Collaboration is Not a Traitorous Act — It’s a Leadership Imperative!
If you’ve been listening to the news out of Washington, D.C. lately, you would think that collaboration is a dirty word, a traitorous act. This is especially disconcerting at a time when collaboration has become an imperative throughout the global business world. For starters, let’s remember that collaborate simply means “to work together.” And everyone knows that a business cannot be successful today without highly-effective teamwork and strong alliance networks — in other words, people working together.
But, collaboration has an even more valuable purpose for leaders in time-driven enterprises; collaboration is an effective means of managing increasingly complex tradeoffs. These tradeoffs often involve multiple desirable paths or solutions, and even competing business interests. Yet, senior leaders have to select the best option for the enterprise overall. Under such circumstances, applying a single mind to finding the best tradeoff option typically is not enough. A single problem solver may enable a faster choice to be made, but not a fast and sound decision. Here’s why.
By definition, a tradeoff decision involves two or more desirable solutions or paths. Most individuals, including many leaders, struggle to make any decision at all when all of their choices have some desirable elements. The fear of not getting it “right” can lead to decisional paralysis. And, even for those leaders who have no problem plunging in and making decisions, the best decisions are always the ones where full consideration has been given to the options available. That’s where collaboration adds value. And, if done well, a collaborative decisional process also leads to lasting solutions. Moreover, effective collaboration fosters the timely use of divergent and convergent thinking, both of which are essential when weighing two or more desirable choices.
Divergent thinking involves the use of imagination and breadth of vision to arrive at a variety of possible solutions to a problem. For this reason, divergent thinking is the best first step in managing complex tradeoffs. By exploring multiple options, each from different perspectives, and by comparing data from multiple sources, it is possible for leaders to tease out the relative degree of desirability for each path in the tradeoff match-up. Moreover, examining each option from every possible angle often opens up a “third way” solution. Divergence also is crucial when decisions involve parties with different viewpoints and different constituencies. Divergence allows everyone’s perspective to be heard and respected.
After surfacing and examining diverse options, leaders responsible for managing complex tradeoffs must engage in convergent thinking – using logical reasoning to decide on the best choice, the most desirable among all the desirables. Often, the pace of business does not allow for complete empirical testing before a complex tradeoff has to be made. But, during the convergent-thinking step, an effective collaborative process requires the use of rigor and discipline to fully vet each alternative and, in doing so, to find the best answer within the available options. By first deploying divergence, convergence is easier to accomplish. All parties to the collaboration have an opportunity to examine the same range and depth of diverse information, and to use that common knowledge to find points of agreement. So, divergence coupled with convergence yields more effective evaluations of complex tradeoffs and a more robustly considered decision—without having to sacrifice speed. By engaging collaboratively, rather than simply insisting on going it alone, leaders make better and more timely tradeoff decisions. And the more Leadership Teams, and organizations as a whole, practice collaboration, the better and faster their divergent and convergent decision processes become.
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As to my earlier challenge to identify the root cause of on-the-job sleepiness by the Air Traffic Controller at Reagan National Airport, the initiating causal condition was the staffing design. Having one person on duty performing a continuous vigilance task during the circadian trough (midnight to 6:00 a.m.), and often in a dimly-lit work space, is a recipe for on-the-job sleeping. If you want to learn more about designing work and work systems for high alertness and performance excellence regardless of time of day, contact me to discuss your situation in detail.
© 2011, Susan L. Koen, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved.
Tags: Collaborative Work System, Employee Engagement, Organizational Leadership, Speed
There is an important distinction between collaboration and compromise. You got it right that collaboration is a fundamental component of teamwork and it is always the right thing to do.
Unfortunately, the media and our culture puts emphasis on “Compromise” instead of “Collaboration”. Compromise has a fundamentally different dynamic than collaboration because it assumes that two sides have incompatible points of view and that one side, or the other, or both, must “Give Up” something, or make concessions in order to make a deal. Both sides dig into their positions, argue the merits of their idea, and attack the other side. When people have strong fundamental differences in principle, compromise can be seen as a weakness, or a “traitorous act” instead of an act of leadership.
Collaboration is altogether different and is always the right thing to do. And you hit the nail on the head with what makes collaboration different. Instead of arguing for a specific position, collaboration is about working together and using divergent thinking and creative problem solving to find a “Third Way”. Not a compromise, but truly a new solution that can achieve maximum results for both sides. This can be hard because it requires active listening, respect, strong teamwork, patience, creativity, and persistence. And even then, it is not always possible to find a Third Way. It is also very unless there is strong sense of trust and teamwork amongst the differing groups.
The role of strong leadership is to create an atmosphere of trust and respect. To eliminate negativity and establish a process that enables all the goals and rationales to be presented without pre-judgment. It is also best when the corporate culture values all creatives ideas that have been presented even the ideas that were not finally selected. Finally, it is important that the culture does not see the end result as “winners” and “losers”, but as a collaborative process that resulted in a final selection that presented the best outcome for the company. The ideas that did not make it all the way through played a vital role in the process even though they were not ultimately selected.
Rick, I really appreciate your comment on my Collaboration post. And you are especially on point about the role of leadership and culture in building a collaborative organization. Ironically, at the outset of an exchange, people feel that they have incompatible points of view or solutions to a problem, and they often believe there is no “Third Way.” If they are encouraged to collaborate and commit to the divergence/convergence process, though, differing parties will find the collaborative solution–and it will be the optimal one.