Collaboration and Problem Solving
The idea of collaborative leadership has been around since at least 1994 when Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s article “The Collaborative Advantage” in the Harvard Business Review discussed how business leaders could harness the benefits of collaboration. That same year David Chrislip and Carl Larson wrote a book called Collaborative Leadership: How Citizens and Civic Leaders Can Make a Difference. Suddenly, it was collaboration here, there and everywhere.
So almost 20 years later, what do we know about collaboration?
First, we know it can generate tremendous results. There are many case studies documenting the financial benefits of collaboration and we have witnessed it in many companies we have worked with. When done right, it harnesses the brainpower and experience of everyone in the organization, and it creates a great environment where everyone feels they are contributing to the company’s success. In highly collaborative companies, you find high ownership of problem solving. Employees don’t say “That’s the manager’s (or supervisor’s) problem.”
Second, collaboration requires that leaders abandon command-and-control behaviors. For some leaders this can be very difficult because those are the same behaviors that got them to leadership positions in the first place. But as more and more leaders have come up through the ranks of collaborative companies, this is becoming less of a culture shock. For many of these leaders, collaboration is the only way they know how to lead. That’s a good thing!
Collaborative leaders are more like coaches than dictators. They coach their employees so they can perform at their highest levels. Some of our clients develop their leaders as experts or mentors in problem solving. They not only develop high competence in a problem solving process, but they also learn how to facilitate the use of those skills with employees to solve issues in real-time.
Third, employees need different skills if they are going to work effectively in a collaborative environment. This was an overlooked facet of collaboration in the early days. Many companies said, “We’re going to have collaboration. Start collaborating.” Employees tried, but they lacked the skills to think critically about problems and decisions. Employees must have the skills commensurate with the position and job responsibility to solve problems, prevent problems, implement or recommend solutions, and determine best practices. Without these skills, the collaboration effort will never reach its full potential.
Fourth, a company needs effective processes to make collaboration work. This was also overlooked early on as many companies thought collaboration meant “freestyle”. The result was bedlam, with employees running helter-skelter and managers not sure what they should do with all the recommendations coming at them. Common processes allow leaders and employees to communicate with each other using vocabulary so everyone understands what has been done to date and what the next steps will be. Without the common processes, there is wasted time and the possibility for miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Although collaborative leadership may seem old now, it was a fairly revolutionary concept for many companies. Some equated it with “giving the inmates the keys to the prison” (a great analogy that, unfortunately, was how some of those companies thought of employees). Many of the collaborative leadership practices have become so commonplace that it’s hard to spot them. And that’s the way it should be!