solve the big problems. If only they were not hemmed in by their ideologies! Here again collaboration becomes comet-like – streaking across the heavens to taunt those below.
As for me, I’m looking heavenwards and being taunted like everyone else. A report I recently read (more on that in the next section) claimed group collaboration projects fail most of the time. Admittedly, this must mean they also work out at least some of the time. It’s worth asking, though – does the benefit of success outweigh the cost of failure?
The dream for any team leader would be to possess the managerial superpower of a sixth sense that could identify in advance which collaborations would fail – they could then invest everyone’s time into the guaranteed wins. Imagine the positive effect that would have on your culture. Morale would be stratospheric, the energy-sapping drain of interpersonal politics might be reduced to zero and, once everyone’s palms got too sore to continue high-fiving, this would leave everyone with more time to generate still more growth in the enterprise.
Is this the type of dream that only occurs in pipe form – or can we really and finally remove what stands in the way of success?
The barriers to effective collaboration
The report I alluded to above makes a compelling case that successful collaboration may well be beyond our grasp. At least if you don’t get the basics right. It’s a 2015 study involving 106 European and US companies participating over a period of six years called, ‘Why Supply Chain Collaboration Fails: The Socio-Structural View of Resistance to Relational Strategies’. Despite the less than snappy title, it’s a critical read with far wider implications than supply chain economics.
There were a couple of specific barriers that stood out:
Barrier one: tarnished reputation
Managers struggled to assess in advance the true value of any collaboration. The resulting poor return on investment was said to tarnish the reputation of future collaboration strategies.
Organisations ‘invested scarce resource in collaborations that offered no unique value co-creation potential’.
It’s easy to see how these frustrations may lead to…
Barrier two: territoriality
Seventy-three percent of companies cited territoriality and turf wars as the most problematic barrier. The report highlighted evidence that showed partners could not break out of their siloed mindset to make collaboration happen. It contained a telling remark made by a senior manager;
“People are more concerned about who will get the glory or the blame rather than evaluat[ing] whether or not a decision will benefit the entire company.”
This resonated with me. I recently asked a close colleague to help me with a collaboration project. There was a momentary faraway look in his eyes which seemed to suggest he was mentally grasping for the unobtainable. He then snapped out of his reverie to answer thus:
I totally get that. He’d been burned before. In our sector of industry, several specialist businesses often come together at the request of a joint client to work on an integrated marketing campaign. I see these as a cocktail of roughly three parts optimism to one part trepidation.
They can be an exciting business opportunity, but the path is strewn with trip hazards related to human nature. Even the slightest problem, one partner in the endeavour failing to meet a deadline for instance, can cause crab-like behaviour in which everyone scuttles back to their silos and may only emerge again to point an accusatory claw at the others. Once this happens, the issue becomes amplified and the management energy required to get things back on track may undo any benefits of the collaboration.
Setting aside the findings of the report, there are other hurdles to seamless collaboration. For me, the main flashpoint occurs at the intersection of two planes.
When worlds collide: the horizontal versus the vertical
I think of collaboration as a horizontal occupation – organisations are tasked to work side by side in partnership to achieve a single aim.
Each partner also has their day-to-day obligations outside of the partnership – a budget target to achieve and a bottom line to protect; I think of this in vertical terms.
It’s in this intersection, where the horizontal and vertical meet, that opportunities for conflict arise. If business in the vertical needs attention – a poor-performing quarter, client crisis, or even a high-performing quarter when you need all your people back in the room – then these things will take priority. If you need to cut back on resource commitment in the collaboration, the other partners may grow to resent that – especially if they have to fill the gap left by you.
I’ve also found that because each partner is tasked with hitting hard targets in their vertical, some are tempted to compete to maximise their share in the partnership to justify the time spent in collaboration. It may even become tempting (in the worst cases) to actively undermine other partners, or to make a big deal over any mistake they make. I’ve been on the receiving end of that. It hurts. I’ve also driven that sort of behaviour in my teams. Karma.
Going back to the research, I raised an eyebrow as I read that 73% of companies cited a refusal to share important information between partners as a source of frustration. Similarly, 63% reported a lack of faith that individuals in one business would do anything to benefit another. If true, this is clearly defending of turf; siloed thinking writ large. I’ve certainly been guilty of that.
It’s not just group collaboration either. The difficulties at the intersection of the vertical and the horizontal occur between people embroiled in interpersonal conflict. A happy resolution in a disagreement is the common goal on the horizontal plane, reached only through a collaborative process. Competing against that in the vertical plane of each combatant are individual preconceptions, assumptions, desires and needs. Not to mention all the stuff that informed their formative years, as discussed in earlier chapters: the drive to differentiate, the urge to compete, our well-rehearsed conflict abilities.
I mean, really, when faced with a potential collaboration project, who can blame my dear colleague for posing the question: what’s in it for me?
Hopefully, we can restore his faith.
Better collaboration – make a list, get a ritual
I’m going to get temporarily biblical on you. Luke 4:23 to be precise.
‘Physician, heal thyself’ is an ancient Greek proverb. Luke, who was a Greek scholar, quotes the phrase in his telling of Jesus’s return to Nazareth to do a hometown gig at his local synagogue.
Jesus gets a little giddy with the occasion and tells everyone he’s the son of God. Presumably after a short period of pin-drop silence, the locals, who knew Jesus from a boy and couldn’t reconcile this claim with someone they knew to be the lowly son of a poor carpenter, become incensed.
According to Luke, Jesus then says: “Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.” For those not familiar with biblical geography, Capernaum was (and still is) a nearby town on the shore of Lake Galilee. Jesus had been there curing blind lepers, and word that the Messiah was in town had spread to Nazareth. The Nazarenes thought that surely this Jesus, familiar to them from his days in short pants, couldn’t possibly presume
