Collaboration is behavioural, not a process or system. As a behaviour, it can’t be taught. It’s something that some people exhibit and other people copy. It’s Homo Imitans more than Sapiens.
If you want to create a collaborative environment, you would waste your time preaching collaboration. You need some good collaborators who collaborate and other people can mimic. Simple. If you don’t have any, you may have to import them, transplant them, inject them, parachute them in. It won’t happen otherwise.
Collaboration won’t come down from the sky. Unless you have a 10 or 20 year plan, you can’t afford a slow change in the culture. Not now.
These are other things you may want to do if you want to waste your time:
- A cultural assessment of the ‘readiness’ for collaboration
- An in-depth analysis of why there is not much collaboration in the culture
- A team building, or hundreds of them, that magically will trigger collaboration in a non-collaborative environment
- A collaboration training package
- Putting collaboration and teamwork in the value system, say you value them and then pray
Implant collaborative people who do things by collaborating. Be sure they are visible. If they have high social connections, bingo. Protect them.
Inject the practice, social-engineer it, if it did not exist, make sure people copy, create a critical mass, spread the behaviours, make collaboration normal. Then, have any discussion you want about collaboration readiness and why it was not there in the first place. Only then.
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Join me today at the Organizational Network Analysis Summit 2020 [1].
Free, online event – 2pm GMT/3pm CET for my keynote on:
Connectivity, communication and collaboration in the organization under the global pandemic. The experience with the Viral Change™ Mobilizing Platform.
This free, online event is a unique opportunity to learn from international thought leaders about how networks of trust and data-driven insights can help you accelerate transformation across your organization. This pandemic has significantly challenged your organization, teams, work culture and workflows. Trust plays a key role in how your organization adapts to the “new normal” and how the crisis will affect the engagement and productivity of your people.
For more information on attending: 👉 ONS Summit 2020 [1]
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Dr Leandro Herrero is the CEO and Chief Organization Architect of The Chalfont Project [2], an international firm of organizational architects. He is the pioneer of Viral ChangeTM, a people Mobilizing Platform, a methodology that delivers large scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations, which creates lasting capacity for changeability.
Dr Herrero is also an Executive Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management. An international speaker, Dr Herrero is available for virtual speaking engagements [3] and can be reached at: The Chalfont Project [4].
His latest book, The Flipping point – Deprogramming Management [5], is available at all major online bookstores.
