The Future of Collaboration

Creativity has long been thought to be an individual gift, best pursued alone; schools, organizations, and whole industries are built on this idea. But what if the most common beliefs about how creativity works are wrong? Group Genius tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity, revealing that creativity is always collaborative--even when you're alone. Sharing the results of his own acclaimed research on jazz groups, theater ensembles, and conversation analysis, Keith Sawyer shows us how to be more creative in collaborative group settings, how to change organizational dynamics for the better, and how to tap into our own reserves of creativity.

The word "wiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian, and here author and think tank CEO Tapscott (The Naked Corporation), along with research director Williams, paint in vibrant colors the quickly changing world of Internet togetherness, also known as mass or global collaboration, and what those changes mean for business and technology. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written, compiled, edited and re-edited by "ordinary people" is the most ubiquitous example, and its history makes remarkable reading. But also considered are lesser-known success stories of global collaboration that star Procter & Gamble, BMW, Lego and a host of software and niche companies. Problems arise when the authors indulge an outsized sense of scope-"this may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance, or the rise of Athenian democracy"-while acknowledging only reluctantly the caveats of weighty sources like Microsoft's Bill Gates. Methods for exploiting the power of collaborative production are outlined throughout, an alluring compendium of ways to throw open previously guarded intellectual property and to invite in previously unavailable ideas that hide within the populace at large. This clear and meticulously researched primer gives business leaders big leg up on mass collaboration possibilities; as such, it makes a fine next-step companion piece to James Surowiecki's 2004 bestseller The Wisdom of Crowds.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Collaboration is an everyday practice that many people find to be a frustrating, even exhausting, experience. How to Make Collaboration Work provides a remedy: five principles of collaboration that have been tested and refined in organizations throughout the world. Author David Straus shows that these methods can help any group make better decisions and function more effectively. The five principles are: Involve the Relevant Stakeholders, Build Consensus Phase by Phase, Design a Process Map, Designate a Process Facilitator, and Harness the Power of Group Memory. Each principle addresses the specific challenges people face when trying to work collaboratively, and each can be applied to any problem-solving scenario.

In the years following the publication of Patrick Lencioni’s best-seller The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, fans have been clamoring for more information on how to implement the ideas outlined in the book.In Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni offers more specific, practical guidance for overcoming the Five Dysfunctions—using tools, exercises, assessments, and real-world examples. He examines questions that all teams must ask themselves: Are we really a team? How are we currently performing? Are we prepared to invest the time and energy required to be a great team?Written concisely and to the point, this guide gives leaders, line managers, and consultants alike the tools they need to get their teams up and running quickly and effectively.

Tested on more than 10,000 participants, the Interaction Method of conducting meetings is proven to increase productivity by up to 15 percent. Demonstrating how time and people can be better used in meetings, this thorough manual is indispensable for any organization--from large corporations to the PTA.

That organizational charts rarely describe functional hierarchy is obvious to any employee who’s ever tried to adhere to one. Instead, survival often depends on incorporating oneself into unofficial social networks that allow one to gain access to necessary information and to collaborate with the colleagues who can actually get things done. In this dense but useful volume, Cross and Parker-both consultants with IBM’s Knowledge and Organizational Performance Forum-give readers insight into how such unofficial networks form and function. They also share their methodology for rendering these basically unseen networks visible to managers. By literally mapping information flow and collaboration patterns among the people who make up a department or firm, they can pinpoint individual bottlenecks, essential employees and those who have been pushed to the periphery or whose expertise is underutilized. Their analysis enables managers to adapt their strategies to exploit and support these now visible networks and improve overall productivity. Rather than using their book as a forum to garner new consulting business-with a ‘kids don’t try this at home’ approach-they encourage readers to pursue network analysis at their own organizations by arming them with step-by-step instructions through two appendixes. The authors present their material in the nitty-gritty style of an evening business course, with lots of charts and examples. They take their mission of arming managers with a substantive strategic tool very seriously. In this way, theirs is unlike many management books that are high on concept and lacking in application-Cross and Parker provide a guide that is directly applicable to improving the functionality of any organization.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

There are reasons why most humans love the mountains and why the great outdoors can do so much to soothe the urban jitters. Winifred Gallagher explains the inner workings of environmental psychology in The Power of Place. Traveling from northernmost Alaska, where the need to stay indoors for so much of the year takes a heavy mental and physical toll on the locals, to the artificial canyons of Manhattan, Gallagher strips off one civilizing layer after another to reveal the human animal within us, the creature that requires open spaces and clear air to function as it should. If you ever wondered why mountaineers take the risks they do or why Michael Jackson spent all that money on a hyperbaric chamber, Gallagher has the answer.

In "Collaboration", author Morten Hansen takes aim at what many leaders inherently know: in today's competitive environment, companywide collaboration is an imperative for successful strategy execution, yet the sought-after synergies are rarely, if ever, realized. In fact, most cross-unit collaborative efforts end up wasting time, money, and resources. How can managers avoid the costly traps of collaboration and instead start getting the results they need? In this book, Hansen shows managers how to get collaboration right through 'disciplined collaboration'. Based on the author's long-running research, in-depth case studies, and company interviews, "Collaboration" delivers practical advice and tools to help your organization collaborate for real results.

Leaping The Abyss: Putting Group Genius To Work is the single most in-depth description and analysis of the patented DesignShop® facilitation methodology invented by the MG Taylor Corporation. Written by two authors who attended a DesignShop event in 1995, Leaping The Abyss provides a detailed step-by-step account of the three-day event, including interviews and anecdotes from participants from a diversity of industries such as healthcare, management consulting, government, military, automotive, food and beverage, education, and high-technology, as well as, a behind the scenes look at how DesignShop experiences are created and the personel who facilitate them. An extensive bibliography, dozens of web links, illustrations, tips and suggested exercises with each chapter offer the reader a great source of new ideas for facilitating the creative process within their own work place.

The premise behind Roam's book is simple: anybody with a pen and a scrap of paper can use visual thinking to work through complex business ideas. Management consultant and lecturer Roam begins with a watershed moment: asked, at the last minute, to give a talk to top government officials, he sketched a diagram on a napkin. The clarity and power of that image allowed him to communicate directly with his audience. From this starting point, Roam has developed a remarkably comprehensive system of ideas. Everything in the book is broken down into steps, providing the reader with tools and rules to facilitate picture making. There are the four steps of visual thinking, the six ways of seeing and the SQVID– a clumsy acronym for a full brain visual work out designed to focus ideas. Roam occasionally overcomplicates; an extended case study takes up a full third of the book and contains an overload of images that belie the book's central message of simplicity. Nonetheless, for forward-thinking management types, there is enough content in these pages to drive many a brainstorming session. Illus. (Mar 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The World Café is a flexible, easy-to-use process for fostering collaborative dialogue, sharing collective knowledge, and discovering new opportunities for action. World Café originators Juanita Brown and David Isaacs outline seven core design principles and provide practical tips and tools for convening and hosting "conversations that matter," even with very large groups. Each chapter features actual stories of Café dialogues from business, education, government, and community organizations across the globe, demonstrating how the World Café approach can be adapted to many different settings and cultures. Based on living systems thinking, this is a proven approach for fostering authentic dialogue and creating dynamic networks of conversation around your organization or community’s real work and critical questions––improving both personal relationships and people’s capacity to shape the future together.

Since its first publication over twenty years ago, Images of Organization has become a classic in the canon of management literature. The book is based on a very simple premise-that all theories of organization and management are based on implicit images or metaphors that stretch our imagination in a way that can create powerful insights, but at the risk of distortion. Gareth Morgan provides a rich and comprehensive resource for exploring the complexity of modern organizations internationally, translating leading-edge theory into leading-edge practice.

Surowiecki first developed his ideas for Wisdom of Crowds in his “Financial Page” column of The New Yorker. Many critics found his premise to be an interesting twist on the long held notion that Americans generally question the masses and eschew groupthink. “A socialist might draw some optimistic conclusions from all of this,” wrote The New York Times. “But Surowiecki’s framework is decidedly capitalist.” Some reviewers felt that the academic language and business speak decreased the impact of the argument. Still, it’s a thought-provoking, timely book: the TV studio audience of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire guesses correctly 91 percent of the time, compared to “experts” who guess only 65 percent correctly. Keep up the good work, comrades.

Author and international business consultant Kotter (Leading Change, Our Iceberg is Melting) returns with an engaging look at companies that need to overcome a lack of urgency-or a surfeit of complacency-with a proactive agenda. Kotter dissects well his seemingly simple premise, using his professional experiences to examine the inner workings of real companies. Kotter defines his terms with clear language and bullet lists, convincingly asserting that urgency "is not driven by a belief that... everything is a mess but, instead, that the world contains great opportunities and great hazards"; it is, in fact, "a compulsive determination to move, and win, now." Among suggested tactics: bring the outside world into overly insular work teams; make your deeds consistent with your words; view crises as potential opportunities; and disseminate data that "feels interesting, surprising, or dramatic," as opposed to "information so antiseptic that it flows in and out of short-term memory with great speed." Great examples illustrate real-life frustrations and successes, and a special section on dealing with the nay-sayers is full of practical ploys to overcome dissent and kill complacency.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In the Old Testament, Joshua blew his trumpet and the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. In the business world, competitive uncertainty is the trumpet that breaks down your company walls. Collaboration–within your company, with partners, with competitors–gives you the power to embrace competitive uncertainty, and to create the innovation you need to exploit its opportunities. But how? Collaboration opens new possibilities, but also exposes your business to new risks. Whether and how you should employ collaboration are difficult questions. How do you exploit collaboration? How do you know which type is relevant and effective for you? When do you enter and exit a collaborative venture? How do you ensure that you do not suffer the same fate as Jericho?

No matter what you call it–strategic partnership, key alliance, business-to-business connectivity, supply-chain integration, co-opetition, or preferred provider status–collaboration is fundamentally about aligning your activities and processes with those of other organizations to create shared value and manage shared risk. Within this simple concept lies deep operational complexity. In The Jericho Principle, top business and technology strategists explore the complexity and provide models, maps, and tools for using collaboration to help managers, executives, and consultants understand the patterns, explore the options, and exploit the opportunities for effective collaboration.

Ralph Welborn and Vince Kasten provide proven frameworks and pragmatic steps to help you determine when, where, and why a collaborative venture makes sense. They help you understand and implement different forms of collaboration using frameworks, case studies, examples, and recommendations to provide a clear view of the promise and the peril. The strategies they present have been tested and proven with clients across the world in industries from telecommunications to financial services. You will understand how to make collaboration work for your company.

Strategically, businesses need to embrace the challenges of competitive uncertainty in order to exploit its opportunities. Collaborative ventures can drive the innovation that allows you to respond with alacrity to fast-moving business opportunities, keeping you ahead of your competition. The ability to efficiently and productively collaborate is becoming a competitive necessity, and collaborative skills have become a crucial core competency. By identifying collaborative competitive dynamics, patterns of behaviors, and emerging best practices, The Jericho Principle helps you to understand and act on collaborative options for your fast-moving business opportunities. You’ll finish the book armed with an understanding of emerging collaborative models and their organizational implications, and also with pragmatic knowledge and tools for making them real and effective.

Meetings are unavoidable?but they don?t have to be unproductive. This tool-packed guide will help readers transform meetings from time-sinks to springboards for effective action by learning how to: Set smart agendas Keep meetings on track Handle problem behaviors and time-wasters Motivate participants to take action

The authors, who are both consultants, conducted extensive interviews with companies to discover how successful teams are created and sustained. The result is not a research report but a collection of minicase histories and commentary. Some of the findings: Teams respond to performance challenges and not to managers' exhortations for more "teamwork." Organizations committed to high-performance standards and willing to modify individual accountability requirements experience the greatest success with teams. Successful team leaders are not necessarily those with remarkable leadership qualities. Instead, they "simply need to believe in their purpose and their people." Team leaders do real work, remove obstacles, and build trust and confidence. Recommended for larger public libraries and special business collections.
- Andrea C. Dragon, Coll. of St. Elizabeth, Convent Station, N.J.

The business meeting—a necessary evil or a vital and invigorating component of running an organization? According to management consultant Lencioni (The Five Temptations of a CEO), meetings should fit the latter description, but more often than not, he says, they don't. In this lackluster audio fable, Lencioni offers practical advice on how to revitalize your business by energizing your business meetings, but his pallid, passive prose would challenge the most skilled narrator, and Arthur is no exception. The voice Arthur lends Will, the young hero of this tale, resembles that of Sesame Street's Ernie on downers, and the various inflections he gives business owner Casey McDaniel and his management team don't make up for the characters' lack of character. Nevertheless, Lencioni's message comes across loud and clear—meetings should be interactive, not passive, and they should be structured (i.e., issues of immediate importance should be discussed in "weekly tactical" meetings, and issues that will fundamentally affect the business should be addressed in "monthly strategic" meetings). Although managers will find this advice worthwhile, they would gather just as much if they skipped the sluggish fable and listened to the last few tracks.

Fourteen organisations all over the world tell the stories of how Solutions Focus has helped them to change - and show you many ways to find what works in the workplace. This book is a massive fund of experience and know-how about keeping organisational change simple. The fourteen real life cases described here illustrate the Solutions Focus approach in action from widescale change to everyday effective management. The cases come from a wide range of organisations, including Lufthansa, British Sky Broadcasting, Bayer Cropscience, the Cooperative Group, the Ontario Medical Association and Freescale Semiconductor. They worked on issues including restructuring, strategy development, sales improvement, continuous improvement, team development, outplacement, training and job satisfaction. International consultants and Solutions Focus pioneers Mark McKergow and Jenny Clarke guide you through the ins and outs of each case, and draw 80 lessons which you can use in building positive change at work and keeping things as simple as possible - but no simpler. "Filled with the wisdom of profound simplicity. I highly recommend this insightful and practical book." - Stephen MR Covey, author of "The Speed of Trust".

'Tony Buzan has done it again. Don't miss Mind Maps at Work. It will make your mind work better.' Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager(R) and The On-Time, On-Target Manager 'One of the world's leading thinkers...his brain-storming techniques have boosted the confidence and ability of his followers around the world.' DAILY MAIL 'Tony Buzan is Mr Memory...endorsed by government ministers, Mensa brainiacs and MDs alike.' METRO 'The radical technique that will blow your mind ... discover the real meaning of freedom of mind.' EXECUTIVE WORLD 'Tony Buzan will do for the brain what Stephen Hawking did for the universe.' THE TIMES 'If you put Buzan's theories to the test, you could find yourself memorising pages from a phone book or becoming the brainiest person in the world.' PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD magazine 'The whole world should Mind Map.' THE EXPRESS 'The biggest name in memory.' THE NEW YORKER 'Buzan has that rare talent of making dry scientific data digestible. That, coupled with his enthusiasm and belief in our potential as geniuses, is inspiring.' HEALTH & FITNESS 'Tony Buzan deserves a medal for coming up with the sanity-saving concept of Mind Maps...a lifesaver.' TIME OUT 'Tony Buzan is the Neil Armstrong of the mind! His Mind Maps are the next giant leap for mankind.' MICHAEL GELB, author of How To Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci

A timeless classic in how complex information should be presented graphically. The Strunk & White of visual design. Should occupy a place of honor--within arm's reach--of everyone attempting to understand or depict numerical data graphically. The design of the book is an exemplar of the principles it espouses: elegant typography and layout, and seamless integration of lucid text and perfectly chosen graphical examples. Very Highly Recommended. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 accoutrements are revolutionizing the social order, a development that's cause for more excitement than alarm, argues interactive telecommunications professor Shirky. He contextualizes the digital networking age with philosophical, sociological, economic and statistical theories and points to its major successes and failures. Grassroots activism stands among the winners—Belarus's flash mobs, for example, blog their way to unprecedented antiauthoritarian demonstrations. Likewise, user/contributor-managed Wikipedia raises the bar for production efficiency by throwing traditional corporate hierarchy out the window. Print journalism falters as publishing methods are transformed through the Web. Shirky is at his best deconstructing Web failures like Wikitorial, the Los Angeles Times's attempt to facilitate group op-ed writing. Readers will appreciate the Gladwellesque lucidity of his assessments on what makes or breaks group efforts online: Every story in this book relies on the successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users. The sum of Shirky's incisive exploration, like the Web itself, is greater than its parts. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In this practical sequel to her national bestseller The Creative Habit, Tharp explains why collaboration is important to her -- and can be for you. She shows how to recognize good candidates for partnership and how to build one successfully, and analyzes dysfunctional collaborations. And although this isn't a book that promises to help you deepen your romantic life, she suggests that the lessons you learn by working together professionally can help you in your personal relationships.

These lessons about planning, listening, organizing, troubleshooting, and using your talents and those of your coworkers to the fullest are not limited to the arts; they are the building blocks of working with others, like if you're stuck in a 9-to-5 job and have an unhelpful boss.

Tharp sees collaboration as a daily practice, and her book is rich in examples from her career. Starting as a twelve-year-old teaching dance to her brothers in a small town in California and moving through her work as a fledgling choreographer in New York, she learns lessons that have enriched her collaborations with Billy Joel, Jerome Robbins, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, David Byrne, Richard Avedon, Milos Forman, Norma Kamali, and Frank Sinatra.