Collaborating for Success: Learn How to Build High Performance Collaborative Teams E-Book

Paul Williams

• Herausgeber: Grosvenor House Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 137

Beschreibung

In today's business world companies need to work as one cohesive team in order to achieve world class performance standards. The need to collaborate effectively both internally and with external stakeholders is therefore critical, and this book looks at the concepts and issues associated with collaboration in an interesting and practical style. It draws on the global experience of the author and focuses on people issues, which are the key to building truly high performance collaborative teams.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Who I Am and What this Book is About

1 What is Collaboration?

It’s Not New

Collaboration is Natural

Dealing with People Issues

Searching for the Answer

It’s Not Just Another Technique

A New Capability

Don’t Forget to Collaborate at Every Level in the Organisation!

2 Benefits of Collaboration

New Communication Systems

It’s Not Big Brother

Don’t Marginalise Negativity

Corporate Versus Personal Benefits

Enabling Benefits

Benefits Quantification

3 Joining Groups Together

Organisational Culture

Culture Clash

Values Drive Culture

Competing Values

Group Beliefs and Norms

Individual Attitudes and Behaviours

The Behavioural Sliding Scale

Style and Impact Reviews

Group Culture

The Cogs of Culture

Espoused Versus Actual Values

Joining Different Countries’ Cultures Together

Decision-making

Risk

Hierarchy

Leadership Style

Speech Patterns

Inappropriate Jokes

Stance

Language

Mergers and Acquisitions

4 Changing Culture

Culture Reviews

Beware of your Culture Goggles!

The Danger of Questionnaires!

5 Managing Collaborative Change Programmes

New Capability

What is a Capability?

The Need for Education

Pace

The Change Programme

Gaining Understanding

Acquiring Perspective

Gaining Acceptance and Dealing with “Yes, but…”

Encouraging Involvement

The Plan

Readiness Review

Engagement and Enrolment

Creation of Change Terrorists

Fishes and Sharks

The Change Fallacy

Dealing with Resistors

Stakeholder Analysis

Communications Strategy and Plan

Presentational Style

Prevailing Leadership Style

Use of Change Specialists

Don’t Rely on Gimmicks

It’s Not What You Do, It’s The Way That You Do It

6 Collaborative Environments

One-Team Feel

Behavioural Protocols

Relationships

Interventions

Meetings Within the Collaborative Environment

Connectivity Quality

Default Displays

Personality Types

Collaborative Roles

Dealing with Resistance

Taking the Credit

Evaluation of the Environment

7 Organisational Issues

Performance Appraisal Systems

Meeting Structures

Reporting Structures

Decision Rights

Reward Systems

8 Creating High Performance Teams

Knowing the Challenge

Stretching Targets – Yes or No

The Confusion Around Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Leadership

Appropriate Individual Behaviour

Energy-Hoovers

The Rule of 75

Two Choices!

Accepting Personal Accountability

Monitoring and Displaying Performance

Communication

Meetings

Comparing Team Performance

Acknowledging Contributions

Celebration of Success

The Danger of Double Standards

9 Team Development

Team Reviews

Team-Building

Being Together

Developing an External Perspective

Traits of a High Performance Team

The Rule of 10

10 Striving for Excellence

The Excellence Maypole

Attaining Excellence

The Danger of Regression

11 Finally

Copyright

WHO I AMAND WHATTHIS BOOKIS ABOUT

I am Paul Williams, and I have been studying and providing guidance and advice on people-related issues across a number of industries for over 30 years.

This short book is a distillation of my experience in joining groups together to create truly high performance teams. These groups might comprise functions within the same organisation, clients with their suppliers, or groups from different countries. The common theme is that, even if it is difficult, it is imperative to create a true ‘one-team’ feel in order to produce a high performance culture.

This book is concerned with the concepts behind creating high performance collaborative teams, and looks at collaboration, organisational culture, management of change, the characteristics of high performance teams and how people can attain true excellence. It deals as much, if not more, with people-related issues as it does with processes and procedures, since it is people issues that are the key to the attainment of high levels of performance; however, these are often marginalised in a desire to focus on the more familiar issues concerning procedures and processes.

I have tried to introduce the concepts and issues in an interesting, pragmatic and readable way, and I hope that reading this book will help you shape both your own thinking and your plans for the future.

My own view is that most aspects of life are simply about decisions, consequences and memories. I hope that you feel you have made the right decision to read this book, and that as a consequence it will leave you with positive, helpful and enlightening memories.

If you would like to contact me after reading this book to continue a collaborative discussion my email is [email protected]

1

WHATIS COLLABORATION?

It’s Not New

Collaboration between people and groups is clearly not a novelty. For centuries people have, either by desire or necessity, sought to interact to achieve a common goal, be it for personal reasons, group survival, commercial success or sporting achievements.

Technological advances have now made collaboration easier, but it has to be remembered that collaboration is different to the interactions generated by the current proliferation of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Collaboration has a specifically defined purpose which has been agreed upon by the parties interacting, and is intended to satisfy this objective.

Collaboration is Natural

Collaboration is a natural progression in the communication process. In my lifetime I have seen a transition from letters to telexes, faxes, emails and video conferencing (VC) connectivity; now, recent technological advances mean it is possible for remote groups to be joined together via visual, audio and data connectivity to produce one virtual team. This provides an organisation with the opportunity for a true paradigm shift, enabling everyone to challenge existing processes and procedures and create revolutionary new ways of working, leading to productivity improvements.

Dealing with People Issues

Effective collaboration depends upon:

• installing the appropriate technology

• creating the right physical environment

• developing new organisational structures, processes and procedures

• developing appropriate behaviours

• creating an appropriate culture.

My own experience is that most organisations feel more comfortable and able to deal with activities which are not people-related – activities where they can design, document and implement any required modifications or changes under logical, controlled conditions. This is particularly applicable in industrial, manufacturing and technologically-driven organisations. However, such organisations can lack the ability to effectively deal with the ‘softer’ people issues which arise. These require the consideration of:

• emotions

• feelings

• prejudices

• relationships

• behaviours.

In many organisations, leaders often delegate people issues to the HR (human resources) function, which in reality is wholly inappropriate. Although HR may provide a valuable resource to deal with conditions of employment, it should not be held accountable or responsible for the development of appropriate individual behaviours, nor relationships between individuals within teams. This should be the responsibility of the appointed leader.

Searching for the Answer

Throughout my career, I have seen numerous new techniques, processes and systems developed to help improve the efficiency of organisations, ranging from Terotechnology, Just-In-Time, Business Process Redesign, Lean Manufacturing and Kaizen, to name but a few. These are all laudable techniques to introduce new ways of working in order to improve operational and organisational efficiency for commercial advantage, but they often ignore the human element, and certainly don’t deal with collaboration.

Many years ago, I was involved in a number of governmental quangos looking at why the UK’s manufacturing efficiency lagged behind that of other developed countries, especially Japan. Numerous fact-finding missions looked for the reasons behind Japan’s attainment of higher efficiency levels, which resulted in the production of heavy tomes containing technical details that were eventually woven into white papers for dissemination amongst industry leaders. All the papers, however, failed to either identify or accept that perhaps the main reason for the attainment of higher efficiency levels in Japan was the diligence, attentiveness and work ethic of the workforce – maybe this was not highlighted as it was too painful to admit to!

It’s Not Just Another Technique

Collaborative working is not just another efficiency improvement technique or tool, but an enabler for creating one truly effective and efficient team. However, joining people together from different groups, who have different ways of working and who have individual mindsets, is not an easy process. It requires individuals to develop new allegiances and possibly have their own ideas and views challenged; this can cause natural resistance, leading to organisational dissonance.

In helping organisations to develop and implement collaborative working, my experience has shown that dealing with people issues is not only important but critical, yet I have found that these people issues are almost always relegated to the end of any agenda, be it concerning the design, development or implementation of any change programme. When it does eventually come to ‘people issues’, I have witnessed many a meeting where laptops are suddenly opened or hands disappear beneath the desk to check emails and texts on smartphones – possibly a none-too-subtle indication of the level of interest or importance placed on dealing with the softer issues of collaboration.

A contributing factor in putting people issues at the end of many agendas is probably discomfort in articulating and dealing with emotional, relationship and behavioural issues. In early engagement workshops designed to talk about collaboration, I have often asked those with teenage children how emotionally connected they feel they are to them. It transpires that the adults’ ability to connect with their own children has gradually diminished over time – they often feel they lack the language to relate to them, and so feel uncomfortable with emotional conversations. It is therefore no surprise that, when creating collaborative environments whose success relies upon surfacing and dealing with relationship issues, people issues are sidelined, ignored or simply paid lip-service to.

This book is designed to address this head on. It is solely about the people issues that need to be dealt with in joining groups together so that individuals can collaborate effectively and harmoniously to create high performance teams. There are no right or wrong answers, and there are no convenient templates which can be populated and applied. This book purely raises the topics that need to be addressed and provides the reader with an understanding of these issues, together with suggestions about how they might be tackled. The precise interventions required will, however, depend upon the existing attitudes, behaviours and mindsets of the groups being joined together in the pursuit of creating truly high performance teams.

A New Capability

It is also important to recognise and remember that collaboration is a new capability that individuals have the freedom to decide how and when to deploy. It cannot, therefore, be dictated or enforced; instead, individuals have to understand the potential of the capability and decide how to apply it themselves.

As we will see later, this element of choice means that the design and implementation of a change programme to embed collaborative working in any organisation relies heavily on individuals understanding the power of the capability and then deciding for themselves how it can be utilised. Hence, any implementation programme must be heavily biased towards educating people on the underlying concepts, rather than relying on traditional process-managed implementation programmes.

Collaboration depends upon successful, harmonious interactions with a wide variety of people from different backgrounds and experiences who may well see the world from different perspectives. This may mean letting go of opinions that help unite co-located groups and seeing the other group’s point of view. This enables them to see another group, which might once have been perceived as ‘the enemy’, as valuable colleagues.

Don’t Forget to Collaborate at Every Level in the Organisation!

We will be moving on to look at the benefits of collaboration and how groups can be joined together. There is, however, an inherent danger that, when joining groups together, the teams are united by enabling technologies, meaning that they can interact on a real-time basis, but that this does not necessarily extend to their senior managers, who are hence separated by a ‘collaboration gap’.

This results in understanding and alignment between the different teams, but creates the danger of misunderstanding between them and their senior managers, whose team members are being influenced by other groups, possibly without their knowledge; this can come as a surprise and lead to feelings of loss of control. This is illustrated in the diagram opposite.

KEY MESSAGES

• Collaboration is a natural progression

• Don’t delegate people-related issues – embrace them

• In developing collaborative working, don’t put people issues last on any agenda

• Don’t sideline, marginalise or trivialise people issues

• Collaboration is a new capability, and individuals need to decide how to apply it for maximum benefit

• Ensure people understand the concepts behind collaboration

• Embrace new perspectives and let go of stereotypes

• Collaborate at all levels in the organisation

2

BENEFITSOF COLLABORATION

New Communication Systems

The introduction of any new communication system or process brings with it a range of benefits that will be the rationale behind it, provide a number of business advantages, and help the organisation potentially achieve improvements in operational performance and efficiency.

However, it is also true that every new communication system or process brings with it a number of disadvantages that need to be identified and managed. Clearly, if the disadvantages are sufficiently significant and serious, it would be appropriate to evaluate how they might be mitigated; and, indeed, if they outweigh the advantages, it is important to assess the wisdom of adopting the new communication system or process at all.

For example, the introduction of mobile phones brought the tangible and obvious advantage of being able to contact anyone at any time, but also an attendant disadvantage: the risk of being constantly disturbed. People therefore quickly learned to cope with this disadvantage by utilising messaging, alerts and diverts, or turning their phones off when they did not want to be disturbed.

Another disadvantage of the latest communication systems, be they mobile phones, laptops or tablets, is that people feel the need to respond immediately to an incoming call, text or email, even in meetings, so diverting their attention from what is being discussed. It is quite astounding how this habit has become virtually endemic in most organisations, accepted as common practice and not perceived for what it is – disruptive, inefficient and discourteous to others at the meeting. How many times have we all witnessed a question directed at someone who has had their attention diverted by another form of communication, only to be met with the response, “Sorry, what did you say?”

Curiously, this was vividly demonstrated to me a few years ago when queuing at a hotel reception to ask for directions to a local restaurant. The queue’s progress was continually interrupted by the receptionist feeling obliged to pause to answer the telephone, and so I decided to find the hotel’s reception number and call her from my mobile. Not surprisingly she answered, and I began to ask my question, and as I did so made my way forward to the front of the queue, only to be met with a wave of the hand indicating that she was busy on the phone! It acted as a powerful illustration of how difficult it is to break patterned communications behaviour.

It’s Not Big Brother

In the introduction of collaborative working, as we shall see later, there are both advantages and some attendant drawbacks. Whilst in my experience the drawbacks are relatively minor and can be controlled or mitigated, as with any major programme of change, individuals naturally focus on the negative issues first (a form of self-protection) and are often unable to let go of the perceived disadvantages and move forward, but instead dwell on, worry and fret about the negative consequences. This prevents them from moving on to consider and appreciate the major and more significant advantages of collaborative working.

One of the major issues which often arises is the introduction of cameras. They are an integral part of visual collaboration, yet people often view them negatively, feel they are somewhat intrusive, that they are being constantly watched, and see them as ‘Big Brother’.

This is something we will consider in more detail later when we look at how collaborative change programmes can be designed and implemented.

Don’t Marginalise Negativity

Again, something we will discuss later, in the section on managing change, is that any perceived disadvantages must not be marginalised or ignored, but must be taken seriously. Although they could appear relatively small in comparison to the obvious commercial advantages, they need to be discussed, debated and considered so their relevance can be seen in perspective and allowed to naturally dissipate.