I have been interested in collaboration for a long time, in parallel with my passion around sustainability.  What I have noticed is this: as people become empassioned about the “big” topics, and become empowered internally to make change, they naturally reach out to others.  Visionaries have realized that the only way they can really make a difference on these urgent, important issues (health; climate change; sustainability; the financial system; I could go on…), is that they must work together to make their vision happen.

This struck me so forcibly that last year (2010), I led a workshop called “Leadership Skills for the Visionary Collaborator.”  That day, along with 25 people who were leading change all over Sonoma County, we explored what leadership skills were specifically needed to lead effective collaborations – both within organizations, as well as between organizations.

For me, 2012 will be a year of exploring “what it takes” to be a visionary collaborator.  Many of my ideas are based on the leadership development training we already do at Global Genesis.  I am delighted by this topic; I feel that with a greater attention to the personal strengths and skills these visionaries bring, the more effective they can be.

And these days, the human race needs us to be effective.  Desperately.

So, what is a visionary collaborator?  How are they different from other types of leaders?

The visionary collaborator may be a CEO working with his suppliers and distributors  to set industry standards, like Jeff Mendelsohn at New Leaf Paper has done in the Paper Industry; they could be a set of non-profit leaders working together on enormous topics like Health, or Climate Change, like my colleagues at the Sonoma Valley Health Roundtable or the North Bay Climate Adaptation Initiative.  Or they could be  green champions in organizations, progressing change amongst various departments or throughout the organizational hieararchy.

Their task is made challenging, unique, rewarding and powerful because they are visionary, they are leaders, and because they know they must collaborate to be able to create their vision.  And they are both influencing change as well bringing their own original thoughts to the table, while navigating a group that must answer to multiple loyalties.

There is a classic diagram that we use in teambuilding, of many arrows pointing in opposite directions.  The task for the visionary collaborator is to help align those arrows in generally the same direction.    To state it simply, s/he is a person with original ideas about the future who is working with a group of unaffiliated people to achieve a common goal.  To do that they must use leadership, or  what I define as “the process of influencing others towards a specific goal(s). “

In essence, the visionary collaborator is honing her/himself to be an effective partner – one that others will flock to because they are trustworthy and able to create results.

I have been noticing that in this world, which is in crisis in so many ways – economically, environmentally, and socially – that collaboration has been an avenue for robust and extremely creative solutions to form.  Check out this interesting coalition as a start -

I have a belief that these skills can be taught, developed, and improved on over time – that leaders aren’t born, but are created.  That doesn’t mean they don’t have their own innate styles and strengths that can be brought to bear in these situations.  In fact, I would argue that given the complexity of collaboration, it is important to have a variety of styles and strengths for a collaboration to produce real, long-lasting results.

Here are some of the qualities that must be developed by the visionary collaborator:

1)      Self and organizational awareness.  One must be very aware of one’s own strengths, weaknesses, assets and liabilities; this awareness essentially allows one to partner fully with others.

2)      Ability to Achieve Results: These collaborators must be courageous, credible, urgent and tenacious.

3)      Ability to Cultivate  Relationship: These leaders must bring their own brand of patience, diplomacy, and consideration.

4)      Attention to Collaboration:  Finally, these unique people must be open, aware, empowerd, and discerning for their collaboration to succeed.

Over the next year, I will be exploring both qualities and skills that the visionary collaborator needs to succeed.  I will also look to many of my contemporaries in thinking about what makes a collaboration work, how to structure to succeed, and how to use the strengths that the individuals in the group bring to bear.  May it be a year of fruitful collaboration!

Formula for Change – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

This is a great illustration for change that is applicable across a wide range of situations – whether you want to lose weight, or you want to change an organization.  Carrie Hays from the Halle Group first introduced it to me; thanks, Carrie!

It also talks about the qualities that enable employees to respond effectively to “being left out”:

Five particular qualities enable employees and executives alike to minimize the threat response and instead enable the reward response. These five social qualities are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.

DailyGood: Managing with the Brain in Mind.

Six Key Lessons on Mapping Out a Business Case for Sustainability Initiatives | GreenBiz.com.

Over the last several months, we have had an abundance of blessings – my sweetheart and I have purchased a fixer-upper house, and have been in the throes of ripping out carpet, ripping down wall paper, painting, putting in new flooring, moving, and finally, hosting 17 people for Thanksgiving. Rewarding, and highly stressful (they say moving is amongst the most stressful events in a human beings’ life.) This along with the challenges all of us have faced over the last few months of anxiety over the elections, massive fluctuations in the market, and watching people lose their homes, their jobs, and at times, their communities. (Christopher, my sweetheart, is in the financial sector – you can imagine the stress that creates.)

So how, in all of this, does one maintain one’s own sanity, health, good temper – essentially, one’s personal sustainability?

This has been an important question for me (floating amongst all of the other important questions, like what paint to use, or, how will the market affect our clients?)

It has not been an easy one. In fact, as I sit here, writing for the first time in two months, it is clear to me how fast all of those good habits of meditation, writing, exercise, good food, and time with friends was thrown out the window.

Can we always do everything? No. So, how do we choose what is most important?

I lived on an organic fruit farm for about a year and a half, through two pruning seasons. And during that time, I learned how to prune grapes – they had about 20 varieties of heirloom table groups that were just stunning in their variety and flavor.

Pruning grapes turned out to be one of the most challenging and rewarding tasks I took on, and is a metaphor I refer to a lot when I am having to focus on what’s most important.

Imagine a grape vine, bare of leaves. Every vine has about 25 woody “shoots” or spurs, that are growing from the vine, looking like a crazy bush of muppet rastafarian hair. Your job is to take this vine and these shoots from 30 to around 10. So, how?

Grapes before they are pruned

The first step is to use simple processes of prioritization – is the shoot oriented correctly, is it big and healthy or small and puny, is it diseased, is it spaced well? After clipping those off down to the vine, that leaves you with about 16 big, healthy shoots, just waiting to burst forth with leaves and juicy grapes the next year. But wait – you still need to take 6 off!

And this is the hardest part of the process. Because, at this point it is pure judgment call. You don’t know if one will do better than the other, or will stay healthier longer. For some reason, that first year, it was agonizing for me – what if I chose the wrong one - and marred the plant, or worse, killed the plant by taking off too many? It took me forever to get through a row, and although my farm-mates encouraged me to just “make a decision, already!” I found that my concern slowed me to a snail’s pace.

I have the same habit in the rest of life – I am so in love with opportunities, that “clipping a shoot” literally feels like I am killing an opportunity? And the same line of questions runs through my brain – what if its the wrong one?

Grapes after they are pruned

The second year, though, I went out there, with the benefit of having seen the results of the first year’s pruning. The places where I had pruned more intensely were fine – in fact, they were vigorous and healthy. Guess what – I hadn’t killed the vine! It helped to see the logic of pruning, the results of my efforts, and how I could fine-tune the second time.

I found that not only was I faster at pruning, but that I was able to teach others, and feel confident doing so; I saw the plant in an entirely different way – more about cultivating grapes, than cutting off woody stems. I became (almost) as fast as the good folks who had been doing it for years.

The whole point of pruning is to be able to send more energy to the things that you know are most important. It is, literally, to cultivate the best possible opportunities to grow the best possible grapes, when they are still months and months away from growing.

These last few weeks, I have had to prune, at least temporarily, so that my finite time, energy and resources could go to the things that were truly most urgent AND important. The results? I sit in my warm, new home, relaxing this Thanksgiving weekend. My sweetheart and I are even more in love. And I am learning to be increasingly efficient AND effective with my time. Some of the pieces I have pruned from my life are not doing so well – but surprisingly, some of the other pieces I have pruned are doing much better without my attention; it has allowed other leaders to step up, and for me to recreate my role in those projects.

Pruning does not always result the way we wish it – but by keeping your eye on your job of cultivating what you want to achieve, as opposed to focusing on what throws itself at you, it becomes easier and easier to prune, year by year.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when one must become very, very clear on priorities, to get through a particularly challenging time. I believe our nation is in the midst of such a time – where we have to remember what is important, what will keep us going in the long term, and we have to choose where we want our finite resources to go. What an opportunity to cultivate clarity!

Winter-time, with its short, cold days is a time that lends itself to introspection. The next few posts I will do will be on managing time, cultivating clarity, and remembering what is truly most important. Much of this is based off of the training that I do in time management. May you find it useful.

I picked up the Complete MBA for Dummies a couple of weeks ago, curious as to whether one could actually get a Complete MBA through reading a 414-page (including the index) book. While I can’t answer that question, I was struck by the first chapter. They said that the thing each organization needs to be prepared for, to expect, to relish, is… (drum roll please)…

The Prospect, the Countenance, the Reality of Change.

It was, to say the least, very confirming.

The truth of it, in these days, with the rapidity of change, the complete turnover of technology (where did the analog system go?), most businesses, non-profits, and everyone else are aware of the need to be prepared for change.

And yet, we still have trouble adjusting for change, building for it, preparing for it. Oh, maybe at the beginning of an organization’s life, when everything is being created, it is easier. Structures are malleable, and people are open. But, as Terry Taylor says…

Nothing Fails Like Success.

Success breeds satisfaction, rigidity. And while we don’t need to imitate Mao with a Cultural Revolution (aka purge) every 10 years, we do need to keep the learning curve fresh for ourselves. Keeping the Learning Curve – essentially, the ability to innovate, fresh is one of the key reasons that so many large organizations have attempted to create smaller entrepreneurial organizations within.

So, how can you design an organization so it is fully ready to surf the wave of change?

How can you ready your people? How can you predict curves and swoops of change, and take advantage of it through strategy and precise action?

The Reconfigurable Organization:

A fantastic book, Designing Dynamic Organizations, suggests the Reconfigurable Organization as a strategy. It says that there are five components to organizational design, and how you handle each of them will directly impact your ability to maneuver change – and have negative consequences if you fail to do so.

The five components of organizational design:

1. Strategy – The strategy for the organization must be integrated into the organizational design. The direction of the company – its goals, its vision, the reality of the economy, environment, and market must all inform how an organization is designed.
2. Structure - The authors refer to the structure as the home, the body of the organization. How functions are organized, and how roles are defined, will have a subtle and not-so-subtle impact on how energy in the organization is channeled, how work is accomplished, and on the focus of the organization.
3. Processes and Lateral Capability - Specialization of function, while it has its obvious strengths, naturally creates boundaries and barriers to collaboration. This can be overcome by looking at the interpersonal communication networks, informal and formal, the technological networks, and by specifically naming integrative roles that, as the authors point out, form the “glue” of the organization.
4. Reward Systems - How people are rewarded signifies how the organization measures success. What types of results and behaviors is the organization looking for? How can it encourage those by what it measures, incentivizes, and discourages?
5. People Practices – Depending on what the organization needs, the skills, competencies, and resources of its people could significantly change. How you are selecting, developing, and what you are giving feedback on should evolve in tandem with the how the organization evolves.

The authors make the point that if any of these pieces do not reflect the organization’s current needs, it could lead to confusion, friction(inability to execute), gridlock (no collaboration), internal competition, and low performance. Any of these problems sound familiar?

Their solution? The Reconfigurable Organization – an organization that by its very design is ready to change and evolve with the organization’s needs; that encourages collaboration and execution. They point out -

If change is constant, why not design the organization to be constantly and quickly changeable?

The Reconfigurable Organization is characterized by…

• Active Leadership
• Knowledge Management
• Learning
• Flexibility
• Integration
• Employee Commitment
• Change Readiness

Designing Dynamic Organizations walks you through the process of organizational re-design, discussing everything from focus groups to the design process. They are thorough, accessible, and really intending the group for leaders and practitioners, pointing out that top leaders and HR Directors will find this very useful. It is the best book I have found on looking at how an organization can be designed to meet the needs of its most fundamental asset – its people.

How Ready for Change is Your Organization?

It is useful to think first about the work of Ichak Adizes, who wrote The Corporate Life Cycle in 1988. He notes that similar to biological systems, organizations are “born,” they learn, they peak, then they (can) fade. He talks about the Business Function of Organizations, and how the needs of the organization change over time. He also talks about how by understanding where your organization is, you can figure out how to give it the “nutrients” (my words) it needs to re-energize.

The Corporate Lifecycle, by Ichak Adizes (1988)

This slide to the side summarizes his ideas. When an organization is in the early stages, it is merely focused on performing services. “Just do it!!” is the idea. As an organization matures, it becomes more and more necessary to focus on how the service is being provided. After that, the organization is looking to be one step ahead of the curve – how can we anticipate the competition. Many best practices have been established in the organization, but the organization must not rest on its laurels. Finally, the organization moves on to integration – whether through vertical or horizontal mergers, externally, or through looking to its people, and thinking about their long-term success.

It is easy to see this pattern in an organization I have been a part of for the last several years, the Sustainable Enterprise Conference. The process that it took to get the conference to be the success it is now very much mimics the path that Adizes notes.

2005: The conference started when Robert Girling, a friend and colleague, went to a large conference in Marin called Bioneers, and came back with the idea of having a conference in the North Bay. He invited a number of people to come brainstorm with him – community activists, Sonoma State & Green MBA professors, business people who were interested or working in sustainable business. I was in that organizing meeting, and ended up being the “Director” for the conference, organizing the efforts of the many volunteers over the course of the next several months. In April, 2006 we thought we would get 150 people – we were shocked when we “sold out” at 220, turning people away.

That year, there was a huge learning curve – and boy was it a rock & roll roller-coaster as we learned about sustainability, how to run and market a conference, how to work together, and clarified, over the course of time, what our true purpose was. In terms of the Adizes model, we implemented systems as we could – but really, the focus was on producing that one day. We had to prove the “business” of the conference was a success.

In 2007, the second year, I was director again. We decided to expand the conference to two days, and to increase our number of targeted guests. That year, I became much more organized; we structured the work differently; there were many more volunteers who had much more ownership. My job became more manageable as a result, although I found myself working much harder as volunteer coordinator than I had the first year. When I compare that year to the Adizes model, we were clearly in stage 2, Administer. Systems became much more important; we didn’t want to “reinvent the wheel”. We were much more focused on fine-tuning.

In 2008, I decided that it was time for people who had a different set of skills to take the director-ship. As a group, the Steering Committee had decided it didn’t want to rely on volunteers as much; it wanted professionals to take the helm on logistics, coordinating sponsors once we had made contact, and otherwise managing the flow of the conference. So, we hired two “co-directors” of the conference, Deborah Grace Kraft & Stacey Ward, and one marketing director, Ryn Longmaid, in addition to our steadfast webmaster Oren Wool & graphic artist Alana Jelinik. These people brought specialization in detail & event management, in marketing; and Oren & Alana were benefiting from having worked in their capacity in previous years. The team took the “Administer” stage of the Adizes model to a new level; writing policy, clarifying decision-making processes; establishing strong working relationships.

As we prepare for 2009, we are clearly in the Entrepreneurial stage, with forays into the Integrative Stage. We are attempting to figure out what is “cutting edge.” Particularly now that “sustainability” and “green” are mainstream words, the question is, how do we help our local enterprises continue to push and challenge their own edge.  We are also re-examining our organizational structure, something we do every year, formalizing different committees and roles that are greater than function, and speak to the purpose of the conference.  More on that later.

Where is your organization?

In the next article, we will talk about how knowing where your organization is can help you design systems that will help you work most effectively and efficiently.