Three things I've learned about commitment to collaborate
I was recently at a wedding and as always enjoyed that critical moment when the bride and groom say “I do”, each making a public commitment to their lifelong partnership.
And of course, this reminded me of the commitment required to collaborate authentically
Commitment to collaborate is one of the five elements of our Power of Co collaborative pathway. In the original version of the Power of Co it is step number one.
In our later iteration, Commitment to Collaborate lies at the centre of the cycle.
However we want to illustrate it, there is no doubt that the commitment to work together, much like the commitment to a marriage, is a critical success factor of any authentic collaboration. I’ve been thinking about it a bit lately and want to share a couple of things I’ve learned about commitment to collaborate.
Who needs to commit to collaborate?
In the ideal universe, everyone is up for this collaboration thing. But of course we can’t click our fingers and make people commit. In reality there is only one person whose commitment we have control over, and that is ourselves. So this is a great place to start. Who needs to be committed to this collaboration? We do. If we believe in this and really want to bring people in to help us make decisions, we stand a good chance of success. With our collaborative mindset we are likely to act collaboratively, and it’s hard to go wrong from there. Furthermore, our authentic collaboration will help others to make their own commitment.
Bottom line? Are you committed to collaboration and how is this driving your collaborative actions?
How much commitment is enough?
I used to believe that successful collaboration required everyone to be fully committed from the get-go but over time I’ve come to see it differently. In my experience it’s unrealistic to think that all parties, whether external or internal stakeholders and decision-makers, will simply sign up to this new way of working together. I’ve learned that commitment isn’t all or nothing and that it grows over time. In practice this means I now worry less about getting strong commitment from everyone at the outset. Instead I seek to get into doing collaboration as quickly and usefully as I can, confident in the knowledge that success breeds success. The experience of good collaboration builds everyone’s confidence in the process and each other and our collective commitment grows.
Bottom line? Build commitment by doing collaboration, rather than expecting everyone to be enthusiastic supporters at the outset.
When should we be focussed on commitment to collaborate?
The answer to this lies in our evolution of the Power of Co, from a linear framework with commitment at the start to a more cyclic framework with commitment at the heart. The difference reflects our realisation that we should always be seeking to build everyone’s investment in and commitment to working together. In other words, at every step in our journey it is useful to ask ourselves “how can we do this in a way that strengthens our collective commitment to this process”.
Bottom line?: Keep asking the question – how do we strengthen our commitment to this process today?”
Embarking on a collaborative process is not like getting married, but it does require a commitment to work together. And like a marriage, it helps to re-commit every day. How committed are you?
How I survived my angriest public meeting
So there I was, in front of the stage, microphone in hand in a village community hall, attempting to manage the angriest public meeting I’ve ever been involved in. Everyone knew it would be angry, including the local media who were there with TV cameras to capture every juicy moment.
But being a clever facilitator I had planned ahead and had my strategies in place for managing just such a situation. The first one was to give everyone an opportunity to express what was on their mind. So…
“On your seats you found post it notes and a pen. To get us started you might like to write down your key issues and post them on the wall here, to capture your concerns…”
The reactions ranged from unpleasant to unprintable and it was very clear that they were going to do no such thing.
Smiling nervously at the camera in my face I soldiered on. Not to worry. Plan B then.
“Let’s go straight to the presentation then, to show you what works are being planned for the local road…..”
More abuse and invitations to stick things in uncomfortable places.
Camera man leaps up again. He’s loving it. Pans across angry crowd. Swivels and tightens on my increasingly sweaty visage. “What’s this bloke gonna do now” he’s thinking…. As was I. In that moment, I had no Plan C.
So I went rogue.
“Ok, so what would you like to do? What feels most useful to you?”
It turns out that their local community committee had their own presentation to give and nothing was going to happen until it had been shared with the room. Up they came with USB stick and the meeting was theirs for the next 30 minutes.
And after that my client was able to share their presentation and we got into Q&As and discussion. And so on.
Those moments are the teaching moments aren’t they. As I drove home, a shaken shadow of my former self, I was able to reflect on what had happened and how I had managed to survive and get a discussion going. Three things I learned in that baptism of fire:
- Letting go of control, sharing how things should proceed. It feels terrifying but was in reality the thing that allowed us to make progress together.
- The more I tried to manage out the anger I was expecting and seeing, the more I exacerbated it. I was the problem.
- Being vulnerable, unsure and uncertain of how to proceed was not the end of the world. In fact, it allowed the meeting to take its own more useful direction.
I learned these lessons in the context of facilitating a public meeting. But have applied them in all collaborative situations since.
Collaboration often involves or evokes high emotions and it’s human nature to try to manage them out. But by sharing control, acknowledging how people are feeling and accepting vulnerability we are much more likely to connect and collaborate as humans.
That’s what I’d say to the camera should it ever be pointed in my face again.
Overcoming the toughest silos of all
Letting them into your silo is the easy bit. Letting them into your head and heart is harder.
In my work this year supporting groups to work together I’ve seen clients working hard to break down the silos and collaborate more effectively with others. I’ve been struck by the commitment shown by many to changing the way they work together. I’ve also been struck by some of the challenges.
Collaborating authentically and creatively with others means being vulnerable, and this is part of the challenge of working across silos. To genuinely let them in to my dilemmas and aspirations I have to let them into:
My head – so they can understand my thinking.
My team – so they can be a part of us, even if they don’t seem to fit.
My work plan - because we are doing this together.
My budget – if are working together on this then my budget is theirs.
My mistakes and uncertainties – because if I can’t be open and honest with them about what I know and don’t know, we aren’t really collaborating.
Silos are organisational but they are also emotional. Getting into the room together across your silos is necessary. Letting them into your head and heart is the thing that makes the difference. The good news is that you can take small steps, take some small risks while staying safe. You don't have to bare all in order to build your confidence to work together.
And best of all, you can get started today. Just try it!
Three simple steps to better collaboration across silos
“I’ll be blunt, the biggest barrier to Australia having the convenience of seamless government services is what I refer to as a plague of fiefdoms. The siloed thinking across departments and agencies has to stop.”
Said Minister Bill Shorten in a recent address at the National Press Club.
And he is not the only one to point out the downside of silos and what he called “turf protection”. We see it in all large organisations and between any organisation and their stakeholders.
Of course, some organisational structure is essential. Silos are useful. But silos often become those fiefdoms the Minister was decrying, getting in the way of effective delivery.
I’ve done a lot of work this year with teams from State Government finding it difficult to make their silos disappear so they can work as a single team and learn from each other.
Here are some things I’ve learned about how to make your silos work a little better.
Get together as often as you can
There is no substitute for getting into the room together – physically where possible, virtually where you must. Get together across your silos. Sit beside ‘them’ and talk to them. Look at the issues together.
Walk in each other’s shoes
Share your perspectives, your dilemmas, your aspirations. Talk to each other. Most importantly, listen to each other.
Just try stuff
Agree on few small steps you can take together to bridge the gaps between you. Experiment with your processes. Learn your way beyond the silos together as you do the work.
Sounds simple. Is simple. Takes commitment. By coming together, walking in each other’s shoes and experimenting with new ways to do things, you can work together better, whatever the state of your silos.
Less Planning, More Collaborating
Sometimes we can get a little paralysed by our urge to plan. I was recently working with a group responsible for coordinating works in partnership with others across a diverse and complex system. The client has a fabulous knack for creating “Playbooks” for action, describing in detail the approach for a range of tasks and projects. They are good planners and they do this important work well.
Detailed plans are invaluable when there is certainty around what needs doing and how it needs to be done. But I was invited to help them collaborate and in this realm there is less clarity and little certainty.
As I often do, I threw up a slide at one point listing some characteristics of a collaborative mindset. The one that seemed to jump out for my client was Less plan. More act. It sparked a discussion about what this means.
When thinking about how to collaborate with others it can be tempting to invest lots of time and energy in creating the collaboration plan. Yet while planning is good, I like to say that we can talk about talking to stakeholders, or we can talk to them. In other words, we can plan to engage or we can engage and when asked, I always encourage the latter.
Less planning, more doing. Less thinking about how to collaborate, and more getting started tomorrow. If you are uncertain how and why and what, then those are some good questions to get started with.
Of course, getting started when you don't have a clear and detailed playbook can be a little unsettling. This is why I get to this discussion in the context of the mindset. Doing things differently requires us to think differently. Authentic collaboration requires us to think more like collaborators and less like traditional project managers.
Are you thinking like a collaborator?
If you want to check the state of your collaborative mindset, take a look at our simple assessment tool.
The Need for Collaboration Transcends Cultures
On a recent camping trip to the Flinders Ranges, while sitting under the dazzling night sky and checking my phone only a little (ahem), an email caught my eye. It was from Medina, Saudi Arabia. The leader of a local program was enquiring about assistance on their city-wide, multi-agency collaborations.
We set up a Teams meetings upon my return to the office. On this call the thing that struck me most was just how familiar are the challenges we face inside bureaucracies. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I had thought that given the very different cultural and governance context in Saudi Arabia, leaders there would face different problems to my other clients. But it seems that the barriers to effective collaboration are universal and the aspirations are very similar, including:
- Working better across silos
- Getting greater alignment across teams in terms of what to do and how to do it
- Reducing competition among teams and increasing collaboration
- Increasing commitment and accountability across the business
- Reducing rework, increasing efficiency
- Working more effectively with stakeholders.
What is it about our organisations, wherever in the world they are, that makes collaboration challenging? Why are we still not doing this better as a matter of course?
The second thing that struck me was that this client found Twyfords by Googling. They could have gone anywhere in the world, but found us. When I asked about that it became clear that it was our Collaboration system and toolsets that made the difference. When struggling to know how to collaborate more effectively and consistently, there is some comfort in being able to follow a clear approach, with a guidebook to follow.
I have since spent a fascinating week in Medina, during which time I’m sure I learned as much as my client. And I’ve been inspired all over again to continue to build our collaborative cultures and practices, wherever we are.
From Data to Decisions the Collaborative Way
Are you co-designing your information and decision-making processes?
You may have seen the hierarchy that goes from data to information, knowledge, wisdom and decisions. For collaborators there is an important overlay to consider. If we want to make decisions with people rather than do to them, if we want everyone to trust conclusions made, if we want to build relationships with collaborators as we work together, then our approach to this hierarchy is critical.
In our Power of Co pathway these considerations are largely part of the co-design step. Co-design means jointly deciding how we will work together, including how decisions will be made. This includes questions about data and how we transform it into new knowledge and collective wisdom. Authentic collaborators make these decisions together.
Useful questions
Great co-design discussions can be had around questions including:
Generating data
- What data is available? What other data do we need and what can we live without?
- What data do we trust? Whose data do we trust?
- What data can we share? What can’t we share? Why?
Turning data into information and new knowledge
- Who interprets our data? How do we do that together?
- What methods of analysis and interpretation are appropriate? What methods do we trust?
- How do we summarise what’s emerging? What is it telling us?
- How do we feel about it?
From new knowledge to conclusions and decisions
- How is this new information relevant to our situation?
- What patterns can we see? What connections are emerging?
- What are the implications for our work?
- What do we know now that we didn’t previously know?
- What conclusions do we draw? What decisions can we make?
Making these sorts of decisions together is at the very heart of collaboration. If you are striving to build bridges with stakeholders as you tackle difficult problems together, then co-designing around your data, information, knowledge and decision-making can make a huge contribution.
Are you co-designing your processes?
Do you really know what problem you are trying to solve?
A perspective I couldn't see
I once worked with a client responsible for developing an innovative community facility in the inner city. It was on surplus Department of Education property and the key project partner was an NGO focussed on supporting education in young people. The vision for the centre was a place that could support a largely First Nations local community to thrive through education and out of school activities.
I struggled to get traction with the local community and couldn’t figure out why. Then someone talked to me about what was going on. We were dealing with First Nations people, on Department of Education land managed by a church-based NGO. I was told about the scars of the stolen generation and how religious and educational institutions may even to this day be seen by local communities through the lens of those experiences.
As a middle-class white guy from the comfortable ‘burbs I thought the project was about how to create a great facility. Turns out it was also about how to navigate history and its ongoing impacts.
Trust is the issue
Years later I worked with an organisation on a redesign of a critical workspace so that the parts of the business could work more effectively across their internal silos in an emergency situation. The project was ostensibly about how to physically improve the space. But over time it became clear that for many it was principally about how to survive long enough for the new ‘disruptive’ leader to move on and let us get back to BAU. It was about lack of trust and low commitment to change.
Why is this windfarm about gender politics?
And more recently I worked with an interesting small business with a global practice, in this case leading an international team on a renewable energy project in South Asia. The project appeared to be about how best to create a windfarm. But for my client, a small local team of capable women, their dilemma was also how to manage the cultural differences and gender politics across a team of mostly male technical specialists from several developing nations.
Context Dilemmas
Each of these experiences taught me something about the dilemmas we face when tackling projects. There is always a project or content dilemma and this is where we focus most, even all, of our energy. But that dilemma doesn’t exist in beautiful isolation. Rather it is nested in an often invisible or subconscious web of social, cultural, political, power dynamics and other stuff that is unavoidably part of any complex situation.
What to do with this?
If you are working with a diverse group of stakeholders on a challenging problem, you will also have context dilemmas that can make life hard for everyone. Best thing to do is make them visible. Between you, you can’t ‘fix’ them, but by explicitly incorporating them into your project dilemma you are better positioned to move ahead. The question becomes “given these context issues, how do we best deliver our project….”
What are your context dilemmas and how are you surfacing them? If you want to build some skills to work across content and context dilemmas, join our upcoming training program for collaborators.
Where are we putting our energy in the energy debate?
Questions about energy production have emerged afresh in recent days, with Australia’s federal opposition party announcing a plan to build seven nuclear power plants as the keystone of the nation’s future energy mix. Meanwhile in my home town the federal government announced approval of a large offshore wind farm zone.
So there’s a lot of energy in the energy debate at the moment.
And of course each plan – be it a nuclear or offshore wind – has its committed devotees and its strident detractors, and each group is investing a lot of energy in convincing others that ‘you’ are wrong and ‘I’ am right.
In doing so I think there is a lot of misplaced effort because it seems clear people really aren’t arguing about energy. That’s just the label on the box. What we are really fighting over are things like:
- Trust. If I don’t trust you why would I trust your ideas? I don’t believe anything you say.
- Politics. How can my team get an advantage here? Why should I believe you when you are obviously being political?
- Power. Who gets to be heard and whose view is given credit? How does this debate help me wield influence? How do I prevent them from wielding influence on this?
- Control. How do I maintain a sense of agency in a fast-changing world?
- Certainty/uncertainty. What feels like common sense? Which set of ideas seems to match what I think about how the world works?
- The need to win. I really want to beat those guys, be seen to win the argument and show the world that they were wrong.
- Relationships. People I like think this way, people I don’t like think that way, so how can I build credit with my tribe?
These are all very human drivers of behaviour.
Yet we try to win arguments about things like energy policy with ‘facts’. In reality, they often come a distant last in this race.
Only last week our Commonwealth Scientific Agency, the CSIRO, released the findings of their updated review into the comparative costs of different energy sources. Some would say the numbers clearly demonstrate that nuclear is likely to be the most expensive option of all. Yet we all have a tendency to simply ignore this type of data as we prosecute our various arguments. Why? Because it isn’t about the facts, and the facts are contested in any case. Why? See list above.
In an effort to convince others that we are right and they are wrong, and much like energy policy itself, it’s easy to invest our effort in a strategy that provides a poor return. If we try to rely on the facts alone it’s likely we are wasting a lot of effort. If we really want to connect with others and convince them we need to work on relationships, on trust, on control.
This means listening, engaging, learning together, even being prepared to be mistaken about some things. If we really want the best outcomes this is the work we need to be doing.
When seeking to convince others, where are you putting your energy?
A new bout of solution-itis strikes home
A small group of residents in my home village are talking about forming a group and working towards a more clean energy future for our community. Everyone is excited about the possibilities, but it’s occurred to me that we may be suffering a collective bout of solutionitis.
Much of our talk is around building something shiny like a ‘community battery’; a visible, tangible solution to our collective climate change anxieties. It’s an exciting thing to imagine and the enthusiasm is growing.
But having done some more research and talked to like-minded groups from other communities, it seems that we may have fallen into the collaborators trap of leaping to a solution before understanding what the problem is. A classic case of solutionitis! While a big battery is a nice idea it may not be the ‘solution’ for what is a complex set of interrelated technical and behavioural dilemmas. Single answers rarely are.
It seems much more likely that the journey to a renewable community is less certain, comprising multiple ideas and actions. Walking this journey together is going to require a whole lot of collaboration through complexity. This means:
- Co-defining our clean energy dilemma together – what’s the problem we are trying to solve here?
- Co-defining our collective light on the hill – what does success look like for this set of dilemmas?
- Co-designing our processes – who are we as a group, what’s our governance, how do we do our work together and where do we get started?
- Co-creating potential ideas, projects, things to try.
- Testing the way forward, trying things, taking small steps together as we build clarity and confidence and find ways to move towards our light on the hill.
- Iterate, learn, fail, learn some more and do it all again.
Creating a more sustainable village is a complex problem and there is no single solution. Instead we are going to need to do the difficult work of working together over a period of years. We are going to need our collaborative mindsets and our commitment to working together. Do this and we can declare our current bout of solutionitis cured.
Wish us luck!
(The photo is a shot of our garden on a clear autumn morning this year)