One of the values of Xperience is humility. On this Friday’s Partner Call, Xperience CEO Chris Suarez shared insights from Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, about why that humility is SO important for collaboration and for making changes that lead to achieving massive results. 

The reason to collaborate is to experience impact that will be greater, bigger and longer lasting. So often we tell ourselves, “Gosh, it is so much easier if I just do this.” But the impact will end with that thing. 

You won’t Collaborate effectively unless you actually think you need to, and you only think you need to collaborate if you are  humble enough to understand you do not know everything. 

There are two steps to GREAT collaboration:

1. The first step in collaborating: agreeing why we are all here and what problem we are trying to solve.

2. People need to connect at a human level before they can collaborate at a high-level. Everyone is here at the same level. It doesn’t matter how successful you are, how tenured you are or what your position. We need to put everyone on the same level for a time. In the end someone may make a decision, but in the beginning everyone must feel it is their opportunity and obligation to bring everything to the table.

To make a change, humility still comes into play. Fiorina laid out behaviors and processes to make a change.

1. Start with a goal that everyone agrees with and that the problem to solve is worth trying to accomplish.

2. Ask what has to be achieved. If you have a big goal that you have never accomplished before, we are not going to achieve it with what we have always done.

3. Agree on how you are going to measure results.

4. What is the behavior we want?

5. Have a reality mindset. Is this something we care about? If yes, and we are still not solving the problem, we have to look at changing behavior.

The reason problems don’t get fixed is NOT because people don’t know what the problems are. In order to solve problems, we have to change something and people don’t love change. We are afraid of being wrong, making mistakes or hurting people’s feelings. Sometimes it is easier or feels safer to leave things alone and do the best you can with what you have. That is why leaders are needed to make the changes. 

Change comes through collaboration and collaboration only comes through humility. 

Chris reminded partners that no one joins Xperience if they didn’t want to change something. Change is why we are here. Are we willing to take the steps to do that? Absolutely! We attract people to our values and one of those key values is humility.