Monthly Archives: April 2012

The Futility of Collaboration without Context


The term ‘collaboration’ gets thrown about as something inherently valuable and worthwhile – an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.  In reality, collaboration in of itself is:

a). Unlikely to happen
b). Unlikely to create anything of value

So Many Collaboration Platforms, So Little Collaboration!

Collaboration platforms are everywhere!  Most IT shops have at least one collaboration platform (usually SharePoint) and often several others.  And some people do participate.  The question is, with what result?  The answer often is little that is really worthwhile, and even less that can truly be called “collaboration.”

I used to wonder if there was something in our human nature that inherently resisted collaboration.  Of course, the opposite is true – human beings are both inherently gregarious and naturally collaborative – it’s in our instinct for survival.  The reason I was seeing so little collaboration on collaboration platforms was not that people did not want to collaborate – it’s that they did not understand (or believe in, or want) the purpose for collaboration.

The Collaboration Context

Alan Kay is credited with one of my favorite quotes, “Context is worth 80 IQ points!” In the case of collaboration, context not just the extra IQ points – it’s the whole enchilada of collaboration!

Several years ago, while I was an Executive Vice President at the The Concours Group – a management consulting, research and executive education firm, we were acquired by a company that had developed a collaboration platform.  Our new management was very keen for us to “eat our own dog food” and encouraged everyone in the company to get on the platform and ‘collaborate.’

I found this to be an interesting and enlightening experiment.  Most of us did indeed get on the platform.  Thoughts were posted and commented upon.  Interest groups popped up.  We had a ‘social reputation’ system, and I was proud the day my avatar suddenly listed me as a “Docent”, though I could not find out what that actually meant in this context!  After an early spike, usage dropped.

After a while, someone introduced Yammer into the firm.  A new groundswell of so-called “collaboration” surfaced, but after a while, that too dropped.  I observed that in spite of putting time and energy into “collaboration”, in reality, people were engaging in conversations that, while they may have been interesting, never went anywhere.  Conclusions were never drawn, deliverables were never created, insights never extracted, lessons never learned and applied.

The problem was not the tool – it was a lack of context.  There was no clear purpose or intent to the collaboration.

So, What’s Your Collaborative Intent?

  • Are you trying to engage people in problem solving?  For example, stakeholders and/or subject matter experts might be invited to review and expand upon a cause-effect analysis.
  • Are you trying to create a deliverable, such as a project proposal?  People might work together on creating the proposal, perhaps each working on their own section, but reviewing and commenting on others sections such that the whole is coherently structured and internally consistent.  Or you might wish to get everyone’s input to the whole proposal, rather than have people focus on their section.
  • Do you want a community of practice or interest to capture and evolve a body of knowledge – best practices, templates, examples of how to do something, such as charter a project?
  • Are you creating an ‘operating manual’ for an organization, with processes, roles, competencies, rules of engagement, and so on?  Perhaps people will be encouraged to not only create and/or refine the knowledge content, but will also rate the content based upon usability, clarity or how well the organization handles a given situation.
  • Are you encouraging people to share across organizational silos – looking for points of leverage or redundancy?

Each of these ‘collaborative intents’ implies a specific goal or set of goals.  And each goal, in turn, might lend itself to a different type of collaboration mechanism.  While content or document management systems might be great for managing ‘documents of record’, they might not be so effective at encouraging multiple authorship.  In fact, document-centric tools tend to deepen and strengthen the traditional document mindset, where a document is something you email around to people to get their input.

It’s all a question of context – what are you hoping to gain through collaboration?  Is the goal clear?  Do those that must participate understand and believe in the goal?

Graphic courtesy of diagoal

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What Does Your Leadership Team Talk About?


I was talking to a senior IT leader at a global company this week, who said, “Our leadership team really needs to schedule some time to talk about strategic issues.  Our weekly IT Leadership Team meetings are consumed by tactical and operational stuff!”

This struck me as odd – and unfortunate!  “Tactical and operational stuff” should be on auto-pilot.  IT processes and management systems should take care of most things.  When I hear that an IT leadership team is consumed by the tactical and operational, my first reaction is that it is not a leadership team – it is a management team – a very different beast.

Leadership versus Management

Much has been written about the distinctions between leadership and management, so I won’t go far into this here.  For me, leadership is about influencing people, whether you have managerial authority over them or not.  Management is about exercising authority.  This basic distinction has important ramifications.  Leaders focus on the longer term and typically are concerned with achieving higher levels of performance for an organization.  Managers are more focused on the shorter term and on achieving agreed performance goals and objectives.

So, to recognize that “our leadership team doesn’t talk about strategic issues” is to recognize that it really isn’t a leadership team, it’s a management team.  That may be ok.  I worked with the CIO and his team at a major financial services company a while back.  They had been through a multi-year transformation under a new CIO.  The CIO and his team had been very ‘hands on’ and directive.  The results had been very positive, and the business clients of IT were impressed by the gains made from the transformation.  But, like many transformations I have seen, their performance improvement efforts had plateaued.  Managers and workers in the IT organization felt dis-empowered, so there was no real culture of continuous improvement.  The results of the annual engagement survey showed significantly lower employee engagement in IT than anywhere else in the company.

I raised the subject at an IT leadership team meeting, posing the question, “Are you a leadership team?  Or a management team?”  Consensus was quickly reached that they were a management team, with this finding justified by the sorry state of IT prior to the transformation, and the need for the top people in IT to drive change.

Which Do You Need – Leadership or Management?

I think that was a valid justification in their situation.  But the follow-up question, “What do you need to be now – a management or a leadership team?’ was much more contentious – especially as we drilled into what behavioral shifts would be implied if they did shift into a true leadership role.  For example, could they really trust their IT managers to manage?  If not, would they replace them with those they did trust to manage?

Dealing with this question and it’s implications became a major theme of my work with that team for the balance of the consulting engagement.  Great managers often have a hard time transitioning to a leadership role.  Great management teams have an even harder time transitioning to leadership teams – team members mutually reinforce each other’s instinct to be directive and in the details.

Have you fallen into the management trap?  How much time do you spend leading versus managing?

Graphic courtesy of Anthem Athletic Association

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The IT Payoff From Years of Belt Tightening – Lower Costs, and High Dysfunctionality!


Mature IT organizations rightfully resist labels that separate them from the businesses they serve.  Any discussion of “IT” as distinct from “business” is anathema – a position I wholeheartedly support.  “Us and Them” made a fine title for a progressive rock tune back in 1973 but is an unhealthy perspective when the “them” is the business where profits are generated, and the “us” is essentially a support function.

Be that as it may, while the intent to resist separating IT and the business is worthy, there is a reality that in most enterprises the business generates revenues and profits while the support functions generate costs (necessary as those costs might be).  So when times are tough (or when a senior executive comes across some anecdote about the wonders of outsourcing IT to Timbuktu) the IT organization comes under pressure to take out costs.  Sooner or later, this comes down to reducing headcount, whether by natural attrition (IT managers represent a significant population ripe for retirement, and many have taken ‘packages’ to do so early) or by downsizing.

Let the Vicious Cycle Begin

And so begins the cycle – IT steps up to the plate and costs are reduced.  Early on, many of the reductions come from increased efficiency – improved Body Mass Index, if you will.  But muscle and bone are also lost, so delivered value is reduced, services are cut back and quality suffers.  The next time cost savings are needed, IT is again a worthy target – why not – they came through last time!  This time, more bone and muscle are lost.  At the risk of pushing the analogy too far, so is the proverbial membership to the gym (e.g., training, productivity and quality improvement programs) where some level of health was being maintained.  Healthy eating gives way to fast food and cola.  Nobody has the bandwidth to deal with the ‘essentials’ of keeping the lights on and trains running on time, let alone break new ground with the consumerization of IT or the move into Enterprise 2.0. Employee engagement suffers and IT performance degrades.

The cycle continues, and sooner or later top management becomes dysfunctional – not sure whether fight or flight are the best response – whether to embark on a full-blown transformation or simply to nibble at the edges with posters celebrating “Team IT” or the new “Agile” method to embrace.  Middle management is too busy to help with a fix – there’s hardly time to do annual performance reviews and budgets, let alone embark on major change programs. And the troops are, for the most part, disengaged – satisfied in accepting a reasonable wage to show up for work, but loath to give of any discretionary effort, or to put passion into their work.  Over time cynicism becomes so deep and wide, it is accepted as the ‘new normal.’  Discussion of organizational problems is all but banned by the IT leadership team – denial is best way to get through the week without the need for anti-depressant medications.

Forget Common Courtesy

In the downward spiral of belt tightening, age old protocols about responding to requests, answering emails, turning up at meetings on time or meeting commitments fall by the wayside.  As the leadership team slides into dysfunctional behavior, middle management follows by example and the troops aren’t far behind.  It’s a slippery slope, and one that’s tough to reverse!

Getting Back On Track

So, what can be done to reverse the slide – to turn the vicious cycle into one that drives increasing performance and leads to higher recognized business value from IT investments, assets and capabilities?  In practice, the catalyst for change is often a new CIO.  It’s not just that the new CIO brings in fresh ideas – it’s more about the energy and optimism they bring to the table.  If they are worthy of being hired into a turnaround position, they know they have a short ‘honeymoon’ period in which to create some visible signs that the slide is being reversed.  They probably negotiated some freedom to make change happen – reminding the executives that hired them that “businesses get the IT they deserve!”

Absent the new CIO, with the energy for change they embody and the breathing space they buy, my prognosis, I’m afraid, is not optimistic.  Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”  I think it’s a legitimate stretch to say, “We can’t solve problems with the same leadership that was in place when we created them!”

Image courtesy of Dysfunctional Psychology / Depression

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