As businesses become more and more dynamic, global, faster with digital disruptions and agile with innovative disruptions, critical leadership skills that are required are being redefined and their pecking order reset.
I choose to talk about collaboration today.
It is an age-old skill that has moved up from “can have” to “must have” for leaders keen on sustainable success.
A simple African quote that is often used by leaders, draws in the essence of Collaboration.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go TOGETHER”
As we know, organisation goals need many layers of people to work together. So going alone is a losing proposition.
And the quality of collaboration defines which company can multiply the benefits by what factor. Collaboration is a company’s success multiplier!
If collaboration is so important, why is it missing in some organisations? Why is it so difficult to inculcate? Why it succeeds only in some parts of the company and not the whole?
The answer lies in the fact that when leaders believe in the concept and make it a part of the organisation’s culture, true collaboration happens. A CULTURE OF COLLABORATION is born. And it grows employees and the business.
It changes the mindsetof employees across functions and business units and unlocks the power of collaboration.
The leader has to ensure this is working across levels and within functions. It is the leader’s role to review if this is truly working. Because any mindset shift needs hand holding and a firm grip so that it does-not slide back to the old ways of working. It also needs processes that link collaboration into decisions and execution. And finally into assessments.
The usual bottlenecks for a Collaborative Culture are lack of proper communication, personal egos and veiled power wars.
Communicating well is also a function of trust. Teams may not trust the system to share ideas freely.
Sometimes communication is deterred by power centres who donot like others ideating. Both are dangerous situations for an organisation.
I recall a line: When good performers stop communicating, Organisations need to start worrying.
Great ideas many a times never see the light of the day because they are stuck in the “My idea vs Best idea “ zone. The bigger loser in this case is the company.
Many approved ideas lose their value just because at execution stage a veiled non-cooperation game from another function/s delay the project, taking away the competitive advantage the company could have otherwise had.
Collaboration within teams are easier to achieve as there is a single leader who drives it. The more critical level of collaboration is at the senior, cross functional levels. Here it gets complex not because there are many functional leaders involved but because there is no alignment of priority for a certain idea. Here is where the leader needs to be vigilant, review closely and drive the right direction for functional teams to fall in line. It is the CEO’s individual commitment that will make collaboration a culture that leads to sustained success.
Employee mindset of such organisations move
from
Individual CONTRIBUTION to an organisation’s effort
to
Individual COMMITMENT to an organisation’s effort.
