ORGANISATIONAL COLLABORATION: PART 1

Written by Seugnet Van den Berg and Bruce Adrain

The ever-changing nature of business means that large corporates need to adapt, and quickly at that, if they are to stay relevant. Connectedness, technology development, and the change in customer profiles are all contributing to a major shift and large organisations need to adapt so as to compete with increasingly successful start-ups and fintechs.

Large organisations are finding that their size, inability to make quick decisions, and more often than not inward-facing and outdated systems are all contributing to their imminent downfall. At the opposite end of the spectrum, start-ups and fintechs are escaping “death by a thousand cuts” through a completely customer-centric approach using all the tools available to them: new products, new customers, increased agility, broad skills, technology support without the legacy systems, collaboration, experimentation and a positive mindset around what is possible. This is putting them significantly ahead of large corporations. For many large organisations the difficulty is in distributing their efforts between three main levels namely:

1. Dealing with the present operations to keep existing clients using existing products. This talks to incremental changes and interventions.

2. Exerting efforts for innovative new offerings for existing clients – this talks to more radical interventions

3. Efforts to innovate with disruptive types of interventions that will launch new offerings for new clients.

Being able to balance and navigate these levels while not being too inward-focused is imperative. The realisation that relevance in the future is dependent on delivering in the radical and disruptive space will force large organisations to partner with startups.

This is best done when they create a collaborative ecosystem. Collaboration is the core competency required to survive in the future. For many larger companies, this is a difficult competency to build. Few companies understand that you have to proactively build this competency on three levels: Individual – being able to collaborate with their colleagues. Team – collaboration inside a team and between teams from other departments. The last level of collaboration refers to organisational collaboration. Here two types of collaboration exist, namely collaboration with partners and collaboration with competitors. It is this last level of collaboration that many organisations find the most challenging and impeding.

Collaboration between different organisations does not come without the complexity and it’s important to clearly define the expected outcomes. To ensure that collaboration is successful there are two elements that need to be approached simultaneously – firstly, reaching the specific outcome and secondly building a collaborative process whilst working on the outcome.

At the core of the collaborative process sits four principles:

1. Bigger than yourself

2. Trust is a non-negotiable

3. It is not about the solution

4. It is not about the pie

• Bigger than yourself – true collaboration is about more than individual objectives. It starts with the mindset and expectation of giving as opposed to receiving. It is about the benefit of the ecosystem. For collaboration to be successful the collaborators need to focus on the value they are trying to create together, how they can contribute and how they are improving the collaborative ecosystem.

• It is not about the pie – domination has always been a primary objective for large organisations. However, the success of collaboration is dependent on organisations understanding and implementing the principle that “there is enough for everyone” and “your success in the future will not be determined by what you have today but by your ability to collaborate with others to create value.” It is about the ability to make the pie.

• Trust is a non-negotiable – Trust is the currency of collaboration because it reduces complexity and limits transaction costs. It takes time to develop and requires repeat interaction. There needs to be trust amongst the collaborating partners and in the process. Distrust facilitates behaviours that are not conducive to collaboration – you cannot protect and contribute, and you cannot withhold and share.

• It is not about the solution – it is about the capability. Solutions can come and go and they get better over time but the capability is the ability to “do it again”. You need to partner with people that understand how to create value and have the capabilities to solve other problems and not just a solution for the current issue. This talks to the selection of collaborators.

The selection of collaborators for the ecosystem should be based on capability. A common mistake is made when inclusion is established on the solutions available and not the capabilities. When selecting a partner on capabilities, the following elements are vital:

Mindset, Skills and Collaboration Maturity

• Mindset – this talks to culture, agility, working with partners and co-creating.

• Skills – What are the technical skills? How transferable are those skills? Do collaborative skills exist?

• Collaboration maturity – How entrenched are collaborative practices? Do they understand the underlying principles of collaboration?

Guidelines for Starting an Organisational Collaborative Process The below guidelines can assist when working with another organisation to set up the collaborative process:

• Define and conceptualise the problem statement or the opportunity. It is important to create a joint understanding of the problem.

• Create structures that support joint administration.

• Mutual understanding of the benefit of the opportunity – be explicit about other objectives that you want to achieve, even if they may not be relevant to other parties.

• Facilitate enough interaction points to build trust.

• Define and conceptualise the joint task. Be clear about the objectives.

• Focus first on the issues around the joint objective and secondly on issues around the collaborative process.

• Define the roles and outline the contribution required from each party.