Well, here is day 5, on my What is Really Important? series. Once I finish this post I will be half way there. Good thing too – only a few days left before the end of the year and I promised myself I would get all of these posts written before January 1, 2010. I’ve got my work cut out for me.
There are all different types of collaboration and anti-collaboration (is that really a word? doubt it!) that can occur in a company. Some companies are really good at one kind, but really bad at the others. It is really unusual to find an organization that is good at all of them.
Here are the types of collaboration that I find to be very important.
Internal Collaboration
- Team -This type of collaboration is the easiest to achieve. This typically is a group that is working on a project together. If these people aren’t working together well, nobody is going to succeed. Here it is clearly in one’s best interests to put the needs of the team first, because they strongly correlate with one’s own. Sometime you’ll get someone who tries to make their team look bad so that they come off looking like the hero who saved the project. That person is likely to get shunned and to get a reputation that they are difficult to work with over time.
- Hierarchical or Vertical -A lot of people forget this one, but it clearly exists. This is collaboration up and down the management chain. This is different than command and control where an order comes down from on high and everyone follows it. We all know that typically doesn’t work. People may follow it, but they won’t own it. Vertical collaboration has people at all levels of the organization taking responsibility for future direction and decision making and it requires a significant amount of trust.
- Cross Department or Horizontal - Most people think of this one when collaboration goes bad. This happens when you have team silos and instead of looking out for the organization as a whole, the teams are only looking out for themselves. This is insidious and hard to break, especially when team goals make up a large portion of a person’s performance review or bonus structure. Here you find managers hoarding resources (people, equipment, money) in order to have their team succeed. What typically allows these types of silos to be broken down is a set of corporate wide priorities. If your team is working on priority #4 and someone at priority #1 needs help – you better provide those resources so that the company as a whole is able to deliver.
- Cross Cultural or Geographic - In the world of offshoring and outsourcing this type of collaboration is necessary, but it also is fraught with issues. People are afraid to collaborate in this way because they fear losing their jobs. In many companies this is a definite possibility, but this is a management stance. Being able to collaborate with people from other cultures and in other time zones is a skill. It is a valuable one. One is always better off learning this skill and taking it elsewhere than worrying about losing one’s job because of it. As our economy grows more and more global this ability will be essential
External Collaboration
- Customer - Working closely with customers is important to the livelihood of any company. If you don’t provide good customer support and your competitors do, you are dead. Key customers should also be asked for their input, this is key for prioritizing new product capabilities.
- Vendor - On the flip side, as a customer, you should strive to have a strong collaborative relationship with your key vendors. The bigger a customer that you are, the easier this is. However, many companies are looking to learn from their customers who are really pushing the envelope in how they are using the vendor’s products. Many times the most creative customers aren’t necessarily the biggest ones. Wouldn’t you like to drive requirements that you need into your vendor’s product development roadmap?
- Partner - Lastly, you must consider companies that aren’t necessarily your customers or your vendors but whose products are complimentary to your own. Is there a way that you can resell each others products to have a more compelling offering? Is there a way that you can integrate the inner workings of your products so that when they are used together it is seamless? This is called a partnership because it benefits both parties equally.
