Author's note

A previous version of this paper was prepared for the Third Annual GOING VIRTUAL — The Future of Work Conference, Melbourne, 25-26 October 2006.

An earlier version of that paper appeared in the Australian HR Magazine, August 2006.

Abstract

How organisations collaborate was recently identified as a major driver of business performance. I argue that collaboration, particularly e-collaboration, can be made a value-generating organisational capability.

Introduction

A survey published in June 2006, sponsored by Verizon Business and Microsoft and entitled Meetings Around the World: The Impact of Collaboration on Business Performance, identified the impact of collaboration on company performance.

Taking collaboration to mean working together, the survey's authors, the Frost and Sullivan consulting firm, surveyed 950 IT and business decision-makers in companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific having over US$5 million annual revenues. Response data were analysed to calculate the extent and components of collaboration and relate this to business performance and process.

• Collaboration in these companies accounted for 36 per cent of their overall business performance. Collaboration had over twice as much impact as the nearest other factor (which was how aggressively the company pursued its markets).
• Profitability, profit growth and sales growth were the performance indices most strongly impacted by collaboration.
• The three operational areas that were most strongly impacted by collaboration were customer satisfaction, productivity and product quality. For these it was by far the strongest influence.

This survey takes the wraps off collaboration as a source of business advantage. Those who collaborate best, perform best. We might always have expected this, especially over the past decade with the increasing emphasis on teaming and enterprise-wide information-sharing, which have their roots in collaboration.

The collaboration that counts is e-collaboration

Before we look at the enablers of collaboration we need to identify its scope. The collaboration measured in the survey — the collaboration that is driving business performance — isn't occurring only between people sitting in the same office. This is collaboration across cities, countries and continents. This is confirmed by the survey finding that for two-thirds of the sample, collaboration involved people from different locations, and that a driver of collaboration was the use of collaboration tools. Thus the collaboration that counts is e-collaboration.

However, e-collaboration is different to face-to-face collaboration. Many of the factors which make sustain collaboration are missing when one is remote. They include personal knowledge of one's collaborators, clarity of coordination, and knowing how one's work is being used and how it will affect one's reward and advancement.

What virtual teaming tells us about enablers of e-collaboration

The good news is that we have a decade's worth of best practice, experience and theory on e-collaboration. The technical term for the practice and this body of knowledge is virtual teaming. The term emerged in the mid-90's to describe people collaborating at a distance, using collaboration tools, and today it has a number of synonyms such as remote teaming, distance teaming, geographically-dispersed teaming and online collaboration. Virtual teaming gives us a racing start in understanding the enablers of e-collaboration.

A culture of openness

The Meetings Around the World survey found that collaboration was highly dependent on a culture of openness, which made a 36 per cent contribution. Their descriptors of a culture of openness were "the ease of talking to anyone within the organization, the regularity of cooperation between units within the organization, and the accessibility of persons to those in other departments."

There is more we can say here about a culture of openness. Aligned with relational practice [1], such a culture is critical for today's knowledge-based and agile enterprises. Although its enablers are still being identified, four factors at least are important.

• Are the vision and goals of the organisation compelling and attract commitment? Does one 'love the company' sufficiently to contribute everything one can, possibly irrespective of any obviously-direct reward? We know quite a lot about team spirit: arguably organisational spirit is similar on a grander scale [2].
• Individuals' perception of whether sharing their knowledge and expertise with others is a source of personal risk (for example, whether someone else might use that knowledge for benefit without attribution). This is dependent on the level of trust ascribed to (or learned about) others in the organisation and the strength of mutual social bonds.
• Visible, pervasive and rigorously-cascaded organisational goals which allow everyone to understand how their contribution makes a difference.
• The example set by senior officers: turf wars are contrary to cross-enterprise collaboration and send a strong negative signal.

A culture of openness is further supported by the more tangible factors described below.

Organisational design and process that make it easy to collaborate

The survey states that collaboration was dependent on a decentralised management structure (16 per cent impact). However, a decentralised structure would necessarily demand greater collaboration, so it is not clear whether this is cause or effect. Nonetheless, decentralisation is a hallmark of enterprises which value collaboration.

Collaboration is aided by having only a few levels of hierarchy so that managers operate over a wide span with many reports. Then, cross-organisational collaborations fall within the remit of fewer rather than more managers, and the potential for competition is reduced.

Another lever for enabling cross-organisational collaboration is to make it easy to happen.

• First, an organisation-wide capability directory so that people with particular skills and knowledge can be identified wherever they are.
• Second, making it easy for a contributor's effort to be booked to multiple and geographically and organisationally-distant cost centres.
• Third, an 'ombudsman' function which managers can ask to decide on the allocation of resources over which they are in competition.

Together these are the basis of a knowledge marketplace.

An equitable and aligned reward system

People need to feel that a knowledge marketplace is not only fulfilling the organisation's goals, it is fulfilling theirs. They need to feel that their reward from collaborating on (possibly multiple) teams and projects which may be run from the other side of the world, is equitable and aligned with their contribution.

This implies a reward system based on cross-geography and or multiple performance reviews, taking input from all the parts of the organisation to which someone has contributed. Such a reward system should reward collaborative, teaming behaviour rather than competitive behaviour. For consideration it should also include rewards based on the performance of the organisation as a whole.

Finally, there need to be systems in place to ensure the careers of remote collaborators are not disadvantaged in comparison to those who are local. E-collaborators often suffer from lack of visibility: for them out of site is truly out of mind.

Training in virtual teaming

Virtual teaming, or e-collaboration, is sufficiently different to its face-to-face counterpart that specialist training is required.

• Manager's behaviour which most usually needs to be remedied includes: not re-designing communication and collaboration processes; failing to be inclusive of distant contributors; and not attending to trust, social bonds and team spirit at a distance.
• Remote collaborators themselves need new skills and mind-sets to work comfortably and effectively with people who they may never see face-to-face.

Standardised collaboration tools

When collaborating at a distance our face-to-face collaboration tool is taken away. What should replace it? The survey found that the extent of collaboration was dependent (again, a 16 per cent impact) on using collaboration tools to accomplish the organisation's work.

Indications are that the most appropriate technology solution for e-collaboration is a stable suite of both same-time and any-time tools. Their role is to provide shared spaces for project, team, community and organisation-wide collaboration.

Importantly this suite of tools is available and standardised across the organisation. Such a standard, common-denominator, suite allows people to collaborate in shared spaces not only irrespective of where they are but also irrespective of the organisational unit they belong to.

E-collaboration as an organisational capability

My argument here is that e-collaboration — the reality of collaboration at a distance in today's enterprises — is too important to be dealt with in point solutions by managers who find that they need resources outside the line of sight. The Meetings Around the World findings challenge organisations to build e-collaboration as an organisational capability.

There will and should be many stakeholders in building this capability. In a previous version of this paper I argued that the factors at the root of enabling e-collaboration — culture, OD, capability directories, reward systems, training and change management — give HR the opportunity to play a pivotal if not driving role.

But if they can't, who will? The Chief Process Officer (if one such exists)? The Chief Knowledge / Information Officer (ditto)? Realising the value of collaboration requires a high-level sponsor who can drive a coherent and integrated programme across the usual suspects of people (and culture), process, organisation and systems.

A final thought. This is a powerful source of competitive advantage. What do you think your competitors are doing?

Footnotes

[1] For more on relational practice see Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power and Relational Practice at Work by Joyce K. Fletcher, MIT Press 1999.

[2] In the early 90s I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation which at the time had a distinctive culture of organisation-wide knowledge-sharing, using its VAX Notes discussion forum tool. In 1991 I wrote a paper which inter alia described this practice and culture. For various reasons I re-published this paper in September 2006 as Web 0.0 Social Media.

NOTICES

This paper

Please cite this paper as: Gundry, John, "The Value of Collaboration". White Paper from Knowledge Ability Ltd, Malmesbury UK. Published at www.knowab.co.uk/valueofcollaboration.html. April 2007.

About the author

Dr John Gundry is Director of Knowledge Ability Ltd, a UK-based company that provides international training and consulting on virtual teaming, e-collaboration and remote /e-working. Co-ordinates are: web: www.knowab.co.uk email: gundry@knowab.co.uk phone: +44 1666 826654 post: 48 St Dennis Road Malmesbury SN16 9BH UK

This paper includes concepts presented in Knowledge Ability's Managing Virtual Teams training and Creating the Virtual Environment consulting.

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