28: The Importance of Bringing Collaboration into Manufacturing - with Gregg Potter

Meet Gregg Potter:He is an international collaboration coach and the founder & CEO of Project Connect. A marketing firm in Madison, Wisconsin. He has worked in the restaurant industry. As a general manager, district manager, and consultant with a good amount of time spent at Starbucks in Los Angeles. He uses his experience and training as a facilitator, a futurist, and a conflict resolution mediator to support executives and organizations as a collaboration coach. This work deconstructs collaboration and finds the best ways to lead and design the work to be more efficient and create more impactful results. He has a BFS in theatre performance from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a master’s in public service from the Clinton School of Public Service. Kris: So anyway, Gregg, what does a collaboration coach do?
Gregg: Yes, first, I need to go back to episode three of your I have to like gush a little bit of a big fan. Yes. And it's Yeah, so what you're doing is very unique, and it is bringing out strains of information that not a lot of people are talking about. So thank you. Okay, I'll go back to what is it. What is it Collaboration Coach too, essentially, it is to get collaborations, more effective and more impactful, that can be done either if we're working directly with a CEO or someone in the C suite, and having those coaching conversations of like, Okay, how did this go? Where's your ego in this, what's going on, and then the, you know, in practicing going back, while also learning my framework of collaboration, which is the lifecycle of collaboration. The other way is actually bringing a collaboration coach on as a contracted employee for a while, and working side by side as a facilitator and coach to the entire collaborative team. Okay, so that can look like facilitating meetings, while also holding the team accountable to this is work time. This is not a question-and-answer time like this is when we're trying to get this portion of the goal or the objective finished. So then we can all come back and assess where we're at. This also is leadership development, facilitation, skills development, and working conflict resolution into the culture of collaboration, which often will, you know, bleed into the company's culture. But sometimes these collaborations are multi-company or multi-organization collaborations, where then it really gets tricky, or collaborations that have collaborations in them.
Lori: So how does this tie into the manufacturing world?
Gregg: Oh, yeah. There are a few things that Collaboration Coach can specifically help with. And in the manufacturing world, there are two very big ones. One is focusing on silo mentality, and bridging the silos and the communication between silos. Kris, you and I were at dinner one night, we talked big time about the sales team and the marketing team. And, you know, and how sometimes, those two silos are not talking at all. And they are one they are like, together, they're the most important part often, of the collaboration. So definitely that, and then, um, and then increasing productivity. And that's through communication barriers. And if we can create the space, and make sure that everyone trusts and shows up authentically, then we're going to increase productivity ultimately and build a bottom line. So when it comes to manufacturing, those are the two pieces that I see the most.
Kris: So Gregg, we're curious, is there something unique about you that nobody else knows that you could share with us?
Gregg: I think the thing that people often look at as a possible weakness, which is something about me, that I love is that I really do care about how people are being held in spaces. And that shows up with you know, me pulling in integrity, like, Okay, I'm you know, is this person really Okay