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From NetSpeed Leader Volume 12, September 2003
Beyond Teams: Building the Collaborative Organization bills itself as "the definitive handbook for working collaboratively in today's complex organizations," and it does not fall short. It is an excellent volume by Michael M. Beyerlein, Sue Freedman, Craig McGee, and Linda Moran. Well annotated and scholarly yet practical, the book is an excellent tool for professionals who want to broaden their organization’s collaboration beyond small pockets of effective teams. Throughout, the authors cite good examples of collaboration at well-known firms such as Nordstrom, Boeing, W.L. Gore, Motorola, Xerox Business Services, and Texas Instruments.
The book is divided into three parts. Part One: Principles and Perspectives is an introduction about the importance and pay-off of collaboration in today's demanding, complex work environments. It compares three levels of collaborative work systems: traditional teams, team-based organizations, and collaborative organizations. In addition, it presents and describes ten principles of collaborative organizations:
- Focus collaboration on achieving business results.
- Align organizational support systems to promote ownership.
- Articulate and enforce “a few strict rules.”
- Exploit the rhythm of convergence and divergence. (Divergence is defined as “the process by which collaboration participants surface the different perspectives that need to be considered.” Convergence is “the process members use to reach agreement.”)
- Manage complex tradeoffs on a timely basis.
- Create higher standards for discussions, dialogue, and information sharing.
- Foster personal accountability.
- Align authority, information, and decision-making.
- Treat collaboration as a disciplined process.
- Design and promote flexible organizations.
Part Two: Applying the Principles includes four detailed chapters that apply the principles of collaboration to four settings: manufacturing, new product development, service settings, and virtual settings. For each setting, the authors provide a historical context, current trends, typical ways of organizing, challenges, how the principles of collaboration apply, and implications for executives. In their delineation of each of the principles, they include useful examples of when collaboration is working and when it is not.
In the “Challenges” section of the chapter on collaboration in service settings, for example, the authors share eight guidelines on when to collaborate. Three of them are as follows: when broader skills, knowledge, and expertise are needed; when the time to develop the skills is greater than the teams can spend; and when the work can be accomplished faster with more people working together.
They also share seven valuable guidelines on when to “say no to collaboration,” among them these: when customer needs do not require complex solutions, when management cannot share technical expertise and decision-making responsibility to fully empower the people collaborating, and when time to develop a shared understanding is considered a luxury.
For virtual settings, in discussing the principle "Foster personal accountability," these are two of five examples of the principle at work:
- Members and teams fight for the resources necessary to do their tasks
- Managers are more concerned about follow-through and responsibility than they are about subservient behavior, that is, disagreeing with a senior manager is acceptable.
These are two examples of the principle not at work in virtual settings:
- Teams and members seek direction instead of reactions
- Teams and members don't defend their positions, but change their plans or assumptions with little resistance
Each Part Two chapter ends with an excellent summary table including the ten principles, their importance in the setting described, examples of when that principle of collaboration is working, and examples of when it is not working.
Part Three: Strategies for Implementation provides a complete diagnostic tool to use to improve an organization's effectiveness in collaborating. The tool itself is well worth the price of the book (about $44 in paperback). The tool covers each of the ten principles of collaboration. These are several of the questions, for instance, on the principle "Manage complex tradeoffs on a timely basis":
- To what degree are the collaborating parties able to consider multiple competing criteria when making decisions?
- How quickly can they make these tradeoff decisions?
- How often do they have to "kick a decision upstairs"?
Beyond Teams: Building the Collaborative Organization, published this year by Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, is an important addition to the literature on collaboration. What's more, it's practical, thorough, easy to follow, and well designed. Those who want to retool their organization's collaborative efforts—especially those in manufacturing, new product development, service, or virtual team settings—may wish to buy many copies to distribute. That could make the process a true collaborative effort!
Note: Bulleted items and sample guidelines in the review are quoted verbatim from Beyond Teams.
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