CHAPTER 8

Overcoming Obstacles to Collaboration

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

—Thomas Paine

Preview

Collaborating takes time, commitment, and effort to overcome the many obstacles along the way and achieve the best results. Successful collaborators need the resiliency and strategic know-how to overcome those obstacles proactively to attain the desired outcomes. This chapter identifies 10 common obstacles to collaboration as follows:

1. 1. Unrealistic expectations about collaboration as a process.
2. 2. Difficulty scheduling meetings that will be convenient for all parties to attend.
3. 3. Lack of accountability to follow through on commitments.
4. 4. Incompatible and dominant personalities.
5. 5. Technology tools not integrated for everyone’s access and ease of use.
6. 6. Discomfort sharing knowledge and resources.
7. 7. Lack of sponsorship from senior executive leaders.
8. 8. Organizational bureaucracy restricting change initiatives.
9. 9. Lack of diverse membership and representation.
10. 10. Change of leadership during the collaboration.

Strategies for how to overcome each of these obstacles proactively are also provided.

Identifying 10 Collaboration Obstacles

Like any worthwhile process, collaboration is hard work, especially due to the inevitable challenges that occur. How collaborators handle these challenges can make a big difference regarding whether or not their collaboration efforts result in success or failure. Being well-prepared to address expected and unexpected obstacles proactively enables collaborators to become more resilient, productive, and effective.

The top 10 obstacles that collaborators are most likely to encounter include: unrealistic expectations, scheduling meetings for busy people, low accountability, dominant personalities, nonintegrated technology, poor knowledge transfer, inadequate sponsorship, organizational bureaucracy, lack of diverse membership, and changes in leadership. The following guidelines offer the secrets to success for overcoming these common collaboration challenges for optimal results (Table 8.1).

Unrealistic Expectations About Collaboration As a Process

The first obstacle to overcome is perhaps the most crucial one, namely unrealistic expectations about collaboration as a process. Some contributing factors include underestimating the amount of time required, wanting the collaboration to progress faster, and not expecting to need to invest so much energy and patience to build trusting relationships. Expectations are hard to change, but addressing them in a timely manner is a good first step. Following are some strategies for how to uncover and manage unrealistic expectations proactively:

• • Identify individual expectations: Ask each party to identify what he or she expects for the collaboration to be most effective:
• °Conduct a precollaboration survey or interviews to identify expectations.
• °Schedule a precollaboration meeting to reveal individual expectations of the team.
• • Agree on expectations as a collaboration team:
• ° Facilitate group discussion and agreement on what to expect, realistically, from the collaboration process.
• ° Agree on which specific expectations are achievable, and which ones are not.
• ° Agree on how to manage the collaboration process best, including roles and responsibilities for each party.
• ° Offer those whose expectations are still not met, the option of withdrawing from the team and being replaced by another person.
• • Identify key milestones and dates when the group will “check in” to discuss and evaluate progress.
• • Invite a collaboration specialist to meet with the group to present information about what to expect realistically from collaboration as a process:
• ° Offer advice to the group.
• ° Agree to consult again about expectations, as needed.
• • Cocreate new collaboration goals that are most achievable for the group:
• ° Make the goals “SMART”: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.
• ° Rank the goals based on the priority level for what is most important and achievable.
• ° Identify unrealistic goals and eliminate them from the group’s list.

Difficulty Scheduling Meetings That All Parties Can Attend

Scheduling a date and time when everyone is available to meet is another common obstacle to collaboration. Assuming that all parties have other commitments besides the collaboration, it is usually difficult finding a common date and time that is suitable for everyone. The more people involved in the collaboration, the more challenging it is to ensure optimal attendance that is convenient for everyone’s schedule. The best strategies for managing this obstacle are as follows:

• • Assign backup representatives: Request that each party choose one or two competent people as substitutes to represent them if needed.
• • Schedule multiple meetings in “clusters” ahead of time: Use specialized software to poll all parties to identify a series of dates and times when all or most people are available and ask them to reserve these meetings well in advance.
• • Agree on the minimum number of attendees required to avoid cancelling meetings: Enable the group to decide how many attendees need to attend for meetings to proceed as scheduled with a core group of people.
• • Determine scheduling procedures for changes and cancellations: To avoid last-minute changes and cancellations, ask the group to agree on a reasonable time reframe to change or cancel meetings, and get everyone’s commitment to comply.
• • Rotate meeting locations: Schedule a variety of sites, combining both in-person and virtual meeting formats, to accommodate everyone.
• • Establish meeting time limits: Shorter meetings will
  most likely appeal to all parties and result in optimal
  attendance.
• • Get agreement on the minimum number of meetings required to sustain membership: Establish guidelines for the minimum number of meetings to attend or miss to be entitled to sustain one’s membership on the collaboration team.

Lack of Accountability to Follow Through on Commitments

How can a collaboration team ensure that each individual follows through on promises to honor the commitments that are critical for success? The following are suggestions for how to motivate accountability:

• • Make it a privilege to join the collaboration team: Communicate high standards of accountability to remain on the team, including completing assignments and actions on schedule and modeling the values and behaviors of a team charter that details accountabilities for each member.
• • Create a collaboration vision that all members support: Team members are more likely to be accountable for tasks and projects they promise to deliver if they understand how these tasks and projects are aligned to the collaboration team’s vision. This knowledge can motivate individual responsibility and accountability based on knowing how and why following through on one’s promises affects both the team and the collaboration results.
• • Form an “Accountability Committee” to encourage and support participation: An “Accountability Committee” is especially useful for complex collaborations with diverse members in multiple geographic locations representing different backgrounds and cultures. This committee can be a permanent core group, or a group that changes continuously, based on a rotating membership. The advantage of this committee is that it is created solely for the purpose of helping all collaboration parties achieve their commitments by providing advice, resources, ideas, and information.

Incompatible and Dominant Personalities

There are some effective ways to manage challenging personalities proactively in collaborations. The following strategies are recommended:

• • Appoint an experienced facilitator: This person’s role is to engage the group and manage dominant speakers at meetings with a balance of assertiveness and empathy.
• • Don’t make it personal: Talk to those individuals who are least and most dominant and encourage the quieter ones to speak more, and the more talkative ones to speak less.
• • Ask the group: Get input for ideas about how they can achieve equal participation from all to hear everyone’s views.
• • Assign roles at meetings: Give dominant speakers roles that will still enable them to participate actively, such as taking notes, or to encourage others to speak.
• • Invite guest speakers: Consider asking guest speakers specializing in personality and behavior styles to share their knowledge and provide coaching or mentoring to improve interpersonal communications within the team.

Technology Tools Not Used Consistently By All Parties

Despite continuous improvements in technology, collaboration teams still have difficulties ensuring that everyone can access the technology tools that will enable the collaboration team to communicate most efficiently. The following are suggestions for how to encourage all parties to use designated technology platforms, software, and apps consistently as a unit:

• • Keep it simple by choosing technology that is easy to use: Use tools that are most likely to be compatible with all computer systems and software.
• • Make it essential: Apply it to common tasks such as meeting agendas, updates, and information sharing.
• • Survey all parties to identify what technologies they use, prefer, and dislike: This will help identify technology commonalities and gaps requiring improvement.
• • Assign an IT specialist to be on-call for troubleshooting issues: Designate this person as a resource to all parties to assist with integration and system issues for all locations where the parties work or reside.
• • Test first before implementing: Test technology and software options with members of the collaboration team before making any decisions about which ones to use or invest in.
• • Experiment with technology apps: Encourage experimentation with new technology applications for meetings, updates, information sharing, and idea generation.
• • Ensure that the meeting location has maximum digital access: Choose in-person and virtual meeting rooms that enable maximum access to technology. Avoid locations that are remote with limited or no wireless access.
• • Use technology carefully: Communicate using technology to inform and influence with care. Avoid overusing e-mails and providing nonessential documentation to avoid creating unnecessary bureaucracy and eroding trust.

Not Sharing Knowledge and Resources

Another obstacle to a collaboration occurs when information, knowledge, and resources are withheld from the other parties, either due to discomfort or resulting from confidentiality requirements. Whereas in a competitive negotiation, withholding information might be considered a power play, in a collaborative negotiation, withholding information can damage relationships, since sharing information is a sign of trust in a partnership. To encourage information sharing and knowledge exchange between all collaboration parties, the following actions are recommended:

• • Set expectations for knowledge sharing: Emphasize knowledge sharing as an essential team value expected throughout the collaboration process.
• • Assign subteams with differing but complementary knowledge and skills to work together: This will enable more diverse perspectives by means of knowledge exchange to generate the most innovative options and solutions.
• • Select a meeting space most suitable for information exchange: Choose to meet in a space with features that optimize interpersonal communications, including: good acoustics, flexible seating options, face-to-face visibility, and a quiet, isolated environment without any distractions.
• • Showcase individual knowledge and talent at group meetings: Schedule regular mini-presentations and discussions to highlight individual expertise, encourage knowledge transfer, and build new skills within the team.
• • Create an internal knowledge and resource-sharing website for team members only.

Lack of Sponsorship From the Senior Executive Level

A key factor in the success of any collaboration is endorsement from leaders and sponsors. This can involve support from a board of directors, a special committee of senior executives from all of the collaboration parties’ organizations, or a volunteer group of people who have political clout. Senior-level sponsors can enforce considerable political and budgetary power to promote the great ideas that collaborations achieve. Otherwise, there is the risk that the collaborators will not be able to sell or execute their ideas effectively due to lack of political backing, limited budgets, and insufficient resources. Savvy collaborators can do much to acquire sponsorship for their projects and programs, including the following actions:

• • Promote sponsorship as a prestigious role: Appoint one or more individuals from the collaboration team to identify the many benefits of sponsorship. Ensure that the short- and long-term interests of potential sponsors are identified clearly. If appropriate, seek the help of someone who has networking and sponsorship experience and a proven record of success.
• • Recruit senior-level sponsors at the beginning of the collaboration: Identify the ideal potential partners for the collaboration. Approach these individuals to ask for their support and identify potential benefits for sponsorship.
• • Make the sponsors a part of the success story: Engage the sponsors to tell the collaboration team’s story to leverage political, educational, budgetary, and resource support. Involve the sponsors by asking for insights, expertise, and ideas to help build ownership for achieving the best collaboration outcomes.

Organizational Bureaucracy Restricting Change Initiatives

There is nothing more frustrating than creating innovative solutions that are delayed or eliminated due to bureaucratic obstacles and restrictions. When the organizational hierarchy overcomplicates policies and procedures, this hurdle can threaten the capacity of the collaboration team to attain internal approvals and initiate change in a timely manner. The following strategies can streamline processes and systems to minimize bureaucratic obstacles to change initiatives:

• • Determine what processes and policies are involved: Identify the specific bureaucracies that can cause unnecessary restrictions or delays.
• • Identify specific improvements required for faster execution:
  It is crucial to be able to identify exactly which
  bureaucracies are blocking the progress of the
  collaboration, and determine the changes necessary for increased efficiencies.
• • Get commitment from bureaucrats involved to help
  streamline processes: The bureaucrats involved have the
  potential to improve processes to improve quality and
  efficiency. Their commitment can be acquired in the following ways:
• ° Appealing to their interests: productivity, client or
  public satisfaction, and enhanced teamwork are a few examples.
• ° Asking for advice: request that the bureaucrats advise how to simplify a complicated process or procedure to help make the necessary improvements.
• ° Conducting a test pilot: seek support through calculated risk-taking to evaluate and refine ideas and changes before implementing the entire recommendation fully.
• ° Using referent power: refer to the person, group, or organization that has the knowledge and authority to improve or override bureaucratic processes to enable the solutions to be implemented successfully.

Lack of Diverse Membership and Representation

The most successful collaborations result when different perspectives are combined into multiple options and solutions that one could never have created alone. A diverse membership based on different cultures, genders, ages, specializations, experiences, capabilities, and perspectives is like a breath of fresh air for any collaboration. This diversity of thinking fosters the broadest range of possible ideas to add energy and vitality to any collaboration to create the best possible discussions, options, and solutions. The following strategies enable collaborators to manage a lack of diverse membership and representation proactively:

• • Identify diversity gaps in the group: Determine what constitutes “diversity” for the group and what gaps exist. Some of these categories include: mental capacity, physical capacity, age variation, and gender distribution.
• • Borrow it: Invite more diverse individuals to participate: For example, if there is an opportunity to make the process of updating drivers’ licenses more convenient, consider asking people that do not drive to provide their input. If there are no self-employed people on the collaboration team, consider inviting them to offer a different perspective.
• • Change it: Replace or add additional members as needed: Sometimes it is better to replace or add additional members to a collaboration team to stimulate new ways of thinking.
• • Compensate for it: Ask for independent feedback: Using interviews, surveys, or consultants, acquire input from additional individuals not represented in the core collaboration team to enable better idea generation, decision making, and problem solving.

Change of Leadership Within the Collaboration Team

It takes considerable time and effort for a collaboration team to achieve a high level of trust and peak performance together. Some of this comes from strong leadership within the team. Those sponsors and leaders who have a strong collaboration vision have the greatest potential to manage disagreement, idea generation, and decision making constructively. When these inspirational individuals leave a collaboration team, the team can experience uncertainty, loss and separation anxiety that can reduce their team synergy and cohesion significantly.

The following strategies are recommended when there is a change of leadership to help the team adjust faster to the leader’s absence and continue to perform at their previous levels of trust and decision making:

• • Communicate the collaboration vision: Unify the team by communicating the vision for the collaboration continuously and consistently. Introduce new leaders to the vision and remind the entire group that the vision is what unites the team in a common focus and purpose.
• • Form an orientation team: By forming an internal orientation team to point out the cultural norms and working processes currently in place for the collaboration, members can help establish a seamless transition for new leaders who they rely on for collaboration support and success.
• • Appoint a mentor from within the team: Allocating a team member to mentor any new leader(s) is a powerful way to advise them about current practices and consult on how and when to introduce any changes.

Summary

The 10 most common obstacles to a successful collaboration include: unrealistic expectations, scheduling conflicts, reduced accountability, dominant personalities, nonintegrated technology, poor knowledge transfer, inadequate sponsorship, organizational bureaucracy, lack of diverse membership, and adjustment issues due to changes in leadership. Key strategies for dealing with unrealistic expectations include identifying and addressing individual expectations, facilitating group agreement on what to expect realistically from the collaboration process, and cocreating new goals that are most achievable for the group. Regarding scheduling issues, two best practices are planning multiple meetings ahead of time so people can reserve dates, and establishing meeting time limits for peak engagement and to encourage maximum attendance.

To manage others’ lack of accountability and commitment, strategies include: establishing high standards for team membership, creating a collaboration vision that the entire team supports, and forming an “Accountability Committee” to help members deliver on their promises by assisting with extra help or resources when needed. Strategies for dealing with incompatible or dominant personalities include assigning roles at meetings to give dominant speakers a break from speaking, and asking the group for ideas about how to ensure that all parties have the chance to voice their views equally.

Another obstacle, the lack of technology integration, can be addressed with these strategies: keeping it simple by choosing technology that is user-friendly, assigning an IT specialist to be available for troubleshooting problems, experimenting with efficient technology apps, and using technology carefully by minimizing the overuse of e-mails. Winning strategies for addressing a lack of sponsorship at the executive level involve: promoting sponsorship as an appealing activity, creating the demand for volunteers, recruiting senior sponsors at the very beginning of the collaboration, and making sponsors a part of the collaboration story by asking them to talk to others about small wins and successes.

Regarding organizational bureaucracy, strategies for making decision making and implementation more efficient include: determining what processes and policies need to be changed, identifying specific improvements for streamlining processes, and conducting a pilot test to take a calculated risk by executing solutions on a small scale first to evaluate and refine before launching them on a larger scale.

To increase diversity in the group, borrow it by inviting additional people with broader skills, interests, and experiences, change it by replacing or adding team members, and ask for independent feedback, using interviews, surveys, and consultants.

When there are leadership changes within the team, key strategies to overcome this upset are to remind everyone about the common vision for the collaboration, appoint a mentor from within the team to help new leaders adjust to the team culture, and implement changes gradually to enable members to adjust more easily.