Your Collaboration Climb

April 2013

A Tool for Your Collaboration Climb

“There is no way we’re going to be on the same stage as those folks. That project experience was far from collaborative.”

Recently, a design & construction team was recognized for exemplary collaboration on a project. The team members, representing multiple firms, were contacted to participate in the award luncheon. The above quote came from one of those firms.

Does that sound like a project with collaboration talent, knowledge & skill? Remember, this project is considered an exemplary collaborative project by today’s standards... and those were pretty strong words quoted. Based on their reaction, do you think there was emotional dysfunction on that project team? Maybe there were collaboration-hindering legacy policies and organizational structures in the project delivery process?

It was unfortunate he felt that way. His reaction validated the idea that opportunity exists to collaborate at another level… even in the more collaborative, better run projects.

What if you had a quick diagnostic tool to avoid this scenario?

Enter - The Team Collaboration Meter

The purpose of the Team Collaboration Meter is to define different types of interaction mistaken for collaboration. This helps you uncover the gap between your current level of interaction and the ultimate goal of collaboration, as well as shed light on 'why' you and your team members would want to learn ‘how’ to collaborate deeper.

Let’s begin with a metaphor to create perspective. In a court of law there are many degrees of ‘burden of proof’ to decide a trial. It’s not just a matter of whether someone’s guilty or innocent. Here are 5 degrees: 1. Reasonable Suspicion, 2. Substantial Evidence, 3. Preponderance of Evidence, 4. Convincing Evidence and 5. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.

When interacting with others on a team, it’s not just a matter of being collaborative or not. Who in their right mind is going to say they’re not collaborative? There are 5 types of team interaction – 1. Association, 2. Participation, 3. Coordination, 4. Cooperation, 5. Collaboration.

The 5 Types of Team Interaction on the Team Collaboration Meter

Association
A group of people with a common purpose. For example, two groups may have an association on a construction project. This could be two trade contractors – a mason and a drywall installer. They are associated on the same project, but don’t necessarily interact with each other.

Participation
This pertains to a particular venture or project characterized by more than one person or group taking part or becoming actively involved. Participatory relationships happen when a person approaches another with an opportunity and there is something to gain or lose. For example, the project relationship between 1. trade contractors and the general contractor (GC), 2. the GC and designers or 3. designers and owners. Taking this definition further, when these participants utilize "collaborative technology" they feel collaborative, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are being collaborative. Participating in a "GoToMeeting", on a "virtual model" or in project management software like "Basecamp" does not qualify as collaboration. These transactional vehicles have nothing to do with heart or behavior.

Coordination
The arranging of tasks or sequencing of work to gain perceived efficiency. Examples are general contractors scheduling trade contractors’ work or arranging third-party inspections at specific times.

Cooperation
The act of working together as long as both groups see a mutual benefit. This can make a group feel collaborative without actually being. An example would be a trade contractor agreeing to a GC’s schedule until that schedule presents something unanticipated which causes short-term risk of money or reputation.

Collaboration
Decisions are made based on what’s best for the project. This is a life-cycle approach to designing and constructing a building. In other words, it’s about how the building will help the owner reach their objectives for the building’s 50+ years of life. In addition, team members do things for each other without any short-term benefit for themselves, even at the risk of money or reputation.

You can accomplish this diagnostic with a large group in an hour. All you need is a flip chart, markers and the Team Collaboration Meter. Beforehand, ask participants to create their own industry specific definitions for association, participation, coordination, cooperation and collaboration and describe what those definitions look like in practice or behaviorally. The participants can choose to share their answers with the large group.

Start the large group discussion with a few questions. Why do teams resist figuring out 'why' to start to collaborate deeper and how does this resistance impact the team? Also, what are the different types of interactions mistaken for collaboration (using the Team Collaboration Meter definitions)?

Afterwards, you could divide into work groups and ask participants to use the Meter to rate the best project or work relationship they’ve ever experienced as well as the last project or work relationship they experienced.

The Team Collaboration Meter creates a rapid ‘gap analysis’ to help you see the distance between collaboration and where you currently fall in line. From there, you can make a plan to close the gap.

You may be thinking, ‘I can't control everybody else’ or ‘I believe what you're saying, but if I can’t implement, it's a huge risk and I'm not going to do it. I'd rather work on technology and work processes’.

If you begin with yourself, then your team and then your organization, there is no risk. It is called the Collaboration Climb. If you begin by trying to ‘fix’ others outside your organization, there’s great risk.

By making the Collaboration Climb and moving-up from feeling collaborative to being collaborative, you move-up from confidence in yourself to conviction about using the heart to be collaborative. You're able to "let go."

Systematize collaboration, stick with it, improve it and become a learning organization around collaborating deeper to solve problems. Don’t stay at the base of the mountain and hop from industry fad to industry fad. Keep climbing and reach higher.

Clay Goser, Principal with Symphony LLC, St. Louis, contributed to this article written by Darren Smith.

Upcoming Developmental Opportunities


NEW Introductory Collaboration Workshop for $199, May 10 at TEXO - What True Collaboration Looks Like on a Project

This workshop helps you identify and implement tools and resources to ensure your project is truly a collaborative one:  exceeding budget and schedule expectations and producing satisfied Owners, Architects, Engineers, stakeholders and project personnel.  The session will draw upon continual, thought-leading research and real-life experience from participants on collaborative projects.

This workshop is for participants that spend most of their time at the project site. Register now.


Collaboration Strategy Boot Camp May 6-7 in Dallas
Register now, if considering new ideas for project delivery is a priority.

Collaborative Leadership Lab on June 13-14 in Dallas
Register now to equip yourself with collaborative knowledge & skills to help you draw-out the gold (waste) lodged between the silos that exists in every project.

Collaboration Change Leadership Boot Camp September 23-24 in Dallas
How do you INSURE collaborating deeper becomes "the way things are done around here?" This experience focuses on solving the issue of leading a collaboration change leadership effort successfully. Register now.

5 types of Collaboration

The Journey to the Base of the Mountain Before Your Collaboration Climb

I spoke with the president of a firm that was part of a team being recognized for exemplary collaboration on a project. I was calling him to know who from his firm would be representing them when the project was recognized at the award event.

His reply with a sarcastic laugh; ‘there is no way we’re going to be on the same stage with those folks. That project experience was far from collaborative.’

Those were pretty strong words. Based on that reaction, do you think there was – emotional dysfunction, collaboration hindering legacy structures in the work processes and project organizational set-up or lack of collaboration know-how that somehow supported behaviorally generated waste in that exemplary collaborative project?

It was unfortunate he felt that way and it validated how much opportunity there is in learning to collaborate deeper to increase team strength & speed, even in the more collaborative, better run projects.

How?

It’s called the Collaboration Climb. First, you must journey to the base of the mountain before your collaboration climb and the journey has three steps – 1. why start the journey, 2. how to start and 3. pacing your start. Unfortunately, there is no “express train” option. You must complete the journey and the climb one step at a time.  

The journey is a half-day workshop and you can add a complementary tools workshop for a total of one-day.

The First Step of the Journey to the Base; Why Start – Where is the Team in Terms of Interacting with Others? 

PURPOSE
The purpose of this diagnostic is to define different types of interaction mistaken for collaboration to shed light on why start to learn to collaborate deeper to increase team strength & speed.

OVERVIEW
Facilitate a large group discussion about the resistance to spend time figuring out why to start to collaborate deeper and how this resistance impacts the effectiveness of a team. The group will explore the different types of interactions mistaken for collaboration and what tools are available to help the team reach collaboration. After working in small groups, members of each group share their definitions and ratings with each other. Lastly, a representative of each small work group reports to the large group and takes questions.

DURATION: 1 hour (in addition to 30 minutes of pre-meeting setup time)

MATERIALS NEEDED: Easel, flip chart paper, markers, the supplied 5 types of interaction diagram

PRE-WORK: Create your own definitions for association, participation, coordination, cooperation and collaboration beforehand as they would be used in the industry and what they look like in practice or behaviorally. Also, rate yourself, your teammates and your team using these definitions.

If we want to collaborate deeper, we need to know where we are as a team when interacting with each other to know the distance to where we need to go.

Most in the industry feel they’re collaborative and look at collaboration as either someone else is collaborative or not based on evidence, just like someone is guilty of a crime or not based on evidence or more specifically a ‘burden of proof’. The stakes are high in both cases and it’s a deeper question in both cases than it appears on the surface.

What does that mean? In a court of law there are 5 types of ‘burden of proof’ to decide a trial – 1. Suspicion, 2. Substantial Evidence, 3. Preponderance of Evidence or 51% in Favor of the Plaintiff or Defendant, 4. Convincing Evidence and 5. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.

What does that mean on a project team? When interacting with others on a team, there are 5 types of interaction – 1. Association, 2. Participation, 3. Coordination, 4. Cooperation, 5. Collaboration.

The 5 Types of Team Interaction Defined

Association
An organization of people with a common purpose and having a formal structure

Participation
Pertaining to a venture characterized by more than one person or organization taking part or becoming actively involved
 
Coordination
A harmonious combination or interaction of functions or parts. For example, a harmonious functioning of muscles or groups of muscles in the execution of movements.

Cooperation
An act or instance of working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit; joint action or activity shared for mutual benefit.

Collaboration
Decisions are made based on what’s best for the project. In addition, team members do things for each other ‘as other’ without any short-term benefit for themselves. They don’t need to do things for each other and they want to do things for each other.

In order to know the distance to where we need to go, we have to have each team member rate themselves, their team members and the team itself using the 5 types of interaction.

For example, if team members rate themselves at cooperation and their team at coordination, we know where to start to help the individuals and team raise the bar and measure progress towards collaboration.

You Can't Have Collaboration Without Sacrifice

One of the ways we twist the meaning of collaboration is how we define sacrifice.

If you're on a project team and a specified material you are responsible for installing on the project is going to cost more than originally estimated, you ask the team to let you 'slide' and use an inferior material. This empowers others to want the same treatment at some point and this behavior becomes a "tit for tat" cascade and degrades the project.

This is sacrifice alright. Sacrifice of someone or something else's interests. In this case, the project's interests. Not our own.

BEING collaborative cannot exist without sacrificing your own interests.

If Business is 90% Sociology...

Why do we spend 90% of our time, talent and resources on technology and work process improvement?

Imagine you're the parent of a kindergartener and you're looking at a rowdy muddle of children laughing and playing together. . . How did your 5 year-old learn to collaborate in the middle of all of that?  It's simple - they used their heart. They weren't old enough to use their heads. Five year-olds are not logical, they are emotional.



You may be thinking, "that's because kids don't know any better."  My response is, "that's exactly my point and that's where we need to be."



Why stop after Kindergarten with 'sharing your lunch'?  What if we could instill conviction about using our heart to collaborate deeper and avoid the 'I'm going to eat your lunch' attitude and behavior that usually takes over in the workplace?



That sounds great, so where do we go from here?



Collaborating Deeper Distinguishes Between 'Feeling' and 'Being'



Today we confuse feeling with being.  Just because you feel collaborative doesn't mean you are.  If collaboration begins with feeling collaborative in your head, then it will disappear as soon as the benefit of collaborating disappears.  For example, we know how to be collaborative when things are going well, but we stop when there is money or reputation to lose.



When you learn to be collaborative and collaborate deeper - with your heart - you change as a person. After this change, you are more likely to collaborate even if there is risk of losing money or reputation.  That's the distinction between feeling and being.



This change - being collaborative - becomes second nature, like breathing.  You evolve from (1) having to make a conscious effort to (2) not even realizing it until after you've experienced it.  That's where my collaboration journey started and where yours can as well.



There's a 'Right Way' and We Choose the 'Wrong Way'



We know learning to collaborate deeper means doing it the right way, working from the inside-out by being collaborative first.  But instead we do it the wrong way.  For example, in the design & construction industry, we pour our energy into technology and work process improvement - using building information modeling and lean manufacturing principles.  But we neglect the 'human' side of the project, where collaboration really needs to start.



How much time, talent and resources does your organization spend on technology and work process improvements relative to investing in learning how to behaviorally collaborate deeper right now?  We know business is 90% sociology and we still spend 90% of our time, talent and resources on technology and work process improvement.



The Biggest Challenge to Being Collaborative - "It Just Ain't in us"



"Yep, but it just ain't in us and I'm tired."  Or, "It just ain't in us to do it . . .you know, collaborate deeper."



This may sound funny, but it's true.  "It ain't in us to do it."  This is the dilemma we face when working with others.  It just ain't in us to behave the same when we're at risk as when things are going our way.



Actually, there's evidence it is in us.  Project teams are converting emotions, such as pride, into humility to strengthen trust among team members.  Teams are rethinking legacy business structures, such as 'selecting a team for a project based on price,' and instead creating work arounds in order to select the 'best team for the project.'  Lastly, investment in specific collaboration training is growing.



It is in us. . . to use our heart to collaborate deeper.  So, go out there and start sharing your lunch.

The Pride System Helps You Collaborate Deeper

This tool is called a Pride System. It helps your team members minimize negative pride on one end of the spectrum and maximize communication and self-esteem on the other.

I've found the study of pride very helpful in learning to collaborate deeper to increase team strength & speed.Why? Pride isn't a very safe subject to discuss for some and it's hard to define and use with skill in our interactions with others. It's a complex emotion and I've found it to be so rich in opportunity to help us collaborate deeper that it might be the most powerful collaboration tool we can use. 

Let's draw-out some of that richness by making a distinction between different types of pride and assemble it into a Pride System.

In the positive, pride is a satisfied sense of attachment toward one's own or another's choices and actions, or toward a whole group of people such as a nation or ethnicity. I call this virtuous pride. Virtuous pride is aligned with and feeds the greater good. Virtuous pride feeds and enhances creativity, productivity and altruism - in all those touched by it.

In the negative, pride refers to an inflated sense of one's personal status or accomplishments. When someone has accomplished a great deal, the negativity comes from the love of one's own excellence. Alternatively, when someone has not accomplished much at all, their pride is out of sync with reality. Negative pride is vanity or inwardly focused any way you slice it and can tend to create feelings of frustration, embarrassment and shame in others. 

A third form of negative pride is false pride, in other words, humility with ulterior motives. It is a lack of character. Some political figures are examples of someone with false pride.  

You can use the pride system to increase safety in team communication by setting the tone of conversations at the beginning of a project and as necessary such as when on boarding new teams members in the middle of the project. Also, the Pride System can be added when creating the project team's "rules of engagement" for meetings. It helps distinguish what collaborative behavior looks like and doesn't look like. 

Questions to begin use of the Pride System:

What type of pride is in use right now?

How do we remove sources of negative pride?

When the relationships between team members is at its peak, what does it look like?

The Pride System is one of a small number of tools (e.g. Pride System, Group think Test, Team Flow Model), that when used together, can dissolve the majority of the blockages to collaborating deeper.   

Imagine an "x" & "y" axis with a sloping line, inside and to the right of this axis, sloping from the top of the "x" axis to the far right end of the "y" axis. That's the team strength & speed accelerant curve. The north/south or "pride" axis is the "x" axis and the west/east or "communication" axis is the "y" axis. At the top, far left of the sloping line is high negative pride, low communication and at the bottom, far right is low negative pride, high communication. 

Most new teams start and can remain at the top, far left. If collaborating deeper is a project objective and increasing communication is a strategy to achieve this objective, then minimizing negative pride is a tactic to complete the strategy and achieve the project objective. Success is measured by moving from the top left to the bottom far right of the accellerant curve. 

We have to figure out at the beginning of a project, behaviorally, what steps along the curve look like so we can measure progress as a team moves from high negative pride/low communication towards low negative pride/high communication. 

You Need a Rock

I heard a story of a traveler who boarded a boat with a capacity for 100 people. It was a long, skinny, open-air boat with arms that stretched-out over the water to help balance it in rough water. Before the boat departed, a rush of new passengers boarded that pushed the numbers to what looked like the 200 person mark.

The water was very rough and a few passengers became sick. The sight, sound and smell of these sick passengers started a chain reaction. How could the traveler keep from suddenly becoming sick like many of the other passengers?

Instead of becoming overcome by the pitch of the boat, the traveler fixed his gaze on their island destination or "rock" ahead.

We all need a rock. A constant that represents what we're aiming to achieve. Being that rock has to be someones specific responsibility. For example, if the aim is to collaborate deeper to increase team strength & speed, someone needs to be the "rock" to achieve this aim. Someone who has the awareness, knowledge and skills as well as the values to support a team or organization collaborate deeper.

This support must be delivered at a transformational, strategic and a tactical level to be successful. While several people can supply these different levels of support, there has to be one person accountable. This is no different from BIM, Lean, wellness, going global or any other initiative the organization is serious about.

I Already Know This!

Lately, I've had a rash of colleagues lament about having to participate in training they think they've already covered. They shared that it wasn't a good use of their time. They had a lot of other things to do. My reaction was "yes."

Things happen for a reason more than we recognize. We tend to practice something until we get it right instead of mastering something until we can't get it wrong. If that is true, then it is a good use of our time and we should engage more deeply the second or more time(s) around. We should pay attention to what the universe is telling us.

Be grateful.

The unanswered email, etc... will always be there.