Chuck Saylor, founder and CEO of izzy+, spoke with otto about collaboration in the workplace and how collaboration has affected his own company’s work culture.
izzy+
What are your thoughts on where collaboration in the workplace was, is, and is going?
CS: Right now, we’re going through a cultural transition. People are sensing this change. The recent WIRED article by Kevin Kelly on the New Socialism” (The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society is Coming Online”, WIRED May 2009) does a great job describing the new digitally based, communal culture that is running deep within our society and economy. This definition of socialism has nothing to do with politics, although smart politicians are tapping into it.
There has always a level of collaboration in the workplace and in education. But historically, it has been in pockets, deep inside organizations, overshadowed by the hierarchical command and control structure above it. A sense of community isn’t the same as when your manager puts you all in a room and asks you to collaborate. There was a sense of forced teaming, which graduated to cross functional teaming the 1980s, and then thought diversity entered into the process in the 1990s. It wasn’t natural but it was what businesses did to get things done.
izzy+ offices
In the workplace there has been collaboration, particularly among people in the creative arts. But it wasn’t a natural part of organizational structure for business or the education environment. Both were largely top-down approaches, one-direction structures. The explosion of the digital economy in the late 1990s and the emergence of social networking that we’re experiencing now is creating a new sense of connectiveness and community in the workplace and in education. It collides with traditional organizational structures of the past.
Now the power of technology and collectivism is harnessing the collective power of people in business and within the classroom. Communal collaboration is where we’re going. It is penetrating its way into our lives, from the way we build and create products, to the way we market them, and buy and sell them. What happens to the power base? It’s crumbling. Just look at the global financial crisis. GM and Chrysler as we knew them are gone. Big is not necessarily better. Power and control over time puts all decision making into very few hands. That world is gone, in my opinion.
izzy+ offices
How are these ideas of collaboration reflected in your own workplace?
CS: There is a hum of activity that is always present at izzy+. It’s going on all the time and you can instantly get the feeling of community here. We have a collaborative work structure and our products support how we work. Unleashing the talents of people through collaboration has made a huge difference in our business. Look at where we are after introducing the izzy brand only eight years ago.
Have you seen changes within your own company culture due to collaboration conscious design?
CS: Absolutely. The old hierarchal method of managing departments doesn’t work anymore. There is less individual recognition, more group recognition. Teams of people share with each other, regulate each other, accomplish goals together and celebrate together. The Me generation is truly moving to We.
Collaborative learning with Dewey by Fixtures Furniture
What do you think came first, the collaborative mindset or collaborative furniture?
CS: I believe we are all as human beings naturally endowed with inquisitive minds and the desire to contribute and collaborate. What happened to it? We essentially dehumanized those characteristics through power and control. Technology is creating a new collectivism that is not political. It is truly driven by the desire to share and create with each other. No one single person is in control.
As we say at izzy+, it isn’t about the furniture. It’s about the people. We are just responding in a small way to the change going on around us. What is our role in this new collective, communal world we’re headed to? I have a huge responsibility to people around me. I have to think more of others than I do myself. If I’m an executive in a business or a professor at a college or university, this isn’t about me. It’s about everyone else around me. It’s about adjusting my workstyle, my behavior, my attitude, to support them. You have to decide to be a part of this and engage to make a difference. I do think that is naturally ingrained part of us. We all want to be a part of something.
by Jean Lin
