Collaboration - human activity or business tool?

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 08:45:02 GMT

If collaboration for your team means talking/examining the problem, but not doing, you may be frustrated by the fact that nothing changes.

Frustrated by the lack of collaboration across his management team, my client called me. He was almost desperate for suggestions that would help him in building a successful cross-functional collaborative team. This team comes together for regular management meetings and is extremely focused on operational results (and highly successful at achieving them) but working together on cross-functional non-operational programmes for the business as a whole… well that’s a whole different ball game.

I duly invited myself to sit in on one of the team’s meetings where they had identified a hot, non-operational business issue that needed to be resolved. Everyone was engrossed in talking extensively about the problem with lots of suggestions for solutions to the issue at hand. The challenge was that after the meeting, every single team member returned to their day job and did absolutely nothing on the non-operational business issue. Collaboration for this team means talking/examining the problem, but not doing. Guess what? Nothing changes.

What’s going on here?

In his recent HBR article, ‘Stop wasting money on team building’, Carlos Valdez-Dapena talks about the collaboration framework he designed for Mars Inc. One of his conclusions is that Accountability is key; success-minded people need collaborative commitments built into their individual performance objectives.

As he describes the process the Mars teams went through, I’m reminded of one of the organisational psychology tools I regularly use - the Accounting Cycle from Transactional Analysis. The Accounting Cycle reveals just how often we all rush headlong straight into solving issues without giving ourselves the time to really understand what’s actually going on in the first place – what exists and what’s significant.

Please get in touch if any of this resonates with you.

Changing Company Culture - launching the journey

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 08:45:02 GMT

Company Culture is unbelievably powerful, it defines what and how work actually gets done. I use a simple yet powerful way of looking at culture and how you can make changes, despite the doom-mongers who say otherwise.

Late August gives me an itch. Or a disturbance in the Force…whatever you fancy.

It’s that end of summer / start of school thing. I’ve always been a bit conflicted about this time of year because, when I was a child, I loved the freedom of summer holidays and also (shh, secretly and rather shame-facedly) rather relished the structure and hope presented by the new school year. So here I am today, with my sadness at the loss of summertime freedom to meet and play out with my family and friends, to relax and let my mind roam, coupled with the anticipation of the September back-to-work and structured dynamism of client work.

The great thing is that I get the sense I’m not alone in having a dual relationship with this time of year, even though this year in the UK, late August has a very odd pre-Brexit vibe.

For example, yesterday I met up with the CEO of a large SME. When I last saw her in late June she was, frankly, looking drained and depleted. Yesterday, she was positively buzzing and full of enthusiasm for the business growth strategies that the summer break had allowed her to generate; looking forward to sharing her vision and passion with her colleagues. We talked at length about her vision for the type of culture she wants to create that will enable those growth strategies.

It’s great she’s so buzzing, and she’s right to ask the culture question linked with visionary growth; culture is unbelievably powerful. It defines what and how work actually gets done so, naturally, those bubbling with enthusiasm for the return to work and the can-do phase want to bring their company along with them. In the field of organisational psychology that I work in, Transactional Analysis, there is a simple yet powerful way of looking at company culture.

If you'd like to learn more about this, please do get in touch.

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Collaboration - human activity or business tool?

Changing Company Culture - launching the journey