How leadership can make collaboration work

Dr Tatchapol Poshyanonda is managing director of Cisco Thailand.

Globalisation, bringing with it increased opportunities for new markets and productivity, as well as new competition, is requiring companies to collaborate across geographic and functional borders.

This has become a fact of life and something about which we in Thailand need to be mindful.

That EIU survey also found that many executives believe collaboration is easy to implement, judging by the way they mandate collaboration within their organisations. However, the people who actually have to perform the collaboration tell a different story, about poorly executed collaboration and how it wastes resources, creates resentment and causes some teams to go in opposite directions. Many of these failures are due to a lack of common goals, miscommunication, perceived inequities, distrust, insufficient resources and a lack of incentives.

So how can you make your organisation collaborate more effectively? Cisco has been looking at this for a couple of years now and we think we have a good blueprint for increasing the chances of making employees collaborate more effectively - not only with their colleagues from other departments and offices, but also with partners, vendors and even customers.

The following are our seven ingredients for successful collaboration.

Create a formal process to find the right partners for collaboration. You have a process for selecting suppliers and other vendors, so set up a similar process for selecting partners with whom you will collaborate. Identify your goals and the necessary capabilities of the partner. Create a formal process for testing and establishing trust, and employ a consultant who specialises in finding the right partners for your objectives.

Plan, set goals and follow up. Seven out of 10 collaborative arrangements fail because they do not begin with careful planning and fail to provide proper follow-up, according to Professor Gene Slowinski of the Graduate School of Management at the Rutgers University School of Business. Firms that identify joint goals, allocate sufficient resources and identify roles and responsibilities enjoy the exact opposite: 70 per cent of these collaborations succeed.

Communicate openly, clearly and frequently. In the planning stage, create the means by which you will communicate throughout the relationship. Consider the information that will be shared and build the necessary channels.

Trust your partners. In addition to contractual implements such as nondisclosure statements, develop a formal process to test the integrity and competence of your collaboration partners so you can learn to trust them. Look for reputation, recommendations of other trusted partners, market reports, financial standing, who the partner partners with, referrals, independent testimonials, and so on.

Lead. This is the main point I want to make in this article. Respondents to the EIU survey indicated deficient leadership, incentives, processes and metrics as the main obstacles to collaboration. As a leader, inspire your team members to collaborate. Educate them in the benefits and goals of the collaboration. Define processes based on known successes so your employees do not reinvent the process every time. Although you may find your employees want to collaborate, doing so successfully is not intuitive. They need to understand where to start, how to set goals in line with your objectives, what to do when conflicts arise, and how to divide responsibilities, among other things.

Establish metrics. The EIU survey revealed that many organisations do not measure their success. Maybe they believe collaboration will succeed naturally. We know it will not. Maybe metrics are difficult to define. This is probably true, but with your objectives defined, you are a giant step closer.

Pay for success. Employee incentives attached to your objectives and metrics, and pointed out at the beginning of the collaboration process, will pay off in the end. Without incentives, your vision may become just a dream.

Dr Tatchapol Poshyanonda is managing director of Cisco Thailand.