When did the authors start collaborating?

The association began when a plant manager at Appleton Papers, Bob DeKoch, asked a young professor at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, Phil Clampitt, to conduct a communication audit. During the conversation the plant manager asked the young professor to describe a “World Class Communication System.” That was one question the new Ph.D. in organizational communication had never directly encountered in all his doctoral studies. Somehow the young professor cobbled together an acceptable answer and went on to perform a successful communication audit (after all, his major professor, Cal Downs, was one of the pioneers of the communication audit). The plant manager’s questions, though, sparked the first of many provocative conversations that ignited a collaborative relationship on various projects over the past 20 years. It is reminiscent of the Biblical proverb, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27.17 NIV)