Principles are powerful. We subconsciously turn to our underlying beliefs in times of uncertainty. In times of crisis or urgency, our principles shape our actions.
Yet your organisation may have no idea what your principles are for effective collaboration.
We often see organisations focusing their attention on new fancy methods. Whether that’s a new app. Or a speed-looking innovation process. Or a change in furniture. These things are easy to change, but they may end up having little impact on how your people collaborate.
Want to change how your organisation works? Don’t look for a new method or a new piece of technology to save you. Start with your principles. Your underlying principles will shape how your organisation collaborates both internally and externally. By taking the time to identify your principles, you can take control of how your organisation choose to work.
Identifying your organisation’s underlying principles is the first step to changing and strengthening how you collaborate.
If everybody believes that “We’ll get the best outcome if our team can work on this on our own” then you will never break down your organisation’s silos.
If people believe that “We should always follow expert recommendations over a community’s point of view”, then you’ll never become a citizen-centric organisation - no matter how much technology or how many smart consultants you throw into the mix.
For 20 years we’ve been developing our own set of principles to guide our collaboration with different communities, industries and sectors.
Here we share them with you. And we encourage you to adapt them and make them your own.
Our top 4 principles for effective collaboration
1: Honest Inclusion
Trusting relationships are the key to effective collaboration.
That’s why we start our work from a place of trust. We trust that people can add value. We trust that people who contribute are doing so with good intentions. We trust that whoever participates are the right people.
So why should we exclude people from a collaborative process if they want to be involved?
The principle of Honest Inclusion means involving everybody who may have an interest in the project or issue at hand.
But let’s be clear: this doesn’t mean that everybody has the same level of influence. It doesn’t mean that the loudest voice gets to make the decision or take over the process.
What it means is that you are clear about how they can contribute and what will happen with their contributions.
That’s honest inclusion.
2: Considered Communication
In our experience, one of the biggest blows to the success of any project is poor communication.
You may have been part of a collaborative meeting or event where the organisers sat on the outcomes for weeks. You left feeling optimistic about the next steps, only to lose all enthusiasm after hearing nothing but crickets.
To assume that everyone walks away clear on what’s important to remember between meetings is often unrealistic.
That’s why we have a 24-hour rule at Business Lab.
We aim to provide a workshop report or summary or next step within 24 hours to our community of interest - even for the most complex of projects. We often get emails from people saying how grateful they were for receiving these so promptly. It’s clear from the correspondence we receive that it’s key to bringing people along for the ride.
Every contact you have with an engagement participant is an opportunity to enable their contributions. So you should carefully consider the medium and language you use. You can strengthen this by working closely with a codesign group to provide feedback on any key messages.
These are simple things. Yet they are often done poorly.
That’s why Considered Communication is such a key principle for any collaboration or engagement work.
3: Action From Day One
Nothing builds momentum like momentum.
Collaboration often requires people to do something extra over and above their normal work. For many people, especially more introverted people, collaboration is a real effort. It drains their mental energy.
That’s why we believe in the principle of Action from Day One. People need to see the quick wins of any collaborative process, or they will lose faith and move onto something else.
Adam Kahane, author of Collaborating with the Enemy talks about how sometimes the results of collaborative brainstorming processes can be disappointing. You may look at the ideas and think “There is nothing new here.”
But often it’s not about creating new solutions. The solutions were already there in the filing cabinet, waiting. It’s about going to the filing cabinet together - and taking action. That’s what separates effective collaboration from a nice talkfest.
4: Simplifying Complexity
What do we mean by simplifying complexity?
This may sound like we are advocating for you to “dumb down” your analysis of a situation or challenge. But that’s not quite what we mean.
For us, this principle is about narrowing your focus to a small number of collaborative opportunities. Often we see organisations put themselves through a planning process that results in 20 or more ideas. They are all reasonably good ideas. So where do you start?
Simplifying complexity is about saying “no” to many good ideas so you can say “hell yes” to a small number. It’s about doing the bare minimum of analysis before going out into the real world to test your assumptions.
If you want people to work better together, you need to narrow your shared attention to a small number of opportunities. This will help people to understand where and how they might contribute.
That’s what we mean by simplifying complexity.
What are your principles for effective collaboration?
There are many good principles we could have included in our list. What are yours? Join the conversation in our Virtual Collaborators LinkedIn group.
Also, you should feel free to take our principles and make them your own. You could reframe them in your language. Perhaps Honest Inclusion could become “whakawhanaugatanga” - the Māori concept of building trust and connections. Or Action from Day One could be “Learning by Doing” or “Prototyping over Planning”.
Find the language that works for you and make them your own.