The saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, and I totally get the intention behind it. It’s often offered up to motivate someone to be thankful for what they have and encourage them to make the best of whatever challenging situation they are experiencing. However, I think this phrase undermines human potential, promotes mediocrity and doesn’t foster creativity and collaboration. When I hear a person say this I cringe, because this is what I hear, “Hey, this situation is all on you. If you can’t figure out that you can make lemonade with them lemons life handed you, then you are either not too bright, or you lack the basic skills to turn things around to improve your situation.” And that’s not cool.
So, this is what I propose instead: “When life gives you lemons, make lemon merengue pie”, but you can’t do it alone. During these trying times, where business is slow or nonexistent, and millions are losing their jobs, I’ve been driven to figure out how I can leverage the multidisciplinary skills of the people on our team (including a lot of zest) to collaborate with other businesses and professionals who have the other ingredients needed to make lemon merengue pie. The idea is that if we all bring to the table our assets, we can develop a strong recipe, work on it as a team, pop that baby into the oven, and enjoy the outcome (the pie) together when it’s ready to be served.
In order to do this, you have to have the following conditions:
1. There must be a pre-established relationship of trust and mutual respect between you and the people you explore opportunities with. This is the foundation – the baking pan – for the success of any collaborative project. Honesty, transparency and protecting your colleagues’ interests as if they were yours is critical. Basically, you have to feel that their interests are your interests, and vice versa.
2. You must be able to take into account the opinion, advice and weigh-in of others to adjust your approach and enhance what you are working on. Sometimes we get fixated on the way we do things or our preferences (i.e. collaborating through Zoom vs. WebEx vs. GoToMeeting vs. Skype, etc.), and when we allow ourselves to experience new things and invite people to openly share their views and expertise, we bring new ingredients into the recipe that can possibly make it so much better.
3. During the beginning of the baking session, make sure to address how the pie will be cut. Once you come together with a group of other professionals or business owners and figure out which ingredients you can each contribute to making an incredible lemon merengue pie for a prospective customer, make sure to agree on how much you will charge for the pie, and who gets what in terms of compensation before you sell it. This is the part where you confirm you are working in a true collaboration because it shouldn’t feel weird to talk about this and everyone should feel they earned their fair share.
4. Create a supportive environment where everyone feels valued, people know their roles and expectations are clearly articulated. It’s smart to name an Executive Chef and have everyone else participate as Sous Chefs. But in the end, a unified vision, defined goals and a seamless process will direct the recipe prep and execution, delivering a delicious result. While it’s important to stay in your lane, working with others requires you to step in as needed to make sure the pie doesn’t burn.
5. Don’t invite too many cooks into the kitchen. I firmly believe that when you are starting something new you shouldn’t have more than 3 – 4 people in the thick of developing the recipe, tasting it and baking the samples. Also, if you have had an unpleasant experience with someone who has amazing expertise and you admire and respect, but your styles just don’t jive together, don’t bring them into the kitchen. Ask around to find someone else who has the same ingredient this person has and that you might be more aligned with. It’s like when you bump into someone you dated years ago and decide to give it another shot, only to realize within a few days there was a reason why you had broken up with this person in the first place. Spare yourself and the rest of the team the anguish of an unhealthy dynamic.
So far, we (my team and several different collaborators) have 5 lemon merengue pies baking in separate ovens, since stay at home orders where implemented in our area 9 weeks ago. Now, I’m going to make myself a cup of coffee and wait for the timer to go off. I’m very hopeful all our pies will come out amazing. #urbander #entrepreneurship #collaborate #marketing #BusinessAsUnusual #purpose #UdoU #business
