“Collaboration” is just virtue signalling. Now is the time for “shared understanding” instead
By: Edward Adams
Tags: Meetings, Framework, Leadership, Collaboration, Productivity

Is this really “collaboration,” or is it a whole heap of delay to your business’s efforts to survive? (picture courtesy of wocintechchat.com on Unsplash)

I have grown back into the habit of checking my work emails on a Sunday night, no matter how much I don’t want to — it just helps me get ahead for the week.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve opened up Outlook and felt more anxious about Monday morning creeping up on me than I did earlier in the day, but today is one of those days where I will go to bed in more of a huff than I had originally planned.

My job is to create new things, whether it be products or services, or even processes or cultures; I am responsible for innovating and keeping my organisation relevant. One of the things I have been doing recently is testing out a new online form on some of our customers on a small scale, to check the language and the questions we are asking, and to check out the impact on our internal operations of doing the process this new way: does it improve the quality of information we get upfront, help us to become more efficient or improve our ability to respond, for example.

I was stunned about a week ago to receive an email from someone in our IT department saying they were going to block us from testing out this new online form, having discussed it in an IT management meeting earlier that day and having agreed that they didn’t know enough about it to be comfortable with it. You may be sat there thinking: “they have every right to say that if they weren’t engaged.” That argument would totally stand, if it weren’t for the fact that they were made aware of the plans three months ago and chose to do nothing about it until now, one week into the trial.

I spent several frustrating hours during the working week speaking to various people in our IT department about this and being clear that this trial would not end prematurely, including our IT lead and some of his team. I have articulated my points which I will detail to you later. But tonight, a whole week after the issue first arose, I have received another email with a whole bunch of IT people copied in saying they hadn’t approved my work yet and that they need another week to look into it (not to approve it!) because they’re all doing training courses or have other commitments in the next few days.

My IT department is stopping me from doing my job; they are saying that I cannot try out new things without them taking time to carefully approve everything. Given the amount of change my organisation needs, their current attitude is going to derail the next few years’ worth of transformation and potentially put us out of business.

Get to the point Edward: what has this got to do with collaboration?

Ok, rant over. Now I’ll get to the crux of the issue.

My organisation is obsessed with thinking they are collaborative, amongst other things. They also think that we are morally superior to other organisations, great at developing leaders and all “together as one” to deliver on our mission. Some kind of superhero organisation. I couldn’t disagree more on all of the points, as a fresh pair of eyes. In fact I think we have a lot to do just to survive, before we focus on excellence.

But I will focus on the collaboration angle here.

There are many definitions of collaboration.

The dictionary says it is the process of working, one with another. It also rightly points to the use of this term for cases when one co-operates, usually with an enemy nation, for example: “collaborating with the Nazis during World War II.” Even I would be acting melodramatically to try and align my current frustrations to that definition!

In a 2019 Forbes article, Carol Kinsey Goman says that a company needs to collaborate to survive, by “combining the potential of its people and the quality of the information they possess with their ability — and willingness — to share what they know with their teammates and across departmental, hierarchical and functional boundaries.”

And Rebekah Carter at UC Today simply describes it as “Connecting teams and getting stuff done.”

Personally, I think Carol and Rebekah’s definitions are very different but also both excellent. Neither creates a specific script of how to collaborate, nor glorifies it the way many people do when they overuse it in conversation. Both summaries of what collaboration is allude to the overall philosophy and what it involves.

I have reflected on my new employers and our culture, applying the definitions above. Based on my first few months of being here, we are not in line with these. All I can interpret is that my organisation thinks that collaboration is defined as this:

Collaboration (according to my company’s employees): 1) having a meeting to talk about planning another meeting, which will involve talking about something that needs to be done. 2) involving stakeholders in your projects to make sure they don’t push back when you’re at a critical stage and have put loads of work in already. 3) the act of completing any job, no matter how big or how small, with somebody else.

You will note that I can be quite sarcastic and facetious when I get going! However it is hard not to when your job is to make change and the rest of your organisation isn’t set up to enable that.

Collaboration is not the same as getting approval from all your stakeholders…

It isn’t. Period. Organising the approval of your activity from the relevant stakeholders is project management, which is transactional. Collaboration is cultural and a mindset rather than some kind of tick list.

And yet, based on my experiences over the years, this seems to be how nearly every organisation operates. I wonder how much wasted effort and project delay and slowdown is caused by heavy approvals processes which are universally accepted because they represent a modern day buzzword.

Furthermore, I tend to find that the departments or people who you are expected to get approval from tend to be the people who aren’t very interested in what you are doing, and that is reflected in the amount of effort they put into helping you. I don’t intend that as a “direct hit” on those people, but it is generally “enabling functions” such as IT, web, HR or other generic teams who you need to approach and because they are less directly invested into what you are trying to achieve and have both their own and other competing priorities from other departments, requests for approval fall down the list quite quickly. In some cases, they just drop off and require persistent chasing… you all know at least someone whose task management is a bit like that.

Nor is collaboration a small-scale, commonplace, frequent kind of thing

It will be interesting to see how readers feel about this one!

I open my emails and attend meetings, and on an almost daily basis I see or hear phrases like “yesterday I collaborated with…” and “we collaborated last week on getting this task done.”

I really don’t agree that collaboration is timebound like this. It’s not just having a meeting or a chat with someone else, or getting some small job done. It’s much bigger than that, and is cultural rather than transactional.

It also isn’t just talking…

We’ve all heard the phrase “you can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?” meaning that someone is very good at talking about things, but needs to prove that they can do those things as well as they talk about them.

Being able to “walk the walk” is a value that I find important. Not many activities achieve results simply through conversation; being able to deliver is critical.

How many meetings have you been stuck on during 2020, staring at a Zoom or Teams screen from your house or apartment, where people claim to be acting collaboratively by having conversations together? What percentage of those have translated into action and progress? In my case it’s nearly zilch. I work with people who love talking ideas and about what we should be doing, but meetings always end with only one action, and that’s to meet again in the near future to talk some more. The pattern continues pathetically. We have collaborated an awful lot based on our interpreted definition. But we have achieved nothing.

Academic Patrik Hall suggests this is because having lots of meetings constitutes a “form of therapy” for workers, allowing them to show off their status or vent frustration or creativity. But he also quite rightly laments that “people don’t do concrete things anymore” and that many meetings are totally pointless. I have long held the same view, taking a preference to have a small amount of discussion with people about expectations and then to block out large amounts of time in the diary to “do the work.”

So what? What should we do instead of traditional collaboration?

Here is what I have proposed in my organisation. It won’t happen overnight but is a great thing to strive towards.

What we need is to get away from the traditional concept of collaboration, large chatty meetings and approvals processes.

We need a new approach, which I would describe as “shared understanding.”

Picture this: I want to start a new project or trial. My enabling functions such as IT and web are really busy helping other people in the organisation so really don’t want any more things to get involved in right now. What if I could crack on with the trial without bothering them, and without doing anything they’re uncomfortable with?

Sounds palatable on all sides. So how do we get there?

We create a shared understanding of how to work and do’s and don’ts; a framework which makes it clear to all of our combined expectations and boundaries.

To achieve this, a lot of effort is required upfront. You need to meet with your stakeholders, talk through the type of projects or things you’re likely to do over the next few years, and ask everyone to take some time to put forward some clear guidelines on what they would support and what they would not.

For example: your IT department should make clear their overall approach to software and infrastructure, and any providers or hosting arrangements which are “no go”s; the procurement team need to tell you the processes for buying things and selecting suppliers.

With this information to hand, you can get on with future projects in line with the requirements other people have shared, and they can get on with their lives without having to worry about what you’re going to come up with next. When they see an out-of-the-blue email about your latest harebrained scheme, it will seem less harebrained if they’ve met you and made their mantra clear, and can feel reassured that whatever you’re doing, you’re doing with their stipulations respected.

This approach would allow the show to go on, and for the business to achieve results more quickly.

I don’t think it’s rocket science. It’s actually quite simple. Intelligence-insulting, even.

But I feel passionately that this article needs to be written, because I have seen far too many bad examples of so-called ‘collaboration’ and barely any people I would consider to be true collaborators.

So my challenge to you all is to reflect on your own collaborative credentials, and those of your employers. If they are more likened to procedure, transactions, large discussionary meetings and seeking approval to do things, ask yourself: am I happy with the current trajectory of our work? Is the business achieving the results it needs to? Are we under threat unless we make things happen?

The answer to those questions, without bias, is likely to be no. It might be “yes,” but I can guarantee you any report would add “but could do better” to the end of your answer.