CHAPTER 3 A Sensible Start

That night Dave hardly slept a wink. His restlessness kept Dee awake, too. She finally gave up trying to sleep and switched on the bedside lamp.

“What is it, honey?” she asked.

Dave sighed heavily. "It’s the Primo project. The end product wasn’t bad—but it was a financial bomb for the company.”

“Yes, you mentioned that. How bad of a bomb are you talking about?”

“A zero profit bomb.”

A long silence followed. From Dee’s experience, she understood there might be implications for her husband.

“Do you think you’re going to survive this?”

“I don’t know. In a couple of weeks I have to give Jim a full report about what went wrong and how to keep it from happening again. It’s not going to be easy. I know Beattie said she would give me a few pointers, but it’s going to take more than a pep talk for me to figure out how to get through to the department managers. I’m dealing with some very arrogant personalities.”

“You know, Dave,” said Dee thoughtfully, "sometimes the best way to get other people to give up their egos is for you to give up yours first.”

Taken aback, Dave propped himself up on his elbows and glared at his wife. "What the heck is that supposed to mean?

“What it means is that maybe, in the grand scheme of things, there’s a reason Beattie just happens to be visiting us right now. She’s been where you are and has come through it with great success. Why don’t you get your ego out of the way and ask her for some help?” Dee switched off the light and turned away from Dave.

Frowning, Dave lay down again. Dee was his biggest cheerleader when things were going well. But he could also count on her to challenge him—and to be brutally honest, if necessary, when she had a point to make.

Dave suddenly tossed off the blanket and got out of bed.

“Dave, it’s four in the morning! Get back here!” Dee called in a loud whisper.

“Nah—I’m just keeping you up.” He put on his robe, closed the bedroom door, and headed downstairs. He figured he might as well have a snack as long as he was wide awake.

As Dave approached the kitchen, he swore he could smell toast. He soon realized he wasn’t the only insomniac in the house.

“Hi. I couldn’t sleep—it’s that awful eight-hour time difference,” Beattie said, shaking her head. "I hope you don’t mind, but I helped myself to tea and toast. I see my dear sister thoughtfully bought English toasting bread.” She laughed. "I don’t know why they call it that. It’s nothing like our toast.”

Dave poured himself a glass of milk and put a piece of bread in the toaster. "And your chips are nothing like ours!” He sat down wearily. "I couldn’t sleep, either.”

“Is the Primo project keeping you awake?”

“Yeah.” Dave took a deep breath. "Beattie, I’d like to take you up on your offer to help me figure out how to get all of our people to work together. Maybe what helped your company succeed can help our company, too.”

“Brilliant!” exclaimed Beattie, toasting Dave with her tea cup.

“I think we’d better get started right away if I’m going to try to singlehandedly change our entire company culture,” said Dave, only half joking.

Not missing a beat, Beattie began. "All right, then. Well, as I mentioned at dinner, collaboration is the key to a high performing organization.”

Dave shook his head. "I’ve been thinking about that since you mentioned it—but we already have teams. In fact, we’re pretty smooth when it comes to running individual teams.”

“Dave, collaboration is a whole order of magnitude beyond teams. It’s in the DNA of the company culture. It’s the mindset of every member of the organization—the air the company breathes. It’s an environment that promotes communication, learning, maximum contribution, and innovation—which, of course, all lead to healthy profits.”

“Hold on a minute,” said Dave. He went into his study and returned with a notepad and pen. He began to write as Beattie spoke.

“First, let me give you our guiding principle of collaboration: Collaboration begins with YOU.”

“You sound just like my boss,” said Dave as he wrote. "No matter what reasons I gave him about why Primo failed, he said, 'I don’t care about any of that. You were in charge and it was your job to make it work.’”

“In one sense, he’s a wise man,” said Beattie, "but in another sense, he isn’t—because he put all of the accountability in your court. He never acknowledged his duty as CEO to create a collaborative culture throughout the organization. When we say 'Collaboration begins with you,' we’re talking about every person in the company taking responsibility, from the CEO to the people at entry level. Let me see if I can explain this better. Give me the pen.”

On Dave’s pad, Beattie wrote:

“I’m going to teach you a simple way to understand how a collaborative culture works. Each word—Heart, Head, and Hands—represents a different domain of collaboration.”

“I’ve heard of that model before, but isn’t it Head first, and then Heart and Hands?”

“Not in this case. At Blenheim, we refer to collaboration as an inside-out mindset. It has to start on the inside, with the Heart. If you don’t get the Heart part right, you’ll never be effective as a collaborative leader, because the Heart is really who you are as a collaborator—your character and intentions. Then it moves to the Head, which is about what you know—your beliefs and attitudes about collaboration. And finally, the Hands are all about what you do—your actions and behavior during collaboration.”

Pen in hand again and writing quickly, Dave said, "This is interesting, Beattie, but I owe Jim a do-or-die report in two weeks. Where do I start?”

“Why don’t we start with the Heart domain and see where that takes you today?”

Dave nodded his head in agreement.

“The focus here is for you to answer this question: As a leader at Cobalt, do you think all the brains are in your office, or are there bright people around you? If you think you’re the one with all the answers, I guarantee collaboration won’t occur if you are involved.”

Beattie’s statement caught Dave off guard. First there was Dee’s remark about my ego, and now this! I’d been thinking Wayne and the other managers were the major obstacle to our progress with Primo, and now Beattie is implying that I’m part of the problem!

“When your heart is right,” continued Beattie, "you want to bring out the best in others. Tap into the wealth of knowledge all around you. Utilize different opinions and perspectives. A few people at my company came up with a phrase that beautifully captures the essence of this concept: 'None of us is as smart as all of us.' As a leader, it’s your job to get everyone to share what they know. Let people bring their brains to work! And this is important: the more diverse the perspectives in the room, the better.”

“But if you put a lot of people together with different opinions on how things should be done, won’t they all end up arguing?” Dave asked.

Beattie took the last bite of her toast and said, "Maybe. But when everyone has a collaborative mindset, conflict can be constructive. There’s an old saying: 'If two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary.’”

Dave smiled. "Yeah, I know that saying. But it seems to me that conflict would be the opposite of collaboration.”

“Not at all—conflict can be very healthy within a collaborative group, as long as everyone sticks to the issues and things don’t get personal. It can lead to breakthrough learnings and innovation.”

Beattie yawned. "At last, I feel tired. Time for a nap, I think. Can we continue this later?”

“Sure—and thanks,” said Dave as he scribbled Utilize differences on his pad. If conflict is healthy, Cobalt managers are Olympic athletes, he thought. He’d have to ask Beattie to explain that concept in more detail.

When he reached his office at Cobalt, Dave opened his briefcase, took out his notepad, and studied his notes. When he got to the phrase Collaboration begins with you, the word YOU screamed out at him as if it were saying, "YOU, Dave! YOU have to fix this!”

Dave frowned. He had two pressing concerns: Would Jim agree to give him time to sort all this out and fix the problems they’d discussed? And would Beattie be able to teach him everything he needed to know before she went home to London?

He started thinking about the Heart domain and the phrase None of us is as smart as all of us. He had to admit it made sense. Just then there was a knock on his office door.

“Come in,” Dave called.

“Hey, Dave,” said the young woman as she hurried in and placed a folder on Dave’s desk. "I emailed you my notes on Primo that you asked for, but I thought you might want to see the rest of my file.” She paused and glanced at his face. "No offense, but you look beat. Everything okay?”

Dave motioned for her to sit down. He liked Sarah McKenzie. One of the newer engineers in Wayne’s department, she’d graduated near the top of her class at Berkeley. Dave could see her leading some major projects at Cobalt in the future if she could get out from under Wayne’s thumb. But as he had shared with Jim, senior managers didn’t seem to care much about potential contributions that could be made by younger staff. New hires did receive a good orientation to the field, however, which made them attractive to the competition. As a result, bright young employees didn’t stay long—their average tenure was about eighteen months.

“Let’s just say I had a tough meeting last night,” Dave replied.

Sarah looked concerned. "Sorry to hear that. Anything I can do to help?”

“Actually, yes—I’d like to pick your brain for a few minutes, if you have time.”

“Sure!”

“My very successful sister-in-law suggested to me that to get rid of the silos around here, we need to create a collaborative environment at Cobalt.” Dave handed Sarah his notepad.

“Hmmm,” Sarah spoke as she read. "‘None of us is as smart as all of us.' Sounds like an interesting concept, but I don’t know—it might be a hard sell.”

“She said in order for collaboration to work, every person at every level has to take responsibility; in other words, collaboration begins with you. It starts with the Heart—who you are. It’s about your character and your intentions. Managers need to be open to hearing ideas from their people. And I think people want to contribute—to bring their brains to work. We have a lot of diverse people with loads of experience we could be tapping into. What do you think?”

“We do have all different kinds of people working here,” said Sarah, "but a lot of them don’t get much of a chance to 'bring their brains to work,' as you just said. I’ve seen younger workers get shut down when they tried to share their thoughts. People don’t feel empowered to express themselves. Bosses seem to want to keep them in their place, doing nothing beyond their current role and function. I think this is an issue for a lot of new people here.”

“Has that been your experience as well?” Dave asked, knowing what her answer would be.

Sarah shrugged. "Pretty much. I’ve learned a lot here. I’d really love to contribute more, but Wayne seldom asks my opinion on anything. I get the impression it’s because I haven’t been out of college long. But I’ve been learning and studying for six years—I’ve done lots of research and I’ve learned from the very best professors. I really want to be part of the success of this company. But when I don’t get to use what I know and what I’ve learned, it feels like it doesn’t have any meaning—like I’m wasting my time.”

“What do you see as a possible solution? Or do you think there is one?” asked Dave, digging for more feedback.

Sarah paused. "To be honest with you, what you just said about each person taking responsibility is making me think. I’m really the one who’s responsible for ensuring my opinion is heard. If collaboration begins with me, it’s up to me to make my intention clear that I want to contribute more.”

“You’re right. We can’t always rely on managers to solicit everyone’s opinions—people like you need to take the initiative and speak up. You can be a silo buster! In fact, you’re doing it right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not in my department, but here we are, brainstorming ways to make the whole company better. If that’s not silo busting, I don’t know what is.”

“You know, with the rich diversity in our company, if everyone started to really talk and listen to each other like we’re doing, it could be a powerful thing,” said Sarah.

“When you say diversity, what does it mean to you?”

“Well, it goes without saying that diverse cultural backgrounds bring very important perspectives to the table. We should also think beyond things like nationality, age, and gender. For example, military veterans have unique and valuable points of view, shaped by their service. And take extroverts and introverts—we can’t just assume extroverts have better ideas because they are more outgoing. Some people may need a little encouragement to speak their mind. Also, it’s not necessarily true that higher educational levels alone bring innovation—someone with a BA who has traveled the world will have different knowledge to share than someone with a PhD who has never left California. But we won’t hear these perspectives if we aren’t open to utilizing these differences.”

“Wow. You’re giving me a lot to think about,” said Dave.

“Ditto,” Sarah said, smiling. "Isn’t that what silo busters do?”

Dave couldn’t help but notice how energetic Sarah became when she realized he cared about her opinion. This kind of interaction didn’t happen often at Cobalt.

Sarah stood up. "If newer people in the company, like me, believed that our managers valued our opinions and wanted to hear them the way you did just now, I know we’d be more engaged—and we’d keep contributing. Because you know what, Dave?” She smiled and handed him back his note pad. "None of us is as smart as all of us.”