According to Wikipedia, collaboration “is a recursive process where two or more people work together in an intersection of common goals by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus.”
When employees collaborate, they improve communication within the organization. Collaboration allows for different ideas from different people to generate a wide variety of knowledge and better make decisions – something that is extremely difficult, if at all possible, without collaboration.
Collaborate
Part of effective collaboration is reaching consensus. As defined in Wikipedia, consensus “usually involves collaboration, rather than compromise. Instead of one opinion being adopted by a plurality, stakeholders are brought together until a convergent decision is developed.”
Example of Collaboration and Building Consensus
Below is an example of a company that brought individuals together in order to determine options for expanding the offerings to their clients.
Background
Assume that you are asked to work on enhancing the services your company offers clients. You are asked by the executive team to develop a proposal on what additional services your company, a software firm, might offer to clients in addition to the current the software you sell. Currently, you only offer one software product and maintenance of that product.
You realize that in order to be successful in your task, you need to get others in the company involved in the project. You have heard throughout the office of ways that the services to clients can be expanded upon and know that there are tons of ideas that would be valuable. Additionally, you are not well versed in every aspect of the business and need the knowledge and expertise of others to ensure you are considering all possible options and are making the right proposal to the executives.
To start, you send an email to each business unit in the company asking them to provide 2 employees who would be interested in working on this project. You explain that you want the input of every business unit in the organization as you know they all have some ideas on what can be done to expand the services offered to clients. Each of the business units – sales, marketing, finance, operations, research and development, information technology, and administration – have sent at least 2 employees. Sales, marketing and operations have sent an additional one employee each. You have 18 people on the team to review options for expanding services to clients. You are excited about the opportunity of working with each of these individuals!
The First Meeting
During the first meeting, everyone begins talking about what the client needs and what the company should be doing to expand business. There are lots of ideas flying around, and in some cases, lots of dissention around those ideas. Some people remain completely quiet and won’t participate at all. A few got up in the middle and left and didn’t return. The first meeting lasted about one hour, and it is obvious those individuals that remained are frustrated at the end of it. You decide there needs to be a better approach to these meetings if anything is going to be accomplished. You thank everyone for their ideas and promise them that you will write up the data you captured and will set up a follow up meeting that will be better facilitated so everyone has a chance to share their thoughts.
The Second Meeting
You are prepared! When you set up the second meeting, you included a “ground rules” email for everyone to read prior to getting together as a group. This meeting is scheduled to be 2 hours in duration and it is a brainstorming meeting.
Here are the ground rules you set out:
- Everyone will have a turn to speak
- All ideas are on the table – no discussion around what will work or won’t work at this meeting, only clarifying questions to be asked to ensure understanding of another’s idea
- Build on the ideas of others
- Don’t worry if an idea seems “out there,” or may be too costly or you are not even sure how it would be accomplished or if it even makes sense – share it with others
- No solutions to be presented at the meeting – just ideas
In addition, you took on the role of facilitator and assigned someone to take minutes/notes and another individual to keep track of time. The goal for the first hour of the meeting was to come out with a list of ideas from the brainstorming session. The second hour was to begin to further develop one or two of those ideas to present to the executive team.
During the meeting, everyone came prepared with their ideas. No one had anything negative to say about an idea they heard – they were very supportive of each other and built on the ideas presented. A few times individuals tried to present a solution immediately – but the others in the group managed it by reminding the individual that they were together to brainstorm ideas only – no solutions. A structured approach to brainstorming was followed where individuals took turns around the room presenting their idea; they could “pass” at any time if they couldn’t think of an option. The note taker captured all of the ideas on flip charts. There were lots of great ideas, including having a portal to support clients’ use of the software, providing on-site customer support for the first month after the purchase of the software, and enabling some customization of the software by the client directly. Some participants even proposed other software products they could be offering their clients that would be aligned to their current software product.
The Third Meeting
The third meeting was a follow up to the second meeting. Its sole purpose in the 2 hours that were scheduled for it was to develop two options for increasing services to clients for presentation to the executive team.
The options selected were:
- Develop a portal for clients that included:
- Tips and tricks for using the software
- Access to an expert 24/7/365
- Downloadable detailed instructions/step-by-step tutorials on use of software
- FAQs
- Free training classes via virtual learning sessions
- Develop components to the software (at its next scheduled upgrade within a year) to enhance its capability
- Clients only need purchase those components that are relevant to their business – which reduces the cost of the software overall to the client
The team then proceeded to develop these two ideas further into a presentation for the executive team.
Summary
Because the approach taken to address the need to increase services was a collaborative one, the entire organization was pleased with the options – it didn’t matter whose idea it was – it was the idea of the entire organization and everyone was able to get behind it. Everyone was pleased with the final solution presented to the executive team – as they were part of the process. They felt like they contributed and had their say – the idea was a joint idea. Everyone was excited to contribute to the development of the new services/products for the clients and all volunteered to pitch in and help in any way necessary.
Collaborating and building consensus isn’t always easy. You need to manage those individuals who go off track or try to dominate the conversation. You need to bring along those individuals who are afraid to speak up because their ideas may not be liked or may be “stupid.” In a well-facilitated session, individuals who participate feel involved in the process and part of the final solution – they feel as if they own it. The individuals involved work together as a team to come to an agreement on the best solution to the issue at hand.
QUESTION: How have you worked collaboratively with others? What are some of your success stories? What are some of the horror stories?
Share your thoughts in the Comments field below.
Thanks!
