Making
a NICER Transition to the Millennium: Five Keys to Successful Collaboration
by
David Smallen and Karen Leach
As
we approach the year 2000, organizations are undertaking significant
contingency planning efforts to prepare for problems caused by the "millennium
bug." The profitability of businesses -- in many cases, their survival
-- depends on their technological infrastructures. Flawless technological
performance is expected, and yet in spite of extensive internal remediation
efforts, problems will occur due to the transparent electronic interconnectedness
that characterizes our global economy.1
In the final analysis, what will matter is the ability of individuals
and work units in our organizations to collaborate effectively in response
to inevitable unanticipated problems. In Organizing Genius, Warren
Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman state: "It's not clear that life
was ever so simple that individuals, acting alone, solved most significant
problems. Our tendency to create heroes rarely jibes with the reality
that most nontrivial problems require collective solutions.2
Practice makes
perfect, and it is essential that a broadly representative group of
organizational members be engaged in contingency planning well ahead
of the moment when action is required. If collaborations are necessary,
what are the basic principles that will make them successful?
Need
The most important
precondition for successful collaboration is the existence of a common,
strongly felt need. That need can be as simple as survival, but
it must be strong, since collaborative work takes time and energy, of
the kind that will be sustained not merely by ideas but by desires.
In the wild, animals sense that collaboration increases their chances
of survival. In the lion kingdom, male lions that work together have,
on average, bigger prides of lionesses, more cubs, and better overall
chances of survival. Zebras are herd animals because working together
confuses their predators. Members of Y2K contingency planning groups
must believe that their efforts are critical to the success of the organization.
Working together
can increase the quality of our lives and, indeed, our chances of survival
as professionals. But collaboration is hard work! We don't like to work
together unless there is some real payback for investing the energy
required to collaborate. Meeting a need provides this incentive. If
there isn't a payoff for everyone, collaboration won't happen. In general,
the need to collaborate can simply be the necessity of dealing with
uncertainty, or of having someone with whom to share our concerns, or
of solving a very real, common problem. Michael Schrage suggests: "People
collaborate precisely because they don't know how to -- or can't --
deal with the challenges they face as individuals. Collaboration is
a necessary technique to master the unknown."3
In our experience,
teams are often formed with only a vague idea that if their members
work together, good things will happen. In the absence of a strongly
felt common purpose and a real problem to solve, these efforts often
fail, degenerating into a collection of individual efforts loosely held
together only by unproductive meetings.
Intimacy
What is often not
clear is that once the need is present, collaborators must develop a
sense of intimacy. Good collaborators are able to speak openly
about what they believe, feel, and think. Successful collaborative activity
demands a feeling of safety to share information and a commitment to
be completely honest about a particular area being discussed. This kind
of sharing implies a willingness to be vulnerable -- to trust -- to
look stupid sometimes and to be open to challenge. In Organizing
Genius, Bennis and Biederman note, "People who are engaged in ground-breaking
collaborations have high regard for people who challenge and test their
ideas . . . ordinary affability may be no virtue.4
Developing intimacy
takes time. Intimacy is earned through deeds: by coming through, being
dependable, carrying your weight, and being willing to take risks for
others -- to go the extra mile. Executives choosing members of a Y2K
planning group should pay careful attention to the previous interactions
of the participants. The people leading these planning efforts have
to be sensitive to creating an environment in which an honest sharing
of information will flourish. We all have experienced situations in
which the real issues are never discussed because there is no feeling
of safety.
Communication
After intimacy
is established, effective communication mechanisms are required
to keep the collaboration going. In a networked world, we rely heavily
on electronic communication (phone, fax, e-mail, the Web). Such forms
of communication are convenient, pervasive, and location independent.
Electronic communication mechanisms allow "just-in-time" consultation
between members. But this isn't enough. To develop the kind of intimacy
that ultimately achieves results, team members need regular face-to-face
communication. A large portion of communication is nonverbal, and electronic
alternatives do not provide an effective substitute for these more subtle
cues. This is well known and is part of the reason that interviewers
of job applicants place such importance on basic aspects such as eye
contact. A well-prepared Y2K contingency team will be comfortable with
multiple communication mechanisms, including electronic, supplemented
with regular face-to-face communication.
Equality
Successful collaborations
involve work among equals. There needs to be equality in power
and in sharing of credit and authority. Margaret Wheatley writes about
self-organizing systems -- ones in which people come together as equals
to reach a common goal, largely without the need for hierarchy. The
most common example of a self-organizing system is a community whose
members work together after a natural disaster such as a flood, hurricane,
or ice storm. People organize themselves based on their abilities, without
using significant hierarchical structures. In choosing Y2K committee
members, executives must avoid the problems caused by inequalities in
status. If participating individuals have unequal status in the work
environment, then particular attention needs to be paid to creating
de facto equality in the collaborative activity.5
Respect
Finally, successful
collaborations are built on a foundation of respect. Working
together intensely won't necessarily lead to friendships, but collaborators
must respect each other's talents. Notable collaborations bring together
people with complementary skills and very different personalities. In
moments of crisis, effective collaborators respect the skills of the
experts in their midst and use those skills to maximum advantage. Respect
is fundamentally about the ability to build upon strengths and compensate
for weaknesses.
As we approach
the year 2000, effective collaborations will be the secret that will
minimize the global impact of information systems problems. Our collective
work can be NICER if we adopt the five keys to success: Need, Intimacy,
Communication, Equality, and Respect. We are facing an immediate problem
in preparing for the new millennium, but the need for collaborative
activities in all aspects of our daily lives will continue indefinitely.
Endnotes
1
See John L. Petersen, Margaret Wheatley, and Myron Kellner-Rogers, "The
Year 2000: Social Chaos or Social Transformation?" The Futurist,
October 1998.
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2
Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, Organizing Genius: The
Secret of Creative Collaboration (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley
Publishing, 1997), 198.
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3
Michael Schrage, No More Teams! Mastering the Dynamics of Creative
Collaboration (New York: Currency Doubleday, 1995), 30.
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4
Bennis and Biederman, Organizing Genius, 203.
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5
Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Learning about
Organization from an Orderly Universe (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler
Publishers, 1992).
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