Collaboration: I Don’t Believe In It
Collaboration
What an interesting word! Many years ago, I was a master scheduler who worked with production managers, warehouse supervisors and purchasing departments to ensure we manufactured the appropriate number of products to keep our customers happy and our inventory low. Back then, the buzz word was “JIT” or “just-in-time” production. This term, coined by Henry Ford, and later adopted and modified by Toyota, was all about producing the right part, at the right time, in the right place. Of course, to make JIT work, you needed collaboration of all those involved. So, if you would have asked me what collaboration was back then, I would have quickly said it was “a group of people working together to get the job done”. Today, I don’t believe in collaboration at all.
At least collaboration in the old sense of the word. What changed my mind you ask? After reading several books that dealt with Web 2.0 technologies, I’ve come to see collaboration for what it really means…..
The ability to use the skills, ingenuity and intelligence of the masses to produce products that are more effective and efficient then would otherwise be possible.
If you’ve read Wikinomics, a book written by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, you may recognize the definition. For those of you who are interested in what can be done with Web 2.0 technologies, I highly recommend this book.
So, if Web 2.0 is about collaboration and collaboration is about using the skills, ingenuity and intelligence of the masses to produce better results, why are there so many companies that aren’t using it? Could it be that corporate executives don’t understand the benefits of Web 2.0 technologies? Maybe it’s deeper than that. Could it be that many companies don’t have a culture of collaboration outside of Web 2.0?
What do you think?
April 1, 2008 at 6:29 pm
[...] Watson’s Collaboration: I don’t believe in it that brings in the collaboration definition from [...]
April 12, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Hmmm, Richard, you pose a provocative question. Indeed, why don’t more companies have a culture of collaboration…period? What does collaboration require? Things like…trust…oh, and things like…trust. Maybe trust? All smart alecking aside, it seems that when egos and deadlines and profits (OH MY!) are involved, the willingness of folks to collaborate diminishes. What can we do about that?
Shari <— seriously would love to know!
April 14, 2008 at 7:48 am
Shari,
Did I hit a nerve there?
I think that Steven Coats, in his book The Conundrum for Collaboration, provided some additional insight into why moving to a collaborative working environment runs into so many obstacles. It starts with who you hire. Are you looking for individual stars or collaboration stars? What about how the company is structured? Does it consists of functional silos or is it built around cross-functional/matrix organizations. Who gets promoted? Is it the people in the company who make things happen on their own or those who work with others to get the job done? What does the company teach their employees? Is it time management, presentation skills, or do they teach group dynamics or how to make decisions in groups?
Web 2.0 tools will not solve these types of problems. It starts with having/developing a collaborative culture within the company itself.
I think trust is an important part of all of this but if we do a “root cause analysis” (that’s for you Shari), I think you will see that the problem, of getting Web 2.0 technologies into companies, is a symptom of a much bigger issue. Companies don’t collaborate with these types of tools because they don’t have a culture of collaboration in the first place.
Richard
April 28, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Heh, heh, heh…shall we do an Ishikawa diagram, Richard? I totally agree with you…companies can’t embrace tools that require collaboration when they can’t embrace collaboration itself.
Shari <— thinks she’ll eat some worms