In the Second World War a ‘collaborator’ was a negative phrase – it meant someone who was actively working with the occupying forces. As countries were liberated the collaborators faced savage beatings, ostracism and sometimes worse.

Now the message is we need more collaborators. It has always been the case that organisations wanted people to follow their vision and deliver their goals. But there is a deeper demand now – silo mentalities are breaking down and corporate working is becoming increasingly important. We are more dependent on each other for shared information, insights and the effective delivery of outcomes.

So what happens to ‘independent minded people’? There are a lot of them about in all organisations – people who are not team players. They can be likeable people; they can be hard working people; they can bring important perspectives – but in challenging times the questions for leaders has to be,’are they delivering what we need? Are they meeting our expectations?’

Sometimes they are introverted people who find maintaining relationships and exchanging information difficult – they like to be left alone to get on with things. Often it is the departmental maverick who likes to be difficult, questions everything, and is cynical. It can also be some values-driven people who are driving their own agendas – often with good intentions. It can be the aloof person, the technical expert, comfortable in a superior sort of way that they see things differently from the rest of us. They can be competitive, hard working, driven people who are shaping their reputations but put their ego before the need to work with others (who are, after all, the competition!)
The challenge to leaders is ‘what do I do with the non collaborators?’

I’ve been coaching someone recently who is a technically brilliant, capable person leading a specialist department. The individual continually fails to deliver what is asked, some of which is key to the organisations agenda. He is not belligerent or awkward, he is just busy on the agenda he thinks is important. But he is not collaborating with the corporate agenda. It is one of those many times when non collaboration is a significant corporate issue. Another example was a manager in the caring professions who had specialists who were spending hours doing wonderful things that were a long way out from the job’s requirements and not concentrating on what was. They were not collaborating with the main agenda. They thought they knew best – and were emotional in their desire to protect what they were doing – but they were letting the organisation down.

The leadership challenges here are:

• How strong is the level of collaboration in your work group? What are the signs that people are collaborating? What are the signs of lack of collaboration?
• Are we really clear about our purpose and therefore what we expect from each other?
• How can you make the non collaborators more aware of their impact – and help them change
• What are the steps and actions that lead to more collaboration – how do we involve people in this so they become more committed to it?
• Are there some people who cannot change – and are they blocking the organisations ability to succeed?

David Maister in his book ‘Strategy and the Fat Smoker’ writes: “It may be that members of the organisation have insufficient commitment to each other [and the purpose of the organisation] to implement any strategy”. Finding the collaborators can be really vital for success.

Daniel Franklin’s article in the Guardian: ‘Good Company - How will Britain’s economic downturn affect the business community’s ability to commit to corporate social responsibility?’ has become even more relevant this summer as every day another report states the latest hit on businesses due to the economic climate.

As the British and American economies turn down and corporate profits are squeezed, firms are bound to take a closer look at their CSR efforts and ask how much these really contribute to their business.

Leaders will be facing difficult questions regarding their financial responsibility to their stakeholders to ensure they survive. Inevitably they will feel pressure to divert funds away from philanthropy and environmental projects. But let us hope that despite this necessary evil they remember their social responsibility inherent in these increasingly crucial business decisions, not just because they should but because they need to. By keeping true to their values and working to their strengths, leadership teams can avoid the reputational risk of bad business and support their loyal employees in harder times. As Daniel Franklin puts it:

‘So harder economic times may help to sort out CSR… thoughtful companies will keep at it, with a keener understanding that CSR efforts needed to be sharply focused - and require hard work and careful implementation - if businesses are to live up to the increasingly common mantra of “doing well by doing good”.’

The Governments Power of Information Taskforce has created a £20,000 prize fund for people who want to develop new ways to use publicly owned data for public benefit. You submit ideas through the website boldly called showusabetterway. They’ve also made a series of government data sets available for people to work with. This website though is important because its how the government is thinking in fresh ways about collaboration and its relationship with us:

We’re confident that you’ll have more and better ideas than we ever will. You don’t have to have any technical knowledge, nor any money, just a good idea, and 5 minutes spare to enter the competition.Go on, Show Us A Better Way.

The same task force has already looked for ways to make it easier or safer for civil servants to share in the ideas fest which often happens online. Openness generates better ideas. It helps people to innovate faster and work better. Yes it also means people can nick those ideas - but that doesn’t put the thieves ahead of those who habitually collaborate to progress.

(Thanks to Bill Thompson)

Julian Dobson runs Newstart, a magazine and website which has spent a good few years watching how cities and communities function and flourish, commune or collapse.

From time to time he blogs on the site Living with Rats. Today he writes on the enforced competition which can drive decisions by our city regions and how some are walking away from that approach:

In Newcastle and Gateshead, the two local authorities are already seizing those opportunities by setting aside old rivalries and are working on a combined city development company. They’ve realised there’s more to be won by collaborating than by fighting over resources. What’s impressive is not just that the civic leaders have grasped that vision, but that it’s being pursued at an operational level: instead of competing for business, the councils work together to give investors a consistent message and to provide employment for local people, whichever side of the Tyne they happen to live on.

That kind of leadership involves questioning and challenging familiar ways of working. It means continually asking what is appropriate and being ready to break old habits.

In a world where people are sometimes deliberately set against each other, it takes a twist of determination to turn your back on such a culture. This something I’ve found with the many stories I’ve recorded of active citizens and also is understood by Caret colleagues who work on community leadership. Leaders look for ways to collaborate.

Following an earlier post about ‘Flip’, here’s an impressive bunch of young ‘flipstars’.

Pupils in South Camden Community School have conducted their own alternative, student-led Ofsted inspection that goes by the name ‘Instead’. The initiative was founded by Edge Learner Forum, an enterprising group of 13 to 21-year-olds, uniting pupils from schools across London - along with 7 other areas around the country - to discuss issues concerning their own education. Samia Meah writes here about the idea and how it came about:

The idea of a ‘Teenage OFSTED‘ surfaced while fellow learner forum member Huda Al Bander and I were brainstorming for our article in VISION. It came from our thought of using young people to solve problems which are about education and an example of this is school and its OFSTED inspections. The idea is simple, to bring young inspectors into a school to interview pupils for their opinions and to find the truth.

Pupil inspectors discuss the results with teachers in face-to-face meetings and submit a report analysing grouped teaching techniques, so no teachers are singled out for attention. Unlike Ofsted, the aim of Edge Instead is “entirely for the good of the school and comes with zero stress” - they work with the school to make things better, rather than merely judging the school’s successes and failures.

How many problems in education could be solved just be giving pupils some control over their own destiny? It puts me in mind of a quote from former Starbucks Executive Howard Behar: “People want to work on ideas that matter to them and make a difference. When they do, they find gold”.

Photo thanks to Qatari Mother.

“Invent best practice.”  ”Let action precede strategy.”  “Throw a whole lot of mud at the wall and see how much of it sticks.”

This is the advice of Peter Sheahan, the globally renowned expert in workplace change with a client list that reads like a prime time ad break (and all at the tender age of 28!). His book ‘Flip: How to Succeed by Turning Everything You Know on its Head’ flies refreshingly in the face of conventional thinking by highlighting the powers of counter-intuitive business strategies. ’Flip’ includes lessons on embracing change and succeeding in an ideas economy from ‘flipstars’ such as Richard Branson, Google and Nintendo.  

There are some intriguing concepts here, such as:

• Powerlessness, not power, corrupts
• Style is substance
• To get control, give it up
• Fashion is function
• Feelings are the most important facts
• The soft stuff is the hardest stuff, and the hardest to get right

But the overriding message is clear: “The only way you won’t be relevant in the future is if you keep doing exactly the same thing as you’ve done up until today.”

I’m a fan of the RSA, not least for the breadth of conversations that take place through this rejuvenated 250 year old institution. Matthew Taylor writes in this blog post about one of this week’s events: Stan Cohen talking on his book States of Denial.

Stan uses his experience in South Africa for what Matthew describes as an:

“exploration of how it is people deny their responsibility for terrible things happening in the society around them. Stan’s analysis is based on a library of sociological and psychological research but also his own experiences as someone who was brought up in apartheid South Africa and lived for many years in Israel.

Stan sees denial as a necessary human capacity to enable us to cope with suffering in the world. The question is less why deny, but what shakes us out of this state: ‘Why people don’t shut out is more interesting than why they shut out’ he says.

Stan described four ways in which we deny responsibility; obedience to superiors, conformity with society, necessity and splitting of the personality.”

Stan is writing predominantly about denial of cruelty on a terrifying scale. But those reasons why we give ourself permission to deny apply at many levels. It is common for team members to deny that change is coming or perhaps that their approaches to work are flawed. So what Stan’s comment remind me of is that leaders need to think about how prone they are to remain obedient to superiors at the wrong time, or conform to the prevailing culture when it’s become a barrier to progress.

When the housing market is sliding, the banking business model is based on a lax understanding of risk, the businesses that are mature enough to spot denial early will be the ones that thrive.

Image courtesy of narek781.

This question occurred to me while reading about reactions to the current head at the BBC and whoever will be the successor to the current Managing Director at the IMF. There are probably many aspects which set these important roles apart from each other.

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Imagine running a major business and facing the following challenges:

• Losses of three of your top posts
• Departure of other key executives
• A big reorganisation
• A failure to fill posts
• Reports of low morale among employees

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“Institutional Hack” is a delicious, contradictory new phrase for me. Paul Miller (of the School of Everything and from time to time the think tank Demos) used it earlier today in this post on his personal blog. At first you might think an Institutional Hack is one of those cynical folk, the type whose skill, energy and expertise is focused on working the politics of their organisation principally for personal gain. Not so.

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