Collaboration? Why Bother?!
So who hasn't said that to themselves – or aloud? Taking the time to properly ‘socialize’ an issue, to get input from key (and not-so key) players, to spend yet another round of meetings seemingly obfuscating the obvious, can feel like an incredible waste of time, effort, and resources, can’t it?
So why collaborate? What IS the upside that makes so many companies think that collaboration is the Holy Grail of effective decision-making?!
Building a Better House through Collaboration
Building Better Relationships though CollaborationLet’s say an architect is designing a house and specifies doubling the amount of insulation for the house. While that will increase the cost of the build, it makes sense because it will also decrease heating and cooling costs on an ongoing basis. No collaboration, per se, but not a bad plan, either.
Now consider what could happen should the architect reach out and collaborate with the HVAC (Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning) guy.
Knowing that the walls will be better insulated (and will have fewer leaks), the HVAC supplier knows he can install a smaller (read: less expensive) system than he might otherwise. So not only will the ongoing heating and cooling costs be less, but the cost to build the house will be less, too!
What examples can YOU share about how collaborating helped you learn something you didn't already know or resulted in saving you, your company, or your customers, time, effort, and/or money?Let’s say you’re working on a project and pretty much have everything figured out. So you go ahead and begin implementation. No collaboration, per se, but not a bad plan, either.
Now consider what could happen should you reach out and collaborate with some of your peers on the project.
While, yes, it may slow things down at first, the rapport and willingness to collaborate you’re showing today, will likely pay dividends in the future on projects where you really do need others’ help.
Labels: Business in General, Success at Work
posted by Barry Zweibel at 11:49 AM
7 Comments:
I have found belonging to professional associations breeds collaboration. Those who have achieved a certain amount of success are willing to give away their time and expertise with no regard for return; the paradox is that when we do this the return comes from the most unexpected places.
Hi Barry
If I collaborate, I potentially grow much faster and I add value to my partner's and my own brand. Sure things can get tricky around communication, trust and respect, but in the end and in these times of more cost effective virtual teams, together we are stronger.
For us it's worth the effort.
Ants
www.courageous-communication-partnership.com
Why use as many resources as reasonable to create solutions?
Each member of a team brings a different perspective that can help create a better solution. As John Maxwell often says, “Not one of us is as smart as all of us.” Also collaboration creates buy in from those who are contributing.
They become the catalysts for the changes within the company.
Over the years I have found if you define the problem at a high level within the organization and bring it to the front line team members to create solutions for their area, then have the managers work with those solutions to integrate them into the overall solution it is easier to create the cycle of change and improvement within the company.
well, if the manager is too stupid to solve the problem himself, he calls a meeting. And if everybody invited to the meeting is too stupid too, they end up calling ANOTHER meeting. So it goes... Somehow it never occurs to anybody (e.g. the shareholders) to fire the whole sorry lot of them and install competent people in their stead :)
Hi Barry,
As one of my objective, I was given a massive historical cash database starting from 1980 or something and one of my objective was to make it usable and user friendly. I could have gone away and simply created a model as per my understanding of what is needed out of it.
Instead, I had several meetings with the finance team and the commercial team to understand who uses or needs the information from the cash database.
I was surprised to note that database was used by a lot of different people and they all wanted different information from the file. Some needed it for audit purposes, some needed to use the database to understand inflow and outflow of cash before going to finalise deals with clients, some needed to ensure correct amount of money is received and paid, some needed to understand which clients are generating more cash, etc.
Without having meetings with the different teams and with some of my previous work colleagues who had exeptional IT skills - I could never have come up with a model which really met everybody's needs.
Following that, having another meeting to take eveyone through the model and circulate a file that explains how the file can be used and updated - helped a lot of people save their time and helped them make quick informed decisions.
Without collaborating - we sometimes fail to understand the real issue or the need to complete a project or an assignment. We can get side tracked from the team's / organisation's goals and can easily end up wasting everyones time (including ours).
Hi
I tend to agree with Heeral.
We need to look at what kind of organization we are working for and how many stakeholders and/or affected (positively or negatively) users/customers would be.
Larger the organisation - need of collboration becomes more and more compulsory. It is also important to get some hidden or already implemented ideas to the forefront and work with feasible ideas to achieve objectives.
Moreover, there are many project sponsors (who fund projects) in large organizations and many systems to be integrated to make the project successful. Without collboration - i dont think it is possible.
I work for a large bank and I have truly experienced and enjoyed the benefits of colloboration on large and complex projects. I truly believe that without colloboration - all the multimillion projects i have executed would have ended up in disaster!
Thanks, all!
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