SUMMER BOOKS

'The History of Love,' by Nicole Krauss
It's my favorite read of Summer

Armenia 2011

Collaboration is the New Competition

Question: What do we need to build systems that foster new forms of business and ensure their success?
Answer: We need collaboration to increase reach and impact, to inform and ignite. We need to transition from competitive advantage to collaborative advantage.

Today’s incredibly connected world gives us a sense of commons. In today’s merging markets the expectations of consumers are already changing when the self interest is matched against sustainability. We care about the socio-efficient ways of manufacturing. Along that, technologies have dramatically altered the marketplace.

With this global change, profitability has to change also, and companies have to supply the demand for the “green product.” To that end, Alex Bogusky, the former advertizing magnate, has created a digital commons – an area of collaboration, where a group of companies, that by traditional definitions would be considered competitors, come together to encompass ideas of the common community.

Alex Bogusky’s “Common” is a collaborative brand. It brings together a diverse group of stakeholders in a collaborative effort to create new businesses built on sustainability and accountability under the “Common” brand. To have a conversation around what is sustainable people have to be involved. Challenging old ways of working requires more vigorous involvement from all stakeholders.

“Coffee Common” is the new business idea under the “Common” brand. It is a collaboration of people with different opinions but a singular interest – serving great by-the-cup brewed coffee. A diverse group of stakeholders – a coffee farmer, an artisan coffee roaster, a barista and a consumer – have joint together in a collaborative effort to emphasize sustainable farming and fair trade. “Coffee Common” was introduced recently at the TED conference.

The heightened interdependence of today’s world allows the rural agricultural communities worldwide to enter and compete in the high-end marketplace of Europe, America and Asia. High coffee consumption in developing countries gives rise to coffee economy.

Collaboration can be an act that promotes global economic prosperity and cultural exchange. Collaboration shifts control to all stakeholders. Collaboration is the new opportunity; it gives competitive edge and creates win-win situation for all.

Orthodox Capitalism is Dead

The crises we face today, the inability to create new jobs and new industries, are the shortcomings of capitalism as we practice it. Umair Haque, the author of the “New Capitalist Manifesto,” challenges us to recognize the cornerstones of industrial-era capitalism to be able to remake it. “Capitalism is a human creation; we made it and we can remake it. We are at a critical juncture to remake it again.”

Profitability is what we mean by capitalism. To rediscover profitability we need to take a critical look at our competitive advantage. For the next-generation capitalism we need creativity, customization, commitment and compliance. We need to unleash creativity by bringing together diverse constituents to generate new ideas and to reach a creative outcome. We need to redefine consumption methods, like iTunes, and give customized purchasing options to consumers to download a digital album in MP3 format or in a single-file format.

Commitment is a process by which we get people to agree willingly to continue to support something. Companies are in need of commitment and compliance – there is a constant fear that people will go home and not come back. People want a say and to be part of decision making. Companies need to engage employees and encourage “make-our-own rules” approach to decision making processes

The 4 C’s become core characteristics of human interaction – the more active the participation, the more creative the decisions and process outcomes, and the more customized to our needs. Systems by which we make decisions need high degrees of collaboration and participation. This is very different from what we are trained to believe.

Our communication practices are still limited by the legacy of an old design. We favor a form of talk that is an argument, a campaign to win, organized around liberal democracy – it is embedded in our constitution. What we inherited is a 16th - 17th century view of human experience.

Partisanship is an outcome of liberal democratic model – it works to polarize into position. We have a model of how talk should be. Our native theory of dialogue is adversarial talk. We advocate a view, we debate, and the better argument wins.

But having the world we want will not come from voting for it.

So we need to look at the communication designs that are available to us. How we talk to each other and what are the native theories?

COMM 4600

Finally! A course by Stan Deetz!
COMM 4600 - Collaborative Decision Making

Course description from syllabus:
Organizations and communities increasingly use participatory and collaborative forms of decision making to solve complex multi-party conflicts. Communication is core to the quality of all participatory decision making. The course will focus on research and practice. More specifically, the course will explore why the need for collaboration is increasing, the various types and models of collaboration, individual skill needs, and the discussion and deliberation processes that facilitate and limit the success of these programs. As a result of the course, class members should have a better understanding of the changing workplace and its connection to the wider society, an increased capacity to participate in collaborative decision making, and the ability to aid organizations and communities in improving their decision making processes.

The upcoming posts will focus on collaboration!

the tyranny of slender

The impulse to put people into neat categories is irresistible. The human aspect is sadly missing from our categorizations of self. Instead we see ourselves constrained by social hierarchies and gender roles, distinguished by our clothes, body shapes, and economic status.

Today, so much of the conversation about women and fashion focuses on body size that we discuss weight as though it were the most important aspect of our life. It seems like media is on a mission to demoralize the average, chubby woman.

The beauty ideal portrayed by media has always been slender.

Being saturated with so many media messages about how we should do gender and what we need to consume in order to do it appropriately creates an anxiety. Susan Bordo calls it “the tyranny of slender,” and how the slender, firm, fit body is taken as a statement about ones character. This assumption that if you are fit you are somehow a disciplined person, you self manage, and you have managerial abilities. You are an ambitious, achieving person.

The cumulative weight of advertising in our everyday life is the insecurity, and the struggle, to constantly live up to this slender body. Not always consciously, but there are pressures that nag at us in our everyday life. One of the fears of losing femininity for me is whether I live up to this beauty ideal, in terms of how I dress and the amount of time I spend doing hair and make up in order to keep up.















We think that if we are lucky to have a job we better live up to the expectations that come with it - the expectations that are hanging over the work situations and that demand to perform in a public sphere and to live up to the notion of “the universal worker.”

Instead of changing the system, I have built my life around it, around the organizational structure, and I navigate, while negotiating my femininity, toning down sexuality and feminized communication style in order to survive in a bureaucracy that is not gender-neutral, but is built around men and masculinity. According to Joan Acker, it is the organizational system that is gendered.

(As Acker illustrates the concept of hegemony, she claims how the bureaucracy creates gendered hegemony that presses everyone, and how we all buy into this norm.)

I have functioned under the assumption that the barriers to women's advancement are created by expectations and habits surrounding communication, and the assumption that masculine communication style is more naturally professional and managerial, realizing that the only way to be in a strong role is playing a part originally written for men.

Acker acknowledges that there are women who are able to step into “a men’s world” and succeed, but it generally requires what she calls “becoming a social man, whose personal and private needs are taken care of outside work,” in order to live up to the idea of “the universal worker.”

London 2010