Anecdote: Collaboration by design

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7/07/08 |

Collaboration by design

By Mark. Follow me on Twitter. Filed in Collaboration.

Lend Lease has pretty good lineage when it comes to innovative practices on the KM front. Their iKonnect program started in 2000 and is a great KM success story. I chatted with some of the KM folk at Lend Lease late last week and wasn't surprised to find that they are still coming up with the good ideas. Our whitepaper on collaboration suggests that collaboration can't be left to chance and that someone (a collaboration coordinator?) needs to be responsible for it. It turns out that Lend Lease put in place a role called 'Knowledge and Collaboration Manager' long before we articulated it in the whitepaper. Their building is also pretty cool - featuring a four storey sandstone wall integrated into the building design. The photo shows the ground floor and its meeting areas (more photos here). The Lend Lease floors feature open work spaces, meeting pods that jut out into the atrium for communal activities and shared kitchens, and a chill/meet zone on the perimeter for quieter meetings and activities. The design emphasised sustainability, heritage conservation, energy efficiency and collaboration. There was also really good feel to the place.