Customer Reviews

The Culture of Collaboration

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this very interesting and useful book, the author shows how collaboration creates value in business. This is unlike other boring business books I've read, this one's easy to read, well-illustrated, and thought-provoking. This book gives real-world examples from a variety of different industries and shows that a collaborative organizational culture is what sets apart large companies like Toyota, Boeing and Procter & Gamble. Rosen also includes DreamWorks Animation, Industrial Light & Magic, the Mayo Clinic, the Myelin Repair Foundation and others. Besides culture, the author covers tools, processes and workplace environment. I highly recommend this book.

The Summary
Evan Rosen has consolidated the latest ideas on collaboration and brought them together into an informative and practical book. Collaboration is becoming more and more important whether you are trying to manage a global workforce or just need to get stove-pipe departments to work together you will learn a lot from this book.

The Audience
The Culture of Collaboration is a practical guide aimed at anyone interested in fostering collaboration in their workplaces. Managers and leaders should definitely check this book out. The ideas around collaboration with a multi-cultural and global work force are extremely interesting to anyone leading off-shore initiatives. The book is full of practical advice that can be leveraged immediately.

The Details
There have been a number of books recently on collaboration from Group Genius, X-Teams to some older titles like `Organizing Genius' and `How Breakthroughs Happen'. There have also been many books on recent technologies that leverage the genius of groups i.e. wikinomics, the wealth of networks. Evan Rosen's book brings all these elements together from the technologies, tools, and theories around collaboration into a practical guide. This is not by any means a lightweight `how-to' guide, but more of a roadmap to not only understand the power of collaboration but also to leverage it in your organization.
Rosen explains the principles of collaboration through personal stories and examples from some new and unique sources. Other books on collaboration use examples from the usual suspects Lockheed's SunkWorks and IDEO but Rosen draws examples from the Mayo Clinic, George Lucas's ILM (Industrial Light and Magic), Boeing and Toyota. The choice of the Mayo clinic was surprising at first and then as Rosen explained the culture behind how the clinic was started and some of their collaborative practices; it became obvious that this was an important and often over-looked example of a collaborative and innovative environment.
While the first half of the book explores the current trends and the need for collaboration, the last few chapters bring the ideas of collaboration together into a practical guide that is worth the price of the book alone. How to use collaboration tools to foster the right culture, which tools to use to solve different issues and challenges and advice to managers and leaders on fostering collaboration.

The Ideas:
Rosen draws from some unique examples and there were many ideas that made me think:
- Presence - the use of tools like IM to foster collaboration across teams. Being able to tell if someone is available or not. The in-box culture is dead and now replaced by tools that incorporate elements of `Presence'
- Why Smoking can get you promoted - ok that wasn't the point that was made, but Rosen does explain that conversations and groups that form around stepping outside for a `smoke', can generate the kind of cross-functional and cross-hierarchical connections that companies need.
- Mayo Clinic's SPARC - as an example of collaboration at work. SPARC gets people out of their usual roles into cross-functional groups in a custom built innovative lab, an open area called the `program support space' which is fitted with everything any innovative group would need.

The Take-Away:
I can't emphasize the practical nature of this book enough. If you are going to read only one book on collaboration and you want to walk away with a guide to foster collaboration at work, then this is the book to get. This is a well written and engaging book and well worth the investment in time to read.

Kes Sampanthar
Inventor of ThinkCube

This book drives deep into the communication technology and organization behavior issues that support collaboration. The author identifies a series of cultural elements that serve to frame effective collaboration within companies and between supply chain partners, responding to the realities of our more economically networked business world.

Rosen's working definition of collaboration involves "working together to create value while sharing virtual or physical space..." His elements of collaboration include trust, environment and communication.

The "presence" of people, ideas, and action in collaborative cultures serves to speed the flow of development, planning and decision making. Net leadership becomes more dispersed, broader discernment is possible, stronger interactions are experienced, and organizations gain bench strength. The proper physical and virtual environment, combined with the right communication resources enables collaborative cultures.

This book also has a very informative section on the technical and operational tools that support communication and collaboration. It's helpful to have a communications expert frame the challenges and opportunities.

Man is a social animal.

While everyone knows this saying do we truly understand its profound implications? As humans, collaboration is built into our DNA and is a large part of our evolutionary success. Look around. Every day we form elaborate groups, companies, government, religions, and softball teams. Now collaboration's competitive value has been exponentially increased by new technologies. Companies are being forced to embrace new methods or be outperformed by those that do.

Evan Rosen is an expert on the subject and this book "Culture of Collaboration" is an essential read.

While collaboration's value is becoming obvious to even the most traditional executivees, but its implementation is not easy. Just as you can't walk into your boardroom and tell everyone to be smarter or more efficient, you can't simply tell your organization to collaborate. Collaboration is a skill with methodologies, best-practices, and tools.
Evan walks us through the important steps to gain the most value from collaboration using inside knowledge from top companies like Toyota, Dreamworks, and HP. He goes over the newest tools and technologies. And perhaps most importantly he covers how to shift from a traditional to a collaborative organization, highlighting pitfalls that many companies fall prey to. He tackles deep questions with solid strategies and examples. For example, how do privacy laws or trade secrets affect collaborative efforts? When choosing collaborative technologies should I focus on asynchronous technologies, such as message boards or synchronous tools such as video conferencing?

As the founder of the first collaborative media creation platform, no one could be a bigger proponent of collaboration than I. And I feel that no one does a better job of highlighting the importance and guiding the organizations to higher results through collaboration than Evan Rosen in his newest book "Culture of Collaboration."

This book was well written. And I think it was definitely worth the read. I think it went a little heavy on citing The Mayo Clinic and Toyota, and it totally ignored that collaboration usually doesn't have much room for job security. But all in all I liked it. The book included the following 11 chapters:

1. Climate shift: Embracing rich, real-time collaboration
2. The culture of collaboration
3. The collaborative environment
4. Lifestyles and workstyles
5. Breaking down barriers
6. Integrating collaborative tools into culture
7. The Tao of tools
8. The brave new world of law and compliance
9. Collaborative leadership
10. The global collaborative enterprise
11. The new script

I would have liked the book much better if its content had stuck to what the title suggested it would be about. If the book had merely described the culture necessary to allow collaboration to thrive, then I would be hard pressed to make much criticism. While it is true that collaboration can be wonderful since it "lets people with a variety of skills and talents come together spontaneously and create value" (Rosen, 22), it also is a problem for anyone who works in a company and is concerned for their job security. Probably the biggest problem with this book is that it does not address the job security issue.

Not too long ago I read and reviewed The Collaborative Enterprise (ISBN: 0300114648), another book that covers much of the same material as The Culture of Collaboration. In my humble opinion, the instant book is better written, but the other book is better researched and covers the subject more thoroughly. If the instant book interests you, then I recommend you read both books to better understand the subject matter.

The culture of collaboration (a "we" culture) butts heads today with the culture of hierarchy (a "me" culture) or command and control philosophy. Whereas collaboration shuns individualism and promotes the group or team concept, the command and control philosophy does the exact opposite. While it is true that collaboration will usually get things done quicker and probably better than mere command and control, it also is interested primarily in short term rather than long term stability. And most people who work for a living are interested in long term stability since they have a spouse to help support and children to feed often times.

Collaboration will thrive in partnerships, joint ventures, and special projects since these endeavors are about building things quickly and well. But the author tries to convince us in his book that all companies will benefit from collaboration and all companies should strive to create a culture for collaboration. I don't buy into this theory and the book does not cover all bases in trying to convince me to change my mind. 4 stars!

America, once the undisputed business, industrial and technological leader on planet Earth, has surrendered that position to a number of other nations. The most obvious example is the American automotive industry and the Japanese, who took us to school on manufacturing and selling cars about 60 years after Henry Ford told Americans they could have "any color Model-T they want, so long as it's black". The secret weapon these "foreigners" wielded against the American manufacturing monolith was, obviously enough: Collaboration.

Therein lies the crux of Evan Rosen's latest book, a sort of how-to manual for companies of all sizes wishing to maximize the effort and talent of their employees, and create something of value, which usually leads to profit. He describes the ins and outs of business collaboration, from the physical arrangement of furniture and office space, to overcoming the psychological barriers, to the technological advances that allow colleagues on opposite sides of the globe to converse instantly, instead of scheduling a meeting weeks or months in advance and travelling 12,000 miles to get there.

It's a fascinating read, as one hears some remarkable stories of companies and organizations that understood the importance of collaboration before it became fashionable in the USA. Anyone who has spent any time in the American corporate world (or reads "Dilbert" on a regular basis) will be asking themselves why more companies don't practice effective collaboration on a regular basis. The answer may be inertia, job security, (or insecurity), or just good old rugged American individualism. But there is no longer any excuse, with a book like "The Culture of Collaboration" on the market. If you, and your business, want to "create value" (ie profit and success) you will buy copies of this book for yourself and all your managers, quiz them on it, and then put these techniques into practice.

Enter "collaboration" into Amazon's search, and the first thing you'll find is Evan Rosen's "The Culture of Collaboration"... and for good reasons too.

When traditional businesses try to tap onto the spectacle of the information ecology that's all the rage in the web industry, they are shifting from a deeply rooted pre-planned Fordian workflow, to a brave new world that embraces serendipitous spontaneity, parallel processing, ubiquitous presence, creative chaos and cross-breed sharing.

Rosen instinctively guides managers and leaders on a journey of change, where historical evidence is presented with noteworthy lessons. Interesting trends are distilled into pragmatic strategies, with a dose of engaging anecdotes from the think tanks at BMW, Toyota, NASA and Boeing just to name a few.

It's easy to appreciate the power of collaboration if we just look online today. The phenomena of Wikipedia and citizen journalism are testaments to the power of diverse, individuals brought together for a common goal. Rosen translates the most salient bits about how working environments should be designed to facilitate such collaborations.

With attention to the human aesthetic, with his well-designed book provides illustrative working models, as well as break-outs of key phrases in every section, especially handy for the findability of particular topics.

As a business manual, "The Culture of Collaboration" will probably be an effective means for any business to derive untapped creative value from within their own company. [...]

If you are looking for more "how-to" and less dry research or theory, this book fits the bill. Of the three books on collaboration on my shelf, this one I found to be most useful.

I read Evan Rosen's The Culture of Collaboration after having read the wildly popular personal productivity book, The Four Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferris. I was really struck by how The Culture of Collaboration sheds lights on and commits to the scope of The Four Hour Work Week:

The Four Hour Work Week is all about helping individuals live their dream lives by increasing productivity and focusing on what really needs to get done . To achieve this state, Ferris suggests that we read our emails only twice a day, that we work from home, and outsource our lives "to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour."

The Culture of Collaboration is written more for business, nonprofit and government collaborators rather than individuals per se. Like The Four Hour Work Week, Rosen wants these groups to achieve their maximum level of productivity. And he explores different ways these organizations can achieve the best "value creation" through collaboration.

Where Ferris writes that we should check our email only twice a day -- Rosen writes about how companies should encourage their employees to collaborate in real time rather than using email as the default mode for communication. With exceptions, the point here is that checking email wastes time as workers wait for replies and can't move forward with their projects. Rosen then goes on to offer simple alternatives that even I never thought of before.

Rosen also goes into the reasons for why it's also good for companies when their employees work at home. Since Ferris' book is written for individuals and is a bit biased in this regard (who wouldn't want to work @ home?) -- I found Rosen's insights rather eye-opening.

Also, while Ferris recommends hiring virtual assistants - Rosen suggests that companies can get more than just assistants. They can get the top field managers & professionals who can work remotely from all over the world.

Of course, the backdrop for all of these points is that collaborative technologies are emerging which make this possible and that this is the time for organizations of all types & sizes to take advantage of these opportunities . He also explores case studies of successful collaborative groups (including the Mayo clinic, which is my favorite) and other remote models that are fascinating to learn about.

For many reasons, I highly recommend this book!

THe book is remarkable, interesting and well deserved attention from corporate environment. In lieu of the financial crisis, we are all in desperate need of collaboration...