Design Sketch for a Network of Collaboration Practitioners

Earlier this year, I announced that I wanted to build a more formal network of collaboration practitioners. I wrote:

It’s always been an important part of my strategy, and it feels like the right moment to prioritize it.

I also want to be open and transparent about how I’m trying to do it in order to model network principles. As the field has professionalized, I’ve felt a narrowness in how many practitioners interpret and practice network principles. I want to offer a counter to this.

In subsequent blog posts, I shared what I had learned from previous experiences. In my first case study, I pulled out the following principles:

  • Be clear about what you want
  • Avoid premature and unnecessary structure
  • Assume abundance!

In my second case study, I pulled out a few more principles:

  • Be selfish, but in a networked way
  • Frequent collisions
  • Networks are about relationships

In this post, I want to offer a few more driving principles and outline how I’m currently thinking about pulling this all together.

Inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous

In addition to my previous work, one of my biggest inspirations for how I want to design this is Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.). A.A. is a global, open, decentralized, self-organizing network that emphasizes pair relationships and peer support, and it has helped thousands of people over the years, including a few whom I know. The core of its program is its 12 steps, the first step of which is admitting you have a problem. Anyone can start an A.A. support group. It simply requires “the need for one as expressed by at least two or three alcoholics; the cooperation of other A.A. members; a meeting place; a coffeepot; A.A. literature and meeting lists; and other supplies.”

I love how open, clear, and simple the platform is. There are formal structures to help keep this all organized, but the basic model is to encourage motivated people to take action. Furthermore, there is a deeply embedded culture of support and practice. This is not dictated by the structure, but it’s reinforced by it. The structures themselves are simple, even though the work of living with addiction is not.

I’ve always been taken by A.A.’s model and results. I also think that what many collaboration practitioners (including me) need amounts to self-help. Most of us are not working in structures that are conducive to our work. Many of us are not doing this work as part of our official roles within our groups, which means it often comes on our own time, and the work is often unseen and undervalued. When structure and culture is working against you, it’s even more contingent for you to maintain disciplined habits and to find support where you can.

I think a lot of collaboration practitioners already find ways to do this on our own, especially the peer support part. However, I think our default culture prevents us from truly getting what we want. I think we generally don’t ask for as much time as we need (and that others would happily provide, because it would benefit them too), and I think we’re generally not as open or transparent about what we’re learning as we could be.

What I Want

I want to create a support group for collaboration practitioners focused on developing and maintaining good habits, the kinds of habits that will not only make us better practitioners, but also enable us to live happy, healthy, sane lives. (These two things are inextricably intertwingled in my opinion.)

I want us to be focused on depth over breadth — deep practice, deep sharing, deep relationships. I want all of us to have a sense of what’s going on with each other professionally and personally. I want there to be enough trust and shared understanding and language that we all feel comfortable throwing around crazy ideas or asking for help. I would love to see participants collaborate, but only when it’s compelling. I’m not interested in collaboration for collaboration’s sake.

I want it to be an open group, but I also want it to feel intimate. I assume this means that it needs to be small, which may require limiting the size of the group, but I don’t know what the limit should be or whether this assumption is even true. I want participants to share what they learn from each other more broadly while also being thoughtful and respectful of people’s privacy and safety.

In other words, I don’t just want this to be a group of folks we already know and are comfortable with. I want to see diversity in as many dimensions as possible — age, gender, race, job, etc. This suggests paying particular attention to diversity and mobility (people moving in and out) with the initial group and letting it evolve from there.

I want participants to feel ownership and agency over their experience in the group. I want it to be leaderful and bold.

Finally, I want to create structures and practices that are easily replicable and customizable, I want to invest in the culture and capacities that can lead to success, and I want to share everything that I learn in the process. I’d love to see many, many, many groups copy what we do, customizing it as they see fit, and openly and frequently sharing what they learn so that we all may benefit. These groups could share a common “brand” or identity, like A.A., but it’s not that important to me. What matters more is that these types of spaces for collaboration practitioners to support each other are abundant.

Design Sketch

Given all of the above, here’s what I’m thinking (and have already started to experiment with). The group (as yet unnamed) would be centered around supporting each other with these Habits of Effective Collaboration Practitioners:

  1. Admit you are a collaboration practitioner.
  2. Breathe.
  3. Start with you.
  4. Listen and understand others.
  5. Be intentional, and hold it lightly.
  6. Stretch, but don't hurt yourself.
  7. Be compassionate.
  8. Do the work.
  9. Pick yourself up.
  10. Celebrate!
  11. Reflect and integrate.
  12. Share!
  13. Repeat.

Most practitioners already do some subset of these regularly. Our goal would be to support each other in doing all of them, which would help all of us become better practitioners and people. (I’ll blog more about this list later, as I’m still eliciting feedback and making changes. I’d love to hear your reactions in the comments section below. Many thanks to Anya Kandel, Travis Kriplean, Eun-Joung Lee, Danny Spitzberg, Matt Thompson, and Kate Wing for providing early feedback.)

Everyone participating would go through an on-boarding process that would include reviewing these habits and talking one-on-one with at least two current participants. This would help people feel more welcome, and it would remind everyone that networks are fundamentally about people and relationships and that we encourage people to forge their own individual connections beyond the platform.

Beyond the on-boarding, there would be only one required activity (which would take place on a Slack instance set up for this group) — checking in every week. The checkin could be brief, and the prompt could change over time, but the basic idea is that everyone would share what was going on in their work and lives at least once a week.

This simple practice would accomplish several things:

  • Make it clear whether you’re in or out. (More on this below.)
  • Help people learn how to use and get comfortable with the platform
  • Build community and relationships through frequent, but lightweight engagement
  • Establish a rhythm that makes the community and the space feel alive
  • Support participants in developing core collaboration and network muscles, especially our Sharing muscles.

I want to make it both simple and clear to delineate between those participating in this network and those who are not. If you’re willing to go through the on-boarding, agree to some basic community agreements, and check in regularly, you’re welcome to participate. I also want to make it okay not to participate. This structure may not feel right for some, or it may not be the right group of people, or it may be asking for too much time. Just because you’re not participating in this particular network doesn’t mean you can’t (or don’t) have a relationship with me or other participants. If you stop participating for whatever reason, that’s okay too, and you’d be welcome to return by just going through the on-boarding again.

I’m also making a bet about our Sharing muscles. When it comes to sharing, most of the practitioners I’ve met default to sharing only when they’re face-to-face with others and in larger, more "finished" chunks. There’s nothing wrong with this. However, many of the interesting and desirable things that sometimes emerge from networks require more frequent and open sharing. Rather than hoping this happens organically, I want to actively cultivate this muscle by encouraging participants to share rough little tidbits about their work and their thinking more frequently. My hope is that developing this one keystone habit will help unlock all sorts of other desirable muscles and mindsets — pausing, working iteratively, comfort sharing rough work, vulnerability, celebration, etc. — which will both help all of us individually as practitioners and the network as a whole.

Finally, I want to encourage (but not require) participants to find a regular checkin partner, similar to my experiences with Kate Wing over the past five years.

I’ve been experimenting with some of these ideas and structures over the past year, and I’m looking forward to taking another step forward. (Many thanks to Cherine Badawi, Shirley Huey, Anya Kandel, Travis Kriplean, Adene Sacks, and Zoe Tamaki for playing.) I have lots of open questions, and I’m looking forward to exploring these.

I’m not ready to open it up to everyone just yet. I want to be really intentional about establishing the culture and practices with a core group, and I want to make sure that we have a good balance of emerging and experienced practitioners. That said, if you think you might want to play, please either leave a comment below or send me an email directly. If you want to try to start your own group stealing any or all of this, please do, and please let me know, as I’d love to learn from your experiences! Finally, if you have any other thoughts on any of this, please leave a comment below. This is a work-in-progress, and I’m looking forward to continuing to share what I learn.

This is the last in a series of blog posts about building a network of collaboration practitioners. The others are:

  1. Building a Network of Collaboration Practitioners (February 7, 2019)
  2. A Personal Case Study in Network-Building: Pre-IPO (February 20, 2019)
  3. A Personal Case Study in Network-Building: Selfishness, Frequent Collisions, and my Colearning Experiment (May 7, 2019)
  4. What We Learned from Five Years of Check-ins (May 14, 2019)

A Personal Case Study in Network-Building: Pre-IPO

Last week, I shared a preamble on my plans to build a network of collaboration practitioners. Given the high-level nature of my post, I was surprised by the reaction and strong interest, especially on LinkedIn . I think it spoke to two things. First, despite all of our connectedness on social media, people crave deeper community. Second, it’s easy to be enthused about something when it’s described in a high-level, hand-wavy way. In this and subsequent posts, I’m going to try to get less hand-wavy by sharing actual experiences. I want to start by sharing my first “formal” experience building a network over 20 years ago.

In 1998, I made the difficult decision to leave the only full-time job I had ever known (and, to this day, the only time I’ve ever worked for someone else). I loved my boss and my team, and I liked the work, but I didn’t love it. I wanted to do something that I loved.

The problem was that I had no idea what that was. Or at least I had no idea how to get paid doing it. My default solution was to start my own company, which was one of the reasons I had moved to the Bay Area in the first place. But I didn’t have an idea that felt compelling. I decided to give myself a year to figure it out, marking the date when I would give notice in my calendar.

One of the things I love about the Bay Area is that it’s a physically small space where lots of interesting people live, which means that serendipitous collisions are common. This structure complements Silicon Valley culture, where people really value relationships. This culture manifests in a wonderful and a not-so-wonderful way. On one side of the spectrum, there is this wonderful openness, where people are willing to grab coffee with just about anyone — even “competitors” — to talk excitedly about their work and passions. On the other side, there are a plethora of networking events largely attended by drive-by networkers — people who treat relationships as a kind of game where they try to spread and collect as many business cards as possible.

I figured that a simple next step in my quest to figure out what to do with my life would be to go to some of these networking meetings. However, the thought repelled me. I wanted to spend quality time meeting interesting people doing interesting things. Going to a networking meeting felt like a painful and inefficient way to do this.

Then I had an epiphany. I was lucky enough to already be friends with some interesting people doing interesting things. Rather than try to meet new people, I decided to make up an excuse to hang out with the people I already knew (and liked). I invited a few friends to my apartment to eat pizza and “help me figure out what to do with my life.” We didn’t solve my problem that night, but I learned a lot about their work and hopes and dreams, I got a lot of encouragement, and I had a good time. In retrospect, it was an obvious thing to do, but I had never thought of doing it before, and I was hungry to do it more.

I decided to expand my invitation list to about eight people and do these dinners monthly. I wanted to keep the gatherings intimate, but I also wanted to open up the group to others. I decided to do two things to address this tension.

First, we decided to call the group, “pre-ipo,” a nod to our shared interest in startups.

Second, I established two ground rules. The first was, “shameless self-exploitation.” My reasons for forming this group were completely selfish. I wanted to figure out what I was going to do next, and I wanted to hang out with fun, interesting people in the process. I wanted to be clear about my own selfish intentions, but I also wanted others to be similarly selfish. This first ground rule made it clear that it was not only acceptable to want to get something out of participating, it was required.

The second was, “The Eugene Rule.” I had to like you for you to be part of the group. I also assumed a transitive property of relationships. In other words, if you liked someone, and if you thought I would like that person too, it was highly likely that you would be right. Rather than act as a gatekeeper, people were welcome to invite others, no questions asked, as long as they were confident that these others would pass The Eugene Rule.

As it turned out, these two ground rules, along with a strong initial set of relationships, helped create the balanced culture that I sought. It enabled all of us to explore our “selfish” goals while developing deep, authentic relationships with each other.

Every month, someone would do a deep dive into their work. One person was building online community tools. Another was building GPS-powered pedometers. (Remember, this was the 1990s, well before smartphones.) Another had developed a Palm Pilot app (again, it was the 1990s) for doctors to write prescriptions, so that pharmacists didn’t have to try to interpret their notoriously bad handwriting. My favorite was when one person described his experiences starting a hip hop music label.

I never paid for space. We always managed to find people to host for free simply by asking. After the talks, we would eat pizza and hang out. We generally had about a dozen people every month, with about 25 people at our largest gathering. Many people ended up partnering with others, in some cases joining each other’s boards. More importantly, people felt comfortable letting down their guard, which led to lots of real friendships being formed.

After nine months of doing these gatherings, I still had no idea what I wanted to do next. However, engaging with this community helped me realize that I didn’t have to decide right away, that I could put myself out there as a consultant and continue to explore, a decision that eventually led to the work I’m still doing today over two decades later.

I often think fondly about pre-ipo. My only regret is that I have no photos or any other form of (easily findable) documentation from that time. It was well before digital cameras, much less smartphones, and I also didn’t value documentation or leaving trails as much as I do now. Regardless, it was a wonderful, generative time, and it also helped me better understand some underlying principles for building networks, principles that I think are often undervalued in other efforts. Specifically:

Be clear about what you want. I often see groups wrestling with questions about governance and structure without voicing what they actually want. With pre-ipo, I had a clear goal that was embodied in the group’s name, which made it clear to others too.

Avoid premature and unnecessary structure. We started small, and we assumed high trust, which meant that we were able to be open without having to worry about complicated membership or governance rules. Instead of worrying about structure or scale, we focused on developing a warm culture that encouraged us to form deep, authentic, generous relationships.

Assume abundance! There were already plenty of formal entrepreneur networks in Silicon Valley, but I didn’t want to participate in any of those. That was fine! There doesn’t have to be only one group for a particular purpose, and in truth, there never actually is. Every person in pre-ipo already belonged to other entrepreneur networks, both formal and informal. Being part of multiple networks benefited everyone, because it gave all of us access to more people and broader learning.

Having an abundance mindset also made our first ground rule, “shameless self-exploitation,” work. I often see groups unintentionally develop a culture of martyrdom, where people feel obliged to sacrifice whatever individual desires they have for the “greater good.” This reflects a zero-sum mindset where people assume that their individual goals come at the expense of other people’s, and it results in spaces where people feel timid and fear stepping on each other’s toes. We assumed that our individual goals would complement and reinforce each other’s, which created a liberating and generative space.

This is the second in a series of blog posts about building a network of collaboration practitioners. The others are:

  1. Building a Network of Collaboration Practitioners (February 7, 2019)
  2. A Personal Case Study in Network-Building: Pre-IPO (February 20, 2019)
  3. A Personal Case Study in Network-Building: Selfishness, Frequent Collisions, and my Colearning Experiment (May 7, 2019)
  4. What We Learned from Five Years of Check-ins (May 14, 2019)
  5. Design Sketch for a Network of Collaboration Practitioners (November 14, 2019)

Giving Away My Intellectual Property

Recycle-Reduce-Reuse

I am proud, excited, and a little bit scared to announce Faster Than 20’s new intellectual property policy. You can find some legalese and a link to the policy on the footer of every page on this website.

Effective immediately, I’m renouncing copyright to all of my written work on this site. This includes blog posts, essays, and toolkits.

This means that you can do anything you want with things you find on this site without restriction. You can share it, reuse it, repurpose it, plagiarize it, and even sell it. You don’t need my permission, and you don’t need to pay me or even credit me.

I explain why I’m doing this on the policy page, but I want to expand on my reasons here. It starts with my mission. I’m trying to find ways to boost the world’s collaborative literacy. The more restrictions I place on sharing the knowledge I have, the more I get in the way of that mission.

This is not purely a selfless endeavor. In my policy, I write:

I’ve been giving away my knowledge for as long as I’ve been working in this field, and the experience has always been overwhelmingly positive. It honors the generosity of everyone I’ve learned from over the years, and it’s been great for business. People find ways to give when they find things valuable, even when they’re not required to.

Everyone I ever worked with loved my policy around openness. They didn’t have to worry about secret agendas and felt unencumbered working with me. This made them far more likely to be an evangelist for me, which helped my reputation, and it also made them more likely to reciprocate. I learned more, had more fun, and made more money as a result.

Still, I noticed some peers and colleagues not wanting to participate in or contribute to commons projects. Upon probing, I realized that my attribution requirement was holding people back. Credit, after all, is currency, and it’s natural to feel the need to be the one saying something, even if someone else has already said the exact same thing and is willing to let you reuse it.

Making everything public domain is my attempt to solve this problem. If there’s something I’ve written or a toolkit I’ve created that you want to reuse, and if you want to rebrand it and redistribute it without crediting me, I’m not only allowing you to do this, I’m encouraging it! The potential for broader impact is well worth any potential loss of credit. I suspect that I’ll still get plenty of credit regardless, even if (or perhaps because!) it’s not required.

Nevertheless, I did not come to this conclusion easily, and I still feel nervous about it. I likely would not have done this had it not been for Creative Commons’s release of CC0 (which makes it easy to renounce copyright) and Mike Linksvayer’s endorsement of it. Many thanks to Mike for his encouragement and advice, and thanks also to Pete Forsyth and Rebecca Petzel for reviewing my policy statement.

I’ll continue to share what I learn from this move here on this blog, and I hope that others will be inspired to follow suit!

Correction: Creative Commons released CC0 in 2009, not last year. I’ve corrected the text above. Thanks to Neil Kandalgaonkar for pointing this out!

Photo by Kevin Dooley. CC BY 2.0.