Real Collaboration

Real collaboration to me is where there's no need to know who's up front. Everyone is working side by side. Given the fact that we are creatures of imitation, it helps when the tone is set from the highest levels - what do you want to change in the world? Change happens whether we like it or not. It happened in the last several years. We did not like it, today.

What are we going to do about it?

With collaboration we can make that change more expansive and at the same time better focused; more responsive and less cumbersome. Collaboration also leads to community. To build a community we need to be willing to educate and connect individuals, and have the desire to take action at the appropriate times.

Marketing needs a serious reboot. In its current form it's a broken, bankrupt nuisance afflicted with the myopia of the perennial short term gratification and now starving because of it. There is no sustainability in that - it's a bubble waiting to burst, and your brand with it.

Real collaboration needs contribution, commitment and championing. To be sustainable, it needs to be embedded in the core principles that move us to action. I was reading a well-written post by Joel Makower where he is pondering the sustainable consumption conundrum and wanted to highlight a couple of points he makes about the WBCSD's newest report with my annotations:

• Innovation — "Business processes for the development of new and improved products, services, and business models are shifting to incorporate provisions for delivering maximum societal value at minimum environmental cost," says the report. We are indeed beginning to see a less packaged, more efficient world.

What does innovation look like in marketing with collaboration? If we take contribution, commitment and championing as the model - I'm thinking co-creation, co-distribution, and co-marketing. What other ideas do you have?

• Choice Influencing — this is where it gets interesting. Creating sustainable marketing practices and business models by working in partnership with consumers and other key stakeholders. The goal is to demonstrate that these practices can deliver deliver superior results at the best prices, and to use marketing communications to make that connection with choice and behavior.

Is this too idealistic? We talk about influentials, yet the needle seems to be creeping to making real change from all that influence. Could it be because we do not yet understand how to do collaboration through community and networks of influence?

• Choice Editing — Eliminating unsustainable practices, tactics, processes, and business models in partnership with other actors, such as media channels. The challenge I see immediately with this point is that of scale. Can there be mass collaboration? Only when each individual self-interest is served through making that very same choice.

When I wrote about Twitter as a social network, I highlighted how it encourages and engages certain features of our nature that are essential to our social lives - the adaptive, the imitating and the cooperative. Would these characteristics conspire to help with collaborative editing?

Marketing is about understanding what customers want and helping deliver it. But delivering the relevant response might involve having to make fundamental changes in the way the business works. Often marketing does not have real influence inside a business - especially if that happens to be a B2B. So much so, that you'd have to break the glass in case of marketing.

Can real collaboration help with delivering better insights, better products, services and experiences? Real collaboration requires more of us. Are we willing to do things differently to test that? If you have done it, feel free to borrow that seal  but only if the credit goes to the whole team and especially if that team goes across departments to start.

Comments

[Stephen Denny]

Valeria: I think marketing in many senses is a broken function right now, stuck in a 'value add' mode of thinking. We take something and do something with it. This is only as effective as how well we measure our incremental lift against a backdrop of cost cutting and the executive suite's unfamiliarity with the discipline.

I think the light at the end of the tunnel is, in fact, "sustainability" in the sense that marketing (and marketers) must become content creators - we must create, not just manipulate, and do so in such a way that our creations are "products" in and of themselves.

Social media networks, stand-alone properties, and branded programs all fit the bill. Even personal brands make sense to an extent - I'm not sure I want to promote the 'celebrity CMO' on the record - but the idea that you, as an individual, are recognized as you on Twitter or on your blog as a trusted source of insight and relevance makes sense.

Thanks - looking forward to talking soon!

[Suzanna Stinnett]

Valeria,
What we have in the Internet is the actual ability to be, to function, as a global brain. Thinking together: the ultimate collaboration. As the brain expands its ability to hold diverse thoughts in neuronal proximity, we will expand our capacities for many solutions, including how to replace marketing with social proof based conversations.
Loving 2009 already, let's get together this year!
Suzanna Stinnett

[Chuck Peters]

Valeria -

Your comment about "to build a community we need to be willing to educate and connect individuals" linked with the later comment "only when each individual self interest is served" struck chords with me.

For the last two years, we have been convinced that if we are truly going to strengthen our communities, we need to make each individual stronger, and easier for them to be able to act. And, our communities are hard to define, whether geographic, relationship or affinity, and truly need to be defined by each individual.

The "elegant organization" for this activity needs to be created by some entity in a region. As the local media company, we think we are the naturals, but are looking for all the help we can get. We chart our progress at http://cpetersia.wordpress.com

Thanks for giving us supporting ideas.

Chuck

[Paul Hancox]

This post has made me re-think how I do business. I've only just joined Twitter.

A lot of my marketing colleagues use it to push their latest products, and while no doubt I'll be doing a bit of that too :) I primarily want to use it to connect with customers and colleagues.

In a sense, you could say that business is a collaboration between the product owner, and the customers...

Best,

Paul Hancox
http://www.OptimalPersuasion.com

[gregorylent]

collaboration happens naturally with growth of awareness .. hyper-connectivity is bringing it about for those not so aware ...

it is a process of recognition of what is, and requires no doing

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Stephen - yes, it has been clear to me for quite a while that marketers should become content creators. The creation as product in and of itself is a difficult concept for CMOs to grasp, especially those who got to that function from disciplines like sales. Brilliant conclusion, here we indeed need to become or continue to be a "trusted source of insight and relevance." I can't wait for your book to come out!

@Suzanna - you go to the heart of things, thinking together. Do you think that marketing will be replaced by "social proof based conversations"? Everything is possible, of course. But only when the commerce side of things is taken care of. Yes, do come to one of our tweet-ups.

@Chuck - I'll be visiting with your work. You may probably find out by browsing here that I have more than a passing interest for media as an industry in deep need of transformation.

@Paul - my take is that the age of pushing is quite over. As a marketer I object to many of the aggressive tactics of the past in favor of a more organic approach to business. Glad the post inspired you.

[Sean Howard]

"Is this too idealistic? We talk about influentials, yet the needle seems to be creeping to making real change from all that influence. Could it be because we do not yet understand how to do collaboration through community and networks of influence?"

First, what a WONDERFUL article, Valeria.

I wonder how much of Choice Influencing and its lack of impact is due to its lack of full adoption within the industry? When we look at how the very basics of Supply and Demand are being challenged to point to the ability of supply side to actually control price and set demand then I have to wonder what will happen as more of the industry shifts to adopting more collaborative processes.

True influence may be, to steal a horribly overused concept, a tipping point factor.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Spotty adoption is an issue with every kind of system where we hope for collaboration. Simplicity as in easy to join and fair to work with should be a consideration when designing such system.

Good of you to build on that point, Sean. It seems to be the next logical step - yet it is such a distant step to take at the moment.

[gstene]

Hi Valeria. Thanx for sharing. This is a very interesting article you have. I've been involved in digital collaboration and the internet business since the start, and yes you are right. There is a shift, an real change is happening as we speak. I especially enjoyed the phrasing you gave it - Collaboration leads to community, and Community needs Contribution. I've seen the relationship for quite some time, but you worded it so neatly and short!
If you aren't familiar with Charles Leadbeater, you might find his thought on mass creativity interesting. I also made a presentation on digital collaboration on slideshare - you will find it from my blog.

Keep the good work up - I will surely be back and read more of your blog!