The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together | 
| Author: Twyla Tharp
Creator: Jesse Kornbluth
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
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Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 123450
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 160
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 1416576509
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.13
EAN: 9781416576501
ASIN: 1416576509
Publication Date: November 24, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Face it, "team" has become an overused, overdone, even overwhelming business word--formalized in sports and extended to the predominantly male corporate world. Yet running as undertones throughout this latest contribution from world-famed choreographer and author Tharp (Push Comes to Shove 1993 and The Creative Habit 2006), is the sense that it's more than time for a kinder, gentler, and wiser take on working together. In 2009 and beyond, that word is "collaboration"; writing primarily from the arts perspective, she weaves stories in and out of her points, as in collaboration should be a challenge and change, vis-à-vis her partnership with Mikhail Baryshnikov; or underscoring how to collaborate with a community is her tale of creating two ballets for the Pacific. Every chapter also features a collaborator or two, highlighting lessons to learn and listen to, from Duke's longtime basketball coach Mike Kryzyzewski to scientists Marie and Pierre Curie. If collaboration, as Tharp claims, is truly the buzzword of the millennium, then consider her as standard-bearer, motivator, and philosopher. --Barbara Jacobs
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| Customer Reviews:
 Collaboration Skills for 21st Century Success December 4, 2009
Larry Underwood (Scottsdale, AZ)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
From politicians who embrace transparency to progressive CEOs who value employee engagement, it's clear their success is driven by their proficiency at getting others to "buy in" to what they're "selling"; and what they're selling is "trust". By building enough trust, they can usually achieve their goals with a great deal of mutual collaboration. Both parties win when the collaborative process goes smoothly; of course, when it doesn't, the results are rarely favorable.
Twyla Tharp certainly understands this, and has compiled this highly engaging book detailing her personal collaborative experiences. Although most of those experiences have been successful, she's quick to point out some of her less than stellar moments, with her spin on why things didn't go as planned. Her approach is refreshingly candid without blaming others for the problems; like any good collaboration, egos are kept in check. Results are much more favorable when the parties can communicate openly, with no hidden agendas.
This is a most enlightening perspective from an extremely successful person, who's built an entire career on making the most of her collaborative efforts. In this day and age of instant information, practically everyone needs to learn the skills of making collaboration a good habit; one you'd never want to break. Going it alone just won't fly these days.
What is it like to collaborate with a genius? Bracing. Exciting. November 24, 2009
Jesse Kornbluth (New York)
14 out of 24 found this review helpful
The first time I took the elevator to Twyla Tharp's penthouse was a grey, chilly morning in early April. We sat in her minimalist office that overlooked a terrace that overlooked Central Park, but when you're in a room with Twyla Tharp, it's hard to notice anything else.
To say she can be intimidating is to understate.
Her features are sharp, her hair is no-nonsense white, her glasses are oversized and round. Somewhere below her neck is a small, taut body, and a white shirt and loose jeans, but none of that matters. Only her gaze does, and it was focused on this newcomer with curiosity and skepticism.
I thought: I am not worthy.
I'm surely not the first to think that. Tharp revolutionized dance with her insistence that classical ballet and modern movement need not be antagonists, and over a 40-year career, she's explored that breakthrough idea in a dizzying catalogue of greatest hits. She's choreographed movies. She's had a Broadway hit. She was anointed with a MacArthur Fellowship, the one that certifies you as a "genius". And she's written two books. One is an autobiography,"Push Comes to Shove". The other, "The Creative Habit; Learn It and Use It for Life", is a surprise --- a wise guide for the general reader about harnessing your personal creativity.
It was a book that brought us together. Her new one, "The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together", would be published by Simon & Schuster in November. She'd written enough for several volumes, and would, in time, surely have been able to carve a book out of it. But she was also embarking on a new show --- "Come Fly With Me", a night of dance built around Frank Sinatra songs --- and her time was tight. If the book was to be published on schedule, someone was needed to help her get to the book's finish line.
I have done this work before, with mixed results. In 1986, I collaborated with Roger Enrico, then the CEO of Pepsi Cola. He worked as hard as I did, all the while running a giant company; all these years later, we still get royalties. Less happy was my experience with Kelsey Grammer. I was hired to write his memoir just six weeks before an inflexible deadline; Grammer gave me little time or guidance, and I succeeded only in turning a total disaster into a mere failure.
If I was skittish about signing on to a new collaboration, I had an additional reason --- Twyla Tharp has a reputation as an artist who finds even perfection inadequate; it was easier to picture her as an autocrat than as a collaborator. But I didn't sense that at our first meeting. She grilled me about Balzac, Tolstoy and Proust; I parried to the best of my ability, painfully aware she'd practically memorized every word they'd written. After a half hour of literary tennis, I suspect we were both pleasantly surprised, she that I had read a book or three, me that that her work ethic seemed fairly reasonable.
One thing I should know, she said: She got up early, worked all day, went to bed early. She expected appointments --- ours included --- to begin a few minutes before the appointed hour: "If you're not early, you're late." I said I understood.
And so we began.
There was one table in her office --- a venerable Shaker piece that was sufficiently rare that I quickly learned to put a coaster under my water glass. This work surface was bracketed by two chairs and industrial shelving stacked with a video editing system, stereo equipment and books. Up a few steps was a large empty room: a dance studio and rehearsal space. When she didn't go to the gym --- at 69, she can still bench more weight than I can --- she danced here. It was one of the supreme perks of our time together that she sometimes showed me how the thing was done.
From time to time, I'd look outside and imagine us finishing the book in July, reading the manuscript and sipping iced tea in air-conditioned comfort as the park shimmied in the summer heat. Some days it seemed that time would never come --- Twyla Tharp could be fierce.
Not that she was ever in a grim mood. It was always, "Good morning, Miss Tharp" and "Hello, my sweet" with us --- formal manners delivered with irony and topspin. The thing was, Twyla Tharp is a one-off. She lives in the now, and she does it with a ferocity I've never encountered. I'd bring up some moment from her childhood that stunned or shocked me; she never had an emotional reaction. Stuff happens. It makes you who you are. Move on. Dazzled by her equanimity, I would.
And so we did plowed through her collaborations with Billy Joel, Jerome Robbins, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, David Byrne, Richard Avedon, Milos Forman, Norma Kamali and Frank Sinatra. This required considerable discipline, because this book, even more than its predecessor, is for general readers --- the stories are about dance, but as she often said, "Work is work." And to drive the point home, we dotted the pages with stories of great collaborators: Steve Martin, the Wright Brothers, Marie and Paul Curie. Even the baseball slugger Kirk Gibson makes an appearance.
Who wrote what? She wrote everything. No one has ever worked harder; anything I sent to her would come back marked, edited, revised, improved. Nothing I did could have made her dramatically better; my contribution was to buff and suggest, propose and try, and, on the rare occasion, shoot the moon. Throughout, she could not have been more supportive and appreciative. As her dancers know, a "very nice" from Twyla Tharp is a bit more meaningful than it is from almost anyone else.
There was only one disappointment. The final month of work on the book involved many meetings at her apartment. Only in the July heat did I learn that I wouldn't be sipping iced tea in the air-conditioned office --- because her office opens on to her dance studio, it isn't air-conditioned. Cold air may be good for writers, but it's bad for dancers.
So, with the terrace door open and the hot air blowing through, I swooned. And I sweated. My eyes smarted; the pages of the manuscript were marked with blotches. I can't remember a more physically demanding work environment. Or a more rewarding one --- I worked with a genius, and survived, and now, magically, there's a book
Brilliantly presented January 9, 2010
Paula Trujillo (Las Vegas, NV)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was on an 11 hour overseas plane ride and read this book on the way to Europe. It was sooo good and informative, that I read it again on my way home from Europe. Great for anybody that works with others in ANY capacity, whether you are a dancer, coach, doctor, law inforcement....it's all the same when working with others and understanding your role in the cooperation/collaboration process.
Amazing.
 Sorry, but I can't agree. December 13, 2009
Theresa (California)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
I was eager to own this book after hearing Ms Tharp (who I think is brilliant)interviewed on NPR. After reading the book jacket and reviews here on Amazon I even thought this book might be a good gift for my work team at our annual training. Unfortunately the book is mostly anecdotes strung together into chapter form, triple spaced in large font format; perhaps charming, but not a substantial read. I felt compelled to write a review because this is not "how-to" or a "business book" as the jacket claims and the current reviews here are somewhat misleading. Buy it if you love theater and want a slim text to adorn your coffee table but don't expect more.
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