What can make a collaboration work? Collaboration is a word that has been bandied around, sometimes with a great amount of passion, for several years. It is something that has been encouraged by funders and, more recently, almost forced on some organisations by the cuts and the difficult economic climate. But what can make or break a collaboration?

Pulling together a group of people with a whole array of skills, backgrounds and passions is not easy, especially if they are all leaders!

I believe that practical things such as the mission, structures, incentives, ideas, specialism, technology etc are crucial ingredients in the mix. But without one key ingredient the collaboration is unlikely to succeed. That ingredient is trust.

However, the trust has to begin within each individual organisation.

A good leader will ensure that there is transparency. By being open with your own staff and clearly explaining ‘the plan’, you will gain trust and support.

A good leader will understand the implications for all employees. This does mean all. Not just the people that you work closely with but even those that you occasionally pass in the corridor or don’t have much contact with because they are part-time or because they sit too far away. There will be a lot of fears and anxieties, which if not dealt with could be costly. The trust dynamic has also changed as more and more contracts are short term rather than permanent leaving less time to build trustworthy relationships.

Large institutions have faced meltdowns because there have been far too many unknowns, ad-hoc forecasting and development of internal ‘groups’. Trust is multi-dimensional and once broken is hard to repair.

Now and then good sense breaks out and allows trust and collaboration to begin. Trust (like distrust) is contagious. It is carried socially and can flourish when enough people in a given population show willing.

It is only when the trust is visible within individual organisations that any collaboration can stand a chance to flourish or indeed even survive. Get the trust in there, then the listening, engaging, sharing and delivering will happen much more effortlessly.

Trust is essential and valuable, but for too many organisations and for too many leaders not nearly enough effort is displayed.

Organisational Development

Creating the right environment to make the right decisions at the right time

As individuals we are making decisions all the time so it should be second nature right?

If only it was that simple for organisations. Many of us have had to make some really tough decisions over that past year – redundancies, mergers, cuts, etc and I am sure that some of the decisions made under pressure and quite often without all the relevant data or input. Some of these decisions become a bit of a gamble or risk. So what can we do to rationalise the process. Rather than list the do’s and don’ts of decision making and problem solving (lots of material out there, I thought it would be useful to reflect on a conversation I had with a colleague last week (Huda Amin, Women into Business) during one of our Action Learning sessions.

Decision making draws on various professions, including psychology,  sociology, anthropology,  political  science and economics and can affect behaviours at and individual, group or organisational level. It also is in my mind very much to do with having the right internal structure and communication.

Getting the right people involved in the decision – this is essential to ensure that all perspectives are included, to allow internal expertise to be utilised and to speed up the decision making process. It is sometimes advisable to set up steering committees (time limited of course) to allow external experts to be pulled in – time to draw on those favours.

Using decision making tools – There are lots of simple and effective decision making tools that should be used in teams or groups. These not only help look at the decision from various angles but also help individuals think out side the box. A couple of my favourites are Force Field Analysis and the 6 Thinking Hats.

Structure is also related to communication. Who and how do you communicate to? Is there an existing hierarchy or protocol? Does it work? Quite often internal tensions and doubts begin to emerge when people feel that decisions are been made without their knowledge. The key word here is knowledge. It is not always the case that everyone wants to be involved at every stage but just want the courtesy of been informed of what the issue is, why it has arisen and how they intend to deal with it.

Yes, decisions sometimes need to be made quickly and not every ‘leader’ has the luxury to consult to the level they would like to – fair enough  - this is sometimes the reality – However, what  often fails to happen is the essential communication before AND after the decision. Get this right and your decision making will be somewhat easier.

Tebussum Rashid