I ran into a friend of mine on Friday, an ex-CEO who is now building a very nice consultancy.   We spoke about one of his clients and the desire his client has expressed in fostering a collaborative environment across several virtual teams in multiple locations.

We talked over an impromptu lunch about moving collaboration from theory to practice.  I have pretty strong feelings about this latest interest in collaboration and the insistence that by working together we will reach some heightened level of  productivity.  The assumption is that if you take a semi-dysfunctional culture and you inject coffee machines, open plan work spaces and soft furnishings you will fix all that is broken.

Not long before the lunch tab was pushed in my direction I suggested that historically it was our ability to collaborate that facilitated some of our more noteworthy achievements.  Collaboration is nothing new.  Music and written language would rank pretty high as collaborative outcomes.

Collaboration is born out of a unifying cause. Physical proximity is an enabler, but distance does not need to be a deal breaker. It all hinges on a conversation, people coming together to combine experience and perspective into a whole that is much greater than the parts.

Our designers and architects have transformed CEO’s visions into stunning open plan, collaborative spaces. These spaces are filled with a myriad of technological wizardry.  The challenge for today’s knowledge worker is not in the tools or in the workshop, but in time.

In a world where managers attend an average of 62 meetings in a month and process over 100 emails a day the conversation becomes a nice to have.  Regardless of the best intentions, collaboration is an endangered species in many firms because of the volume of work.

A proposal: align individuals and teams with diverse skills around a common cause.  Engineer a process whereby these groups can form an environment of trust.  Give them the resources to see the project through to fruition.

Pressure test this on a small scale to get the recipe correct.  Celebrate your success and you may just have the early stages of a collaborative culture evolving on its own.

SDG