If collaboration for your team means talking/examining the problem, but not doing, you may be frustrated by the fact that nothing changes.

Frustrated by the lack of collaboration across his management team, my client called me. He was almost desperate for suggestions that would help him in building a successful cross-functional collaborative team. This team comes together for regular management meetings and is extremely focused on operational results (and highly successful at achieving them) but working together on cross-functional non-operational programmes for the business as a whole… well that’s a whole different ball game.  

I duly invited myself to sit in on one of the team’s meetings where they had identified a hot, non-operational business issue that needed to be resolved. Everyone was engrossed in talking extensively about the problem with lots of suggestions for solutions to the issue at hand. The challenge was that after the meeting, every single team member returned to their day job and did absolutely nothing on the non-operational business issue. Collaboration for this team means talking/examining the problem, but not doing. Guess what? Nothing changes.

What’s going on here?

In his recent HBR article, ‘Stop wasting money on team building’, Carlos Valdez-Dapena talks about the collaboration framework he designed for Mars Inc. One of his conclusions is that Accountability is key; success-minded people need collaborative commitments built into their individual performance objectives. 

As he describes the process the Mars teams went through, I’m reminded of one of the organisational psychology tools I regularly use - the Accounting Cycle from Transactional Analysis. The Accounting Cycle reveals just how often we all rush headlong straight into solving issues without giving ourselves the time to really understand what’s actually going on in the first place – what exists and what’s significant.

Please get in touch if any of this resonates with you.