Collaboration Is More than Team Building and Management

We address three models here:

• The Harvard Model: Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J Erickson, published in the Harvard Business Review
•  The MIT Model: How to Manage Virtual Teams by Frank Siebdrat, Martin Hoegl and Holger Ernst, published in the MIT Sloan Management Review
•  The All Collaboration Model: The Four Ps of Effective Collaboration by Steve Lamont

The Harvard and MIT Models focus on building and managing teams for collaboration. Their recommendations are indeed valuable and should not be overlooked. However, these recommendations are not sufficient for effective collaboration. Effective collaboration requires a holistic approach, from clearly defined objective to eventual deliverables. Effective collaboration teams needs a comprehensive framework – such as the 4 Ps Model of All Collaboration - within which to operate and succeed.

Below is a comparison of the Harvard and MIT Models with the 4 Ps Model of All Collaboration.

I can anticipate at least two critiques of this analysis. First, the Harvard Model is for building collaborative teams and the MIT Model is for managing virtual teams. Fair enough! I accept and promote their recommendations without reservation. I submit that the teams – effective or otherwise – require a whole lot more than the building and management for effective collaboration.

Second, some would quibble about the “ink” I gave in certain boxes. Assignment of ink is a judgment call. Your judgment may be different from mine, and I accept that. In fact I would love to get feedback and update the ink, based on your arguments. However, the point of the analysis is not how much ink is assigned to each box. No matter how precise are the judgments and no matter how they vary due to individual judgment calls, the 4 Ps Model is a comprehensive framework for effective collaboration.

Update on 24 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

See Related Posts:

• The Four Ps of Effective Collaboration
• The 4Ps of Effective Collaboration - Redux
• You Have Been Asked to Run a Complex Collaboration Project... Now What?
• Assessing the State of Collaboration: Return to Essentials
• Managing Complexity in Collaboration Demands Rigor
• How’s your collaboration effort going?
• Articulate the Purpose of Your Collaboration Effort!
• Current Practices in Virtual Team Management
• Managing Virtual Teams
• The What and Why of Enterprise 2.0

Comments

[Lokesh Datta]

Below are the comments from LinkedIn Groups and Q&A on:

Collaboration is a whole lot more than team building and management, virtual or otherwise! Please share your thoughts

Team building is getting folks to work together productively and respectfully. Collaboration is getting folks to think together - enhancing each others ideas and producing a solution that is contributed to and shared by all.

You have to have a solid team culture in order to elevate yourselves to the level of genuine collaboration. It's like learning to talk. First there are sounds, then words, then sentences, and eventually you're ready to give a speech.
By Monica M. Paul; Expertise: Operational Efficiencies & Margin Enhancements

I agree with Monica.

It certainly helps to have the same goals and shared values. If these don't exist then you at least need to find some common ground or there will be no frame of reference for thinking together.
By Ray Seghers, "The Survey Guy" at Seghers Survey Consulting -- Improving Organizational Performance

Lokesh, glad you're raising this topic.

Collaboration is, to me, about the division of labor (as the word's etymology implies) that leads to cooperation toward a common, if not shared, goal.

There are two models of collaboration and team-building that I believe speak to the spirit of your post.

One is Christensen's model of consensus-driven cooperation*. From that view, the effectiveness of collaboration depends on how well one executes two factors. The first is to correctly identify the extent of agreement in the organization; and the second is to employ the tools of cooperation that are right for the circumstances surrounding the level of consensus.

(A). MAP EXTENT OF AGREEMENT ON WANTS AND CAUSATION
To effectively divide/assign the work-to-be-done the team/organization must first gain an understanding of its people's agreement along two axes: the extent to which people agree on WHAT THEY WANT on one axis and the extent to which people agree on THE PATH TO GET WHAT THEY WANT. This is the path of cause and effect to solve/fix problems by the work done.

The resultant 2x2 matrix gives you 4 scenarios of agreement:
1. people don't agree about what they want and they don't agree on how the world works
2. people don't agree about what they want but do agree on how to get there
3. people have common hopes but differ on the actions required realize them
4. people agree on what they want and agree on how to get there.

(B). EMPLOY TOOLS OF COOPERATION ACCORDING TO (A).
For the unfortunate people experiencing scenario (1.) the tools of cooperation are such "Power Tools" as coercion, threats and force. For groups in scenario (2.) the tools of cooperation are such "Management Tools" as SOPs, standard ways of measuring performance and coordinated training methods. Organizations in scenario (3.) are best served by "Leadership Tools", examples of which are vision and mission statements, salesmanship and charisma. Finally, for people in organizations experiencing scenario (4.) the best tools of cooperation appear to be such "Culture Tools" as ritual, folklore and democracy.

The second of these collaboration models is Rath and Conchie's strengths-based components of talented teams. In this model, the most effective teams employ people whose collective talents partner to form strength across the behavioral domains of "execution", "influencing", "relationship building" and "strategic thinking".

Fantastic subject to contemplate and upon which to set plans in preparation for the new year.

ON THIS TOPIC I'VE ENJOYED READING:
"Disrupting Class" (chapter "Forging a Consensus for Change") by Clayton Christensen
"Strengths Based Leadership" by Tom Rath
"Organizational Culture and Leadership" by Edgar Schein

*Consensus-driven cooperation is my term for the elegantly constructed model that I merely describe in this post.
By Demetrios Perdikis, Clarify Complexity.

First, shared values are part of the common denominator. However, real collaboration goes well beyond just any old share values. Collaboration must be a about hard hitting shared values such as Integrity, Accountability, Courage, Competence, Support & Caring and Passion. Each of these values must then be defined by specific guiding principles. Until individuals fully understand and agree to behave at this level of relationship you will simply have people coming together to share their views at a meeting, but they are no where close to engaging in a "principle-based process of working together" that we can call collaboration.

Second, you must have a leader who has the fortitude, knowledge and skills to take on the process of building a framework of collaboration. Collaboration, like conflict is central to team high performance. Research indicates, that whether you are talking about collaboration or conflict management, the accountability and responsibility for managing both within a team falls directly on the shoulders of the team leader.

Therefore, you cannot address the topic of collaboration without a discussion of leadership. I as see it, collaboration is a function of leadership.

Oh, so simple, yet so hard!
By Tony Garcia, Ph.D., President - G3 Leadership & Organizational Consulting, Inc.

I can only agree with what previous responders explained and can only recapitulate the four main requisites for a genuine collaboration:

- Enterprise culture as namely Ray and Tony underlined it; the suitable state-of-mind inspired from the top-management and enforced at every level is strictly necessary
- An adapted organization, as Monica and Demetrions developed it, including team-building with rotating representatives, reporting with participation of the immediate upper level and so on
- A framework with proper software to harvest the results of collaboration (project management, experts localization, knowledge management, information network and so on)
- at last but not the least, leadership as Tony states with human resources care (incentives, rewarding, recognition and so on)

The conditions to fill will have to thus allow:
- initiatives to express itself like consequence of the immersion of the whole of the agents in a regular flow of knowledge as well ”pushed” as “drawn” leading those to react to any dysfunction or signal even “weak” of change
- problems to be solved and decisions to be made quite transparently and within a collaborative framework or a project management structure

That supposes nevertheless an essential prerequisite :
The staff has to be trained and involved to act in accordance with the collective interest. For that, besides the usual continuous training aiming at updating the trade-oriented knowledge, the staff needing it will receive a general initiation on aspects financial, economic, social, environmental and so on and on the strategic objectives specific to the company as well as on the various methods of decision-making and the data-processing assistance which is associated to them.

Well, at this point of our discussion, we may assert that collaboration depends on a specific state-of-mind which is to be flourishing only in a context of some freedom. In order to tap this distributed intelligence, you have to let people utter their opinion by means of networking and collaborative tools; moreover, you have to create the psychological and sociological conditions to enhance this utterance. People have no longer to hide their initiatives (until they are mature... and successful) but must unveil them at the beginning without fearing being blamed for not complying with the hierarchy.

From the organizational point of view, you have to use collaborative platforms which generally help project leaders managing a project or a portfolio of projects, take care of as well work realized as the knowledge acquired in the shape of various documents, in a genuine traceable way. But an issue of prime importance is how you progress from the first statements to the final conclusion. To accomplish this, you need to create and use some concepts buoying out the rationale and suitable to your own context. An important issue is the level at which the collaborative intelligence has to be practiced ; of course, the whole (extended) firm may be concerned but in this case, would it be possible to imagine a fractal structure of projects.
By Guy Benchimol, Technical writer

Interesting in a basic way. What do you think about cross team collaboration? For service/support roles, cross collaboration is critical to effectiveness. What would you add to these models to bring the individual and the team (cross) collaborative model to best practice operation?
By Karin Wills, Experienced Leadership and Change Management Consultant

When an organization accepts that knowledge, both tacit as explicit, is an asset susceptible of being freely disseminated, capable to be improved, susceptible of being a referential framework to make better business decisions and is able to be systematically audited, is logic to assume that this organization aside of having a management committed with the preservation of a knowledge-driven culture, is mature enough in applying knowledge management practices to achieve business agility, as a result of conciliating operational excellence with strategic alignment.

Being involved in learning communities or in communities of practice from the perspective of a knowledge-oriented organization signifies that due to the fact that knowledge is considered as a major asset in these organizations, value is added in an organization, team or workgroup when after having been created or generated a meaningful knowledge, this is susceptible of being improved, disseminated, preserved and integrated with core business processes.

Today’s organizations have been slow in learning when they have not addressed yet the benefits of nurturing a culture of collaboration where thanks to Technology, corporate knowledge can be generated, shared and improved as part of a dynamic where management is appreciative about the strategic value of corporate knowledge and is opportune in encouraging, rewarding and recognizing positive behaviours around an organization that has the willingness, the desire and the motivation of learning collectively.

Conservative companies have been traditionally reluctant in promoting a culture where corporate knowledge may be a corporate asset susceptible of being shared, generated and enhanced and have denied systematically any possibility of creating a collaborative workplace environment where knowledge management applications, collaborative technologies and social networking can be used competitively in a business context that is highly competitive and volatile.

Incapacity to innovate, micromanagement practices, poor strategic mindset and lack of an inspiring and competent leadership, are factors that are related to corporate culture and may explain why a company is slow to learn and may lose its competitiveness, business focus and its leading role in the business context.

To ensure that a knowledgeable employee has a real opportunity of gaining the working knowledge in a knowledge-driven workplace, you will need to achieve the following conditions:

- A organisational culture which promotes the deployment of collaborative workplaces where the interchanging of corporate knowledge can be developed easily and it may be acquired, shared, disseminated and enhanced among all the integrants of the team.
- Corporate policies and incentives to encourage in the employees the effective use of Knowledge based systems and make possible the paradigm of an organisation that is really driven by knowledge.
- A well designed training and capacitating plan to allow the productive utilization of knowledge management applications in a way that may generate quick benefits for the employees in their whole and personal productivity.
- To overcome natural resistance to change and reduce in the employees belonging to communities of practice, possible fears, apprehensions and doubts about the fact of sharing, disseminating and enhancing knowledge facilitation in change management practices is amply advisable.

Complementary to this interesting theme, I include the links to 3 questions I have posted in Linkedin.

1. What would be different in the culture of the knowledge based company? http://www.linkedin.com/answers/management/change-management/MGM_CMG/215694-933031

2. How should we lead knowledge driven organisations in the 21st century? http://www.linkedin.com/answers/management/change-management/MGM_CMG/143353-933031

3. What would you do to transform corporate tacit knowledge into a strategic asset? http://www.linkedin.com/answers/management/organizational-development/MGM_ODV/172765-933031
By Octavio Ballesta, Partner and COO at Talaentia ★ Corporate Strategist