Catalyzing Success through Collaborative Advantage

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There are some people that make their
work just another thing they have to do,

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and there are those that make their
work something that they want to do.

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Welcome to Working on Purpose with your
host Elise Cortes. In our program,

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we provide guidance and inspiration from those
people who have found deeper meaning and

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personal connection to their work life.
It's beyond nine to five. It's working

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on Purpose. Now Here is your
host, Elise Cortes. Welcome back to

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the Working and Purpose Show. Thanks
for tuning in again this week. I'm

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your host, Alise Cortez, joining
from Dallas, Texas, which is home

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base for me. If you've been
tuning in for a while, you know

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this program is all about helping people
create more meaningful and purposeful lives and equipping

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leaders insight organizations to cultivate meaning and
purpose ilicit's passion inspired contribution, innovation and

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persevering performance. I talk with my
guests to draw on their expertise and share

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my own experience consultings developing workforces across
the globe. Every week. In these

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conversations, I hope you walk away
with something you can immediately put to use

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in your life or your work.
And if I can do anything to help

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you along that journey. Go to
my website at a leastcoretes dot com and

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use the contact me feature to message
me. Then let's open a dialogue and

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explore what's going on for you and
how I might be able to help at

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any rate. I'm glad we're connected, and thanks for listening with us.

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This week is Paul Skinner. He's
the author of Collaborative Advantage, How collaboration

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beats competition as a strategy for success. He is the founder of the Agency

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of the Future, which helps clients
create collaborative advantage to drive organizational success,

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and as founder of the social enterprise
Pimp My Cause, he and the platform

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bring together marketers and good causes to
create transformational pro bone of projects for social

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good. Today we'll be talking about
why collaborative collaborative advantage is so important to

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success and walk through five steps of
his outside in framework, and also hear

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about some inspiring examples of how he
harnesses collaborative advantage in his own work.

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He joins today from London, England. Paul, Welcome to Working on Purpose.

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Thank you very much, Alisa.
I've been very much looking forward to

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a conversation me too, and As
I told you, I read your book

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from cover to cover, and I
got so much about it out of it

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for myself, and I'm really,
honestly very excited about how that's going to

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change my own direction. So I
really want to thank you for coming into

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my world and really giving me something
beautiful. Thank you, Thank you very

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much. That's wonderful to hear.
Yes, Yes, isn't it nice to

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know that all the effort that you
put into writing that book actually made a

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difference to at least one person on
the planet, that being me. It

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is, you know, the world
is becoming such a surprising place, and

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I think some of the most interesting
things we can do are the things that

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we do that increase our exposure to
positive surprises. And I think that's probably

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one of the most fun things about
having written the book on Collaborative Advantage is

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some of the messages that I get
from people that otherwise I would have had

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no connection tosoever. And so for
me, it's been a vehicle for increasing

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the number of positive surprises that come
my way, which I think is a

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magical experience. It is a magical
experience, and I love how you said

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that, Paul. It's a great
way to start and from there. There

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are so many pearls I got from
your book that I wanted to talk about,

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but one, let's open if we
can you talk about one of the

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greatest problems facing humanity, like poverty
and climate change and political violence and mass

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migration, all those really big,
hairy, messy problems may ultimately be entirely

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dependent for the resolution on our capacity
for cooperation and our ability to create collaborative

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advantage, maybe our best strategic capability
as a species. What an incredibly alluring

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thing to say, can we start
there? Well, that's very kind of

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you, and I think that's true, and I think it's actually for all

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of us. So a lot of
the problems that you cited just there are

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big, cross cutting societal issues that
no one government, no one country,

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no one part of the world can
solve on their own. But I think

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it's increasing the increasingly the case for
all of us and for businesses of any

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size, that we're increasingly coming up
against problems that reach across our core capabilities

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and that perhaps we don't have the
fullest competence within our own experience or within

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our own organizations to address. I'm
not sure was it Benjamin Franklin who said

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that the key to success is to
look for the opportunities in every problem.

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And I think today, in the
light of some of the big, complex

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challenges that you cite, you know, perhaps the advanced version of that technique

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is to look for the opportunities,
both for ourselves and others in the problems

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that we face. And hopefully our
conversation around collaborative advantage will open the door

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to that a little bit wider.
There's so much in that what you just

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said, Paul, And yes,
we certainly can can not solve are any

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problem on our own, let alone
the big ones that we just talked about

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before. And so what I think
is so compelling about what you've written is

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we all heard about competitive collaborative competition. But when you talk about collaborative advantage

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as being able to beat competition,
I just think that's really really compelling.

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So for our listeners who haven't yet
read the book, would you distinguish what

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you mean by a collaborative advantage.
So, collaborative advantage, as I propose

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it is the business advantage that comes
from better harnessing the full of value creating

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potential that lies outside as well as
inside our own business. So it's about

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working with our customers and other stakeholders
as opposed to just for our customers and

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against our competitors. And so I
search it is as you say, it's

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a radical alternative to the convey goal
of creating competitive advantage, which has largely

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been about creating success from within a
business through our own performance. And I

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propose that collaborative advantage can be a
greatly accelerated path to growth. I know

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that we're going to talk about this
a little bit later when we talk about

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what you've been up to uniquely in
the world. But where did this come

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from for you? Paul? I
mean, how did you start to really

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see? Because to me, this
is a very unique lens on the world.

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Where did this come from for you? So I suppose, in terms

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of my own influences, two things
that are very important to me every day.

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First of all, I have a
daily practice of meditation, and secondly,

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my background is working as a professional
marketer. So in a sense,

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I think a lot of my ideas
on collaborative advantage have been born of the

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interplay between those two experiences. Apps
enjoying in meditation a daily experience of a

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more unified state of awareness maybe gives
rise to a natural inclination to find more

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unifying ways of working. And just
as an aside, since you jump into

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the topic, I wonder speculatively if
when we meditate we create collaborative advantage with

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ourselves, so in a sense,
listeners may find this a part of their

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common experience as well. It's quite
difficult to choose to have a good idea

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from within an individual stream of conscious
thought. Most of our valuable ideas probably

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somehow pop up in the spaces between
our thoughts in an emergent way, and

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I think when we meditate we create
a bigger space for those kind of value

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creating ideas to emerge. And it
may be that if we get more use

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to the process of greater value coming
from the spaces within our own thoughts,

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that more naturally opens the door to
us recognizing that greater value still comes from

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the spaces between me and you,
Greater value still comes from the spaces between

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one organization and another. Greater value
is created still in the space between a

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business and its customers and its partners
and other stakeholders and so on. This

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may be far ahead of topic or
off topic, but something that has really

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influenced me is the Vedic concept of
leila. So Leila is a Sanskrit word

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that means the divine play through which
Oneness manifests itself in the universe as the

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diversity of creation, in order to
enjoy the process of rediscovering itself as oneness.

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And I think in some way I
try to enjoy that experience in meditation,

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but then it naturally overflows into working
activity. And I think that creating

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collaborative advantage is a very worldly,
a very practical, and very business orientated

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way for me to become part of
something bigger than myself and to help client

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organizations achieve greater success by becoming something
bigger than theirselves as well. Paul,

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you're going to make me cry.
It's so beautiful. What you're saying is

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deliriously delicious in every way. And
I've had breakfast, yet this is amazing.

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This is better than breakfast. I
love what you're saying, Paul.

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And no, we're not going off
track at all. We're going right into

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the space that I want to dwell
in. And that brings us me maybe

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to what you're when you talk about
being part of or contributing to something bigger

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than yourself. I have to go
then to the space of purpose and so

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connect for us if you will.
What does collaborative advantage have to do with

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purpose? Well, collaborative advantage proposes
a new purpose or a new endpoint for

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strategy itself. So it's a new
goal for business strategy. And it also

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provides us with a toolkit that can
help us to understand and define the purpose

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of our own businesses in a new
way. The better to mobilize around those

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purposes, and the better to grow
our businesses, and the better to scale

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the impact of our nonprofits. And
I would say, in some ways,

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it's a very simple idea. You
know, I would say that business has

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always been essentially an act of cooperation. Now, if I'm in business and

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you're my customer, then if I'm
not doing something that in some way helps

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you to improve your life, we
could ask why I'm in business in the

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first place. Equally, if I'm
not providing it in a way that,

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through some kind of exchange, enables
me to sustain and grow that business,

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then how can I exist in business
in the first place. But it so

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happens that almost certainly the most influential
idea. In the history of ideas about

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business strategy, the idea of competitive
advantage has come to so dominate our thinking

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about how you create success in business
that it has come to overshadow that essentially

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cooperative nature to business. And my
hope is that we can use collaborative advantage

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to restore human purpose to the particular
stories that we tell ourselves in the form

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of our organizational strategies, and to
better harm this are innate capacity for cooperation

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as a means for fulfilling that purpose. Sounds really good to me. I'm

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in awesome my best recruit, right, absolutely, absolutely, I'm so in

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for that. Well, let's do
this if we can. Paul, I

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think it's interesting. And when I
was reading your book, I really got

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way more present to the idea of
the notion of how we've really embraced competitive

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competition in our world. So what
is if you will we've been so conditioned

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to embrace competitive advantage, what are
its limitations? Well, I should say

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so other people have criticized the concept
of competitive advantage before me, and then

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I've brought my own distinct criticism to
bear on it. So some people have

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pointed out that it's too often a
zero sum game. If I'm looking to

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compete with you, then my natural
inclination is to try to replicate what you're

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doing, but to offer more of
it for less can ultimately just extract value

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from our businesses. Others have pointed
out that it's too often been used to

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prioritize shareholder value in a way that
may have been too often to the active

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detriment of broader stakeholder value. Financial
analysts have argued that the length of time

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that you can hold on to a
competitive advantage has diminished at an ever accelerating

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rate since the idea was first introduced. And then you have people like Kim

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and Moborneo, who wrote the Blue
Ocean Strategy series of books, who argue,

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I think quite convincingly that the biggest
changes and the biggest disruptions we're likely

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to face probably don't come from our
competitors anyway. And what I would add

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to that is the notion that the
idea of competition and competitive advantage creates a

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perception, whether we're deliberately buying into
it or whether it's just infiltrated our assumptions,

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it creates a perception of the relationship
between the business and the environment in

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which we operate, which causes value
to be left on the table. So

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it too readily reinforces the idea that
it is we inside the business who create

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value, it's our performance that counts, and that people exist primarily outside the

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business of relevance to us, either
as competitors seeking to capture that value or

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as customers, who I believe we
too readily reduce to the idea of consumers,

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which is probably the single word in
the whole of the English language that

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I most detest, because it seems
to imply that our customers human agency can

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be restricted to their capacity to diminish
by a few units the world supply of

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whatever resource we happen to be selling
them, whereas I would say that we

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do well to remember that at any
point in time, it is almost certainly

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our customers who are the people who
are doing the very most to improve their

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own lives. And so perhaps our
purpose in business can be best understood as

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finding the right ways to make it
quicker or easier, or more effective,

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or even as you say, more
magical for them to do that. And

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what I want to endorse about that, Paul, I really appreciate how you've

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distinguished that for us. It's just
stunningly beautiful. And also it speaks to

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what you say in your book about
just a really encouraging and embracing human agency.

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And I really appreciate that as a
person who's studied psychology and sociology.

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The human agency gets to how we
get things done. And what you're saying

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is we're enabling people to do what
they're already doing in life or can do

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for themselves. And I think that
is such a brilliant way to look at

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how we are serving our customers in
a different way than I think we probably

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have been for a long time.
Thank you. Yes, I think that

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that aspect is incredibly important, and
it also opens the door to such a

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diverse range of knowledge and techniques to
help us achieve that. You know,

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one legacy of competitive advantage perhaps is
the whole idea of change management. And

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so change management takes as an assumption
that the important change is the change that

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takes place within our business. But
actually, if we think about human agency

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and unlocking the human agency of our
customers, we realize that the most important

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change is the change that we can
enable outside the business, and so that

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opens the door to us finding techniques
from such a diverse range of fields from

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psychology to the nonprofit world, and
finding all sorts of new perspectives on how

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do we accelerate that process of change. There is so much there. Paul

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and I want to hold that thought. We want to grab our our first

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break here, and then I want
to get into your outside in framework.

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I'm your host, Elise Cortes.
We've been on the air with Paul Skinner,

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who's the author of Collaborative Advantage,
How collaboration beats competition as a strategy

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for success. We've been talking about
how he's able to distinguish this concept from

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competitive advantage. After the break,
we'll get into his outside in framework.

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Stay with us, We'll be right
back. Alise Cortes is a speaker and

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engagement and development catalyst. She designs
and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement

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workshops and can bring her expertise to
your organization. She will help ignite meaningful

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development within your workforce that will increase
employee engagement, performance and retention. To

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learn more or to invite Elise to
speak to your organization, please visit her

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00:17:48.559 --> 00:17:53.240
at www dot Elisecortes dot com.
She would welcome the opportunity to help get

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your employees working on purpose. This
is working on Purpose with Elise Cortes.

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To reach our program today, send
an email to a lease Alise at a

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Lascortes dot com. Now back to
working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with

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us, and welcome back to working
on purpose if you're just joining us.

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My guest is Paul Skinner. He's
the author of Collaborative Advantage, How collaboration

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beats competition as a strategy for success. He's also the founder of the Agency

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of the Future, which helps clients
create collaborative advantage to drive organizational success.

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And he is the founder of the
social enterprise Pimp My Cause, which brings

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together marketers and good causes to create
transformational pro bono projects for social good I'm

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your host Elise Cortes, So Paul, for this next section, before we

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talk about your outside and framework,
I just I want to also share with

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you that as I read your book
for me, I was so excited because

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your concepts open to space for me
to be able to see that in porting

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what you do really opens. What
you're suggesting that we do opens a whole

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new world for people to live and
execute on their purpose. And so I

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come across people who get access to
and discover their purpose and they feel so

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overwhelmed by it because it's so big
and they're just they feel like they're just

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too small to fulfill it. And
so it seemed to me that by employing

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collaborative advantage, we actually may see
a way to fulfill our purpose. And

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that's what the big amazing gift that
I got from reading your book gave me.

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So let's give it to our listeners
as well and talk about your outside

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and framework and talk about the first
step, if you will, And I

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see it as step one is really
a way to understand and seeing what purpose

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is in a new light. So
can you start with your step one of

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your framework, yes, of course, and picking up on your point about

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individuals wanting to achieve their purpose and
feeling overwhelmed when we come we may come

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back to talking about the social enterprise
I found it might cause at some point

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point in the conversation. But one
of the impulses to create that was to

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find a way to multiply my own
impact one thousandfold. And so collaborative advantage,

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I think is something that we can
use to create new initiatives at any

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scale. It's certainly not just for
large organizations, but the outside in framework,

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as you say, is a tool
to grow any business of any size,

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in any sector. And the first
step is the most crucial and the

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most fundamental, and as you suggest, it relates to purpose. The step

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is finding common purpose. And I
propose that if we accept the premise that

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our primary value creators are our customers, then it makes sense to find common

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purpose by beginning not with our organization
or purpose, but with their purpose,

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and making that common by unifying around
that purpose. So this can come from

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asking ourselves or from moving away from
competitive questions such as what do we do

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best as a business and towards collaborative
questions such as what do we enable people

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to do better? So just to
bring that to life with an example that

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we all know and almost certainly have
all used at some point, if not

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on a very regular basis, Amazon. When Amazon launched the first online bookstore,

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in a sense, they subverted the
conventional competitive model of a shop,

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which is I have stuff and I
try to sell you my stuff better than

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the shop next door, and instead
they replace that with the collaborative proposition I'm

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here to enable you to choose.
I don't mind what you choose. If

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I don't have it, I'll find
a way to get it to you.

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And that collaborative premise is at the
heart of their business model, at the

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heart of their now over two hundred
thousand global retail partnerships to this day.

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And so Step one is unique in
that it's about making a fundamental switch away

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from seeing our business as a deliverer
of change and towards seeing our business or

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our organization as an enabler of change. And that switch changes the nature of

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the business that we're in and how
we see it and can open the door

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to different paths of growth. As
a result, I want you to know,

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Paul, that I have changed the
way I language, how I talk

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about what I do be precisely because
of what you just said. I no

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longer say that I'm delivering something.
I'm enabling something in people. And I

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want to thank you for contributing that
to my world. Thank you. That's

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beautiful. Yeah, it is beautiful. Okay. So that's step one,

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finding common purpose. Step two is
creating opportunities. So once you've defined and

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the purpose that you're seeking to enable, the next step, as you say,

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is to create the right opportunities for
people to pursue that purpose. So

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step two is about making our whole
innovation program more useful to people pursuing that

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activity or that purpose. And so
that can be about putting powerful cooperation enabling

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ideas at the heart of our customer
value propositions, at the heart of our

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value creation process itself and who we
work with to create that value. It

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can be about putting them at the
heart of our business models or our forms

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of service delivery or customer support.
Maybe just to give one example of it

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being at the heart of a customer
value proposition, let's take gyms for example.

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So you might say that the typical
gym is not necessarily on the side

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of its members, because often gyms
are quite happy if we become a member

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of the gym, but we know
a turn up. In fact, it

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leaves them quite profitable. One chain
of gyms in the Netherlands decided to be

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much more on the side of its
customers and develop the proposition train more pay

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less. So they have a monthly
subscription and every time you go into train,

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they take one, in their case
euro of that month's subscription price.

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To the point where literally, if
you were to go in every day,

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you would train for free. And
by demonstrating that they're really on the side

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of their customers in getting into shape, they've won the trust and love of

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their customers. They've expanded right across
the Netherlands. They're now expanding into the

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countries around the Netherlands, and of
course having earned their customers trust, they

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can also supply them with other valuable
products and services and really grow that movement

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of creating change through fitness. That's
beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, I

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really appreciate that the examples really help
us get get access to these ideas.

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Paul. The Amazon example just really
the way you distinguish that and open that

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force is gorgeous and I didn't as
a person who's about to go to the

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gym later on today, it made
me think about the idea of how to

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really be on the side of customers
in a very different way. So step

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three then is engage participation. So
that is a lot to do with designing

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an environment which is conducive to the
particular purpose that you're enabling. And in

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the book, one of the things
I look at is the concept of extended

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cognition, which implies that our choices
and decisions are so heavily influenced by the

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context and the environment in which we
take them that it is almost as if

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our choices are structured in our environment
more than they are structured inside our own

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minds. And so I would suggest, for example, that's why it's very

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difficult to judge people from history in
the light of our contemporary values, because

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it is very difficult for us to
know how we would have behaved and what

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decisions we would have taken if we'd
been in their shoes at the time.

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And so step three can be about
making sometimes big, sometimes subtle changes to

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our physical environment, our social environment, the environment inside the business or organization,

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or the external environment in which we're
operating, which are conducive to the

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purpose we're supporting. So g one
example is you suggest that's quite fun.

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From the book, there is an
example of a wine shop that was able

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to sell more bottles of French wine
simply by putting French music on in the

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background. And one of the things
that was quite intriguing about that is that

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it worked especially well on the customers
who, when leaving the shop and were

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asked about the music replied that they
could swear that it wasn't playing when they

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were in there. Delightful. And
you know what I'm also getting here,

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Paul, which is so beautiful.
I'm really getting the threads, the interconnected

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threads of what you're describing and going
back to what you said before about how

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the ideas maybe even emerged from your
experience of meditating and then being a marketer,

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and I'm starting to see all the
interconnectivity of what you're distinguishing for us,

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and it's almost overwhelming, but beautiful. Thank you. I think it

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has emerged into a worldview that has
certainly enhanced my own agency in being able

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to help people build ambitious solutions to
complex problems. And I think another point

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that comes out of your observation is
that this is a very organic process.

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So the steps that I'm taking you
through are five steps of outside but in

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reality, we can pull on any
of those steps simultaneously, and it may

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not just be a linear process.
It may be a more organic process that

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I'm simplifying by showing it in the
form of five steps. And to that

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point, Paul, I absolutely do
want to acknowledge one of the things that

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really stunned me about your book is
that you have boiled down to something that's

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something that is very very large and
beautiful and enveloping into something that we can

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digest, we can get our arms
around. And what I know, because

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I've done a little bit of writing, is that it really takes something and

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to be able to produce something that's
that clear, to let us into that

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space where we can distinguish it and
see it for ourselves, really takes,

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frankly a brilliant writer. And I
want to acknowledge you for that beautiful contribution.

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Well, that means a huge amount
to me because in writing the book,

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for me, the most important act
of collaborative advantage was the collaborative advantage

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between me and the reader. You
know, the purpose of the book isn't

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to provide a great book. The
purpose of the book is to make it

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easier for you to take advantage of
and use and creating your own way the

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best of anything that my experience so
far can offer. And what you said

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before and you did, and what
you said before about enabling people to forget

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exactly how you said it was beautiful
to unleash their ambitious motivations. I forget

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how you said that, right,
don't That's what I'm up to is I

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want to be able to enable more
people to be able to discover and express

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their purpose into the world. So
that makes a difference the way that they

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want to and for you to be
able to give us something that enables us

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to be able to do that in
a bigger way, I'm so grateful to

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be able to share that with my
listeners. Thank you. So with that

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step four, iterate and accelerate.
So that step is about mainstreaming the purpose

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that we're enabling, and that comes
from working with our early adopters and strongest

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supporters, looking at how they behave
in practice as opposed to what they say

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they'll do, what we think they'll
do, or what classical economics tells us

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they should do, adapting to their
needs as a result, and also using

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their powerful influence to reach a broader
mainstream of customers or stakeholders. So to

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give one example, when Netflix launched, they had a queue system which was

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not very successful, and it turns
out the reason for that is that we

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are more aspirational for our future selves
than for our current selves. So we

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might come from home home from work
feeling tired and think to ourselves, next

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week, what's Richard the Third?
But for tonight Lucy will do. And

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then of course we get home from
work next week and we're scratching our heads

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and thinking no. Come to think
of it, I also had quite a

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hard day to day, so maybe
I'm not quite ready for Richard the Third,

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And so that's why Netflix switched to
the system of showing you what other

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people who also liked Lucy then went
on to watch. In practice, that's

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fascinating, that's very fascinating, and
I do certainly we know of many organizations

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when we think about them, that
maybe came into the market with one idea

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and realized that's not what people really
want. And if we can be present

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to and adapt to what we're hearing
from their feedback, and as you say,

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partner with them, collaborate with them, it can produce a whole different

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set of offerings. And how exciting
is that? Absolutely? And one point,

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by the way, since since you
raise it using their influence, often

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the value of a break and people
think of a brand as something that you

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can choose and that's its value,
I would say that brands also play perhaps

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a more valuable role not so much
in enabling us to choose, but enabling

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us to reveal our choices to each
other. That's more valuable for us because

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a lot of our choices fundamentally are
influenced by how we wish to appear to

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and engage with the people around us. And it's also more valuable to the

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brand manufacturers because perceived usage for a
species as socialist humans is actually a far

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greater influence over us than advertising or
formal recommendations or anything of the sort.

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And that also really goes to what
you do beautiful in the book, Paul,

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in terms of really just helping us
distinguish for ourselves as human beings,

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just how much we are in the
driver's seat of our life and are it

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gives us something to stand from,
to be able to, as you say,

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help us understand our choices versus feeling
like maybe they've been foisted upon us.

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Yes, absolutely absolutely, And that
takes us back to human agency.

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Yes, exactly where I was going. And so if we can before the

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break, would you distinguish for us
your step five build partnerships. So that

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is about helping us to scale further
and faster than we could alone. You

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know, when I was writing the
book, I came across a wonderful line

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from Antwinder sentig Zupere, who wrote
that the perfect partnership is based not on

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looking at each other, but on
looking in the same direction. And so

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three ingredients I suggest in the book
for great partnerships are first of all,

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a good shared understanding of the end
user purpose you're enabling. Secondly, a

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good alignment of the interests of the
organizations around that purpose, and thirdly,

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as a result, the ability to
adapt over time. And in the book,

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I look at different categories of partnership, ranging from what you might call

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partnerships of unlikely bedfellows, where very
different organizations come together free from competitive instincts,

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right through to what you might call
marriages of convenience, where businesses come

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together who, in other circumstances might
not be particularly concerned by each other's prosperity,

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but where they recognize that only by
working together can they achieve sufficient scale

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in some way too best enable that
inducer purpose. When I hear that,

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and I know we're going to talk
about this a little bit later, I

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just think about all the possibilities of
really addressing those big, hairy problems in

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the world that really we do need
all of us to come together to be

409
00:34:45.159 --> 00:34:49.599
able to address and it just it
opens a whole different space. Poll It's

410
00:34:49.199 --> 00:34:52.559
it's like it's almost as if you
know, it's like you're turning your head

411
00:34:52.639 --> 00:34:57.519
upside down in terms of how you
see the world. And I just I

412
00:34:57.519 --> 00:35:00.920
feel like it gives us such a
different space to be able to see opportunity

413
00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:06.119
and even ourselves in the world and
how we dance with it. Yes,

414
00:35:07.440 --> 00:35:13.519
some of the inspiration for outside in
actually came from having coffee opposite the Saintre

415
00:35:13.599 --> 00:35:17.639
George Pompidoux at a time when I
was in Paris, and so that building,

416
00:35:17.840 --> 00:35:24.039
in case people are familiar with it, it takes the structural and functional

417
00:35:24.079 --> 00:35:29.880
aspects of the building, the escalators, the air ducts and so on,

418
00:35:30.760 --> 00:35:32.679
that would normally be hidden a way
inside, and it puts them on the

419
00:35:32.719 --> 00:35:38.639
outside of the building. And it
struck me that that was a good visual

420
00:35:38.679 --> 00:35:44.960
metaphor for how things like open innovation
work. But then it struck me that

421
00:35:45.039 --> 00:35:49.280
actually we need to go further than
that. It's not good enough to simply

422
00:35:49.320 --> 00:35:53.159
put the insides of a business on
the outside. The greatest value can be

423
00:35:53.239 --> 00:35:58.880
created by starting with the value that's
created in the whole wide world around us,

424
00:35:59.320 --> 00:36:01.760
and then finding the right way to
work with and through that value from

425
00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:07.320
within the business. And that was
the more anecdotal inspiration behind the outside in

426
00:36:07.400 --> 00:36:13.320
framework. I would love to live
inside that beautiful mind of yours, Paul.

427
00:36:13.559 --> 00:36:15.840
And with that, let's grab our
last break. I'm Alice Cortez,

428
00:36:15.880 --> 00:36:17.960
your host. We are on the
air with Paul Skinner, who is the

429
00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:22.719
author of Collaborative Advantage, How Collaboration
Beats Competition as a strategy for success.

430
00:36:23.119 --> 00:36:27.480
He joins today from London, England. We've been talking about his outside in

431
00:36:27.559 --> 00:36:30.760
framework. After the break, we're
going to talk about how he applies this

432
00:36:30.480 --> 00:36:34.199
idea into his own life and his
work. Stay with us, we'll be

433
00:36:34.320 --> 00:36:45.880
right back. Alice Cortez is a
speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She

434
00:36:46.000 --> 00:36:52.840
designs and delivers professional development, leadership
and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise

435
00:36:52.880 --> 00:36:57.639
to your organization. She will help
ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will

436
00:36:57.639 --> 00:37:01.719
increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite Elise

437
00:37:01.800 --> 00:37:07.519
to speak to your organization, please
visit her at www dot Elisecortes dot com.

438
00:37:07.639 --> 00:37:13.079
She would welcome the opportunity to help
get your employees working on purpose.

439
00:37:17.519 --> 00:37:22.519
This is working on Purpose with elease
Cortes. To reach our program today,

440
00:37:22.760 --> 00:37:30.760
send an email to a lease Alise
at Aleasecortes dot com. Now back to

441
00:37:30.960 --> 00:37:35.679
working on purpose. Thanks risting with
us, and welcome back to working on

442
00:37:35.760 --> 00:37:37.719
purpose if you're just tuning in.
My guest is Paul Skinner. He's the

443
00:37:37.760 --> 00:37:43.239
author of Collaborative Advantage, How Collaboration
Beats competition as a strategy for success.

444
00:37:43.639 --> 00:37:46.079
He is the founder of the Agency
of the Future, which helps clients create

445
00:37:46.119 --> 00:37:51.280
collaborative advantage to drive organizational success.
And he is also the founder of the

446
00:37:51.280 --> 00:37:54.760
social enterprise Pimp My Cause, which
brings together marketers and good causes to create

447
00:37:54.880 --> 00:38:00.840
print, transformational pro bono projects for
social good I'm your host, Elise Corte.

448
00:38:00.239 --> 00:38:04.760
So for this last section or segment, Paul, I really wanted to

449
00:38:04.840 --> 00:38:07.199
talk about really how you bring this
into the world, how this shows up

450
00:38:07.239 --> 00:38:10.639
for you, and how you express
it. So we've talked about the two

451
00:38:10.639 --> 00:38:14.119
things that you're up to there,
but I want to understand and help our

452
00:38:14.119 --> 00:38:17.039
listeners understand what does your work mean
to you personally, and how do you

453
00:38:17.119 --> 00:38:22.280
understand your own purpose? Well,
I mean in a sense that takes us

454
00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:27.840
back to the whole concept of Vada
leader and finding a way to become bigger

455
00:38:27.840 --> 00:38:31.400
than myself. You know, it's
quite interesting. I guess few people would

456
00:38:32.320 --> 00:38:40.159
readily associate the notions of marketing and
vocation. But collaborative advantage has been a

457
00:38:40.199 --> 00:38:49.280
way for me to turn marketing into
my vocation and to make it something more

458
00:38:49.400 --> 00:38:53.840
useful to myself and others than it
might otherwise have been. In a sense,

459
00:38:55.440 --> 00:39:01.119
marketing is to collaborative advantage what finance
was to compareative advantage, and so

460
00:39:01.159 --> 00:39:08.679
it's a way of making the tools
of my own profession as useful and valuable

461
00:39:08.760 --> 00:39:13.599
to the world around me as I'm
able to. And so in that sense,

462
00:39:13.639 --> 00:39:20.559
it has become a real vocation for
me. You know what's beautiful about

463
00:39:20.559 --> 00:39:22.920
that is I really appreciate so much
then, all of your language and what

464
00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:28.119
you just said about really making a
difference to and being of service to others.

465
00:39:28.119 --> 00:39:31.440
How can I be of greater service
to other people? What I've learned

466
00:39:31.480 --> 00:39:35.000
in the work that I do,
Paul, is that I meet so many

467
00:39:35.039 --> 00:39:38.320
people they ache to matter that's what
they're aching for is to make a difference

468
00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:42.719
in the world. And what I
so appreciate about finding you and reading your

469
00:39:42.719 --> 00:39:47.920
book is that you're giving people access
to do that. Yes, that's exactly

470
00:39:47.960 --> 00:39:54.000
my intention. Collaborative advantage has to
begin by having an idea that is bigger

471
00:39:54.039 --> 00:40:00.280
than yourself. And I think one
of the limitations of competitive advantage, a

472
00:40:00.280 --> 00:40:04.960
strategy that is led by finance is
that if it doesn't have that bigger picture

473
00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.920
to fit into, it becomes too
inward looking, it becomes too self serving,

474
00:40:10.480 --> 00:40:15.840
and of course, ultimately that means
it fails to attract the level of

475
00:40:15.880 --> 00:40:22.159
support that it might otherwise have achieved. So collaborative advantage is not an altruistic

476
00:40:22.239 --> 00:40:29.840
approach to strategy. It's I hope, an enlightened approach to strategy which recognizes

477
00:40:30.360 --> 00:40:37.920
that it's about creating the best possible
connection between you, your business, and

478
00:40:37.960 --> 00:40:43.039
the world around you. Beautiful beautifully
said too. And to that end,

479
00:40:43.079 --> 00:40:45.000
we have just a little bit of
time left, I want to make sure

480
00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:47.599
that we share with our listeners what
you're doing at the Agency of the Future

481
00:40:47.639 --> 00:40:53.559
and how you're using collaborative advantage through
that. So the Agency of the Future

482
00:40:53.639 --> 00:40:59.159
is all about collaborative advantage. So
it's through the Agency of the Future that

483
00:40:59.239 --> 00:41:06.920
I help organizations to grow more quickly, to achieve their goals more ambitiously,

484
00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:10.320
perhaps to set more ambitious goals in
the first place to achieve And so it's

485
00:41:10.440 --> 00:41:15.840
absolutely symbiotic with the book, and
the ideas in the book have been developed

486
00:41:15.239 --> 00:41:20.239
through my own practice at the Agency
of the Future, and in a sense,

487
00:41:20.320 --> 00:41:24.920
the book makes those ideas accessible for
the first time to a much broader

488
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:30.920
audience, as well as hopefully playing
a role in reaching some members of that

489
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:35.000
broader audience that would also like to
come back to the Agency of the Future

490
00:41:35.079 --> 00:41:40.199
to accelerate their approaches to gross Through
the Agency of the Future, we help

491
00:41:40.400 --> 00:41:45.719
clients tackle all sorts of problems.
We've worked with recently with a world leading

492
00:41:45.719 --> 00:41:51.360
renewable energy business on how to power
greater positive change in the world. We've

493
00:41:51.400 --> 00:41:58.679
worked with institutions of international governance on
how to enable more collaborative and more society

494
00:41:58.960 --> 00:42:06.239
wide approaches to dealing with disasters and
complex emergencies. We've worked at looking to

495
00:42:06.360 --> 00:42:12.800
explore how to better adapt to the
needs and the agency of aging populations and

496
00:42:12.840 --> 00:42:20.639
so on. So collaborative advantage I've
discovered to be really useful to any organization

497
00:42:21.000 --> 00:42:24.679
of any size in any sector.
You know, Paul, one of the

498
00:42:24.679 --> 00:42:29.360
things that I say when I'm out
speaking is I often will open my talk

499
00:42:29.519 --> 00:42:32.239
with and ask the audience one question, and that is, what will you

500
00:42:32.320 --> 00:42:37.599
do with your one precious life?
And it strikes me that you are doing

501
00:42:37.920 --> 00:42:43.280
magnificent things with your one precious life, and you're helping others do the same.

502
00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:50.360
I think that's one of the kindest
things anyone's ever said to me.

503
00:42:52.679 --> 00:42:54.800
Oh, you're going to make me
cry. It's good though, I'm good.

504
00:42:54.800 --> 00:43:00.400
I'm fine. Beautiful, it's beautiful. So to the to that in

505
00:43:00.800 --> 00:43:05.159
let's hear about this beautiful social enterprise, pimp my cause. Talk again about

506
00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:10.639
duplicating yourself over and over again and
making a difference. Yeah, and I

507
00:43:10.679 --> 00:43:15.239
really want to relate that since you've
really picked up on this idea of human

508
00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:20.039
agency, and to find a way
to circle back to that. So my

509
00:43:20.119 --> 00:43:24.360
cause came from the fact that I
had enjoyed offering my marketing skills to particular

510
00:43:24.480 --> 00:43:30.920
charities and social enterprises that I believe
in, and I found first of all

511
00:43:30.960 --> 00:43:34.400
that that was both useful for them
and very rewarding and useful for me.

512
00:43:34.519 --> 00:43:38.719
It enabled me to diversify my experience, to try out new roles, to

513
00:43:38.840 --> 00:43:45.360
increase my influence, to find out
more about particular subjects that really interested me,

514
00:43:45.239 --> 00:43:49.239
and that most of my opportunities to
do that had come about in quite

515
00:43:49.400 --> 00:43:53.159
random ways. So I wondered if
there would be a way to essentially multiply

516
00:43:53.239 --> 00:44:00.000
my own impact one thousand fold by
making those kind of opportunities more systematically available

517
00:44:00.039 --> 00:44:04.599
across the marketing profession as a whole. So that's why we created my Cause,

518
00:44:04.760 --> 00:44:09.360
which works rather like the online dating
of pro bono marketing, and which

519
00:44:09.400 --> 00:44:15.760
connects professional marketers with charities and social
enterprises that they can support with their marketing

520
00:44:15.840 --> 00:44:22.199
talent and enhance their own marketing capabilities
in the process. And we also run

521
00:44:22.440 --> 00:44:30.719
talent development programs where we coach whole
brand teams for blue chip marketing teams by

522
00:44:30.760 --> 00:44:37.920
giving them live charity briefs that relate
to their particular talent development priorities and coaching

523
00:44:37.000 --> 00:44:43.679
them through those briefs in a way
that they create marketing resources that are transformational

524
00:44:44.159 --> 00:44:47.519
for a whole range of charities and
social enterprises, so that creates a positive

525
00:44:47.599 --> 00:44:53.679
legacy and which really gives them an
opportunity to develop a new level of leadership

526
00:44:53.719 --> 00:44:59.400
and capability in their own marketing as
a process. And I just want just

527
00:44:59.480 --> 00:45:05.119
thinking to relate that to human agency
because it had struck me a few weeks

528
00:45:05.119 --> 00:45:09.159
ago. Something that is going to
sound very negative, that the two and

529
00:45:09.199 --> 00:45:15.960
a half thousand charities we support don't
improve people's lives, that our marketers don't

530
00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:22.559
improve our causes, and that our
talent development programs don't improve our marketing,

531
00:45:22.639 --> 00:45:27.880
but that actually these are three very
good things, because first of all,

532
00:45:28.239 --> 00:45:32.360
by and large, most of our
causes are not so much improving their beneficiaries'

533
00:45:32.440 --> 00:45:37.360
lives as doing something much better than
that, which is to create a context

534
00:45:37.440 --> 00:45:44.159
or provide particular types of support that
empower them to improve their own lives.

535
00:45:45.199 --> 00:45:49.519
And that's so important because that distinction
gets to the heart of how they unlock

536
00:45:50.079 --> 00:45:55.039
not a one off change, but
a self perpetuating change. And then,

537
00:45:55.079 --> 00:46:00.719
of course, our marketers and the
course of our programs don't have time to

538
00:46:00.880 --> 00:46:07.119
change their charity partner's fortunes, but
they do have the time and opportunity to

539
00:46:07.280 --> 00:46:14.519
create valuable marketing resources with them that
the cause leaders can use to enhance their

540
00:46:14.559 --> 00:46:19.079
own outcomes for months and often for
years to come. And many charities will

541
00:46:19.079 --> 00:46:22.119
say that the reason they still exist
as an organization is because they've participated in

542
00:46:22.159 --> 00:46:28.199
these programs and had that support.
And then for the marketers participating in these

543
00:46:28.239 --> 00:46:31.239
talent development programs, you know,
marketing is one of those things where you

544
00:46:31.320 --> 00:46:37.079
gain advantage not just from doing better
marketing, but from having a better and

545
00:46:37.119 --> 00:46:40.000
a better idea about what marketing is
and what it can be used to achieve

546
00:46:40.079 --> 00:46:45.199
in the first place. And our
programs often create a space for our marketers

547
00:46:45.239 --> 00:46:52.320
to tell themselves an upgraded story about
who they are, what they can achieve,

548
00:46:52.400 --> 00:46:58.079
and what the people around them can
achieve. And often that experience will

549
00:46:58.119 --> 00:47:04.400
stay with them and it's the development
of their career through many levels of promotion

550
00:47:04.599 --> 00:47:10.400
to come. Paul, that so
elevates any one of us who are listening

551
00:47:10.480 --> 00:47:15.400
to that what you've done here and
it's so beautiful and what you're what you're

552
00:47:15.400 --> 00:47:21.400
explaining to us is really what my
experience is is you have empowered me and

553
00:47:21.559 --> 00:47:24.000
enabled me to see who I can
become in this world and what I can

554
00:47:24.119 --> 00:47:29.320
what I can accomplish with a whole
new set of eyes, and you have

555
00:47:29.519 --> 00:47:32.119
contributed to me greatly because of that, and I believe absolutely to our listeners

556
00:47:32.119 --> 00:47:37.960
as well. Thank you, thanks, thank you. So with in our

557
00:47:38.000 --> 00:47:42.119
final little bit of time here,
what would you like to leave our listeners

558
00:47:42.159 --> 00:47:47.920
with, HM, Well, so
I've listened to your show many times,

559
00:47:49.599 --> 00:47:53.400
and so each episode I found very
inspiring. So that means that your listeners

560
00:47:53.440 --> 00:47:58.679
so DEFECTO must if they've been listening
to your show be very inspired people,

561
00:47:59.559 --> 00:48:02.719
and so they no doubt all have
their own changes that they're working on.

562
00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.599
A lot of people have enjoyed Gandhi's
advice to be the change that you want

563
00:48:09.599 --> 00:48:14.480
to see in the world. But
I think something that really fits with the

564
00:48:14.480 --> 00:48:20.920
themes that you've picked up on in
our conversation is that perhaps with collaborative advantage,

565
00:48:20.960 --> 00:48:27.719
we have the opportunity to deploy an
even more ambitious version of that technique

566
00:48:28.039 --> 00:48:30.880
in terms of not just being the
change that we want to see in the

567
00:48:30.920 --> 00:48:35.400
world, but enabling the change we
want to see in the world, and

568
00:48:35.440 --> 00:48:39.880
to do so at scale. And
of course, since I'm a proponent of

569
00:48:39.880 --> 00:48:44.480
collaborative advantage, I just don't just
want to give a final message to your

570
00:48:44.519 --> 00:48:47.840
listeners I'd also love to hear one
back. So I'm sure many of your

571
00:48:47.880 --> 00:48:52.679
listeners are working on their own examples
of collaborative advantage, and I would love

572
00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:57.960
to hear about them. I'd love
to hear about what they're achieving, what

573
00:48:58.000 --> 00:49:01.519
obstacles they're going up against, they're
overcoming those challenges, and so on.

574
00:49:02.440 --> 00:49:07.599
And maybe the next time I'm talking
about collaborative advantage, I'll be using the

575
00:49:07.639 --> 00:49:12.119
example of one of your listeners.
Brilliant. I absolutely invite the same.

576
00:49:12.159 --> 00:49:15.639
I would love to be inspired by
hearing what art listeners are up to in

577
00:49:15.679 --> 00:49:19.079
the world. And with that,
Paul, thank you so much for showing

578
00:49:19.320 --> 00:49:22.679
for sharing your beautiful gift of yourself
with us. I have gotten so much

579
00:49:22.679 --> 00:49:25.480
from reading your book and being in
conversation with you, and I look forward

580
00:49:25.480 --> 00:49:30.760
to further collaborative advantage conversations with you. Thank you, Elise. If you

581
00:49:30.760 --> 00:49:35.920
want to learn more about Paul his
book Collaborative Advantage, how collaboration beats competition

582
00:49:36.079 --> 00:49:38.760
as a strategy for success, or
his work in the Agency of the Future,

583
00:49:38.840 --> 00:49:42.719
or what he's up to a pimp
my cause, start by visiting the

584
00:49:42.920 --> 00:49:46.800
aoftheo dot com. So really,
it's T T h E A O F

585
00:49:47.000 --> 00:49:51.239
dot com the A of O excuse
me? That is that right, Paul,

586
00:49:51.960 --> 00:49:57.000
the aof SO taof dot com.
I'm also on Twitter I Paul Skinner

587
00:49:57.559 --> 00:50:01.360
and people can find print my Cause
at PRIP My Cause wonderful. Thank you,

588
00:50:01.440 --> 00:50:10.400
Paul, My pleasure. We hope
you've enjoyed this week's program. Be

589
00:50:10.519 --> 00:50:15.079
sure to tune in to Working on
Purpose, featuring your host Alis Cortes,

590
00:50:15.360 --> 00:50:21.480
each week on the Voice America Empowerment
channel. This week, find your life's

591
00:50:21.480 --> 00:50:42.400
purpose at work.