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Collaboration: Fuel for High Performance
Jane Ripley, Eunice Parisi-Carew, and Ken Blanchard
Collaboration creates high performing teams and organizations. And with today’s diverse, globalized workforce, it’s crucial. Organizations that embrace a collaborative culture benefit internally from increased sales, improved innovation, and better business processes. The external benefits can include new products and services and a smoother running business that delivers higher client satisfaction and increased revenues and profitability. Additional, less tangible benefits include knowledge sharing and competence building of employees and contractors.
Collaboration Is Not Coordination, Cooperation, or Teamwork
Many people think of collaboration as being the same as coordination, cooperation, or teamwork. However, these words are not interchangeable.
Coordination is when one department or function independently completes a specific task before handing off to another department, which is then able to complete its own specific task. Neither needs the other to complete its own goal, and the outcome of the two efforts is the completion of the final goal.
Cooperation is when one party benefits from the help of another. For example, a salesman needs a product to be delivered to a client in three days to meet his sales goals and earn commission. Regular delivery takes ten days. The salesman asks the fulfillment department to expedite delivery, and the fulfillment department complies with his request.
The most common confusion is between collaboration and teamwork. Teamwork is defined as two or more people working toward the same goal. This structure is considered to be a static team; in other words, the team members are permanent. While goals may change on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, the team in essence remains the same. It is important to understand the difference between teamwork and collaboration, as teams can collaborate with one another.
Collaboration involves bringing resources from various areas together to create something better or to solve a complex problem. These resources may come from different departments, teams, or locations and may even include people from other organizations.
This kind of collaboration can save lives. For example, during the wildfires of 2003 in San Diego, the efforts of police, firefighters, and first responders were fragmented due to unaligned communication systems. In 2003, as firefighters flocked to the county from all over the west, some had only 800-megahertz radios rather than the traditional VHF radios—meaning they couldn’t talk to each other. By 2007, when the Cedar Fire hit, all the police, fire, and emergency responder agencies were equipped with VHF radios.1
Collaboration can happen even between organizations that traditionally might be thought of as competitors. In 2011, the Nature Conservancy and Dow Chemical Company partnered to demonstrate that integrating the value of nature into business decisions can lead to better business and conservation outcomes. Projects such as constructing a wetland for water recycling have proven beneficial for both nature and Dow’s bottom line.2
Creating a Collaborative Framework
Organizations that successfully collaborate focus on four key areas, which we call the Four Key Predictors of Success:
Mission, Goals, and Results: Collaboration should not be treated as something that is nice to have, something to implement only when there are no other ideas, or as a fallback position in the event of a crisis. It should be perceived as a way to ensure the organization achieves its goals and results. In other words, the organization’s mission, goals, and results are key to its enduring success—and collaboration should be deployed only when it can help meet these elements.
Culture and Values: Values shape the behaviors of an organization’s people and support the achievement of the vision and mission. If collaboration is viewed as key to an organization’s success, somewhere in the values there needs to be a reference to collaborative behaviors. If this is not explicit, they may get lost in the priorities of the organization, may not be lived, and leaders could be forgiven for not modeling them. Once leaders fail to demonstrate collaborative behaviors, others will lose their collaborative compass and will fulfill the prophecy that collaboration is time consuming and expensive.
Leadership and Empowerment: Leaders who value collaboration will generally model it and encourage their staff to build their collaboration skills. However, middle managers can struggle to encourage and embrace the value of leadership—often because they are more focused on delivering results than on the bigger picture. They might espouse the importance of mission, vision, and values but fail to model them, thus discouraging collaborative efforts of their staff. The managers’ failure to acknowledge the value of collaboration will ensure that few if any collaborative efforts will succeed—again fulfilling the prophecy that collaboration is inefficient and not cost effective. Leaders who fail to empower their staff make the lives of their people difficult. The unintended consequence of a lack of empowerment is eventually business failure on many levels: It stifles creativity and innovation and makes the delivery of customer service difficult. This can lead to poor results, which is the focus of the middle manager. Middle managers have no idea their actions are actually holding themselves and their organization back.
Empowerment of direct reports is easier said than done. In fact, we have found that empowerment is the hardest skill for leaders to adopt and for individuals to truly understand and apply appropriately. Over-supervision and under-supervision of staff by leaders are barriers that lead to inefficient collaboration. Therefore, it is incumbent on leaders to not only learn how to empower their people but ensure their staff has the appropriate training and the opportunity to use the newly acquired skills.
Systems, Structures, and Policies: Finally, systems, structures, and policies need to be formally aligned to ensure that leaders model collaboration. Those who don’t collaborate don’t get promoted. As a last resort, anyone failing to model the company culture may be “shared with the competition.”3 Senior leaders need to declare and demonstrate, not just declare and hope, turning a blind eye because middle managers are getting short-term results.
While technology has increased communication and collaboration, outdated IT systems can sometimes erect barriers to the sharing of information. As costly as upgraded IT systems can be, they need to be a top priority now more than even a few years ago. While time and budget are spent on updating crucial data systems, an extra step is needed to ensure that everyone who needs the information can access it and communicate it efficiently. Open and transparent communication between all parties helps build an agile and intelligent organization that allows people to cross boundaries, discourages silos, and builds in flexibility to enable appropriate collaboration.
Collaboration Versus Competition
Collaboration has been around since the beginning of mankind—an instinctive behavior to protect against attack, hunt and gather food, and share resources for the good of all.
Instinctive collaborative behaviors can be observed at an early age. A small group of children aged two to four playing together in a sandpit, when asked to build the biggest sandcastle, will naturally organize themselves into a collaborative group often without any formal leader. After the initial buzz about the project, they will move into excited action. One will heap sand for others to fill buckets, some will level the building ground, while others will simply sit on the sidelines and encourage the group. That’s not to say there won’t be disagreements or even a brief withdrawal by an individual from the project. As these instances occur, others will act as peace makers and bring the group back together until they congratulate themselves on their achievement.
Now contrast that lovely scene with the behaviors of many coworkers today. How is it that collaborative behaviors have all but disappeared?
The fading of these skills starts in school, when resources or prizes require competition. Competition to be in the top ten or top three in various subjects sparks competitive behaviors. And as children start to realize that not everyone can be number one, they learn they can improve their chances of succeeding by hoarding knowledge and resources and withdrawing support from fellow competitors. Innate collaborative skills grow dimmer as young adults compete for acceptance at top universities. Competitive skills have become instinct by the time the four-year-old has matured to work age and vies for the best job or better pay and again for scarce promotions or specialist roles.
Team experts Don Carew and Eunice Parisi-Carew observe when teaching team skills that the problem for western cultures is the inability of workers to move from me to we. This is at the root of understanding when and how to collaborate effectively. Organizations who wish to reap the benefits of collaboration must not only create a collaborative framework but also reacquaint their staff with the skills of collaboration. It is important to make collaboration a key competence and to promote only those who collaborate effectively: people who collaborate get promoted and get the best jobs. Those who don’t wish to collaborate should find organizations that better suit their individualist, competitive natures.
Reciprocity is a behavior that should be encouraged because it is at the heart of collaboration. Information, data, experiences, people, and resources should all be shared freely without expectation of getting something back from the other party.
What It Takes to Be Collaborative
Most people believe they collaborate well and that it is “the other guy” who doesn’t. Of course, at some point you may find that you are “the other guy.” Our attitude can color our view on the importance of collaboration and our willingness to be collaborative as well as our ability to collaborate well. To improve this attitude, let’s split skills and behaviors into three domains: the heart, hands, and head.
The heart. The heart is the first of the domains because collaboration is an inside-out mind-set. It has to start on the inside, with the heart. If you don’t get the heart part right, you’ll never be effective as a collaborative leader. The heart is really who you are as a collaborator—your character and intentions.
The head. The second domain is the head, which is about what you know—your beliefs and attitudes about collaboration. These beliefs and attitudes drive your behavior. For example, leaders who are competitively focused on the achievement of short-term goals are less likely to collaborate. Their attitude is that the goal is more important than collaborating to achieve the goal.
The hands. The final domain, the hands, is about your actions and behaviors. When your heart and head are right, your behaviors and actions align to support collaboration.
The UNITE Model
The UNITE model shown in Figure 12.1 was developed to identify within each domain—the heart, the head, and the hands—best practices for developing collaborative competence.
The Heart: Utilize Differences
Leaders who have a heart for collaboration instinctively utilize differences. Utilizing differences is especially important if organizations want to innovate or to recombine existing resources to deliver better customer service or products. Diversity has long been recognized as a source of creativity and innovation. Yet, within many organizations, when a new project team is put together, the same people tend to be included—often because they have learned to work together and have a proven track record.
The problem with always returning to the same people is that there are no new ideas. The workgroup should be encouraged to seek out new members who might hold opposing views. An ideal opportunity that helps build collaborative and leadership bench strength is to have new hires be members of such groups. This gives them practical field experience prior to promotions or career assignments. This simple action demonstrates the importance of collaboration.
The key to encouraging diverse opinions is the ability to skillfully manage conflict, which is generally seen as difficult and time consuming. But people don’t understand how to harness conflict as a creative crucible. Conflict is natural and should not be avoided, nor should it be intense and personal. Sticking to the issue and the clarity around the outcome helps. In addition, conflict awareness training can go a long way. The use of a conflict assessment tool such as the Thomas Kilmann Instrument can help people understand why they behave the way they do and how they can manage their emotions.4
To utilize differences in building a collaborative environment, a leader must:
Seek opinions from a variety of sources
Value diverse points of view
Use conflict creatively
The Heart: Nurture Safety and Trust
Leaders who have a heart for collaboration intuitively nurture safety and trust. This is one of the most important behaviors leaders and their organizations need to master. People need to feel safe to be who they are—to speak up when they have an idea, or to speak out when they feel something isn’t right. They also need to trust that they won’t be punished if something goes wrong. View mistakes as learning opportunities.
The biggest barrier to people wanting to share their perspective is fear. Fear is a big inhibitor. Besides keeping people from speaking up, it also stops them from experimenting with an idea—and that’s exactly what you need for innovation.
It is impossible to create a collaborative environment without safety and trust. Where trust exists, silos are minimized because people feel safe to help others, inside or outside their department.
To nurture safety and trust, leaders should:
Encourage people to share their perspectives
Encourage people to experiment with ideas
View mistakes as learning opportunities
The Head: Involve Others in Crafting a Clear Purpose, Values, and Goals
Leaders with collaborative attitudes and beliefs realize how important it is that all members of an organization or workgroup create together a collaborative vision with a clear purpose, shared values, and established goals. A clear purpose unites everyone around a common objective, values guide behavior, and goals provoke action—but only when everyone has the chance to contribute.
The accountability of each person to the vision and to the achievement of the established goals is crucial. Without everyone’s commitment to the vision, collaboration will break down and silos will be the norm. That is why it is essential that everyone participates in creating the vision.
To involve others in crafting a clear purpose, values, and goals, leaders should:
Create a collaborative vision
Ensure everyone is clear about the purpose and goals of the group
Hold each other accountable for the jointly created and agreed-upon values
The Hands: Talk Openly
Leaders who demonstrate collaborative actions and behavior model open and transparent communication. When people talk to them, they listen to understand, not to argue. They are candid, and respectfully tell the truth. Sometimes this is counterintuitive. As humans, our competitive nature predisposes us to withhold information and resources that may give us an advantage over another.
To be a leader who talks openly:
Share relevant information. Failing to inform others of a failure or missed deadline can create distrust.
Give constructive feedback. Not holding each other accountable can lead to a lack of safety and thereby undermine the whole project.
Master the art of candor; share information in a straightforward and easy-to-understand way.
If you model open communication, those who receive the information will learn to listen to understand, not criticize or undermine, and ask questions.
Respect for each other is essential in creating an environment where people feel they can talk openly. To summarize, leaders should:
Listen to understand
Encourage candor with respect
Share relevant information and give constructive feedback
The Hands: Empower Yourself and Others
Leaders who demonstrate collaborative actions and behavior master the skills of empowerment, either as leaders empowering others or as individual contributors empowering themselves. To empower yourself and others, become interested in your own and others’ growth. Practice knowledge sharing, networking, and continual learning.
In a culture of collaboration, individual contributors see themselves as self leaders. Leaders empower these individuals by building trust and coaching them to become competent in their jobs. Individuals also empower and inspire each other when they share ideas and deliver on their agreed-upon tasks and goals.
Empowered people feel more trusted and competent, and therefore feel more of an individual responsibility to contribute and become a more integral part of the organization.
Leaders seeking to empower themselves and others should:
Share knowledge and experiences with a view to individual growth
Build and share their own networks
Participate in and encourage lifelong learning
Collaboration: Fuel for High Performance
Effective collaboration is the key to organizational effectiveness. It requires commitment from the top as well as buy-in from throughout the organization. If collaboration is a nice thing to do and not the norm, the organization will miss out on the power of synergy and the realization that “None of us is as smart as all of us.”
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In the next chapter, we’ll see how to make leadership come alive and be effective at the organizational level.