Collaboration
Apparently, the difference between the most and least efficient person is about a factor of ten.
That feels about right. A 10x multiplier.
But here’s the trick: That all goes out the window when we work together.
Apparently, a high performing team of programmers will outperform a poorly performing team by a factor of one thousand.
ONE THOUSAND TIMES THE OUTPUT.
It turns out, if. you want to be more efficient (or even better, productive), you should just work better with others.
The start of creating something collaboratively can feel a little like you’re all spinning your wheels. Like you’re just generating a whole lot of smoke and noise, and not a whole lot of forward movement.
One reason might be that the handbrake’s on.
Another reason could be that the direction’s you’re facing is being tweaked so that once you get traction, you head off down the straight and not into the stands.
The trick is knowing which is which, and not blowing out a tyre while you spin.
If you want something done, don't do it yourself.
Get some good people together and get to work.
This applies whether you want to get the dishes done, or want to build a new deck.
It matters even more when you want to make a change in the world.
We've become obsessed with being busy, and lost sight of being productive.
A building company reduced staff hours from 45 hours per week to 38 hours per week, with no change in annual pay, and didn't have a blip on the bottom line.
A well functioning team can be many hundreds of times more productive than a poorly functioning team. Whereas the most efficient worker is only going to be ten times more productive than your least efficient worker, at best.
Think about the last design team on your building project, or the workgroup you sit with, or the subcontractor who installed your plumbing. How do they rate on the "effective team" scale?
We've lost sight of the benefits of intensive work and traded it in for long hours of solo drudgery.
How much more productive could we be if we spent less time working?
How would the construction industry change if we all learnt how to work hard, fast, and together?
We might build more, better, for less.
Which sounds like a piece of the solution to our housing crisis...
Because not one of us has the answer.
But all of us have an answer.
And we've all got questions.
"Why do the windows have to be different sizes?"
"What is this space being used for?"
"What about when I get older?"
"Can we make it simpler to build?"
"Do you really need a walk in wardrobe?"
"How much will we save on power bills?"
There's a lot of labels and terms floating around for businesses that try to do good stuff.
Social Enterprise.
Social Business.
For-Purpose Business.
Not-for-profit, but not-for-loss Business.
Triple Bottom Line.
Let's get serious here: A business going good stuff isn't anything special. It's just good business.
It's only special, because it isn't common.
Good, isn't common in business.
Buying Fairtrade isn't a do-gooder decision, a business model or a story used to sell a product: It's called paying a fair price. Businesses reliant on low-cost supply chains are at risk, because at some point you'll need to pay.
Deliberately pushing against the status quo, unconscious bias and systemic injustice within your business isn't a noble purpose: Diversity drives performance. We're better when we work together.
Solving societal problems, even in just a small way for a small group of people, isn't charity: It's necessary to regenerate and sustain society. Business doesn't happen in a vacuum, it happens in society.
Collaborative decision-making isn't a style of community engagement: It's the best way to (attempt to) keep pace with a rapidly changing world.
Making people's lives better isn't an optional extra that deserves to be applauded: It's called being human, and loving
When we all look after each other first, and ourselves second, we'll find ourselves very well looked after indeed.
I've been running numbers tonight.
It looks like, in order to activate about $3M of radical, purposeful, alternative property living, building, and ownership, we need a little over 100 of us.
The list looks something like this:
And most importantly:
100 people with Purpose.
Do any of these people sound like you?
So you want to make a difference. You have a dream for a better future. You want to make an impact.
The next step is to try and make it happen within our sphere of control.
While positive personal, individual responses are necessary, it turns out that trying to convince others to "do what I did" isn't a particularly effective way to achieve a large-scale impact.
Attempting to control the situation based on your frame of reference isn't is not the determining factor in creating impact.
Collaboration might be.
This isn't to say that individual stories don't matter. They matter because they are all different. But listening and sharing is more important than convincing and justifying.
Collaboration, not co-opting.
Coordination and cooperation by communication, not command.
Imagine the solutions for housing we might arrive at if we wove our stories together:
When designing a home, there are an almost insufferable number of decisions to make before you even start to consider what is 'good'.
What is a 'good' construction product?
On the list of things to consider are:
You can spend a lot of time thinking.
The issue is that the true cost of the products aren't necessarily reflected in the price. When we buy a product with a massive carbon footprint, we don't have to pay the price to off-set the impact on climate if the supply chain doesn't have to pay it.
If we buy a product manufactured under oppressive labour laws that don't adequately value human life, and human capital, we don't pay the price of the negative social impacts of low-wages.
It would be much easier for the average consumer, and the general market, if product pricing reflected the true costs.
There are many ways to work together. McKinsey & Company identified four organisational 'recipes'. Interestingly, their research found that focussing on a single recipe was more likely to be successful than attempting to delivery on multiple fronts.
If we wanted to build a system together that delivered better outcomes for all people through property, which recipe would we pick?
I suspect one of the following two could be a valid approach, and aligns with an emphasis on people working together to solve wicked problems.
The "Leadership Factory".
This approach would rely on developing leaders, entrusting them to do work, and wrapping them in support systems to sustain and grow their leadership and impact. Leadership is necessary when we're trying to move in a new direction, and a coordinated group of embedded, aligned and supported leaders could move us all a long way.
The "Continuous Improvement Engine".
We'd embed and maintain systems that promote continuous learning, knowledge sharing, diverse involvement and high engagement among every person involved. As we're trying to solve and unsolved problem, we know we'll need to learn as we go along. "Build it as we fly it" as the saying goes. And we also know that the more diverse the group of people involved in the learning, sharing and design process, the better the outcomes.
Perhaps, if I may, I'll deviate from McKinsey's conclusion that success requires focus on a single approach and theorise on a hybrid model:
Continually Improving Leaders who Continuously Improve the World
What would happen if we developed leaders who lead in a manner that promotes continuous learning, and who themselves are embedded in a leadership network that encourages knowledge sharing and learning around getting the most from others.
We could solve some wicked problems. Together.
On the one hand, we have people missing out with the way things are.
On the other hand, we have people with the skills and resources required to move us to the way things should be.
And both sides are aware of the situation. They just don't seem to be coming together in any significant and meaningful way.
What's the clutch?
My hunch, is that focussing on the fringes with a social business approach to property development could bring some pieces together.
We need a scalable approach, translatable infrastructure, holistic design principles to make an impact. If needs to work for people on the fringes for there to be real systemic change, meaning that it works for all of us.
Which means we'll need to understand alternative ownership models. We'll need to understand the intersection of community development and property development. We'll need to understand communities in general, and our neighbourhoods specifically.
We'll need to think differently, work together, and dream.
There's a lot pieces involved in building a house. A lot of different people, a range of skills, a multitude of issues. Finance and city planning. Carpenters and painters. Details deliverers and big-picture dreamers.
Doing property differently requires bringing together a lot of pieces. I'm hoping that when we all come together, we're less of a machine, and more of a creation.
We need to work together on this one
Read MoreHere’s a few discoveries, some afternoon or weekend reading, if you’re interested
Read MoreIt works for the desk-jockeys, can we make it work for the tool-slingers?
Read MoreWorking better together for good. That’s an organisational model we might subscribe to
Read MoreWe need some experts around the table. a.k.a the Design Team.
Read MoreWhat kind of property developer gets involved in building Suburbia 2.0?
Read MoreSome questions to start us on the journey.
Read MoreTrue collaborative partnerships where skilled, resourced and grounded people work together towards a common goal could be amazing. They could change our neighbourhoods.
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