Collaborate: The Art of We

Q&A with the Author Dan Sanker
Author Dan Sanker When did you first realize that collaboration was powerful?
It started in grad school. I was fortunate to work with some teammates with deep tech experience, and I saw the power of collaboration. Around the same time we were exploring team dynamics and situational leadership, I was seeing how amazing the results could be when we put marketing, finance, and operations together with seemingly incomprehensible engineering expertise.

How and when did you become such an advocate of collaboration?
The dollars and sense really came together for me on our Safeway team at Procter & Gamble; we did things that changed the industry by sharing once-guarded information to create big solutions. I saw it again soon after at Nabisco, working collaboratively to drive sales at Club stores through the roof. My team went from dead last to first place. I've just seen collaboration create real value so many times. And it's at the very core of CaseStack's successes. Trust is a huge element of logistics and although it might be uncomfortable at first for a company to relinquish control, the benefits quickly become apparent as the relationship begins to yield cost savings and efficiencies. I've witnessed collaboration create billions of dollars in economic value.

How hard was it to get so many people to collaborate on the foreword?
Hard as an author works, I doubt anyone ever feels like they've gotten their ideas to really represent the larger ideas in their heads. I am definitely in that boat. That said, nothing could have been more natural or easier than bringing everyone together for the book's foreword. Social media has made us all comfortable with sharing, and mobility has made it convenient. I still feel like the foreword is the greatest part of the book. A bunch of people got together to collaboratively write about collaboration, and it just flowed. It wasn't work. It was actually a lot of fun.

What's the most unusual collaboration you’ve been involved with that actually worked?
When I was a Managing Director at Deloitte, I was brought into a project by one side of an internal power struggle created by a merger. Two great companies were put together to create some synergy; 1+1 was supposed to equal 3. It had started to look more like 1 + 1 was going to turn into negative 1. It was an ugly scene for a while, but we managed to create a new positive culture that took on a life of its own. By the end of it, executives who had literally thrown punches - they were like new people. And, it sure worked – to the tune of many millions of dollars for quite a few people who were on a path to get absolutely nothing. It created real economic value – good jobs and super-satisfied customers.

What’s something I can do tomorrow morning to get started?
Let's take the hardest example: you’re in a place where collaboration sounds like an absolute fairytale. I say, cross the biggest bridge first. Find the most broken thing, the two groups that are furthest apart, the two people who can't even be in the same room, or what might seem like the most insurmountable business opportunity in the world. Then, start talking – about what everyone actually really wants when all is said and done. Follow the process toward results that improve everyone’s situation.

How will collaboration reshape the future of business?
Collaboration has already fundamentally changed business. We see it all around us every day. Does it seem like many large, secure, permanent institutions have woken up in a Twilight Zone? Does it seem like some new concepts that didn’t even exist 5-10 years ago absolutely dominate your daily business and personal lives? Globalization, communication technology and economic necessity: they have enabled a new collaborative business revolution. It's a better world – why not play a leadership role now than try to just deal with it later?