Enabling Collaborative Creativity at Work

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Enabling Collaborative Creativity at Work

• American Creativity Association
• International Conference 2006
• Keynote Address
• Michael Beyerlein
• Center for Collaborative Organizations
• University of North Texas

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The Main Issue

• How do you organize to optimize meaningful
  interaction and achieve excellence in innovation
  for sustainable competitive advantage?

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The Challenge

• Complexity of work problems
• Fast pace of change
• Globalization competition
• Fragmentation silos
• Tradition inertia
• Helplessness hopelessness

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Building the Boat While Going Downstream in
Whitewater
http//www.rocknrow.com/
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Creativity in the Organization

• The organization is a creation.
• It is renewed every day.
• Creative ideas range from tiny to huge.
• Most ideas are never implemented.
• The question is
• What are the enabling conditions?

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Creativity at Work

• Builds up complex structure where new meaning is
  created
• Thought and social networks emerge that get more
  organized with practice
• Needs an environment where complex social
  structure can be sustained (vs. eroded)
• Depends on sharing of knowledge, values, goals,
  ideas, and assumptions
• Flourishes under leadership that understands,
  enriches, and nourishes the thought system

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Collaborate

• The act of working together with others to
  achieve a common goal
• Blend our resources (knowledge, skill, energy, )
  to create a unique synergy
• Relationship with a purpose
• I am committed to your success you to mine.

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The Social Network Knowledge Sharing
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Creativity Always Involves Crossing of Boundaries
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http//www.auroraprocess.co.uk/silos.html
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You cross cultural boundaries every day!
Organizational Culture
Nested Subcultures
Cross Cutting Cultures
Subcultures
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Local Culture Gaps

• Management
• Engineering
• Production
• Gaps so large, they seem to be from different
  countries (Edgar Schein).

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Culture An Elephant with Infinite Sides
Elephant illustration (C) Jason Hunt
naturalchild.org/jason
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Blame vs. Collaborative Culture

• Collaborative
• Look to partner
• Spontaneous problem solving
• Collaboration is efficient and habitual
• Committed to collaboration
• Understand how to pull group together to work

• Blame
• Look to blame
• Little time spent solving problems
• Collaboration is forced
• Committed to work against each other
• No clue of how to pull group together to work

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Creative Culture

• Dedicated to work
• Clear goals
• Clear procedures norms for regular and
  consistent communication
• Personal bond (vs Superficial or lack of personal
  bond
• High level of honesty
• High level of trust

• Ideas/input valued
• Change is supported (vs status quo)
• Time to think
• Constructive conflict
• High level of challenge
• Freedom
• Supportive managers
• Sufficient resources
• Collaboration

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Levels of Expertise

• Novice
• Beginner
• Competent
• Proficient
• Expert
• Master
• World Class
• We are usually novices outside our own
  disciplines and cultures.
• What happens when we dont admit it?

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A Hierarchy of Organizational Creativity

• I. New Ways of Seeing
• -- employee as person not machine part (e.g.,
  Whole Foods)
• II. New ways of organizing
• -- new forms, such as Dell and Sematech
• III. New ways of leading
• Shared leadership, such as AMD

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I. New Ways of Seeing

• theis the invention of new ways of seeing T.
  Z. Young, Philosopher
• "If you change the way you look at things, the
  things you look at change."  -- Carlos Castaneda
• A way of seeing is a way of not seeing.
  --British statesman Edmund Burke

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Outdated Maps
http//www.giuliomotta.com/pics/ancient_maps/globe
.jpg
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Where is the Creativity at Work?

• Products
• Services
• Processes
• Systems
• Strategy
• Organization

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What Is an Organization?
Org. Structure
The Work
Environment
Org. Culture
Alignment
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Competitive Advantage Creates Wealth

• Wealth
• Tangible capital intangible capital

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The Knowledge Economy

• Intellectual Capital (IC)
• Competence x Commitment x Control

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Intangible Capital

• Intellectual
• Human
• Social
• Relationship
• Political
• Organizational
• Collaborative

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New Definitions of Organization

• Bundles of tangible assets traditional beans
• A system of identifiable routines or activity
  sets
• Systems for information processing and symbol
  manipulation
• Systems of interpretation and sense-making
• Communities of knowledge (vulnerable)
• New definitions new ways to see new options

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New Organizational Forms

• network organization
• virtual corporation
• learning organization
• collaborative organization

• bureaucratic organization
• matrix organization
• project-based organization
• re-engineered corporation

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An Array of Collaborative Structures
Harris, 2003
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The Leadership Challenge

• The question for the leader is
• How do you use and develop all the resources in
  the organization over the long term for achieving
  strategic business goals? (including the human
  social cognitive emotional)

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The Old Way of Leading

• Top down
• One-way communication
• Command and control
• Motivate by fear
• Power based on position

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Performance Tradeoffs

Relationship Innovation Learning
Speed Quality Cost
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Downsizing

• 3 ways to loose Intellectual Capital
• - loss of people expertise, networks
• - loss of commitment
• - loss of concentration

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The New Way of Leading

• Side-by-side (Romig, 2003)
• Two-way communication
• Shared decision making
• Accountability based on mutual respect, honest,
  and caring feedback, and a sharing of ideas and
  feelings, rather than fear and reward

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Traditional hierarchy -- l Leader is the director
Not yet connected as team Leader is the center of
activity
Members begin to form team Leader is in the center
Team members take over team Leader becomes coach
Leader as lead team member
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The Es of Leadership

• EMPOWER
• ENERGIZE
• ENCOURAGE
• ENVISION
• EXCITE
• ELEVATE
• EXEMPLIFY

• ENDURE
• EMPATHIZE
• ENRICH
• EXPERIENCE
• ENABLE
• ENOBLE
• EMBOLDEN

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Starving Teams

• 90 of teams fail because of context. Sue
  Mohrman
• 70 of teams fail. Beyerlein, et al.
• 70 of process interventions fail. Jim
  Underwood

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Organizational Support Systems

• Leadership
• Organization and Team Design
• Performance Management
• Integration of Teams and Systems

• Integration of Teams Systems
• Financial
• Learning
• Physical Workspace
• Change/Renewal
• Creativity Innovation

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Three Most Critical TBO Components
Number Participants Who Ranked Component In Top
Three (N15)
From Harris, 2003
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Support System Alignment
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A cascade of champions and models

• Champions energy, modeling, evangelizing
• Corporate Gravity it all falls downward.
• CEO ? VPs ? directors ? managers ?..

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Creating Space for Discovery
Create
Collaborate
Learn
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Stifling Change

• The Corporate Immune System
• "For the introduction of a new kind of music must
  be shunned as imperiling the whole state since
  styles of music are never disturbed without
  affecting the most important political
  institutions."
• -Plato (c. 427347 B.C.), Greek philosopher.

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Roadblocks to Collaboration

• Change is important for others.
• Teamwork is important for others.
• Their fault, not mine.
• They can trust me, but I cant trust them.
• Weve always done it this way.
• Too risky.
• Not my job.
• My loyalty is to my group, first.
• I know more than they do.
• It will slow me down.

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Which Organization is Smarter?
Dictator
Steering Committee
Whole System

Low
High
Involvement in Design and Implementation of
Change
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Collaboration It Is Rocket Science

• Moving against or apart or with
• Conflict - - - - - - - - - - - collaboration
• Domination - - - - - - - - interdependence
• Synergy occurs when a collaborative system is
  forged a deliberate, disciplined, systemic
  creation.

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A System Produces What It Was Designed For

• You get what you pay attention to.
• You get what you measure.
• You get what you reward.
• You get what you model.
• New outputs require new design. If creativity at
  work is the goal, set up enabling conditions,
  with collaboration at the core.

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Contact Information

• Mike Beyerlein
• Center for Collaborative Organizations
• University of North Texas
• beyerlei_at_unt.edu
• 940-565-2653