Sandy Burgham is a principal at Play Contemporary Leadership CoLab, a consultancy practice specialising in leadership development and organisational culture. She writes for listener.co.nz about her observations of modern corporate life.
Collaboration is one of the words that has been popularised in corporate vernacular in recent years.
This is seen as antithesis of the command-and-control leadership approaches that most leaders were raised with and that characterise classic patriarchal structures that, although no longer in vogue, still predominate inside and outside the workplace.
Corporate enthusiasm for collaboration has been significantly driven by two movements during the past two decades: the adoption of design thinking and the implementation of agile methodology.
For those unfamiliar with them, design thinking is the idea that customers or people, commonly known now as “users”, should be at the heart of innovation. Sounds obvious, but it was for many years more the idea in theory than in practice. A design-thinking approach, now widely adopted, is distinguished by spirited brainstorming sessions where every idea is valued, and liberal use of colourful Post-it notes. (I’m not cynical; I have always been a huge fan of experimentation -- or “fast failing” as it is now called -- rather than researching things to death among consumers who have never been that good at predicting their own behaviours.)
Agile methodology, on the other hand, is a genuine attempt to dismantle corporate silos and fiefdoms by emphasising continuous improvement enacted in smaller cross-functional teams -- or, as they are commonly called, tribes or chapters. It is a brilliant approach that is often thwarted by the limitations not in the process itself but in the human who runs it. This is the person who is supposed to collaborate.
Collaboration sounds so good on paper; so does change. In fact, about the same time these two movements were in their infancy, the book Who Moved My Cheese, by Dr Spencer Johnson, became a global corporate favourite.
This short parable explored how people deal with change in their work and personal lives, encouraging adaptability as the only route to survival. It has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide but has little to encourage people to effortlessly adapt to the principles of the new common practices and processes.
Why? Because, embracing collaborative approaches is not really about what you do, it is more about who you are.
I often quote data from The Leadership Circle, a holistic tool used by nearly half a million leaders worldwide, because it reveals insights into a leader’s inner world. It indicates that if they score highly on being a collaborator, and although they might work in a competitive environment, they do not act competitively and they balance self-interest with the best interest of others.
But people who can turn up in a conflict, listen to other perspectives -- and value them even if they disagree -- and create innovative solutions to serve the needs of all interested parties are a rare breed. Most people are driven by self-interest, even if they pretend they have “got with the new programme”.
Collaboration is not for everyone, but it can be if continually checking on where “my stuff” (ie, my fears and belief systems, things I don’t want to let go of) might be getting in the way of what is better for the greater good.
People used to think that this inner work was best left to the privacy of a therapist’s office, but it is fundamental to the development of strong collaborators able to translate whatever has been scribbled on colourful Post-it notes into real business outcomes.
So, if it is collaboration you require, make sure that what is embedded into the new approaches is a different type of process, one that gets into the heart of what it means to be a human being.
