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determines their performance and behavior. Just as the representing perspectives from throughout the organization
designer of a ship exerts more infuence on its performance with the following objectives:
than does the captain or the crew, the structure of our thinking • Review current governance practices, procedures,
(and its corresponding infuence on the system’s design) is the expectations, assumptions, and results.
primary determinant of our actions and thereby the pattern
of results we are getting in our lives and through our work,” • Identify the benefts of our current system and the special
(Senge, 1990). A change in the central organizing structures features that should be preserved in redesign.
of our thinking (shifing our paradigm) eventually translates • Establish the expected outcomes of shared governance at
into a change in the results we are creating (Anderson, 2011). Valencia.
If we desire an organization that is collaborative at its deepest • Identify the factors, behaviors, and processes that enable
level, our leaders need to shif the central organizing structure efective governance at Valencia.
of thinking from command and control decision making to
generative dialogue, authentic engagement of subject matter Te review team, co-led by an administrator and a faculty
experts in strategy, design, process, and implementation. Tis is member with support from organizational development, designed
collaboration by design. a process through which the charge would be accomplished and
Jones (2012) ofers a simple defnition for intentional the college would be included and informed throughout.
collaboration, “solving problems in teams, with a designed,
thoughtful approach and a specifc outcome in mind” (p. 27)
and adds that as simple as the defnition seems, the act is as
infnitely complex. Te challenge of authentically collaborating
is made more difcult through our existing organizational
structures, born from an industrial era when exact replication
was valued over novelty and when our messy human-ness
was a risk to organizational productivity. Wheatley (2006)
observes, “We try to engineer human contribution. We set clear
expectations for performance…then ask people to conform
to our predictions…we freeze them in their functions” (p.
39). Our organizational systems and structures, rewards and
sanctions, are overpowering and stife our organic need to
interact, self-organize, and co-create. It is not enough for
today’s college leaders to “be collaborative” – to solve problems
in teams – without the designed and thoughtful approach to
systems that enable our natural state of connectedness.
When we “engineer human contribution,” we create safety,
predictability, opportunities for metrics and measurement, and
other structures that are useful in a manufacturing model. We
limit variability, eliminate waste, and establish frm boundaries
for acceptable outputs. We also engineer out those skills,
abilities, and contributions that many leaders say they espouse Much like change management processes, selecting a
including innovation, novel ideas, breakthrough thinking, framework for collaboration is far more important than which
and risk-taking. Many organizations identify themselves as particular framework is selected. Te framework provides the
innovative, creative, and seeking new ways of thinking about scafolding – the organizing principles – that allow individual
the complex problems we face, yet the organizational culture participants and those outside the process to orient themselves
tells a very diferent story. To be truly “innovative,” we have to in the larger process. Tough various frameworks (including
be open to the messiness of new and conficting ideas, difcult Design Tinking and the Creative Problem Solving Process)
decisions, and to let go of the predictability that keeps us safe label parts of the process with slightly diferent names or insert
in our roles. Collaboration by design is a pathway back to real or remove a step, the essential elements of a collaborative
human contribution in co-creating solutions we would not have process include:
reached independently.
Valencia College recently tested our thinking about • Understanding, clarifying, and articulating the right
problem to be solved and to identify the design principles to
collaboration by design by conducting a full review and be used in the decision-making process;
redesign for our system of shared governance. Our existing
system had been in use for a full decade and, as with most • Uncovering conventional thinking and generating new
systems, the edges began to fray over time. We were using our thinking about the problem (remembering that the frst two
system of shared governance less efectively and were seeking thirds of ideas generated are usually not novel or unique and
better outcomes from the heavy investment of institutional are generally adjacent to existing solutions);
resources in the system. Te president charged a group • Investing some time/energy/resources to further develop,

LEADERSHIP Vol. 22.1 Spring/Summer 2016 23

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