Enterprise Collaboration – a mindset, not a toolset

Collaboration is a good thing, a sacred concept in today’s business world and hailed as a key multiplier for success. In an increasingly complex landscape, it counts as a business necessity especially in very large organizations that become silo-ed as a result of their size and structure. When trusted collaboration is missing, the ‘silo syndrome’ sets in, something that Eva Rosen calls out in her book, The Culture of Collaboration – she describes it as an organizational dysfunction where finger pointing is the result of a lack of collaboration among people in multiple functions and business units whose complementary skills are necessary to create value. Collaboration puts our personal communication skills to the test as we work across departmental, cultural and time zone boundaries, especially as a lot of our work interactions these days occur over collaboration technologies. We may find ourselves using any of the elements of the collaboration technology portfolio that contains conferencing capabilities, enterprise social software, mobile apps, telepresence or video conferencing and instant messaging. Most of these tools are now considered utilitarian, but some organizations still view enterprise social software with some cynicism. In a recent interview for the McKinsey Quarterly, Don Tapscott, a leading business strategist and thinker in the area of the intersection of business and technology, challenged that cynicism and referred to such social tools as the operating system of the 21st century enterprise, in which the platforms are where talent (employees) build capability. 

Collaboration within and across an enterprise is a mindset, not a toolset. It stems from the very core of an organization, from the behaviors and tone that the leaders of the organization set and from the recognition that it is a vital component for success in a global economy that has knowledge and connectivity at its foundation. It can be the one factor that ensures long term survival of an organization, and gives an organization the ability to carve out its own unique cultural marker in a landscape where long tail business models are becoming prominent (earlier posts on this here and here).

In the less optimal end of the spectrum, large organizations are siloed and fragmented. In its best form however, a very large organization that has staff across many countries and continents and working in various departments, has the potential and power of a mini-city in corporate terms.  These multiple departments and their people have complementary skills whose sum total is larger than its parts. As a matter of fact, employees that have figured this simple fact about collaboration and are able to leverage it to be more effective in their work have tapped into a goldmine. Enterprise social networks make tapping into that goldmine a little easier, but ultimately it is the mindset that trumps any toolset. If employees don’t collaborate across the organization without the platform and don’t appreciate the value of such collaboration, they will not suddenly change their behavior in the presence of one. A strong adoption program could help here, but will leave that for another post.

For those that are natural collaborators, social networks within the enterprise present an incomparable opportunity that can catapult them to a different dimension (more about how the influence of pull in my earlier post here). Based on Dr. Morten Hansen’s book, Collaboration, the employees that make the most natural collaborators are T-shaped - they perform well both in their own jobs and have the ability to work vertically and horizontally (my earlier post on T-skills here). Dr. Hansen identifies other types of workers as well - lone stars, butterflies and laggards, and in his book illustrates why sometimes even collaboration can be done wrong. Employees may participate in endless committees or other collaborative groups, but may contribute very little in terms of overall outcomes. Susan Cain, author of Quiet : the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking, argues why working in solitude is as much a contributor to creativity as is groupthink.  However Cain points out that online networks are an exceptional medium where shared brainpower can be optimized, going on to say that the offline equivalent of such groupthink would in fact be disastrous. She cites examples of Linux and Wikipedia, the results of online collaboration and insists that throwing a number of people in a conference room for a year, couldn’t have yielded the same end result. This is an interesting point, because currently most organizations are comfortable with the offline version of collaboration and are still a little unsure of its online equivalent. The Cathederal and the Bazaar model has played itself out, and proven itself but only a few of the large corporations have embraced it to their advantage (an earlier post on this here).

Another aspect to consider as a success factor of collaboration is the goals and rewards mechanism around it, because it redefines organizational development and talent management in a transformational way. If individuals are recognized and rewarded only for their individual goals and not collective goals, the best intentions around collaboration have the chance to go awry, but will leave that for another post.

The photo above is from a family summer trip to India, in the beautiful desert fort of Amer of Rajasthan. The criss-cross of this courtyard in the palace square felt right for this post.