Leandro Herrero
3. Collaboration
Collaboration (’the volunteers’)
Virtually all roles and jobs in the organisation are interdependent. Collaboration is what binds them together for success. But there is a difference between organised collaboration and collaboration as a free-floating attitude. This disruptive idea is about making everybody ‘a volunteer’.
Collaboration is the new competitive advantage. The current business environment (be that in a private or public company, or an NGO) can be described with one single word: interdependence. Virtually no job can be done in isolation. Success, any kind of it, depends on somebody else’s success. This is the reality, both at macro social and micro social levels.
You may think that this is just another obvious thing. After all, you have had teams and task forces for a long time and your product development or sales department can’t function without the collaboration between individuals. This is true, but I am talking about a different dimension of collaboration: one that has not been designed and is not dictated (like the collaboration intrinsic to a team activity), but one that would exist even without a formal team to join. This is spontaneous, voluntary collaboration, spread across the firm well beyond teams and formal structures. These are some of its characteristics:
- Collaboration as an attitude. People are going the extra mile without the dictation of the project or the action plan.
- Embedded feeling of ‘my success is your success.’ It may not be an immediate quid pro quo, but we are all so interdependent that building your own success means that inevitably you’re going to make sure that Mary and John also succeed.
- Making yourself available to others. In practical terms: truly having an open door, instead of just saying you do.
Today, a thriving culture is one where spontaneous collaboration is the norm, where ‘voluntarism’[1] and ‘volunteerism’[2] are present and where the opposite (individualism, silos) is unthinkable. It is a culture where informal networks constitute a truly recognisable organisational fabric. In the extreme case, everybody can talk to everybody and tap into intellectual capital wherever it is. ‘Competing on collaboration’ is what truly differentiates the company from others. It is ‘Collaboration-R-us’.
This attitude, if you can make it widespread, creates a distinctive culture that goes well beyond the existence of cross-functional teams, for example. We often design structures and then assume that the behaviours to sustain them will automatically follow. Creating multiple cross-functional or interdisciplinary teams is a good vehicle for collaborative work, but it doesn’t guarantee that collaboration of the ‘voluntary type’ will be a key, fundamental behaviour. Some of the features of the collaborative culture are:
- Collaboration happens without the need to have collaborative software tools installed across the board. If the software is installed, it should build upon the existing collaborative behaviour and boost it.
- People don’t talk a lot about collaboration, it just happens. The best collaborative environments I know don’t spend too much time talking about collaborating.
- Information flows very freely, it is not kept in people’s heads or contained within groups.
- People make an effort to understand who should (need to) know what. It is not about using distribution lists including everybody on earth, but about finding out who needs to know or be involved. It requires an active search for the kind of information that is often not contained in the organisation charts.
- People frequently use informal channels of communication.
- People choose telephone or face-to-face communication over email.
- Joint efforts between departments ‘appear’ without having been designed.
- ‘Membership’ of informal groups is fluid.
- People’s behaviours, situations and interactions pass the volunteer test. Is this something that could only happen if it were dictated or designed? Has any command-and-control mechanism been used to make this collaboration visible? Were they ‘forced’ to do it? If the answer is no and if it’s widespread, your collaborative culture is in good shape with collaboration as a core behaviour.
I am not suggesting that all collaboration has to be of the voluntary type. There is nothing wrong with designing structures (like teams and communities) for collaboration, but this disruptive idea is not about them. It is about the collaboration that is not ‘controlled’, but ‘volunteered’.
A few years ago, somebody working at a big, global and successful software company pointed out to me that there were about sixty or so VPs who had made so much money since the start-up, that their presence in the company was now truly ‘voluntary’. They were multi-millionaires and no longer needed to be there at 08.00am every day, but they were. This is a perfect, aspirational model for today’s organisations. Imagine what a company of volunteers would look like!
Boosting collaboration as a non-designed behaviour and spreading it virally is one of the best investments you can make. As with any behaviour, this spontaneous, informal, passed-the-volunteer-test behaviour needs to be reinforced by providing airtime and by showcasing it. It is highly viral. Decide where to start and you’ll soon see a new critical mass of people practicing it (providing you reinforce it every time!).
Aim at constantly increasing the number of ‘volunteers’ in your organisation. Aim at becoming ‘a company of volunteers’.
‘It’s collaboration (not competition), stupid!’
Your mission statement: ‘Collaboration-R-Us’.
Collaboration via teams, committees and task-forces is a pass, a baseline. Voluntary collaboration beyond the designed vehicles is your aim.
[1] Voluntarism = the use of or reliance on voluntary action to carry out a policy or achieve an end.
[2] Volunteerism = the willingness of people to work on behalf of others without the expectation of pay or other tangible gain.
