Collaboration By Any Other Name

by Eric Britten

This morning, I read an article that was an early introduction to a local group describing AoH (Art of Hosting) of which World Café is an element. The article was titled “Conversational Leadership: Thinking Together For A Change”, written by Thomas Hurley and Juanita Brown. The article described how a senior manager for H.P. was able to bring about substantial change in one particular area (safety) by visiting plants around the world and sitting down with the workers to discuss the problem and potential solutions. This was as opposed to H.P.’s normal top-down approach.

I realized quickly that I was reading about a process that has been successful in the field of process improvement for some time – empowering the people who actually do the work to identify the process weaknesses and then develop the best solutions for improving the process. This process can certainly be classified as a “conversation” as, in this case, skilled facilitators help the workers hold their conversations so that they remain focused and productive. Whether called conversational leadership or process improvement, the approach is the same; getting those who do the work engaged in developing the solution. Process improvement actually takes the sequence one step farther in that after the workers identify the problem and work together to develop the best solution, they then actually implement that solution. They feel involved, empowered and successful.

While there may be other elements of AoH and process improvement that are not the same, it is interesting to note that the approach is consistent – engage those who are most affected in discussing an issue or problem and then help them evolve and implement best possible solutions.

As all of us in various worlds and disciplines become more focused on evolving solutions by engaging those most conversant with the issues in a dialog about problems and solutions, we should celebrate that we are all recognizing that top-down isn’t working these days in an ever growing list of processes. Business, government, community and social leaders are all recognizing the power of communication, collaboration and group solution generation regardless of what they call it.