Mind the “Collaboration Gap”
07 May 2010 Tweet Yes, we are not being very original! The title is obviously adapted from announcements in the London Tube.
Collaboration is growing in importance for the enterprise. Yet, neither individuals are ABLE to collaborate as much as they WANT, nor the Enterprise is ABLE to have its employees collaborate as much as the enterprise WANTS. We shall provide some empirical evidence for this “Collaboration Gap” below. The question however is why this gap exists and what can be done to overcome it. We shall offer some ideas but would love to hear from about your own actual experiences and thoughts on bridging this gap.
Studies suggest that collaboration is a top priority today for senior executives. Collaboration is experiencing a growth in impact and importance in the enterprise. Numerous driving forces are responsible, which include: trends in globalization and outsourcing, workforce demand for flexibility, critical need for rapid innovation, co-creating value with vendors and customers, technology and tools enabling a networked world, and behavior and expectations of Gen-Y.
In our recent study, Assessing the State of Collaboration: Return to Essentials, 45% respondents said that collaboration is Essential Across the Board for business success TODAY and 77% believe that collaboration will be Essential Across the Board in the FUTURE.
How would you rate the value of collaboration to the success of your business?
Now comes the info on the Collaboration Gap. Percentage of individuals with Extremely High WANT to collaborate (64%) is twice as high as those who are ABLE to do so (33%).
Please rate yourself... a) I WANT to be able to collaborate, and b) I am ABLE to collaborate.
When you look at organizations wanting their employees to collaborate, a similar situation exists. Organization with High or Extremely High WANT their employees to collaborate (63%) are ABLE to do so about half as much (30%).
Please rate your organization... a) My organization WANTS its employees to collaborate, and b) My organization's employees are ABLE to collaborate.
;)
Nothing the importance of collaboration, what is causing this Collaboration Gap? What can the enterprise and the individual to bridge this gap? Perhaps you have experienced this yourself! Do share your stories.
What are your thoughts?
Lokesh Datta
See Related Posts:
- Mind the “Collaboration Trap”
- Effective Collaboration Is More than Deliverables
- Collaboration: Building and Sustaining Trust
- The ALL ONE (TAO) of Collaboration
- The Four Ps of Effective Collaboration
- The 4Ps of Effective Collaboration - Redux
- Collaboration Is More than Team Building and Management
- Get Teammates to Move "Towards" Rather than "Away"
Reader Comments (1)
I posted this question on LinkedIn: Neither individuals nor organizations are able to collaborate as much as they want. Do you experience the “Collaboration Gap”? How can or do we bridge this gap?
I received interesting responses that I would like to share.
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Christopher Janney, Organizational Development and Performance Improvement Professional
Recently I heard an example of how to breakdown the proverbial "silos" in an organization and help with collaboration. It requires (in some cases) major restructuring. It starts with taking a look at the different areas of the business, and determining if you can split them into teams made up of members from each of the different departments/units. Then you can rotate people between teams to continually allow for new experiences.
Ultimately collaboration needs to be a deliberate and concerted effort. Organizations have to make it a standard part of what they do, not an after thought. It may initially be a radical change, but once it becomes a natural part of the culture of the organization, the rewards will definitely be limitless!
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Patrick Seaton, Organizational Improvement Consultant, Problem Solver, and Business Transformation Specialist
The short and sweet answer is that we have a gap in collaboration for a few reasons: 1) organizations don't have the proper collaboration tools designed for small group interactions; 2) we spend too much time on hurrying up and "doing" something, instead of taking the time to collaborate and think about what needs to be done; and 3) we lack methodologies for structured brainstorming and problem solving so that everybody involved in the collaboration exercise can truly bring their expertise to the table and get engaged in the process.
As a designer of collaboration tools and methodologies, I see only too often the collaboration gap you speak of.
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Catharina Heida, Procesdeskundige at Gas Transport Services
Start by thinking 'out of the box'. We tend to invent more and more tools, other forms for organisation and structure to build an environment for a better collaboration. And at the same time, structure, hierarchy, expected roles, plans, hold back the use of all talent and knowledge and becomes an obstruction, instead of support for collaboration.
Collaboration is about people. Many people work to live. Many people collaborate because they have to - their boss tells them to, they want to accomplish the same goal (if you are so lucky they really share the same goal), they are where they are, not always coherent with their own individual goals.
Why do informal circuits have so much impact on results you want to reach? There people really talk to other people, apart from structures, plans, etc. There is the real opinion about the path and destination you want to follow and accomplish.
Two things are important, in my opinion:
1. Create space and a secure environment in which employees can experiment, follow their own passion and goals, discover and exploit talents which they like to exploit, can find people to share those talents.
2. Provide leaders that recognize talent, experience and are able to see opportunities for business, can link employees to positions where they can really add value and stand out.
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Patrick Hopp, Principal at Aligned Development
Great question. True collaboration in any organization is a huge challenge and I'm sure we could all come up with plenty of reasons why. There are also probably lots of potential solutions, but here's one that I'm currently having good luck with.
In a program I recently launched at Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air, we've built in facilitated team coaching groups. The participants were strategically chosen from different departments and work groups to provide opportunities for better collaboration and cross-functional social learning. They are expected to bring "real life" work challenges to the group once per month and then get feedback from their peers and the group facilitator. They also are working as a team on group projects that have direct impact on the bottom line. In between monthly meetings, they collaborate online using web 2.0 tools and I moderate the interactions.
The program is proving to be a big hit with both the participants and the executive team. My hope is that as the model is replicated and introduced into additional parts of the organization, it will go a long way towards improving collaboration within and between both companies.
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Rajiv Prasad, Principal Business Consultant at Plan for Success
Trust is an ingredient that seems to be slipping away for employees towards their organisation and vice versa.
Over the years, there has been a fundamental shift in the way an organisation in general has started to project itself towards the general community and the treatment that it gives its employees.
Having been connected to the banking industry, there have been numerous instances when "hard decisions" were taken to give the "pink slip" to people who had devoted 30+ or 20+ years to the organisation and who were then asked to leave the same day.
In a month's time, their positions were filled by young grads who were paid half their salaries and benefits - does not take a genius to figure out what the "hard decision" was.
If we are to immerse ourselves in theories and conceptualisation models, then the discussion can continue till ever; however, the main ingredient that is important to foster collaboration is trust.
Employees are now learning to look after their careers and organisations are learning to cut costs where it can be easily achieved (redundancy policy - hard decision).
If organisations are to foster a spirit of co-operation and collaboration, they need to ask themselves some really hard questions about how they treat their employees.
In today's time, employees are not beholden to the companies that employ them and companies should not expect the same if they cannot give the employees comfort that the organisation can be trusted.
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Harry Forsha, Director of Business Development at Emergo Group Inc.
One of the problems with organizations is that many potential collaborators are at remote locations. As a result, relationships are often not sufficiently strong to form a solid basis for collaboration.
Secondly, busy managers do not see themselves as collaborators, but rather are driven by metrics that in fact discourage collaboration. These two factors should be sufficient to cause any potential collaboration to fail.
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Richard Fox, Executive coach and a business mentor. A specialist in integrating strategy and developing people
We can start to bridge the gap by finding the areas of common interest and exploring the win- win for each party (plus a 'win' for the ultimate customer, if appropriate).
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Arti Dhar koul, Marketing Director at IT industry
Remove all boss and subordinate relationships from companies and let people own their job and results will drastically improve...Hierarchy controls and not delivers...
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Warren Lake, Director of Strategic Development at Quantify It
Collaboration is alive and well, though it’s most often left unrecognized by those who practice it. Collaborative practices exist all around us, actually, for all people who communicate and work with each other to gain mutual benefit are collaborators, even if they don’t use the title as such. Collaboration permeates our lives, it just needs to be recognized and then more formally engaged in for its strength to be fully tapped.
Following, are several links I’ve posted to both questions and to responses in the Q&A forum - and they’re all examples of how collaboration can be recognized and more readily used in our lives,
Would you give away your valuable ideas for free, trusting in the motto, "What goes around comes around?": http://tinyurl.com/2f32tm7
Kindly Suggest Types of Business Networking Places, Tools, Ideas?: http://tinyurl.com/2cen92z
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Indroneil Mukerjee, Transformational Coach & Executive Mentor; Strategist & Enabler - Enterprise Learning; Inspirational Speaker & Columnist
Collaboration comes from Latin con- (“‘with’”) + labōrō (“‘work’”). In "labor" there is a sense of "physical exertions of childbirth".
Thus, both in word and spirit, collaboration essentiates three things
(1)coming together
(2) to work / exert
(3) in a process of birthing.
The gap exists because all three, in the given institutional and individual contexts, are pre-dominantly not possible / difficult.
Most individual / institutional behavior is fear-led. Where is the question of together-ness in a fear-led state. If at all you need the other, it is to be one-up or to fix a common problem (which is not same as the act of creation in a birthing process).
Work has become impossible in an age which touts execution and delivery. None of these require the spirit of human intent. Work does. It is essential.
Driven by the fear of loss and death, one cannot even imagine birthing or creation. It is all about survival, somehow.
Underlying all the three factors leading to the gap is fear. And the simple humanly antidote is love, which fortunately does not need to be manufactured or engineered or learned (for that's who we all are) but to be re-minded and re-remembered.