Collaboration

I’ve been thinking lately about collaboration.

I just finished a book, finally! I read like 7 books at a time, so I’m AWESOME at starting ones, but not nearly as great about finishing them—at least not quickly. But I finished Tough Choices by Carly Fiorina, a great memoir from a talented businessperson—lots of helpful thoughts on leadership.

As I read the afterword, this particular paragraph really stuck out to me:

“A company’s [or any group of people] ability to look at new ideas and new solutions is linked directly with the heterogeneity of its management team. If a management team is homogeneous or becoming less diverse, it means people are favoring consensus and conformity in their meetings and decision-making processes, rather than encouraging the creative tension that comes from differences in perspective, experience, and yes, race and gender as well. This is why real diversity is in everyone’s interests: better decisions come from understanding and hashing out the differences in people’s points of view. If everyone thinks in the same ways and agrees quickly, decision-making may be faster, easier, and more pleasant, but it’s not as effective. Something important is going to be missed, some problem ignored, some risk underestimated. The only antidote to the dangers of ‘group think’ is a diverse team sitting around the table and a decision-making process that explicitly examines and debates every point of view.” (321-322)

And later she says a lot about how she views her role as a leader when she says “I have always been passionate about unlocking people’s potential, the power of collaboration, and the technology that enables both” (323).

I always talk about believing in humanity’s “Imago Dei”, our being created in the very image of God. How because of this, everyone has value, potential, and divine characteristics—as flawed and twisted by sin this all can be at times. But Carly’s view that everyone has something to bring to the table, no matter how different they are, really challenged me.

This takes Imago Dei to a whole new level for me because it doesn’t just mean I value my neighbor, or my husband, or the homeless man on the street. It means I have to believe that the person I don’t get along with, or the person I don’t feel on the same page with, has something I desperately need. That together, we can create something better than we can alone.

As young adults, I think we often feel at odds with the world around us. We have a sense of cynicism and discontent with the way things are. We rile up with passion, often coupled with bitterness, about how we want to change things, people, institutions, culture. And sometimes we think this is a righteous sort of indignation. Maybe it is. Maybe God wants to use each new generation to push in directions where we need to go. But somewhere in the process we lose sight of the fact that previous generations have something to bring to the table as well. That there can be good, even alongside the bad, in the way things are.

Now I keep thinking about this in those moments I feel at odds with others around me.