Do
you ever give collaboration any conscious thought? I hope so, because it is integral
to virtually everything you do, and certainly a key aspect of any leadership
role. After all, collaboration literally means “working together” and no
organisation can exist unless people work together. So you could define management as “the art or science of enabling people to collaborate more
effectively.”
Actually
this definition of management may be more powerful and profound than you
realise, for it makes people paramount: it makes them the centre and the
circumference of management and reinforces the fact that, as a leader, managing
people is the most important aspect of your job. It is powerful because it
exposes something you possibly never consciously recognise: that your people
are your brand! Your
people provide the collective intelligence that shapes
everything your organisation is, and is perceived, to be.
Collective intelligence can be defined as the knowledge and
applied ability that emerges from collaboration, with research indicating that
new learning is created by people sharing their knowledge to solve problems.
This
means that collaboration is both the cause and consequence of collective
intelligence. It also means that the quality of each depends on the quality of
the other.
Unfortunately
there is no direct measure of collective intelligence, but it nevertheless remains
an aggregation of the applied
knowledge and ability of your people. And the degree of application determines the
power of your brand. Thus you could say that your results are your ultimate
performance. That, however, is not just glib, but it also lacks any
element of assessment against what is possible – against what might have or
should have been.
Imagine
for a moment you have taken delivery of a new top-of-the-range Ferrari. You
would not take it onto the roads and then drive everywhere in second gear. That
would not only be a complete waste but it is ultimately not good for the
gear-box or the car or even its fuel economy. Well, having disengaged employees
is like running that Ferrari in second gear. How well do you think your people are
collaborating if they are unfulfilled, or not realising their full potential,
or are disgruntled at the way they are being treated? That’s why – even if it
is an abstract, umbrella term – employee engagement is so important. If you don’t
optimise individual intelligence and capability, you will never realise or
release the collective intelligence (the horse-power) you have available. It is
just as much of a waste.
Now
ask yourself, “How much of this ‘human
economic waste’ is there in my organisation?” It is most likely your single
biggest hidden cost. So if you want a successful, optimal, lean organisation eliminating
this human economic waste must be your major focus. (After all, lean management
is all about eliminating unnecessary waste.) And where do you start?
It
has to be with collaboration. To develop good collaboration you must begin with
the individual and the only way you can optimise the individual is to activate
their primary intrinsic motivators that we covered previously, viz. Autonomy,
Mastery, Purpose. The self-optimisation will ignite both the will to collaborate
and the quality of the collaboration and fire the collective intelligence.
Then
you will have your “finely tuned” organisation delivering sustained results way
beyond what you currently have and which you may currently only dream of.
great man 😀