blunt disagreements and rebuttals (“no” and “but”) and instead to use formations such as “Yes, and…” to build upon what has been shared. Great ideas are rarely born fully formed so we need to foster a mindset of exploration and discovery and remember that everything’s a prototype that can be refined and further developed.
3) Truly valuing input from others
Few people will disagree outright with the idea of teamwork and collaboration — yet so often people continue to work alone, wanting to maintain full control over all aspects of the work. At other times, we see groups coming together to work on something, yet whenever ideas are shared, the group continually defers to the opinions of the highest-paid or most senior or most vocal person present. Yet if we are to establish radically collaborative environments, we need to truly believe that great ideas can come from anyone, no matter what their age, job title, time with the company, etc.
We will achieve greater things by working together than any one of us can achieve on our own.
When approaching a piece of work or a new venture, it’s absolutely right and healthy for us to believe that we have something positive to contribute, but it’s equally important to recognize that we don’t have all the ideas or answers. We need the input of others. And we need to see other people as also having value and having something positive to contribute. In short, we need to adopt the I’m okay; you’re okay mindset.³
I believe that in life, you tend to find what you look for. So, if you start out with the belief that Joe from the Finance department is a moron, chances are, it won’t take you long to find “evidence” to support your view. On the other hand, if you join a meeting with the expectation that the others present are bright, capable people who have positive contributions to make, it’s much more likely that you’ll indeed start to see the positive contribution they have to offer.
In practical terms, when working with a group on a particular piece of work, instead of just sitting around and talking, the practice of getting people up and on their feet around a whiteboard and giving each person a pad of Post-It notes and a pen really helps. This is because when limited to verbal discussion, it’s common for one or two voices within the group to dominate, whereas by giving everyone a pen and paper and setting the expectation that all will contribute a few ideas into the mix, you help ensure that everyone gets a voice. I like to think of this as the democratization of ideas.
4) Getting over our egos
When it comes to collaboration, the source of many of our problems seems to be our egos. As already mentioned, we so easily fall into thinking and speaking about “my” idea vs “their” idea. And once we have our idea in mind, we seem to find it natural to then try to defend it against the attack of other people’s ideas, which we often see as hostile. We need to learn not to be so possessive about our ideas, our contributions, and our work. If it’s true that we will achieve better solutions when we collaborate, then we need to stop thinking in terms of what’s mine and what’s yours.
William Isaac has written extensively about all of this,⁴ and one of his central tenets is that whenever a discussion is taking place where other people are sharing their thoughts and ideas, each of us has a choice:
- to defend our original position (and attack the new idea), or
- to suspend our judgment, to truly listen in order to understand, and then to engage with the other in exploring the potential new possibilities and insights.
I said earlier that some group discussions feel a bit like watching billiard balls being smashed together, as one person asserts their position or idea, only to be rebuffed by another, etc. In contrast to this, the mental picture I like to think of is one where a group of people who are collaborating together stand in a room, facing each other. Whenever one of them has something to contribute, they offer it into the middle of the room, where it floats, as if suspended on a thin thread. Once shared, a contribution ceases to be linked to any particular person. As the discussion progresses, there are soon many contributions hanging suspended in the center of the room, and everyone is able to see them, interact with them, and build upon them as desired. Getting ideas onto Post-It notes on shared whiteboards has a similar effect.
Obviously there is a balance to be struck between getting input from lots of people and needing to make decisions to move a project forward. I am not suggesting that we design by committee; we still absolutely need strong leaders whose experience and judgment we can trust to make clear and well-informed decisions when needed.⁵
5) Asking “How might we…?”
Where I work, we’re encouraged to share our work early and often and we regularly hold design critiques. That word has different connotations, but for us, design critiques are always about one thing: getting useful feedback from others on work-in-progress so that we can make it even better. Therefore, one of our rules for design critiques is: “Don’t defend your work. Not even a little.” This is because the critique is not personal. It’s not about me versus you. It’s always about looking at the proposed design and seeing if there is any aspect that we think can be further improved.
Whenever we are looking at a particular problem space, or become aware of a new opportunity, or conscious of potential pitfalls, another really helpful phrase to use is “How might we…?” Here’s a great summary about why this is such a useful little phrase to use from Duane Bray, Global Head of Talent at IDEO:
While the phrase “How might we” seems pretty basic, each word is intended to serve a specific purpose. “How” asks employees to be descriptive, “might” suggests there are good answers, but not a single correct answer, and “we” evokes inclusivity and teamwork.⁶
I hope you have found these ideas helpful. As in the example of the jazz musicians improvising together, I’ve found that radical collaboration tends to happen within an understood structure — it’s not unbounded chaos — but it’s one where there is plenty of space for each person to think creatively, explore original ideas, and share these openly with the group.
So here’s to ways of working together that are truly and radically collaborative. Here’s to unique and talented people coming together for a purpose: to talk, to listen, to explore new ideas, and to solve some of the big challenges that we face. I wonder, how might we…?
Footnotes:
[1] This might seem an odd thing to include, but there’s nothing like sharing a good meal and some wine to help a group relax, deepen relationships, and open up.
[2] See, for example, Margaret Wheatley’s excellent book Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World.
[3] See I’m OK — You’re OK by Thomas Anthony Harris. The four-quadrant image shown was found here.
[4] See Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together by William Isaacs.
[5] A great example is provided by Ed Catmull in his book Creativity, Inc., where Pixar’s “Brain Trust” group regularly convene to offer expert feedback on a film in development, yet the Director is ultimately trusted to make the final call.
[6] I first came across this quote in Leah Fessler’s article about the usefulness of this phrase when running brainstorming sessions. I then discovered first-hand that the “How might we…?” formula is a key part of Jake Knapp’s great Design Sprint methodology.
Tom Waterton is a Content Designer at IBM based in Hursley, UK. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.
