In last week’s blog we talked about collaboration among solo practitioners and small business owners. This week we focus on collaboration in big businesses.
Collaboration in big business occurs at two levels: inter-organizational and intra-organizational. Google and Verizon (WSJ 11/10/09) announced a collaboration to challenge iPhone – a successful collaboration between Apple and AT&T. This is an example of inter-organizational collaboration. Our Blog today will focus on intra-organizational collaboration – that is internal to or within the organization
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones. Man or woman – outgrowing a small job is the prerequisite for career growth. And while it’s OK to be a loner in a small job, it is impossible to be a loner and successful in a big job. And big jobs create the companies that create more jobs.
Getting promoted is often the easy part. Being successful after promotion is the challenge. Studies show that only 50% of bosses (read managers) are successful. Promotion brings new challenges and one of the new challenges is often described pejoratively as learning how to “play politics”. We have a different take. We believe you will be more successful in your new job if you learn how to collaborate. Yes collaboration includes understanding and working within a process that involves “playing politics”, but it is much broader than that. If you only think in terms of “playing politics” you are likely to underperform and find this is your last promotion.
Collaboration is three-dimensional. It involves superiors, peers and subordinates. One of our clients was working on a project involved with reducing the time a patient stayed in the Emergency Room waiting for an available bed. She was responsible for the Emergency Department, but not for nursing, housekeeping or information technology. Yet resolving the issue required support and cooperation from these three areas. It required nurses to identify when a patient was discharged, IT having a system that reported discharges as they occurred, notifying housekeeping that the bed was available for cleaning, and notifying the ED of the available bed. Rapid notification and rapid response to a bed needing to be prepared for the next patient involved superiors, peers and subordinates.
The manager’s authority in this example was meaningless. She had authority over only one group. It required influence and good working relationships with her superiors, peers and subordinates, which are the ingredients of a successful collaboration. It’s also the ingredients for breaking down the silos that form in far too many organizations.
Now you may be thinking that this is ridiculous. Something as serious as patients waiting in the Emergency Department shouldn’t require anything other than the demand to fix it. Well big businesses just don’t work that way. And to believe they do is naïve and dangerous. Like any other human system they have likes, dislikes, friends and foes. Getting things done in a big business requires you to deal with what is and not what you would like it to be.
And what is – is the need to collaborate.
Copyright 2009 Kubica and LaForest
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