Employee Factory vs. Culture of Collaboration

In the recent episode of the Mafost Mashup, I was fortunate to have Hal Bowman as a guest. He offered some valuable insights on creating cultures of collaboration. Here’s a snippet:

“Man, I shouldn’t say this for all schools some schools are way outside of the box, but for a lot of schools who are still using it for the employee factory. Back when we really did need those kinds of employees, which is what school was designed in some ways to say look don’t make mistakes, do what you’re told, don’t think. You’re not reinventing the wheel. We have the wheel. We just need you to make the wheel like we tell you to.

But now man, clearly these positions are still available, but outside of that, oh my gosh, you know where we have these crazy classroom structures that we have, but when you go to work at Google it’s all about collaborating and working with each other and none of us have the answers, but collectively we
can figure this thing out. We just don’t have a lot of opportunities in some classrooms for
those moments to happen.”

(If you have trouble viewing the video, it’s here on Facebook.)

You can view the full interview at Hal’s website or listen to Episode 9 here.