Collaboration

Achieving collaborative advantage

It’s safe to say that every type of organisation is engaged in collaborative activities – the top 500 global businesses are reported to have 60 alliances each. Combining the expertise and know-how of one organisation with that of others can result in great things.

Yet collaborating successfully and gaining an advantage is not a foregone conclusion. Most collaborations make painfully slow progress and others die without achieving anything. Why is this and what does that mean for those leading and managing them

Getting to grips with the challenges of collaboration

Pooling resources – say, the technical knowledge from one organisation with the product design of a second and access to market of a third – makes it possible for organisations to achieve collaborative advantage. However, collaborations are inherently complex, dynamic and extremely demanding on management time and sophistication: they don’t just happen –managing to collaborate involves actively managing in order to collaborate. Issues to do with aims, culture, communications, power, trust and complexity tend to get in the way of making any real progress.

Take for example the issue of aims. Why is seeking agreement on joint direction so difficult in practice? Genuine aims for a collaboration exist in an entanglement of other, real and imagined aims. It is possible to explore aims and seek ways of satisfying each partner’s needs – at least to some degree. But it is necessary to consider not only the joint aims for the collaboration but also the aims of all the organisations and individuals involved. It is also necessary to consider not only the aims that partners say they have but also those that have not yet been openly discussed, those that partners claim to have but do not in reality adhere to and those they do not wish to admit to. Of course, it may not be possible to establish exactly what your partners’ motivations are but it is usually possible to get a sense of what they might be, and to act accordingly. The outcome may not be perfect, but it probably will be good enough.

Making it happen

Whilst there are no easy answers to managing collaborations, it is possible to reach good outcomes if you understand how collaborations work. Because collaborations are complex and dynamic, much of what takes place is not within the control of individual managers. What then is the nature of leadership appropriate to these situations? Leadership must involve being both gentle and tough at the same time – being prepared to nurture relationships on the one hand and taking a directive clear line on the other. Thus, you can expect to engage in activities that are highly facilitative –concerned with embracing, empowering, involving and mobilizing partners – whilst at the same time being adept at manipulating agendas and playing the politics. It means accepting and managing problems with power and trust and so on. And most of all, it requires continuous nurturing and a lot of attention to detail.

Further reading

To find out more see Siv Vangen and Chris Huxham’s book, Managing to Collaborate: The Theory and Practice of Collaborative Advantage (Routledge, London, 2005, ISBN 0415 339200).

Breakfast Briefing presentation 13th October 2011

Key points on collaboration from Dr Siv Vangen's presentation

Dr Siv Vangen's presentation in full