Collaboration – For The Long Run

8/11/2019 Collaboration For The Long Run

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CollaborationFor The Long Run

By Doug Shaw

Notes and a few pictures from my recent talks on collaboration at

Illinois SHRM 2014 and Ohio SHRM 2014

Collaboration and working together more effectively, starts when we

begin to notice one another, and improves when we take the time to get

to know one another better, and understand each others wants and

needs.

On my recent trip to Ohio for the SHRM State HR conference, I signed up

for a 5K run which took place on the Thursday morning. I needed a pair

of shorts to wear for the race so I got up at 6am and drove to the local

Walmart. This was my first time in a Walmartthis place is huge! The

clock is tickingI need to find shorts and all I can see is fruit, vegetables,

hair dryers and kids toys. Im all lost in the supermarket. Luckily my

lost look attracts a member of staff and in no time Im shown to where

the shirts are, I grab a pair, thank the man and leave. I just made it back

in time for the start of the race. Walmart guy noticed me, took a few

seconds to understand what I needed and made a difference for me that

morning. In case you are interested, I ran the race in 27 minutes, 22seconds.


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Although I wanted to do well in the race, I stopped en route to

photograph the sunset over Sandusky. This view was a part of my

journey I wanted to keep and share and I decided it was worth losing a

few seconds off my time to gain something which would make the

overall experience more enjoyable and memorable.

I opened my talk in Ohio with this little story, and then set out a light

structure for the rest of the session:

Our objective for the session was to think about how we cocreate

greater value through better:

Collaboration

Experimentation

Relationships

Collaboration

Collaboration is important as we increasingly work in dispersed teams.

Its important when we consider the importance of organizational

memory and the importance of sharing knowledge to create power with

each other, not controlling knowledge to gain power over each other.

We talked about more open systems of communication, referencing

how Automattic (the company which founded Wordpress) chooses to

work in an almost email free way. People who work for Automattic

share almost everything on open platforms easily accessible by any

other member of staff. In this way, as problems arise and ideas are

generated, the conversations around them are visible to all, and all may

contribute if they choose.

As is often the case, there was broad agreement among us that we all

currently send and receive too much email, so a challenge to take back

to work from this section was to review the information we have in our

organizations and find better ways to make it more openly accessible to

colleagues. Try starting from the assumption that everything is open

and work back from there (hat tip to Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant, co

authors of Humanize, for that excellent suggestion). As the service user,

I should have easy access to information and then come to you as the

HR/Legal/Facilities/Sales/Marketing/Operations subject matter experts


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for any clarification. Imagine how much more effective wed be if we

werent always having to point out where stuff is to other people, and if

we reduced the amount of current duplication, which is an inevitable

consequence of not haring information.

We also looked at an interesting study from Breakpoint and Beyond that

indicates that as we get older, our ability to think divergently,

significantly reduces.

At kindergarten age, almost all (98%) of a group of 1,500 children

demonstrated genius level ability to come up with different solutions

to a problem, a challenge, or an opportunity. By ages 8-10, this level had

fallen to 32%, by ages 11-13 it dropped further to 10%. A further study

of 2,500 people over the age of 25 returned a score of just 2%. Im sure

there are many reasons for this, and it is important we recognize that we

seem to unlearn this important ability. I expect shame, and fear of being

judged play into this strongly too.

Experimentation

The art of trying out different ways to work together. A couple of years

ago I was working with Thomson Reuters on improving collaboration inMinneapolis. Rick King, a senior manager in Thomson Reuters opened an

event I was facilitating at Target Field with a simple, powerful question.

Rick asked, How much of your complexity is self inflicted? and you

could have heard a pin drop among the 200 plus guests. Suresome of

our work is complex, and we overcomplicate many things too. Being

willing to work in a more open, selfless style can be a great way to start

the process of simplifying and deduplicating.

The pull of the familiar is often strong, so how do we get past that pull,that reluctance to take a risk? In The Year Without Pants, by Scott

Berkun, he suggests a way past this mental barrier is:

Simple, Little and Often. Why? If we keep it simple, stuff is easier to

launch, and if its easier to launch then it will get launched,and we are

likely to get fast frequent feedback from simple, quick experiments.

Very often at work, our activities are designed to support the plan, the

strategy. Businesses invest lots of time, money and effort into strategic


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planning, and I think that is very risky. If the statement change is the

only constant rings true for you, then beware the often inflexible nature

of the long term strategic plan. As you and your colleagues try to

execute the planthat change we mentioned in the last sentence is

busy happening, possibly making your plan less and less relevant. Im abig fan of having a direction of travel for your team and or your business,

and iterating your way there, maybe borrowing some thinking from the

agile manifesto along the way.

We also agreed it is important to understand the prevailing culture when

introducing experimentation and creativity into the mix. These are

desired qualities, a 2013 survey by the Design Council found that CEOs

chose creativity as the most critical capability required to navigate

todays complex world, rating it higher than vision, rigouror

management discipline. Yet we all know how much people struggle to

get creative. I think that is because we often mistakenly see creativity

as an all or nothing pursuit, as something that inevitably brings chaos

and disruption along with it.

I prefer to look at the creative process as a series of tensions, knobs and

dials. Playing with these tensions, adjusting the flow between rules and

trust, loose and tight, frameworks and freedoms. The tensions in yourorganization may be different to the ones Ive shown here, so by all


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means develop your own creativity ebb and flow meter, and let some

creativity, experimentation and collaboration flow helpfully into the mix.

Relationships

Here are a few simple truths:

Without people, youre nothing

We do things more willingly for friends

Connections give us meaning

Conversations are the bond

These small significant ideas are the kind of thing we can build good

work on. Increasingly I notice in my work that what really matters is

small steps. I tend to glaze over when the promise of transformational

change is dangled in front of people like a huge glittering prize, just out

of reach. In recent conversations there seems growing agreement that a

grand plan is too big to feel achievable and is often hampered by a stack

of well meaning and dull PowerPoint slides and a healthy dose of

management mumbo jumbo. Instead, the way we actually get stuff done

is more often:

Little by little

Through getting to know one another better

Recognising effort and results

Trust is the foundation stone of relationships, and we build this in part

by doing what we say we will. And we recognize that at some point, we

all make mistakes. When that happens, its how we seek to recover from

that position that helps trust to reestablish or break. Acknowledging as

before, that knowledge has power when it is shared and used tococreate power with each other, not over each otherthat is key to

building relationships too. Personally I choose to trust people Im

working with and we will deal with the fall out as and when something

goes wrong. I realise that approach is not for everyone but it works for

me.


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So Why Does it Go Wrong?

We know the value of collaboration, experimentation, creativity and

relationships, yet somehow we often fall short on these things. I was

fortunate to give a talk with Neil Morrison in Louisiana earlier this year,and one of the many things he researched for our session together was

some of the psychology behind whyeven though we know what

works, we often deviate towards less helpful methods. The next couple

of pages are based heavily on what I learned from working with Neil.

In Illinois and Ohio I shared the SCARF modeldevised by David Rock, as

a helpful way of realising when things may be going wrong. In his

research, Rock found that when Status, Certainty, Autonomy,

Relatedness and Fairness are threatenedwe are less likely tocollaborate. He distilled his thinking into this simple model so we could

recall it easily, and so it can help us notice a threat occurring while it is

happening.

This model is not the answerit is simply there to make you aware of

how people respond when these things are threatened, so that you can

adapt and respond in a way that brings people back to a more helpful,

productive place.


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We also looked briefly at the importance of having the basics covered.

Things like sleep, hydration, exercise/movement and diet and nutrition.

Once the basics are in place, and you are aware of what might threaten

your ability to collaborate, you can set the environment up to workbetter for you.

One thing we noted is that when people are working at their best, they

can only do so for a short period of time. Yet at work, we often find

ourselves rushing from meeting to meeting, we allow our diaries to

become unrealistically full and then wonder why were not functioning

effectively. We talked about this and I shared some research that

underpins why busyness is bad for decision making, because of

something called the depletion effect. Heres an extract from Thinking

Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, which gives an example of how theeffect works:

A disturbing demonstration of depletion effects in judgment was recently reported in

the Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences. The unwitting participants in

the study were eight parole judges in Israel. They spend entire days reviewing

applications for parole. The cases are presented in random order, and the judges

spend little time on each one, an average of six minutes. The default decision is

denial of parole; only 35% of requests are approved.

The exact time of each decision is recorded, and the times of the three judges foodbreaks morning, lunch and afternoon during the day are recorded as well. The


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authors of the study plotted the proportion of approved requests against the time

since the last food break. The proportion spikes after each meal break, when about

65% of requests are granted. During the next two hours or so, until the judges next

feeding, the approval rate drops steadily, to about zero just before the meal.The

best possible account of the data provides bad news: tired and hungry judges tend to

fall back on the easier default positioning of denying requests for parole.

I think we owe it to ourselves and our colleagues to find gaps in a busy

day, or failing that, acknowledge that a packed diary and a continual

rush of meetings will likely result in poor decision making.

In Summary

I think we work better together. Some of the things that help us do this

are:

Having, building and giving trust

Noticing one another

Getting to know each other better

Keeping things simple wherever possible

Accepting that small steps can make big differences

Having open access to relevant information, this means we can

cocreate power with each other, not exercise power over oneanother.

Recognising that creativity is not binary. You don't just switch it

on, you adjust the dials and tease it out. Don't fear it, play with it,

iterate it.

Having meaningful conversations

Taking breaks


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Collaboration – For The Long Run

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