I've been enjoying a book that I picked up a few months ago called 'The Innovators' by Walter Isaacson. You may remember that Walter Isaacson wrote the biography on Steve Jobs and he actually put this book on hold until he finished Jobs' biography because Steve Jobs had terminal cancer and had said that he was going to pass away soon. But 'The Innovators' is such a beautiful compilation of about 150 years of creativity that has been chronicled right from Lady Ada Lovelace in 1843, who was the daughter of Lord Byron and her influence on innovation that came from her mother adding maths to her curriculum as she had such a romantic spirit because of her father. Ada Lovelace actually called it 'poetical science'. From there he chronicles it all the way down to 2011.
But in this book, he has this interesting conversation that takes place as written by Nick Bilton in the New York Times. Twitter was invited by a team of people who were collaborative, but also quite contentious. When one of the co-founders Jack Dorsey started taking a lot of credit and media interviews, another co-founder Evan Williams, a serial entrepreneur, who had previously created Blogger, told him to chill out. "No. You didn't invent Twitter," Williams replied, "I didn't invent Twitter either. Neither did Biz (Biz Stone, another co-founder). People don't invent things on the Internet. They simply expand on an idea that already exists."
I thought that was such a wonderful line because it tells us that collaboration of ideas and thought and people over time is really what contributes to some of the ideas that we have today. As Florian Schneider says, "Collaborations are the black holes of knowledge regimes. They willingly produce nothingness, opulence and ill behavior. And it is their very vacuity that is their strength…It does not entail the transmission of something from those who have to those who do not, but rather the setting in motion of a chain of unforeseen accesses." So true! It doesn't come just by friends gathering together and having a good time and talking about things. It comes even through contentiousness – people who may not get together but who are able to put those ideas together and then set in motion a chain of completely unforeseen accesses.
The dictionary definition of collaboration is: Working together especially in a joint intellectual effort.
Helen Keller would say this so well, "Alone we could do so little, but together we can do so much."
In his book, Isaacson talks about a collaboration of different things. He talks of collaboration of ideas; he talks of coming together, specializations, of different people who have different specialized areas of work and how that collaboration can help in innovation; of complementary leadership styles, vis à vis putting in place vision and management; then also the collaboration of geographically separated individuals – you can get crowds involved who are completely separated and yet can help in the creative process (The physical proximity also being beneficial) I was working with a team last year on an audio CD and we needed to put in one particular instrument that we couldn't do here in Mumbai. I just sent the entire work to Bangalore and overnight, a musician programmed and sequenced the entire thing and sent it back to me. Although we were separated by 1000 km, we were able to collaborate and bring together a good musical piece.
So, collaboration of people who are geographically separated and yet, collaboration also happens when people come together in physical proximity. I think it was Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer's first axe to discourage the practice of working from home, rightly pointing out that people are more collaborative and innovative when they are together.
So, collaboration is a mix of a whole lot of things that are part of the process. But, as Vineet Nayar points out in his article, "A Shared Purpose Drives Collaboration", collaboration is effective only if goals are evident. He says, "Companies and executives spend endless amounts of time and money trying to foster collaboration through technology, training, and memos instead of quickly defining the problem, framing the challenges, and inspiring people to come together and tackle it."
I remember reading how, 2,500 years ago, when the people of Jerusalem had come back from exile under the Babylonian empire and the Persians had freed them and how they came back to live there, but the wall of the city which was so important at that time, wasn't ready. One person called Nehemiah, got people together and said, "Let's build the wall." There was collaboration of people and I've always been so astounded by the kinds of people who came together, because there were priests, merchants, goldsmiths, perfumers, officials, servants – all came together with one purpose – to put up this wall. Collaboration must have, and must be driven by purpose.
But Nayar also goes on to say that it needs execution as well. We all remember those cryptic words that came out in Apollo 13, the movie: "Houston, we have a problem." Three astronauts, 200,000 miles away from earth and home, suddenly realize that they have a major problem and the NASA center in Houston has to bring these three astronauts back. They come together and collaborate, put together the things that are only on Apollo 13, ideate over water coolers, coffee machines and restrooms – all pooling ideas with one purpose – to bring these three astronauts back. That was execution at its brilliant best. That's what we need to have. We need to have a focus – vision as well as execution.
Steve Case (of AOL fame) brilliantly pointed out in his speech at Stanford in 2010 that "Vision without execution is simply hallucination."
So as we think about collaboration today, I want to throw out a challenge. Are you one who works alone, who doesn't like the challenge of working with other people? Here we are not talking about teamwork. Teamwork is quite different from collaboration. Collaborating together produces innovative things. Creativity is fostered by collaboration. The brilliance of various people coming together with different specialties and letting ideas bounce against ideas and create energy and the synergy of movement to create something that is absolutely creative. I wonder if that's something that you and I can put in place, that we can collaborate more, and in the process find that wonderful innovations are happening that just help us to create better work environments and maybe, better the plight of people around us. That's my thought for us today. Are we good collaborators?
May I pray with you? Almighty God. Help us to come together. You have made us so different, so unique. Our DNAs are so different. Yet, when we come together, wonderful things happen. We have seen that in history. Allow it to happen in our present as well so that we can write a different history for the future. I ask this in Jesus' precious name. Amen.
• Walter Isaacson, "The Innovators." http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Hackers-Geniuses-Revolution/dp/147670869X
• Twitter quote, "The Innovators," pgs 479-480
• "Collaboration" quotes: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/collaboration
• "Collaboration" definition: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/collaboration
• Vineet Nayar, "A Shared Purpose Drives Collaboration." https://hbr.org/2014/04/a-shared-purpose-drives-collaboration
• Nehemiah--account of the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, taken from Holy Bible, book of Nehemiah.
• Steve Case quote on "Vision." Speech at Stanford in 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment