Lightning Talk: Bicycle Fenders and Collaboration
Susan Rohde draws a vivid analogy between bicycle fenders and collaboration, distinguishing between "me fenders" that only keep the rider dry and "we fenders" that protect everyone in the group. She extends this metaphor to transformation teams in organizations, contrasting those narrowly focused on their own goals with teams invested in advancing the broader organization. The insight reframes collaboration not as an abstract virtue but as a practical design choice with real costs and real benefits.
In this talk, you'll learn how to recognize "me" versus "we" patterns in transformation efforts, understand why the "we" approach requires deliberate investment, and see why building that capacity ultimately benefits every team on the journey.
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Susan Rohde
So I think I'm your last lightning talk speaker, and I'm thrilled to wrap up this wonderful event.
Today I'm going to talk to you about bicycle fenders and collaboration. And I need my clicker.
Normally, I talk on transformation topics and some of the real challenging problems that are out there. But today, I'm talking to you as a bicyclist. And I've bicycled for like 30 years. How many bicyclists in the crowd?
Woohoo. Excellent, excellent.
And I own four bicycles, all of which have fenders, all of which I love, all of which have a special purpose. So for the bicyclists out there, you get my jam. You understand where I'm coming from.
I got this insight from a group of people I was bicycling with. We were riding on a very wet day, and we came across some bicyclists. The gentleman I was bicycling with pointed at this fender, and he said, "Oh my, those are me fenders. That's interesting."
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "Well, they'll keep him dry, but you're going to get wet if you ride behind him."
I thought, "That's interesting." I looked at my fenders and his fenders, and he said, "We have we fenders. Not only does it keep us dry, our backside dry, it keeps the people behind us dry."
Okay?
And it just struck me that this was such a good example of so many patterns of human behavior that you see all the time.
You drive around in life and you experience me drivers, and you experience we drivers. The me drivers, it's like their signal lights don't work. They're the people who go right to as far ahead as they can before they merge. That's their approach. They want to get home.
We drivers, they signal their turns. They very politely zipper merge. And they're really committed to this notion that we're all trying to get someplace. Let's do it with some civility and some politeness.
So now let's turn it back to transformation. I had to come back to my roots.
As you talk to transformation teams, they kind of break down, at least in my experience, to a couple different groups. You have teams you trip across, and they're really just focused on their transformation. "I've got to get this done. It's all about me. It's all about my team."
Then you find teams that are very much, "How can not only I help my team, but how can I help the organization move forward?"
Okay, back to bicycle fenders, which is where we started.
So here's the question: why doesn't everybody have we bicycle fenders? Why don't we do that?
Well, in the world of bicycling, they are more expensive, they're heavier, they're more difficult to install.
Thinking about we transformations, why aren't all teams we teams? It's like, well, it takes some capacity. It takes some time. You've got to care a little bit about all the other teams that are on this journey with you.
So here's the benefit: if we all have we fenders, we all stay dry.
If we all try to be we transformers, eventually we all get to fly.
Thank you.