First, my recommendation. Read this book. Better, read this book with a colleague. Much better, read this book with the three to fifteen people you consider teammates.

This book was written for you the individual. It was also written for you the team.

Here’s why I make this strong recommendation. Jim’s book focuses on what is takes to really collaborate. A large part of this requires we demolish the idea of “leader” as the strong individual and recognize that effective leadership is a shared responsibility. The chapter, “Leadership is an Action,” calls out the hundreds of hero-leader books as anti-collaborative and “how we routinely end up with overpaid narcissists as CEOs and utterly terrified middle managers.” The chapter should be required reading at every business school. We know that will not happen.

Is this a “lean” book? Certainly, there are many practices in the book we identify as lean, and if you are an advocate of lean practices, lean thinking, and lean management then you have another reason to read The Collaboration Equation. However, as the title conveys, the point of this work is to leverage the power of real collaboration. While lean practices support collaboration, the point is to collaborate and not to be “lean.”

Throughout the book real-world examples are provided, accompanied by images, that illustrate the points Jim is making, in industries that include construction, software, and product management. While the book provides examples, Jim is very clear that these examples are not templates to copy. They are stories intended to inspire teams to take principles and think for themselves how they will best design, and continuously redesign, their work. Work is defined as a collaborative creation.

The stories in the book take the reader through the work individuals in teams did to create collaborative work structures based on highly visible information in shared workspaces. The book places a large emphasis on the Obeya, a workspace, physical and/or virtual, that promotes visual management and collaboration. For people who misunderstand the nature of an Obeya, or what many people refer to as a “big room,” the book provides a rich understanding of how and why an Obeya can be effective at promoting collaboration. Key is that these workspaces democratize not only the availability of information, but also the creation of information and management of work informed by that information.

The Collaboration Equation addresses both human potential and a common shortcoming. The potential comes from our ability to achieve great things in teams. The common shortcoming is that humans tend to mistake authority for leadership and in doing so create nominal leaders who often act out of fear – because true leadership in any shared endeavor, any organization, is too big for any one person, or even small group of people. I’ll repeat an earlier statement. This book was written for you the individual. It was also written for you the team. For me the book captures the spirit of the Respect for People principle. We are powerful as individuals when we act as different expressions of the same whole. To accomplish this, we need to communicate freely and clearly. The Collaboration Equation describes the territory in which this happens. It is up to each team to chart its own path through this exciting world.

This book will challenge your team to find your own way of doing things that nominal leaders in your organization may not like. Do them anyway. The work that results will be your reward.

Get this book on Amazon.