Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Build Common Ground, and Reap Big Results by Morten Hansen

Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Build Common Ground, and Reap Big Results
by Morten Hansen

Spot the Four Barriers to Collaboration Modern management is the enemy of collaboration. Managers have installed extreme decentralization to foster entrepreneurship, individual freedom, and accountability. This is a great system that yields many benefits, but it is also hard to collaborate across a loose collection of units. The solution is not to centralize, but to spot barriers to collaboration among units and tear them down. That’s a decentralized and yet coordinated model. Research shows that four barriers block collaboration among decentralized units. – Not-invented-here: People are not willing to seek input from others outside their unit. – Hoarding: People are not willing to provide information and help others when asked. – Search problems: People are not able to find information and people easily. – Transfer problems: People are not able to transfer complicated knowledge from one unit to another. The first two barriers are motivational problems—people don’t want to collaborate. The latter two barriers are ability problems—people are not able to collaborate well.

Three fundamental unification mechanisms allow a leader to translate the lofty aspiration of unity into concrete measures: (1) creating a unifying goal, (2) inciting a common value of teamwork, and (3) speaking the language of collaboration. These mechanisms are effective in making people more willing to collaborate. They reduce the not-invented-here and hoarding barriers.

Is your team over burdened with stuff that they are going nowhere?

An engaging story about braking silos

 An obvious, but nonetheless engaging story about braking silos. Leadership must not take a dept or divisional approach to the few but focused goals of the organisation.

To understand the logic of the cooperative approach, it helps to reexamine the fascinating, three- decades- old research program of Turkish- born social scientist Muzafer Sherif. Intrigued with the issue of intergroup conflict, Sherif decided to investigate the process as it developed in boys’ summer camps. Although the boys never realized that they were participants in an experiment, Sherif and his associates consistently engaged in artful manipulations of the camp’s social environment to observe the effects on group relations. It didn’t take much to bring on certain kinds of ill will. Simply separating the boys into two residence cabins was enough to stimulate a “we vs. they” feeling between the groups; and assigning names to the two groups (the Eagles and the Rattlers) accelerated the sense of rivalry. The boys soon began to demean the qualities and accomplishments of the other group. But these forms of hostility were minor compared to what occurred when the experimenters purposely introduced competitive activities into the factions’ meetings with one another. Cabin against cabin treasure hunts, tugs- of- war, and athletic contests produced name- calling and physical friction. During the competitions, members of the opposing team were labeled “cheaters,” “sneaks,” and “stinkers.” Afterward, cabins were raided, rival banners were stolen and burned, threatening signs were posted, and lunchroom scuffles were commonplace. 

At this point, it was evident to Sherif that the recipe for disharmony was quick and easy: Just separate the participants into groups and let sit for a while in their own juices. Then mix together over the flame of continued competition. And there you have it: Cross- group hatred at a rolling boil. A more challenging issue then faced the experimenters: how to remove the entrenched hostility they had created. They first tried the contact approach of bringing the bands together more often. But even when the joint activities were pleasant ones, such as movies and social events, the results were disastrous. Picnics produced food fights, entertainment programs gave way to shouting contests, dining- hall lines degenerated into shoving matches. Sherif and his research team began to worry that in Dr. Frankenstein fashion, they might have created a monster they could no longer control. 

Then, at the height of the strife, they hit on a resolution that was at once simple and effective. They constructed a series of situations in which competition between the groups would have harmed everyone’s interests, in which cooperation was necessary for mutual benefit. On a daylong outing, the single truck available to go into town for food was “found” to be stuck. The boys were assembled and all pulled and pushed together until the vehicle was on its way. In another instance, the researchers arranged for an interruption of the camp’s water supply, which came through pipes from a distant tank. Presented with the common crisis and realizing the need for unified action, the boys organized themselves harmoniously to find and fix the problem before day’s end. In yet another circumstance requiring cooperation, the campers were informed that a desirable movie was available for rental but that the camp could not afford it. Aware that the only solution was to combine resources, the boys rented the film with pooled money and spent an unusually congenial evening enjoying it together. 

The consequences, though not instantaneous, were nonetheless striking. Conjoint efforts toward common goals steadily bridged the rancorous rift between the groups. Before long, the verbal baiting had died, the jostling in lines had ended, and the boys had begun to intermix at the meal tables. Further, when asked to list their best friends, significant numbers changed from an earlier exclusive naming of in- group chums to a listing that included boys in the other group. Some even thanked the researchers for the opportunity to rate their friends again because they realized they had changed their minds since the old days. In one revealing episode, the boys were returning from a campfire on a single bus— something that would have produced bedlam before but was now specifically requested by the boys. When the bus stopped at a refreshment stand, the boys of one group, with five dollars left in its treasury, decided to treat their former bitter adversaries to milkshakes! 

We can trace the roots of this surprising turnabout to those times when the boys had to view one another as allies instead of opponents. The crucial procedure was the experimenters’ imposition of common goals on the groups. It was the cooperation required to achieve these goals that finally allowed the rival group members to experience one another as reasonable fellows, valued helpers, and friends. And when success resulted from the mutual efforts, it became especially difficult to maintain

Blind obedience can be pain in r ear

A physician ordered ear drops to be administered to the right ear of a patient suffering pain and infection there. But instead of writing out completely the location “right ear” on the prescription, the doctor abbreviated it so that the instructions read “place in R ear.” Upon receiving the prescription, the duty nurse promptly put the required number of ear drops into the patient’s anus. Obviously, rectal treatment of an earache made no sense. Yet neither the patient nor the nurse questioned it. The important lesson of this story is that in many situations where a legitimate authority has spoken, what would otherwise make sense is irrelevant. In these instances, we don’t consider the situation as a whole but attend and respond to only one aspect of it. 

There are lessons to be had here!

Success in life comes from variety and choice