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Team time: It has the place, the process and the technology

Collaborative Labs gives businesses and organizations the place, the process and the technology to get rolling again.

By Christina Rexrode, Times Staff Writer
Published June 25, 2007

he Collaborative Labs encourages creative problem solving with diverse meeting rooms, whiteboards for writing on almost every surface, chairs and furniture with wheels, and professional facilitators to guide the way.
	[Times photo: JULIA KUMARI DRAPKIN]

Necessity might be the mother of invention. But comfy chairs, colorful markers and smiling mediators probably help too. That's the idea behind the Collaborative Labs in Largo. When an agreement needs to be hammered out, when creative juices need a jump-start, when a sense of teamwork needs to be enlivened - that's when companies bring their employees here. The Labs opened in late 2004, the brainchild of St. Petersburg College president Carl Kuttler. Since then, about 100 clients have passed through for 200 engagements, said Andrea Henning, the executive director. The list of clients includes a number of Tampa Bay corporate powerhouses, like Honeywell, Sweetbay Supermarket, Jabil Circuit and Catalina Marketing. Henning said there are three keys to the Labs' game plan: the place, the process and the technology.

The place

The Labs are designed to help participants relax and think freely. They're part executive suite - witness the 65-inch plasma screen TVs and an unending supply of coffee - and part kindergarten classroom. The walls are painted bright colors, music (often '70s hits) plays whenever participants switch activities, and the four main rooms are named the Beach Lab, Water Lab, Tropics Lab and Forest Lab.

Every piece of furniture is on wheels, so that no one feels tied down. Every wall has multiple whiteboards, so that no idea goes undocumented. Participants are encouraged to lock up their personal belongings, to cut down on distractions.

The process

Generally, participants are divided into groups of six or eight for brainstorming. The Labs have a handful of permanent employees, all trained in arbitration, to oversee these sessions. They hire extra mediators for the larger groups.

"We don't present ourselves as the subject matter experts who will tell a client what to do, " Henning said. "They have the expertise; we facilitate their answers."

Frank Stasiowski, an independent director on the audit committee of PBS&J, said that having a disinterested third party on hand helped employees feel comfortable to speak frankly.

The facilitators, he said, also "force you to focus on what's important, and discard what isn't." For example, a facilitator might have group members come up with eight ideas on a topic, then require them to pick just two to present to everyone else.

The ban on cell phones, Stasiowski said, also helped.

The technology

Once the brainstorming ends (though Labs employees will point out that it never really ends), a software program called GroupSystems lets participants vote on the best ideas and organize them by feasibility, expense, or any other category they choose. Everyone is given an electronic response card, so they vote a la American Idol and see the tallies immediately.

David Feaster, the area president of Whitney Bank, said that the voting technology encouraged employees to vote candidly.

"If the CEO was in the room, you wouldn't want to be the one raising your hand and saying, 'This is a stupid idea, ' " he said, comparing the response cards to a less-secret ballot.

Feaster was also impressed by the documentation: The Labs promise to deliver each session's records - including minutes from brainstorming sessions, voting results and photos - by the close of the next business day. Feaster said he's been in strategy meetings where the only documentation was papers taped to the wall.

"And what happens to those things?" he said. "They get stuck in the closet."

The Labs were created for about $32-million, with funding from SPC, the county and the federal government, said Kuttler. They're expected to turn a profit next year.

A full-day session for 20 to 40 people starts at about $6, 000.

Lee Arnold, the CEO of Colliers Arnold, was so impressed by Collaborative Labs that he flew the facilitators to Las Vegas to run a planning session with 35 Colliers International owners.

It's much easier to convince workers to buy into a business plan when it's formed at the Labs, he said. The people who were there saw exactly how it evolved; the other employees can at least read about it.

"People who haven't had an opportunity to contribute to a plan, " Arnold said, "find it hard to accept."

Christina Rexrode can be reached at crexrode@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8318.

For more info

The Collaborative Labs are at the EpiCenter, a complex in Largo that houses several other resource programs for businesses, including SPC's corporate training center. Clients don't have to be businesses; nonprofit and municipal organizations also use the Collaborative Labs.

For more information, visit www.spcollege.edu/central/collaborative/

Similar settings

The Collaborative Labs aren't the first place to make the connection between funky furniture and business solutions. Among the short list of similar organizations: Catalyst Ranch in Chicago, Inspiration Point in Pittsburgh and WorkShop in Louisville. And when the Collaborative Labs were being designed, executive director Andrea Henning visited Capgemini in Chicago. But Henning says that most of the other organizations focus only on offering a collaborative environment, not facilita- tion or state of the art technology.

[Last modified June 22, 2007, 22:44:39]