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 Note from Lynda: by now, you will have seen a few issues of the Hot Spots Newsletter, and will hopefully be benefiting from some of the exclusive insights and analysis from the team. We want to continue to bring you great content that you won’t be able to read anywhere else, and which will inspire and enthuse you to help your organisation flourish.
Secondly, a vital part of our research comes from finding real-life stories (both good and bad) and feedback from the workplace. We would be delighted if you can share in the process with us – please send me your ideas and questions. In this way, the Hot Spots Newsletter becomes a living medium that will contribute towards my research activity.
The importance of collaboration
Much of Lynda’s work at the Hot Spots Movement, as well as her work on Glow, has focused on the importance of teamwork and collaboration in organisations. Here are some of her thoughts:
“When I began the research process which became the basis of the Hot Spots book, the idea I was most excited about was collaboration. It seemed clear to me that a joined up/global world needed people to work together much more than people pulling apart. At that time many people agreed, but I felt that they thought of collaboration as a 'nice to have' and not really central to their company’s mission.
“How times have changed! The recession that has raged across the world has brought into question our notion of competition/hierarchy/command and control as the dominant organisational paradigm. The writing is on the wall - companies where individuals, teams and businesses are able to cooperate will flourish.
“What’s truly exciting about this is that the old forms of collaboration - where you simply trusted the people sitting next to you at work - is so very different from the new forms of collaboration. Today, you need to collaborate with someone in another office, or another country, who may be very different from you and you may well never have met.
“This is one of the most exciting challenges facing companies right now. And at the centre of this question sits the issue of leadership development. If, in the new order, leadership is as much about attracting others as it is about directing others, then how do these traits and behaviours become developed?”
We will be addressing this question from different angles in the Newsletter over the next few months. Tammy Erickson, who has co-authored articles with Lynda for Harvard Business Review, has just completed a project about the different forms of collaboration. You can read more here.
Ten questions to ask
Lynda was asked to provide a commentary for a report by Wikinomics author Don Tapscott called Building the Collaborative Enterprise. The report dispels some widely-held myths about collaboration (including that it is driven by technology, or that we lose accountability). The result is the Ten Questions to Ask about Business Opportunities Through Collaboration, which you can read here.
The report itself is interesting in that it has brought together thought leaders, who started out in rather different areas of expertise, behind the idea that the collaborative organisation is the right way forward. One of the report’s recurring themes is how widely applicable the collaborative organisation approach is, and it also highlights the benefits of ‘co-creation’ where the customer is brought in before the product or service is finalised.
Real-life examples: creating pockets of innovation at Philips
In 2000, new product innovation at Philips was predominantly shaped by R&D, particularly in its lighting business, and the company incurred a new loss of more than EUR 3.2 billion. Since 2003, Philips has been engaged in a programme to rejuvenate its brand and approach to new product innovation with expertise on end-user insights. Six years later, this approach has significantly influenced the way Philips innovates, in line with a brand promise of “sense and simplicity”.
What steps did Philips take to change the way they innovate? They took small but significant steps to begin with, and one business unit led the way. In early 2001, the Chief Technology Officer of the Lamps business initiated some initial experiments to catalyse learning opportunities. These included:
- A vision team in the Central Lighting Development Lab: a team of four employees, split equally between men and women, and split 50/50 between anchored informal leaders from the Lab and newcomers. The team’s role was to bring outside inspiration into the development organisation. The immediate results were two “out of the box” innovation projects in 2002, one of which led to the invention of Ambilight TV.
- An exploratory automotive project for car headlights, which included a Philips Design innovation process based on socio-cultural insights.
- A Philips Lighting New Business Creation group. The team was made up of four senior managers and one lateral thinker, whose role was to challenge mainstream business assumptions.
You can read the results of these measures in a really interesting study, which you can view online here.
Hot Spots around the globe
Over the last two months, the Hot Spots team has been in New York, Beijng, Dubai, London and Helsinki, working with Nokia to bring energy and innovation to one of the company’s businesses. It has been a fascinating journey, and we have learned a great deal about just what makes the organisation work.
We have designed a learning platform that has enabled more than 100 teams from across the world to share their insights and experiences. We have been so impressed by this experience and think it is a really important step forward in measuring and encouraging teamwork and collaboration. As a result, we are now rolling out a Hot Spots learning platform to the other international companies we are working with.
During times like this, when people are so busy, it can be hard to get their attention, even for the development activities they know will really benefit them. What’s clear from those who are working with us on bringing energy and innovation to companies is that work time is so fragmented that they are finding it a challenge to find time to truly focus. Recently, we heard of one person who gets more than 1,000 e-mails a day! This flood of communication and activity can be a real challenge. While technology can support learning, we have to use it cleverly to support a working pattern that still enables people to take time to think, and we think the learning platform will achieve this. We are working hard on this challenge and have come up with some ideas which we will be sharing with you next month.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower continues to be a real champion of Hot Spots. We have now worked with more than 12 companies in Singapore and are about to begin work with more. The exciting news is that the MOM is creating a Hot Spots Institute, which sounds really fun. Lynda and Andreas will be in Singapore for the Human Capital Conference on September 29. You can read more about the conference and learn how to sign up here.
Developing networks: who’s in our network
At the heart of Hot Spots is the capacity to create valuable and exciting networks. Over the next few issues of the newsletter, we will be introducing you to some members of the Hot Spots’ network who have been important sounding boards. This month, we’re looking at Gary Hamel.
 Lynda explains: “Gary has always been provocative, thoughtful and never, ever boring. Over the years he has argued that innovation around management practices has been painfully slow. I have had lots of conversations with him about how we bring energy and innovation into companies. His Moon Shot article in Harvard Business School Review earlier this year detailed some of the ways he believes the world of business needs to change. We are avid readers of Gary's blog and strongly recommend you take a look at it.”
Next month you will be introduced to another member of Lynda’s network: Dave Ulrich. As a bonus in the August issue, we will bring you some exclusive insights on the eve of a two-day conference in Johannesburg, where Lynda and Dave will be speaking together.
Have your say: the future of work
The recession has really accelerated organisational change: teams are increasingly turning virtual as travel budgets are slashed. Meanwhile, home working is on the increase as firms look at the cost of offices and sabbaticals and paid holidays are bringing an unanticipated level of flexibility. Of course once we are in a period of growth many of these new forms of work will disappear - but others will not.
Here at the Hot Spots Movement, we are fascinated by the future. We are investing in learning and decision-making technologies that enable teams to connect and be innovative, and we are practising what we preach at the Hot Spots Movement by working as an entirely-virtual team ourselves.
Over the next 12 months, we plan to put the future of work at the centre of our thinking. We will be looking at new forms of collaboration, how technology will aid decision-making and what corporate developments will bring about increased innovation.
As part of our research, we are reaching out to our extended networks and client base to look for case studies, feedback and ideas. We are also building a research consortium of companies who see this as a key challenge. We have a number of companies as founding partners and will give you an update in the coming months. If you would like to be a part of this exciting debate, or indeed to join the research consortium, just send us an email to tina@hotspotsmovement.com
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