Mastering Collaboration

by Gretchen Anderson

  Cross Cultures, Don’t Overthrow Them

  At some point in your journey to master collaboration, you will have a realization: people are a problem. Working with power structures can be challenging, especially if you don’t happen to have a lot of authority in the system. And people are irrational and messy, which is why organizations create structures in the first place—to help guide our decisions and establish ways to control and command. Cyd Harrell, as someone who has made a big push in the last few years to bring innovation and inclusivity to the US government, knows all about these kinds of structures. As a leader at 18F, the digital services arm of the government, Harrell has worked with huge governmental agencies, elected officials, and political appointees, and she’s seen firsthand the challenges of bringing a collaborative approach to command-and-control cultures.

  “Some kinds of hierarchy are not conducive to good collaboration,” she says, “but you have to find a way through anyway. That culture exists for a reason, and many of your stakeholders have a great deal invested in it.” It’s important to note that not all organizations are chasing less hierarchy and flatter structures. Civil servants and employees at government agencies typically have a much longer tenure than you find in Silicon Valley, and many people work hard for years to attain a level of authority and power—which they aren’t eager to shove aside in the interest of being “transparent” and nonhierarchical. These organizations have succeeded in large-scale, often high-risk, situations because they employ what Harrell calls a “submit and review” approach, in which ideas are taken to a final state where a gatekeeper has the power to approve or reject them in a single blow. In that model, more senior people are seen as experts whose point of view demands organization-wide alignment. Conversely, those who are elected or appointed might serve short tenures with a great deal of authority, but priorities and perspectives change once that person has been replaced or voted out of office. Both of these forces tend to make collaboration hard, or nearly impossible.

  But, Harrell says, at the same time, you can’t get around these cultural forces. Approaching collaboration in this setting without respecting the system and structures is likely to have bad effects. When I offered some ideas I’ve seen used to break through power imbalances and help create a different vibe in a team, Harrell was quick to correct me. “You can’t make changing the culture central to your success” in an environment where so many are so invested in its structure. And trying to get around it by going to a senior influencer might land you in hot water for violating the chain of command. Asking people lower on the totem pole to speak up in front of more senior people can also backfire, since the system doesn’t reward new ideas as much as it rewards supporting the hierarchy.

  The US government is one such culture, and during her tenure Harrell has learned how to navigate it rather than fight it. Her approach is simple: have a great deal of empathy for your stakeholders, however reluctant they are, and create a space where the normal rules and systems are paused or changed. Or, work within the command-and-control system, but constantly seek input and reviews from people along the way by asking for their expert input. The trick is to acknowledge to yourself and the team that the situation simply requires another iteration or two to bring the sticky stakeholder along. Since you are always showing “finished” work, you must be willing to be “wrong” so that you can have a meaningful conversation about what’s not working and how it might be fixed.

  But cultural differences can also be more geographically influenced, such as in teams that are large and international or dispersed. Erin Meyer is an author and researcher who’s done a lot to map out the ways in which cultures differ, which in turn helps us negotiate them. Her work is useful for those who are navigating national cultural differences in teams, from how to give negative feedback to how to build a schedule. More typically, though, teams are made up of people who differ culturally not only in terms of their countries of origin but also in their backgrounds and skills, so it may be most useful to focus on individual behaviors.

  Some companies have collaboration built into their cultures from the start. Netflix began with an unusual business model—mailing customers DVDs of movies from their queue—and transitioned to streaming media at a time when physical media was losing adoption. The company has recently undergone another transition and begun creating their own movies and TV shows to stream. The resilience of their business model and technology are impressive, and much of the credit for the company’s success is attributed to their strong culture, which values collaboration highly. This culture is embodied in a famous “deck” of slides that was shared openly on the internet and is now published on the company’s website. Andrea Mangini, Director of Product Design, offered her observations about how that culture works on the inside, as someone relatively new to the company. She says that people are constantly showing their work and inviting others to weigh in. People value getting feedback; in fact, not seeking out the opinions of others is frowned upon. Because the emphasis on collaboration has been at the core of the company since the start, it’s second nature to many employees. The company sees so much value in breaking down silos that they’re not as concerned about duplicating efforts and optimizing the creation of new ideas.

  No matter your environment, by being intentional about involving “everyone” and making your differences productive through team norms, you get the diversity you need while maintaining the sanity you deserve. By understanding power differences and openly discussing cultural differences—whether they are based on nationality, background, or skill set—you will help create a more harmonious collaboration.

  Troubleshooting Issues with Enlisting Everyone

  Bringing many different people together can surface many emotional and interpersonal issues in the team and with stakeholders. This section discusses some ideas you can use to mitigate these issues and keep the team focused.

  Dealing with Difficult People in Teams

  However you’ve decided to set up your core team, it’s likely that at some point, one or more members will turn out to be trouble. Whether it’s someone who dominates or someone you can’t seem to get to speak up, difficult people are a fact of collaborative life. Thorsten Borek and his team at Neon Sprints in Hamburg, Germany, have created a simple framework to understand the problematic people who show up to collaborate (or not, as we’ll see). I have recreated their framework here with permission because it’s simply too useful not to share. The framework has five main types of difficult people, and ways you can handle them gracefully:

  The leader

  Leaders can’t help but take over in a meeting, controlling conversations and dominating ideas. Whether they are literally the boss or just act like it, their presence is likely stifling to others and a pain to facilitate. The key here is to understand that their motivations are power-driven, meaning that they seek to be seen as powerful by others. To handle leaders, Borek suggests giving them an important task—the keyword being important. These folks should be asked to lead a discussion about key decision criteria, or to make critical decisions.

  The know-it-all

  Know-it-alls are those who constantly drag the discussion in a specific direction or bring up what seems like minutia when the group is talking about the big picture. They make other participants cringe because they take things off-track even though they may be saying important things. Understand that these people are knowledge-driven, and need a way to channel and share their expertise with the group productively. Handling know-it-alls means giving them an outlet in a collaboration. Consider giving them a chance to present their knowledge of constraints as part of framing a problem, or let them share insights about a specific technology you are considering. Truly disruptive people may need to be handled with care, and included only in places where they won’t drown everyone else out all the time.

  The introvert

  You may not always notice introverts as problems in your team, because they tend to be ni
ce and quiet, eagerly following along and agreeing with whatever the last person said. Introverts are instruction-driven, meaning they may not be extroverted or confident enough to participate in messy, free-form discussions. Giving them very clear instructions, or running through an exercise together before asking them to do it on their own, will help build up their comfort level and confidence. They can also be enlisted to help out the group in many ways, since they highly value helping the group get along.

  The negativist

  Negativists are people who, no matter what, can’t help but resist what is happening every step of the way. These people will question the process being used ad nauseum, or insist that every idea offered has already been tried. Often these folks are resistance-driven because they’ve not been listened to, either by you or by others in the past. Handle negative people with care, making them into valued experts and enlisting them to prepare and strategize ahead of time. But these people may also prove difficult to change, so consider asking them to serve as a critic of the effort, rather than an idea generator, to best take advantage of their energy.

  The indecisive

  This type of team member typically is well integrated in how the team works and eager to participate in discussions. Frequently indecisives will introduce different perspectives on a subject or ask to consider more aspects of the matter at hand. However, when asked to make a decision, they have a really hard time making up their mind. And once they do decide, in 9 out of 10 cases they’ll ask to change that decision after a few minutes, potentially asking the team for more input “just to be sure.” The indecisive team member is safety-driven and needs constant reassurance about proceedings and decisions.

  It’s worth getting to know your team members and stakeholders well enough to understand what they value and what drives them. You can do this in a variety of ways—from 1:1 interviews, to asking people who have experience with individuals what they think, to trying out different approaches and seeing what works.

  Handling a Critical Stakeholder Who Won’t Engage

  Sometimes, despite your invitations, a person just won’t show interest or participate in the effort. Many people I spoke to described having an important stakeholder or subject-matter expert either fail to attend sessions (even short ones) or express deep skepticism of the enterprise.

  The cause of this lack of engagement can vary. Often it’s just that these stakeholders have competing priorities, and yours doesn’t rise to the top of the pile. This happens with people whose expertise is in high demand. When I dug in with one such person, I learned that their days had a Groundhog Day quality, where they were called upon over and over again to deliver the same perspective, the same information across many groups, and each new request felt even less interesting and valuable than the last.

  So what can I do?

  Understand their priorities

  When you can’t get the attention of someone critical to the effort, it’s worth spending some time trying to understand what they are devoting attention to. You can frame your project in ways to align with what they care about to get more support. You can do this by speaking with them directly, but if they aren’t engaging with you, try speaking to those around them who are likely to know what their focus is. It also may be necessary to acknowledge that their other priorities are more important. You may need to wait until they have the time and space to devote to your effort.

  Burn a cycle

  When a key stakeholder won’t give you the time of day because they don’t believe the work is needed, trying to force them to play ball probably won’t work. Instead, run through a cycle of exploration to move quickly from the fuzzy frontend questions and assumptions to asserting a hypothesis about the solution or creating a prototype. This answer need not be (and probably won’t be) the right one, so beware of investing a lot of time or making it very high-fidelity. What you might find is that once you assert a “truth” developed by the collaboration, you’ll suddenly get the stakeholder’s attention—although it’s likely to be negative. But this is the time to make sure that person feels like their input and knowledge is what’s required to solve the problem. When I work with people in complex domains, I often show them things early on that are wrong or incomplete so that they’ll be compelled to step in to provide guidance and fill in what’s missing. If you prepare yourself to take an extra cycle or two to draw people in, you save yourself the frustration of having more finished work “rejected” by someone who could have been helpful earlier on.

  Join forces or have a runoff

  As a consultant, I’ve been hired by large organizations a shocking number of times to work on problems that other people were already trying to solve. When you discover this, consider merging or aligning your efforts with the other team(s) in the spirit of sharing the load to move faster. Or, alert leadership about the redundancy, because it may be something they aren’t aware of. In my experience, however, this isn’t always a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Some companies intentionally set up different teams to see what different solutions emerge. In this case, you should know your work is in a runoff, and proceed anyway. Make sure that the ideas are being compared fairly, though—try to ensure that leaders aren’t comparing the cookie dough from one team with the freshly baked cookies from another. It also may be a good idea to reach out to the other teams so everyone understands what’s happening.

  Managing Someone Who Is Spread Too Thin

  Having team members who are spread too thin will stress any team. One of the strengths of Agile/Sprint methodology is the insistence on 100% dedication to the team. This is a great goal, but all too often I run into people who have too much on their plates. When your collaborators have varying levels of dedication to the cause, you may run into resentment (“X isn’t pulling their weight”) or dismay (“I want to do more, but I can’t!”).

  So what can I do?

  Speak to a manager

  You can try to ask the person who oversees the employee to help clear the person’s plate, for everyone’s sanity. Don’t do this behind the employee’s back, but rather include them in the discussion about how everyone wants to make sure priorities are aligned. This isn’t the employee’s problem, it’s the resource manager’s.

  Spread the gospel for them

  When a key player is trapped in a cycle of being the subject-matter expert, you can help them by aggregating some of their requests for them, and aligning their input sessions (at least up front) into a single learning session so they can get off the hamster wheel. You could also offer to attend meetings with other groups to consolidate. And, while you’re there, consider recording video and compiling great notes that they can use as a first line of defense for requests for their time. This should also serve to create a bond, and hopefully they’ll repay you by giving you just enough attention later.

  Change their status

  If someone really can’t be spared the needed time to focus on your collaboration, then it’s a good idea to be explicit about making them an advisor who can review and weigh in, but who isn’t part of the core team. It’s also worth seeing if they have a protégé or colleague who might be better able to participate, even if that person’s at a lower level of expertise.

  Navigating Cultural Conflicts

  The main objective of many personnel managers is to minimize dust-ups between employees and promote healthy teams—the irony being, of course, that avoiding conflict ends up creating more issues than it solves. If the business of business were really without contention, and everyone agreed all the time, then we could have delegated it all to robots and retired in our utopia long ago. But the reality is, we need to express and work through differences of opinion to get to better answers—the very heart of what this book is about.

  But what happens when your teams, whether intrinsically or through coaching, won’t fully engage in healthy debate? If you notice that there are few points of disagreement in your team, it’s t
ime to stir the pot. Otherwise, productivity will actually suffer, as energy spent not arguing takes away from accomplishing goals.

  You need to strike a balance among team members where there is productive tension and conflict about specific ideas, not individual people.

  So what can I do?

  Talk cross-culturally

  A lot of what underlies the willingness to speak up, or not, may be cultural. In the spirit of openness, it might be a good idea for your team to spend time together talking openly about what their expectations are, and sharing their previous experiences. Erin Meyer has fantastic advice in her book, The Culture Map (PublicAffairs), and online about helping teams embrace productive conflict despite cultural differences. She suggests using specific language, like “Help me understand your point” in place of “I disagree with that,” to depersonalize and invite intellectual discussion among those who might otherwise give in.

  Map it out

  Meyer also suggests mapping out the differences in the team explicitly. Her model is specific to national cultural differences, which may be both irrelevant and overly simplistic for your purposes. But if you replace the nationalities with specific team members and their individual predispositions, you can use this tool to help team members better understand where they’re each coming from.

  Remove the boss

  Some people may be more reticent to express themselves when an authority figure is in the room. Help your diverse teams feel comfortable by making sure they have space to engage with each other where they don’t feel like they are being watched or need to align with a superior.