Opinion: Collaboration skills typically must be taught

Part of the reason this is happening is because the organization’s structure requires collaboration, but the people aren’t equipped to make that structure work.

This situation is often evident when organizations utilize an extended enterprise. Depending on the industry, extended enterprises may be sister companies, value-added resellers, subject matter experts, etc. In all cases, employees have to rely on other organizations to serve the marketplace.

There is no question that adult education can influence organizational results when collaboration is necessary. People need to learn how to collaborate; organizations should not assume this capability exists.

In 1996, AT&T and Wilson Learning co-designed a workshop called, “Collaborating Across Organizational Boundaries” to address this specific issue. I was Wilson Learning’s consultant to AT&T at the time.

It had been a few years since I looked at the work we did. I was surprised to find how relevant it is to my client’s current challenges. In particular, “The Four Elements of Collaboration” struck me as essential for employees to know and do.

The Four Elements of Collaboration represent activities that must be accomplished in order to identify and launch a successful, collaborative organization-to-organization effort. Considering all of the organizations in the collaborative effort, internally and externally, completes each of the activities.

Clarify strategic direction

This activity provides a source for collaborative opportunities and ultimately helps align the partners on a collaborative effort.

Employees learn the important link between executing organizational strategy and collaborating to achieve it. They can use the company’s interest in executing strategy to engage other departments or organizations in moving forward in the context of opportunity.

This is one of the things I love about this approach. Many organizations struggle with connecting their marketplace to their strategies to their structure to their employee behaviors. This does it.

Define collaborative opportunity

This activity involves the selection of the strategic issue and the creation of a potential partner profile.

Employees often overlook opportunities to collaborate because they fear it is too hard or it will bog them down. This attitude, more than anything else, keeps organizations from collaborating.

Engaging employees in defining the opportunity and choosing partners gives them ownership and a sense of commitment to the outcome.

Assess organizational readiness

This activity explores the structural and cultural boundaries of the organizations involved. Exploration helps to identify barriers that need to be addressed as the effort evolves.

In most situations, crossing organizational boundaries means dealing with different compensation incentives, different strategies and objectives, different cultures and structures, etc.

Organizations need employees to be problem solvers. One of the problem-solving skills is to anticipate and prepare for potential barriers, which is encouraged in this element of collaboration.

If employees know what to expect, then they can decide action before a barrier becomes a problem. Often, an employee needs courage to simply name the issue and ask the other organization to recognize it and engage in dealing with it.

Create collaboration

This activity helps formulate the strategic direction and the critical success factors for collaboration.

Employees identify stakeholder concerns, strategic direction for the collaboration, mutual benefits of the collaboration, a blueprint for how the organizations will work together and critical success factors for ensuring productivity and results. Wow.

Essentially, employees create a plan for how they will collaborate across boundaries.

Executing the plan should be considered in the employee’s performance objectives and reviews.

My experience with planning anything is that it gets easier with time. Planning negotiations, for example, takes about an eighth of the time it used to.

It’s the same with planning collaborations; it’s hard at first, but after a while, it’s the way employees begin to think. It’s why the Four Elements of Collaboration is such a powerful adult learning tool.

Linda Bower is a speaker, executive coach and human performance improvement consultant in Rogersville.