Collaboration
'More than 97 percent of senior leaders believed collaboration is vital to success. However, only 30 percent of respondents and 47 percent of senior leaders believed leaders in their club are unquestionably skilled in collaboration. Results indicate leaders must learn to work across boundaries to collaborate effectively in the advent years.' (Centre for Creative Leadership, 2007)
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Collaboration is a process of participation through which people, groups and organizations work together to accomplish desired results. Common factors and characteristics have been identified by explore as influencing the collaborative process, including the skills of leadership, communication, sustainability, unity, participation, and a history of thriving accomplishments (Hogue, et al, 1995; Keith et.al, 1993). Borden (1997) has identified four factors: internal communication, external communication, membership, and goal setting.
Borden & Perkins (1999) identified and defined the following factors in the improvement of a easy self evaluation tool. This tool can be used by groups to stimulate seminar after self rating the collaborative endeavor for each key area. It can also supply an overview of the key factors vital for success in a collaborative project.
• communication - clear and open with an established process.
• Sustainability - there is a plan for sustaining participation and resources throughout the scheme including guidelines in regards to the exchange of members.
• explore and evaluation - a needs evaluation has been conducted, goals are clear and there are measurement processes in place to derive data and recite those goals.
• Political climate - there exists obvious history and environment surrounding power and decision making. Political climate may be within the group as a whole, systems within the group or networks of people;
• Resources - there is passage to the required resources. Resources refer to four types of capital: environmental, in-kind, financial, and human;
• Catalysts - the collaboration was commenced due to the existence of problem(s) or the reason(s) for collaboration to exist required a overall approach;
• Policies/Laws/Regulations - the collaboration can function effectively under the existing policies, laws, and/or regulations or these can be altered or created
• History - the group has a history of working cooperatively and solving problems;
• Connectedness - members are associated and have established informal and formal communication networks at all levels;
• Leadership - there are leaders who promote, facilitates and sustain team building, and who can capitalise on diversity and individual, group and organizational strengths;
• Group improvement - this collaboration was mobilized to address foremost issues. There is a communication ideas and formal facts channels that permit the exploration of issues, goals and objectives; and,
• insight Stakeholders - the collaboration understands the stakeholders, including the people, cultures, values and habits.
Using the factors outlined above as a focus of seminar may sacrifice fragmentation within the group and move group conversation from generic seminar to focused dialogue foremost to sound decision making, and action. Open and honest communication within the group can growth group effectiveness and commitment. It also assists with viewing issues and problems in a holistic manner. Open and honest communication within the collaboration and with stakeholders is vital to success.
Another key area to be addressed is the setting of direction and focus for the collaboration. Ensuring a clear and understood direction and focus in the middle of all parties for a collaboration defines the purpose of the collaboration as what its members seek to create. Setting the direction and focus begins with establishing the vision, mission, values, and principles. Defining the outcome(s) added establishes identity and basal purpose. Activities also need to be aggregated to supply value to the collaborative group and to stakeholders. Many activities with similar focuses can confuse. Task/role clarity can create greater involvement, dialogue and understanding. Applying the range of factors above to the processes and contexts of the collaboration results in a greater shared insight of what the collaboration stands for, where it's going, the internal and external environment, and how it intends to make its outcomes a reality.
Collaboration as a Continuum Collaboration often means separate things to separate people, it is useful to think about collaboration as a continuum. Parties may reconsider themselves in relationships that vary from lower-intensity exchanges, in which the groups are more independent, to higher-intensity relationships, in which they are more interdependent. In one model (Kaplan, 1991), these differences in intensity are reflected in four Common terms: networking, cooperation, coordination, and collaboration.
Networking Cooperation Coordination Collaboration Lower-intensity' Higher-intensity Independence' Interdependence
1. Networking Organizations have a networking connection when they exchange facts in order to help each club do a good job.
2. Coordination Organizations have a coordinating connection when they modify their activities so that together, they supply good services to their constituents.
3. Cooperation When organizations cooperate, they not only share facts and make adjustments in their services - they share resources to help each other do a good job.
4. Collaboration In a collaborative relationship, organizations help each other improve or heighten their capacities to do their jobs. (Axner, 2007)
Trust and Collaboration The improvement of trust in nurturing collaborative relationships is a vital skill for leaders (Tschannen-Moran, 2001). Trust is built on perception and history. How our motives and activities are perceived determines if others will trust us. If we trust, we share. If not, we don't. How other's realize us is their reality -outside of our own motives. If we are perceived as promoting our own agenda or trying to create our own "empire", others are reluctant to become involved and to share. This applies to organizations and individuals.
Affect- based trust are feelings of emotional involvement and sincere caring for each others welfare. Cognition-based trust is the belief that others are competent and responsible. Both of these forms of trust are the foundations for collaboration in organisations (McAllister, 1995). Interpersonal trust is also viewed as a key to facilitating and enabling coordinated communal interactions (Coleman, 1988).
Learning to Lead Collaboration citizen can tend not to collaborate, this may be caused by issues of understanding, time, our work environments or politics. Collaboration is a relatively new conception and is unfamiliar to many people. We were taught in school to compete and that the world is survival of the fittest. Collaboration can seem to run contrary to what we were taught to do and be. If citizen are used to finding knowledge as a scarce resource (and through possession of knowledge it can create increased power for the private or group) citizen may be less inclined to engage in open idea exchange and collaboration.
Innovation needs to occur in an environment of experimentation. However, if innovative ideas are to be effective, they need some buildings to allow for consistency. The environment should sustain both innovation and standardization.
Politics and bureaucracy also need to be addressed and understood within the organisational context and the context of the collaborative effort. Good ideas aren't always the ones that are implemented. Ideas that are associated to the right citizen in the right positions can often gain acceptance quickly and easily. Who has power? influence on key decisions sometimes rests surface of formal processes. Sometimes, citizen on the "outside" have a profound impact on key decision makers. Ignoring other stakeholders can sink new ideas and innovations.
Tools for Collaboration The It manufactures has recognised that collaboration and communal networking is the way of the time to come and there is a strong move to create products which seek to heighten productivity by virtualizing communications and firm processes. citizen and organisations are finding at ways to join together with each other virtually and Web 2.0 products are being designed to fill those needs. However we already have easy passage to tools such as video and tele conferencing, chat, bulletin boards and email - easy tools which enable groups to communicate. Many tools are facilely available as open source software or at low cost development them accessible to all sectors. There are also more developed products such as derive instant messaging, screen sharing and other groupware tools. These types of tools enable geographically dispersed teams to come together for virtual meetings allowing for time and cost savings, less travel, and improved communications flow.
Conclusion Trust, collaboration, sharing, relaxation of ideas, are expressions of belief systems and culture. When we deliberate upon the role of collaboration in an organization, we are debating our views of how the organisation as a whole should be organized, power distributed, diversity allowed, and decisions made. Collaboration reflects a point of view: that by working together partners, formal or informal, can bring separate perspectives to bear to solve a question and bring about change. In order for collaboration to occur successfully within an organisation there needs to be a supportive culture and work environment, encouragement from senior managers and a rewards ideas which reflects the significance of collaborative practices. For collaboration to be thriving in the middle of organisations there must be clarity, direction and dialogue.
Resources For more facts about collaborative software go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_software
References
Axner, M. 2007, Promoting Coordination, Cooperative Agreements, and Collaborative Agreements Among Agencies. The community Toolbox accessed 17/12/07 at [http://ctb.ku.edu/tools/en/sub_section_main_1229.htm]
Borden, L. M. 1997, community collaboration: When the whole is greater than the sum of parts. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. (Quoted in Borden & Perkins, 1999)
Borden, L.M & Perkins, D.F. 1999, Assessing Your Collaboration: A Self evaluation Tool. Journal of Extension, accessed 17/12/07 at http://www.joe.org/joe/1999april/tt1.html
Centre for Creative Leadership, 2007, What's Next? The 2007 Changing Nature of Leadership Survey, accessed 17/12/07 at http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/research/WhatsNext.pdf
Coleman, J.S. 1988, communal capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology 94 (Supplement). 95-120.
Hogue, T. Perkins, D. Clark, R. Bergstrum, A. Slinski, M. & Associates, 1995, Collaboration framework: Addressing community capacity. Columbus, Oh: National Network for Collaboration.
Kagan, S. L. 1991, United we stand: Collaboration for childcare and early study services. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1-3.
Keith, J. G., Perkins, D. F., Zhou, Z., Clifford, M. C., Gilmore, B., & Townsend, M. Z. 1993, construction and maintaining community coalitions on profit of children, youth and families. Michigan Agricultural Experiment center explore description (529). East Lansing, Mi: fabricate for Children, Youth, and Families.
McAllister, D.J. 1995, influence and cognition - based trust as foundations for interpersonal cooperation in organisations. Journal of Occupational and Organisational science of mind Journal, 38: 24-59
Tschannen-Moran, M. 2001, Collaboration and the need for trust, Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 39 Iss. 4.
The Role of Collaboration in Organizations
