Radical Collaboration

I was talking with HBS Professor Linda Hill about an upcoming collaboration yesterday (on a zoom with my good friend Perry Klebahn), and she casually mentioned that she makes a regular practice of choosing a particularly promising 22 year old to co-author her books with her. Talk about appreciating the perspective of a novice!

Then something special happened: she showed us a hand-drawn sketch her current novice collaborator has given her, which she keeps on her desk. "She's asked me to consider an octopus as a metaphor for organizations, so I keep this here..." 

What spoke to me was not only how much she truly values blending perspectives (that's prime real estate on the corner of her desk!), but also the power of positioning the drawing where other collaborators (in this case, me and Perry) could see it and interact with the metaphor. 

It was a cool example of not only radical collaboration, and valuing outside perspectives, but also of leveraging background artifacts in virtual meetings to drive insights. It made me wonder how to arrange my own background, to advance my own thinking... Go, Linda!

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