and to support military requirements, we
learned to get comfortable in the discomfort
of relying wholeheartedly on internal and external collaboration.
Starting with a look inward, Cooley determined that there are three principles around
which we have a zero-tolerance policy:
1. Operational Safety
2. Personal Integrity
3. Corporate Collaboration
The first two points seem obvious: safe-
guarding our employees’ well-being as well
as insisting on personal integrity in business
operations big and small are paramount.
However, adopting our less obvious but
equally essential final principle of company-wide collaboration has reaped business and
personnel rewards that shocked the very
business leadership team that put these principles into place.
Inspiring the Team
The easiest way to determine if your business struggles with collabora- tion is first to evaluate your internal
communications. How do your employees in-
teract at meetings, over email, and on phone
calls? Internal communications that aren’t
face-to-face (i.e., emails) are particularly tell-
ing. If you notice negative, frustrated even
hostile inter-office messaging then you have
immediate feedback as to the deteriorated
state of collaboration at your company.
At Cooley we have silos – physical silos
that contain polymer compounds – as well
as internal silos that pertain to separate functions, business units, and departments.
Pictured below are two sets of physical silos: one set old and the other new. The rusted,
dented silos on the right are damaged as a result of old-time measurement practices, one
of which was when Cooley employees would
throw rocks at the silo to determine the remaining volume of chemicals inside. To the
left, the pristine white silos are equipped with
electronic measurement meters that evaluate
material volume without resorting to the archaic rock throwing method.
Just as Cooley no longer permits rock
throwing to evaluate our physical silos, we’ve
adopted a “no throwing rocks” culture when
working with internal, functional silos. Prior
to our collaboration transformation, negative emails would escalate to the senior lead-
MANUFACTURING
LEADERSHIP JOURNAL
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
.................... ....................
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
“The easiest way to determine if
your business struggles with
collaboration is first to evaluate your
internal communications.”
Physical silos at one of Cooley's Rhode Island manufacturing facilities.