Mastering Collaboration

by Gretchen Anderson

  Communication is also challenging when the participants aren’t one size fits all. One of the biggest pitfalls I’ve seen is when teams are sharing with key stakeholders who haven’t been intimately involved all along. Key stakeholders are often very powerful and influential, so teams seek their approval and endorsement without actually building any real understanding of the challenge and solution.

  At the same time, some people aren’t well suited to hashing questions out in a real-time, face-to-face situation. Different collaborators need different ways to explore ideas, provide feedback, and make decisions. The typical approach to gathering people around a table and holding a discussion may leave some perspectives unheard.

  Leading collaborators communicate effectively by being transparent with those who are not deeply embedded in the effort so they stay aware enough to be useful and comfortable with what’s happening.

  How to Help Teams Avoid and Overcome Obstacles

  As you’ll learn throughout this book, there are steps you and your teams can take to avoid or overcome each of the obstacles just described (see Figure P-2). You can create or adapt your environment to be more inclusive and trusting, and use space in ways that promote better interactions. You can provide the right type of direction that teams need to manage their time, understand progress, and judge success. Help people be more creative and open to others’ ideas so that your collaboration delivers on outcomes and doesn’t just implement simple solutions that don’t move the needle. And finally, you can improve the communication within the core group, and with key stakeholders, to reduce friction and keep people aligned.

  Figure P-2. Ways to support collaboration

  Part I. Creating the Right Environment

  The typical business setting, from the incentives it offers to its seating arrangements, is not naturally conducive to productive collaboration. The principles in this part will help you make the team feel safe and supported, and keep wider participation organized so that everyone can focus on the work at hand. The right environment means recruiting the right people, giving them a clear understanding of how they can contribute, building a sense of trust in the team, and using the (real and virtual) space you have wisely.

  Chapter 1. Enlist Everyone

  This chapter will show how being more inclusive makes teams stronger by widening their perspective and making them more invested in the team’s success. Managing groups of people who are very different can present some challenges and create conflict. You can take steps to help teams work through their differences, at least enough to make working together less painful, by enlisting everyone in a constructive way.

  Now I know what you’re thinking: Everyone? That sounds…messy. In meaningful collaborations “everyone” cannot literally mean everyone, but as a general principle the more you include people who are affected by, and invested in, the topic at hand, the better your results will be. Enlisting everyone, done right, actually helps.

  Casting a wide net and including more people actually helps you move faster. That sounds counterintuitive, but consider for a moment that everyone may already be “helping” you, just not in a way that is actually helpful. Group dynamics, especially in competitive corporate culture, lead people to see efforts that exclude them as potential threats or a drain on resources that feel tight. At first, the people that you haven’t engaged (for whatever reason) might stand off to the side, neither helping nor hurting your efforts. But it doesn’t take much for those who feel excluded to stake out a position on the opposite bank, and work against what you are trying to do.

  We tend to assume that anyone not working with us is a neutral party, but if those parties think they should be involved, they won’t stay neutral. Often in a rush to just “get to it,” we leapfrog over interested parties, only to find that we must spend large amounts of time and energy trying to get their buy-in later. Their participation takes place after the fact, in the form of combative reviews of “finished” work, or worse, competitive efforts that spring up and muddy the waters.

  This isn’t necessarily because these people don’t believe in what you’re doing. Rather, their reaction is a normal response to having a perspective that isn’t being heard. When we have a real interest in an effort, we can’t help but want to contribute, and if we aren’t given a chance, it can bring up an emotional response that is hard to corral productively. By engaging “everyone” in approaching a problem, you increase their commitment to the end product and reduce the drag on momentum.

  Including “everyone” doesn’t mean every person is always fully involved, however: it means widening the funnel of inputs to the process, enlisting varied perspectives to generate solutions, and getting a larger set of people to vet ideas to find their faults and make your case stronger. Everyone can help if you make room for different perspectives and ways of engaging. Some people may be dedicating their full attention to the problem, pushing solutions forward, while others may be advising or providing feedback on work. The purpose of including everyone is to get a sufficiently diverse set of perspectives on a problem to mitigate risks and drive innovative solutions.

  Enlist Everyone to Reduce Risks

  A recent “innovation” from Doritos stands as a great reminder of how limiting the variety of orientations to a problem can have ridiculous results. The maker of tasty chips completed some customer research and found a surprising problem. Many women reported not feeling comfortable eating Doritos in public, saying that crunching loudly and licking the delicious chemical flavor powder from their fingertips just didn’t seem ladylike. So the brand announced a plan to address this problem by creating Lady Doritos—a less crunchy, less finger-lickin’ good version of the product. They had successfully dealt with every issue identified. Or had they?

  Now, mind you, the problem wasn’t that women weren’t buying the chips, but that they had an aversion to eating them publicly. Both the analysis of the findings and the proposed solution stink of a team that lacks diversity. And I don’t just mean women. I suspect that those involved were all “product people” whose only hammer is a new product type, and every nail a gap in the product line. Thankfully, the resulting internet backlash kept this idea from moving forward. Doritos could have avoided the PR gaffe, however, if they’d included people not responsible for product development in their team, because the issue is a messaging opportunity, not a product/market fit problem. A simple ad campaign showing women enthusiastically enjoying the chips in meetings, at the park, on the bus—all while smiling and laughing—would have gone a long way and probably required a lot less investment.

  Blair Reeves, a Principal Product Manager at SAS and coauthor of Building Products for the Enterprise: Product Management in Enterprise Software (O’Reilly), says sometimes the blind spot comes in defining the very problem itself. Prior to getting into product management, Reeves worked in international development in Cameroon. He recalls how projects to improve infrastructure among communities often moved forward without partnership or input from the people within them. The so-called solutions may not have been used or sustained once implemented because the people didn’t see them as something they had ownership of. When Reeves began asking communities about their priorities, he found that they were different than had been assumed. Issues like AIDS and HIV education weren’t as big for them as his organization assumed; instead, the people wanted help with combating malaria and building latrines—issues that were more disruptive for them day-to-day.

  Asking a diverse group that’s closer to the problem is one way to spot and avoid potential missteps. A group that’s too homogenous may make incorrect assumptions or apply too narrow a lens to finding solutions. You should also be sure that the team understands and seeks out the right skill sets, rather than assuming those skills are already present or blindly trying to “make do” with those that are.

  Enlist Everyone to Boost Engagement

  Including those who are affected by the outcomes of the work is also a boon to morale. Ree
ves not only discovered the community’s real priorities, but also found that when he started asking people about the problem, they were easier to engage in the solutions. People we work with are no different. When you can invite more people to thoughtfully consider a problem or enlist their help to test solutions, they become more active and interested. It seems obvious that when people are shown or informed of work only once it’s finished, they care less about it (unless, of course, they actively hate it), and yet sharing work that can’t be changed much is standard for many office cultures.

  Companies know that having more engaged employees is beneficial—that’s why they spend so much time and money measuring engagement. Marc Benioff of Salesforce found his organization faced with the challenge of employee engagement at senior levels of leadership, something that corporations pay a great deal of attention to. Higher engagement can multiply productivity and quality so much that substantial amounts of time and money are spent monitoring and supporting people’s experience at work. Benioff wanted to nip his engagement problem in the bud, so he took pains to create a virtual space to understand what was fueling the issue and address it. He says, “In the end the dialogue lasted for weeks beyond the actual meeting. More important, by fostering a discussion across the entire organization, [I’ve] been able to better align the whole workforce around its mission. The event served as a catalyst for the creation of a more open and empowered culture at the company.” Clearly, senior leaders at Salesforce are busy people whose typical focus is on the products and services they create, but without taking time to come together as a group and establish shared understanding and priorities, their day-to-day efforts would have been affected.

  Collaboration is an approach to problem solving, but it’s just as valuable as a cultural force that helps employees achieve purpose and meaning—not just productivity—in their jobs.

  Enlisting Everyone Brings Up Cultural Differences

  So, maybe enlisting “everyone” has some advantages, but employing this principle can also bring up issues around diversity and inclusion for the group. As a master of collaboration, it is important that you stay aware of dynamics that can reduce its benefits.

  In the study of cultural differences, there’s a force known as the Power Distance Index, first identified by business anthropologist Geert Hofstede, which measures the degree to which a group values hierarchy and ascribes power to leaders. A country like the US has relatively low power distance because we value flatter organization and independence over bowing to authority. Japan, on the other hand, rates very high, as the culture demands a great deal of respect for elders and authority.

  In his book Outliers (Little, Brown and Company), Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of Korean Air’s “cockpit culture” during the late 1990s, when the airline was experiencing more plane crashes than any other airline. Analysis showed that the cultural norm of giving in to superiors rather than challenging them meant that junior pilots who spotted problems failed to raise them. In Fortune, Gladwell said:

  What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical. You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the US.

  But Boeing and Airbus design modern, complex airplanes to be flown by two equals. That works beautifully in low-power-distance cultures [like the US, where hierarchies aren’t as relevant]. But in cultures that have high power distance, it’s very difficult.

  When the airline made some adjustments, their problem went away. They flattened out the Power Distance Index by reinforcing the value of junior aviators, and “a small miracle happened,” Gladwell writes. “Korean Air turned itself around. Today, the airline is a member in good standing of the prestigious SkyTeam alliance. Its safety record since 1999 is spotless. In 2006, Korean Air was given the Phoenix Award by Air Transport World in recognition of its transformation. Aviation experts will tell you that Korean Air is now as safe as any airline in the world.”

  How we react to power isn’t the only difference you’re likely to run into. If you’re beginning to see the value of widening the circle of collaborators and making sure they are active, respected participants, you might be wondering how to define the right level of “everyone” for your teams. Getting diversity means including people with a variety of:

  Experiences in industry and skills

  Cultural backgrounds

  Introversion and extroversion

  Working styles

  Primary languages

  Ownership, from end users to senior leaders and everyone in between

  Helping teams deal with these differences requires being open to talking about differences, creating norms that bridge gaps, and having productive conflict. When people acknowledge to themselves and others where their perspective is coming from, it’s easier for the group to not reject it as an outlier. Discussion about how the group will handle certain differences is also healthy. Creating explicit norms about everything from group versus individual working time to how decisions get made gives the group common ground. It’s important to model, and hold each other accountable for, respecting these team norms.

  Tools to Create the Right Environment for Collaboration: Tools to Help Enlist Everyone

  Understanding what kind of team you have, how they think, and what they are missing is critical to being inclusive. Here are some tools you can use to set your team up and give them what they need to have a healthy, diverse environment.

  Understanding Behavioral Differences: Variation 1

  Knowing the skills that you have on the team and what you lack is key, but many times, the source of friction in teams is behavioral or cultural. It is useful to have the team identify and work through their issues with each other up front.

  You will need small sticky notes, large sticky note pads or a whiteboard surface, and Sharpies for each person.

  Ask each person to write down, one per sticky note, characteristics of the worst teams they have worked with.

  Next, ask each person to write down aspects of the best, most high-performing team they have worked on.

  Have each person present their negative and positive experiences to the team, grouping them together into negative and positive qualities on a large sticky note pad or under a heading on the whiteboard.

  The facilitator should look for where people have alignment and divergence, grouping similar examples together to show the team where they agree and where they differ.

  Review the items that are similar, and discuss what rule or norm the team would like to agree to. For example, if there’s a lot of negativity around “too many meetings,” establish specific times when meetings will be held, versus when people can have heads-down time.

  Decide how to hold each other accountable for upholding the norms and what the consequences for breaking rules are. For example, is there a formal apology for missing meetings without prior notification?

  Revisit the norms after a few weeks to see whether the team feels the need to change or add any new rules to help remove friction.

  Understanding Behavioral Differences: Variation 2

  If your team members aren’t all comfortable sharing their experiences in prior teams (perhaps because some of them have worked together before, or are unwilling to speak up about negative feelings), consider this variation of the exercise to establish team norms.

  In this exercise, you will have people identify their preferences or behaviors on several dimensions to see where there are similarities or differences. Then you can discuss and decide as a team what the shared expectation should be.

  You will need small sticky notes, large sticky note pads or a whiteboard surface, and Sharpies for each person.

  Create and label a horizontal line for each of the following categories, which are the main areas teams struggle over and typically develop norms around (see Figure 1-1):

  Interruptions. How do team members feel about be
ing interrupted with questions?

  Core Hours. What are the hours the team should agree to be together in the office and/or available online? Team members may decide to work before or after core hours, as their schedules allow, but these are the hours that the team commits to each other.

  Meeting Times. When should the team have typical meetings like stand-ups, weekly reviews, or other rituals?

  Authority and Decision-Making. Who should make final decisions about important agreements for the team?

  Disagreeing. How comfortable are you with expressing disagreement about a decision?

  Feedback. How comfortable are you with receiving direct negative feedback?

  Have each team member write their name or initials on a sticky note and place one (or in the case of indicating hours, two) on each line to indicate where their preferences fall.

  Look at where there are overlaps and agreement, and where people diverge. Discuss these and create team norms accordingly.

  Figure 1-1. Main areas teams struggle over and develop norms around