Collaboration

We were fortunate to have such a diverse, inspiring and experienced panel of leaders speaking on a range of collaboration concepts. They represented a range of educational backgrounds, corporate experience, and cultural and entrepreneurial backgrounds, but they had much in common.

• They each leveraged collaboration to bring out the best in themselves and in others. 
• They are each experts at drawing on the experience and backgrounds and perspectives of others, while focusing on common issues and problems.
• They are each passionate about learning and growing, and committed to spreading their learnings to others.

Below are some thoughts they shared about the benefits of collaboration:

• Collaborating with others leads to greater results for all.
• Collaborating with others who are different than you brings great value still.
• Business issues ranging from problem-solving to decision-making, from brainstorming to conflict resolution can be resolved through collaboration.

Each panelist emphasized that leaders who can best facilitate collaboration will consistently bring better results. Below is some advice on how to better encourage collaboration.

• Understand the background and motivations of others, so that you can better work towards a common goal.
• Identify criteria and factors of importance for a project’s success.
• Ensure that the data you use is valid and true. That data’s integrity is critical to the success of any project.
• Larger networks are not necessarily better, but more diverse networks generally can be better. So encourage diversity of thought in your team, for your projects, in your life.
• Be inclusive of others. Help others feel comfortable contributing.
• Focus on the needs of the customer. Ask your internal staff, your partners and your customers how you can best serve their needs.
• Clear, transparent, true communication is critical for all effective collaborations. 
• All successful collaborations rely on mutual trust.

Here are some final thoughts around collaboration.

• Be humble. Be open. Be a lifelong learner who believes you can learn from anyone, from every experience.
• Have a good attitude. Your Attitude and Your Aptitude will define your Altitude.
• Empathy is the new superpower. Be empathetic to those around you. Understanding everyone’s point of view, and having compassion for their pain-points and challenges will help you better understand yourself and your project.

Resources:

• HBR – On Collaboration https://www.amazon.com/Collaboration-featured-Intelligence-Leadership-Boyatzis-ebook/dp/B00ATLM04Y
• https://connectedcommons.com/ Research highlights include the published reports, “Invisible Network Drivers of Women’s Success”, “Networks for Agility”, “Accelerating Transitions: Initiate, Engage, and Refine Networks for Success in New Roles”, “The Invisible Network Strategies of Successful People: Counterintuitive Ways to Innovate, Execute and Thrive at Work”, “Collaborative Overload”, etc. https://connectedcommons.com/research-highlights/ 
• Sapiens

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Internet of Everything

FountainBlue’s September 13 VIP roundtable, on the topic of ‘Internet of Everything’. Thank you also to our gracious host at Micron and to each of you for your input and advice. Below are notes from the conversation. 

On the one hand, the ‘Internet of Everything’ is inevitable and logical, but on the other hand, it’s overblown and ineffective. If first all collectively focus on creating a viable and flexible infrastructure to sustain it, if we could all collaborate to mitigate the downsides around privacy, security, and access, we could positively impact societies and people around the world.

Core to the success for Internet of Everything solutions is the need to optimize data, process, and people. 

• Data: With the mind-boggling volumes of data available through the ever-growing mass of devices, we must quickly discover, filter, organize, communicate, report on and process real-data efficiency. 
• Process: We must strategically create processes which would help us receive, manage, communicate, and report on data to the right stakeholders as quickly as possible. These processes must also optimize energy, dollars and people.
• People: We must ensure that the right people get access to relevant and accurate information quickly so that they can respond accordingly.

As an enterprise leader and as an informed consumer, the Internet of Things is providing some daunting challenges.

• The blurring line between work and home means that ‘home’ devices show up at work, which may endanger the enterprise network.
• ‘Intelligent’ appliances might help you optimize what you buy when for example, but might also make you uncomfortable with who might know what about you.
• Everyone wants everything seamlessly, wirelessly, and simply, but sometimes that’s not easy. We can assume that people will get ever more hungry for bandwidth, meaning a huge and growing demand. But creating that infrastructure is a challenging business, unless we can work together to collaboratively fund it.

Where there are challenges, there are also opportunities. 

• Allow on-premise processing of data for the most important information.
• Leverage mixed reality, holograms and simulations to connect with experts in support of people addressing specific on-site challenges. 
• The volumes of generated data will help customers better understand a wide range of problems, and make better decisions, leveraging AI and ML.
• The idea of ubiquitous communications means so much information from so many sources. Filtering out which communications are essential and important will be a huge ongoing need.

Our executives had some words of caution.

• Segment out individual devices which may have access to your home or work network. Hackers generally get in on the weakest link.
• Proactively manage your layers of risk. Ensure that greatest protection for your greatest assets. 
• Know what’s likely to happen and plan accordingly.

In the end, our executives are practical, emphasizing the need to focus on ROI rather than IoT. 

Collaboration Best Practices

FountainBlue’s September 13 When She Speaks event, on the topic of ‘Collaboration Best Practices’. Below are notes from the conversation.

We were fortunate to have such a diverse, inspiring and experienced panel of leaders speaking on a range of collaboration concepts. They represented a range of educational backgrounds, corporate experience, and cultural and entrepreneurial backgrounds, but they had much in common.

• They each leveraged collaboration to bring out the best in themselves and in others. 
• They are each experts at drawing on the experience and backgrounds and perspectives of others, while focusing on common issues and problems.
• They are each passionate about learning and growing, and committed to spreading their learnings to others.

Below are some thoughts they shared about the benefits of collaboration:

• Collaborating with others leads to greater results for all.
• Collaborating with others who are different than you brings great value still.
• Business issues ranging from problem-solving to decision-making, from brainstorming to conflict resolution can be resolved through collaboration.

Each panelist emphasized that leaders who can best facilitate collaboration will consistently bring better results. Below is some advice on how to better encourage collaboration.

• Understand the background and motivations of others, so that you can better work towards a common goal.
• Identify criteria and factors of importance for a project’s success.
• Ensure that the data you use is valid and true. That data’s integrity is critical to the success of any project.
• Larger networks are not necessarily better, but more diverse networks generally can be better. So encourage diversity of thought in your team, for your projects, in your life.
• Be inclusive of others. Help others feel comfortable contributing.
• Focus on the needs of the customer. Ask your internal staff, your partners and your customers how you can best serve their needs.
• Clear, transparent, true communication is critical for all effective collaborations. 
• All successful collaborations rely on mutual trust.

Here are some final thoughts around collaboration.

• Be humble. Be open. Be a lifelong learner who believes you can learn from anyone, from every experience.
• Have a good attitude. Your Attitude and Your Aptitude will define your Altitude.
• Empathy is the new superpower. Be empathetic to those around you. Understanding everyone’s point of view, and having compassion for their pain-points and challenges will help you better understand yourself and your project.

Resources:

• HBR – On Collaboration https://www.amazon.com/Collaboration-featured-Intelligence-Leadership-Boyatzis-ebook/dp/B00ATLM04Y

• https://connectedcommons.com/ 

  Research highlights include the published reports, “Invisible Network Drivers of Women’s Success”, “Networks for Agility”, “Accelerating Transitions: Initiate, Engage, and Refine Networks for Success in New Roles”, “The Invisible Network Strategies of Successful People: Counterintuitive Ways to Innovate, Execute and Thrive at Work”, “Collaborative Overload”, etc.

  https://connectedcommons.com/research-highlights/ 

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari 

See bios and invitation at https://www.tikkl.com/fountainblue/c/collaboration

Please join me in thanking our panelists and our gracious hosts at Western Digital for FountainBlue’s September 13 When She Speaks event, on the topic of ‘Collaboration Best Practices’:

• Facilitator Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue 
• Panelist Marilyn Becker, Director, People Analytics, Western Digital
• Panelist Win Chang, Cloud Customer Experience Director, Oracle
• Panelist Karthi Gopalan, Product Line Director, Mobile Power BU, Maxim
• Panelist Shalini Kasliwal, Founder and CEO, JoinEight
• Panelist Shveta Miglani, Head of Global Learning and Development, Micron

An Ode to Mentors

Mentors come in many shapes and sizes, from many backgrounds, with different interests. But in my experience, the best mentors have some key qualities.

1. All great mentors have the type of broad and deep experience, preferably in a range of products/services/industries/markets. This doesn’t mean that every experience that a mentor had was successful, just that there are learnings from every experience. Indeed a mentor can’t effectively share their suggestions and insights with wisdom. 
2. Successful mentors generally have their own successes in business and in life. ‘Success’ is loosely defined, but suffice to say that the mentee must respect the mentor as ‘successful’ in ways which are important to him or her. Indeed, it would be difficult to respect a mentor unless the mentee respects the successful experience of that mentor.
3. Mentors are viewed as ‘influential‘ in specific ways, as defined by the mentee. The mentor might be influential for specific niches of people, or across broad groups of people, depending on the needs and interests of the mentee. 
4. Although there have been good mentors who are less than humble, I find that those who are humble are more modest, more unassuming, more clear about their contributions and abilities, while also being more open to helping others also succeed.
5. Most successful people, including successful mentors, are focused and goal-oriented. A great mentor knows how to make the mentee more focused and goal-oriented, while helping her or him keep an eye on the longer-term objectives, and helping him or her feel supported and balanced. 
6. Great leaders have displayed perseverance and commitment, often overcoming extraordinary circumstances to achieve outrageous goals.  Great mentors help their mentees to do the same.
7. Great mentors are principled, honorable and respectful leaders who teach others how to conduct themselves in the same manner.
8. Great mentors are Self-Aware – they know their weaknesses and strengths and appreciate the strengths and weaknesses in others. They encourage and support others in being increasingly more self-aware.
9. Great mentors make a point of including others in projects, successes and challenges. They know that added new and different perspectives will better benefit all participants.
10. Great mentors are Life-time Learners who relish the opportunity to keep learning, and help mentees and others around them to embrace those learning opportunities as well.

Thank you to all great mentors who have touched me directly and indirectly. You helped me to better understand myself, and raised the bar so that I can be a better version of myself.

 

Energized by the opportunities life has to offer; never settling