collaboration IQ
How to connect, create and count in the 21st
Century
Presented at Institute for Contemporary Arts by
Nick Jankel
nick@wecreate.cc
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Multi-platform learning experiences
for
innovation, collaboration, creativity
and leadership

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Today
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All of humanity now has the option to ‘make it’ successfully and susta
inably, by virtue of our having minds, discovering principles and bein
g able to employ these principles to do more with less.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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What is collaboration?
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The age of mass collaboration
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What does it look like?
• Fewer resources
• Smaller budgets
• More challenges
• More complexity
• Less time to solve things
• More collaborative technologies
• More vested interests
• More network effects
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Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the
cooperation of many minds.
Alexander Graham Bell
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Google &Surui
• 250 tribes people near Rondonia
• 340 sawmills, 4000 loggers
• 11 chiefs have been killed
• Enter Google…
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And…
• Google and P&G swap their staff
• Fox and NBC launch hulu.com
• Reamp.org
• WWF’s Sustainable Consumption
• Open Ventures Challenge / Cancer Research
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We have to learn how to best participate if
we want to make best use of the
participatory possibilities…
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despotism
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doldrums
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disintegration
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What are the challenges to collaboration?
Social, psychological, emotional
Practical, operational, functional
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collaboration IQ: Leadership
• Understanding and harnessing the key roles in a collaboration
• Managing ourselves and others when we get stressed / fearful
• Clearing away the sediment that blocks creative flow
• Fostering trust and openness
• Developing a sense of collective ownership and responsibility
• Thinking digitally and harnessing the network
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collaboration IQ: Management
• Understanding how to initiate and manage collaborations
• Understanding new business, profit and growth models
• Harnessing emerging technology
• Designing new partnership agreements and legal frameworks
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Every collaboration helps you grow.
Brian Eno
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How high is your CIQ?
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Close your eyes and finish
these sentences…
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The prisoner’s dilemma
• Two types of cards
– Collaborate
– Defend
• Each team decides on a single card to play and gives it to the
banker
• The banker then reveals both cards
– Both play the 'Collaborate' card - Banker pays each £300
– Both play the 'Defend' card - Banker collects £10
– One of each card - Banker pays 'Defend' £500, but collects £100 from
'Collaborate’
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Now for the science bit…
Are we designed to be self-interested?
Or collaborative?
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In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who
learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have
prevailed.
Charles Darwin
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A selfish gene?
• Darwin believed that moral compassion is a naturally selected trait
• Reciprocal and collective altruism common in nature
– Vampire bats
– Limewire
• Absolute altruism has been discovered in fish - one will die for the good of the
whole (without any benefit to themselves)
• The brain’s mirror neurons create a tendency towards compassion and co-
operation in all animals, ensuring that most organisms attempt to minimise
‘pain’ in others
• The ‘helper’s high’
– National Institutes for Neurological Disorders and Strokes that show that the brain’s
reward centres fire when we give
– New evidence from Harvard shows that volunteering increases our physical health
• Iroquois and Mexican ejido collaborative use of land for centuries
• Various tribes – e.g. the Semai or Ladakhi – have next to no aggression or
violence. They positively discourage competition
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And even economics…
• Gift Economies & LETS
• Co-operatives
• Trust is one of the strongest known indicators of a countryʼswealth
– Paul Zak calculates that a 15 percent increase in the proportion of people
who think their compatriots are trustworthy raises per capita growth by 1
percent for every year thereafter!
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collaboration IQ Taster
Collaborative Roles
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Intro to archetypes
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The Leader
visionary, wise
creator of ideas and inspiration
generates new contexts
balances teams
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The Builder
transformative, catalytic, curious
sees problems and solutions
uses suite of tools to shift things
makes change with minimal effort
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The Peacemaker
calming, empathic
solves disputes
connected to others
understands motivations
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The Champion
strong, committed
fights team battles
says what needs to be said
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The Teenager
childish, petulant
looks after themselves
rejects group (but wants their
support)
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The Saboteur
pessimistic, spiky
uses tools to tank projects
and destroy people
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The Opportunist
flaky, calculating
flits between ideas and people
switches allegiances
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The Victim
needy, cowardly
feels hard done by
drains energy and moods
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Finding your role
Introducing peer-to-peer coaching
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• When you are at your best, what do people say about you?
• When you are the only person who can do anything about a
problem, how does that make you feel?
• What role do you like to play? Who are you when you aren't
playing it?
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• When you have left a meeting feeling a little tense, what kind of
outcome have you helped create?
• Remembering back to a recent crisis or stress point - when you
feel worried about the future, money, failure - what thoughts
came to mind?
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collaboration IQ Taster
The Give / Get
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The Give / Get
• What are you prepared to give?
• Time
• Money
• Contacts
• Resources
• Ideas
• What do you want to get?
• Practical
• Financial
• Social
• Environmental
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collaboration IQ Taster
Thinking digitally
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Your behaviours are influenced by others in your network far more
strongly than you might think, even by people you’ve never met.
New Scientist, 2009
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Harnessing your network
Who, specifically, do you have to collaborate with
from your network to realise your mental, social
and economic capital?
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Harnessing your network
What role must you play in your network – no
matter how much it challenges your past
behaviours or conventional wisdom?
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Harnessing your network
What part of you do you have to build on –
authentically - if you want to influence these
people with integrity, creativity and vision?
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Harnessing your network
What needs to happen for people to trust you, and
for you to trust them?
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Harnessing your network
How could you work around the barriers and
obstacles to this trust occurring?
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Harnessing your network
What ideas from your past do you need to let go
of if you want to co-create most effectively?
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