Our CEO purchased six sets of Conversant's High-Performance Collaboration tapes and gave one to each of the senior managers for Christmas.

I listened to the tapes and felt they addressed some core challenges we have at Datalight. As a result, I proposed a program in which we invited everyone in the company who wished to participate in a lunch discussion of the material. We buy lunch for people and have 16 or so people each week, out of a staff of 25 people.

We have now listened to nine of the ten Laws of High-Performance Collaboration. Our meeting format is to spend the first ten minutes of the meeting asking anyone if they saw the last law we discussed in action. Then we listen to the next law, followed by a 15-minute, or so, discussion of what we heard and how it may apply.

At the third meeting I made the statement that I am committed to understanding and applying the Laws of High-Performance Collaboration at Datalight. I invited people, if they noticed me behaving in a way contrary to these laws, to please call my attention to the behavior so that I could have a chance to adjust my actions. Our president made the same commitment. (This was not a planned event.)

A week later one of our engineers (a pretty quiet guy) expressed to me that he felt that he also wanted to be held accountable to helping to make Datalight a High-Performance collaboration company. Since he is not the kind of person to stand up and make such a statement, I created a High-Performance Collaboration Commitment piece of paper which had our logo and copies of both sides of the card that comes with the tapes listing the ten laws and the Conversation Meter.

Also it included the following: 'I am committed to making Datalight a High-Performance Collaboration Team. As such, I would like to be made aware when I operate outside of the laws of High-Performance collaboration.' I passed these out last meeting and asked that if people chose to abide by the commitment they could place them on their doors, or windows showing their commitment. Since then I've noticed about 12 or so of these posted.

Over the last few weeks, the same engineer I mentioned earlier has dropped by my office a couple of times to 'get clear about some things' meaning he was hearing rumors about issues in the company and rather than treat those as 'truth' he took it open himself to get the real story. This is a fundamental change in behavior for our company which has historically gossiped, and never bothered to check with the people involved to get the facts. Also, some of the more quiet people in the company have started to share their opinions in our lunch discussions.

After the tenth law we will take a week break from our lunches, as many of us are going to our a tradeshow exhibition next week. The following week we will meet again to explore with people what they believe the next steps ought to be toward re-forming Datalight based upon the concepts presented in your material.

Personally, I have found the material to be profound. My take is that it presents a fundamental look at how humans ought interact without moving into some of the more touchy-feely realms. The manner in which the material is presented is excellent. I have listened to the tapes three times since December and expect it will take several more listens and discussion before I personally change my own behaviors. I remain very hopeful.

Thanks for your note and please pass my thanks to all at Conversant who made this material available."

— David Cloutier Physical Operations Manager and Director, Marketing and Sales Datalight, Inc.

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