In the April issue of the Harvard Business review Morten Hansen asked: Is internal collaboration bad for your business? Hansen’s research raises a good point about just how valuable (or not) internal collaboration can be. He says:
“Too often a business leader asks, How can we get people to collaborate more? That’s the wrong question. It should be, Will collaboration on this project create or destroy value? In fact, to collaborate well is to know when not to do it.”
Here is a link to his article: When Internal Collaboration is Bad for Your Company At the Australian Businesswomen’s Network COLLABORATION is one of our company values. Internally we collaborate easily because we are a small team and we lean on each other to produce results. Our staff brainstorms many business development ideas before we execute them. I believe it is the leader’s role (whether that’s the business or project leader) to ultimately decide if an idea goes ahead based on your business strategy, available resources and what course of action will achieve results. It takes a strong leader to run with an unpopular idea, even when it has come out of collaboration and team brainstorming.
But what about collaborating with those outside of your organisation? Hansen’s points are as relevant when thinking about collaboration with external partners. We encourage collaboration between our community members. Most members are women business owners who can benefit from joining forces with others to pitch for business, to barter services, to provide peer mentoring. Actively supporting collaboration fits our positioning of being a community of like-minded women who network and connect to help each other grow business.
Collaboration often works best when parties have an equal amount to offer each other. If you’re a big fish (ie. you’re successful) in an area of business, you are more attractive to the small fish than they are to you. For instance, I’ve never been keen to (or known the best way to) collaborate with competitors. Maybe that’s because often, when these opportunities arose, I was the big fish in the equation. I’ve had what it is that others want a piece of. I’ve also been in the position of being the small fish in a situation (and today there are many areas where I am new/young/green and the small fish.) In these situations it’s up to the small fish (me) to find ways to provide value within the partnership. And, through collaboration you can add mass to your ‘small fish’ weight and grow. Hansen’s point – ie. Know when collaboration is pointless and when it is not – seems to ‘hold water’ regardless of who you are collaborating with.
