Recruit T-shaped people in to order create a collaborative, organisational culture.
Morten Hansen, a lecturer at INSEAD business school in France, has written a wonderful book on how to transform collaboration as a buzzword into real, corporate value. He claims loads of interesting things in his recent book ‘Collaboration: how leaders avoid the traps, create unity, and reap big results’ (2009). In his book he offers a couple of really interesting suggestions on how to ensure collaborative culture is embedded in a corporate culture:1.
1. Recruit T-shaped people
When searching for colleagues or leaders for your organisation, look for people who have demonstrated asking other people for help to solve a problem. He mentions Roy’s Restaurants in California and Hawaii where the interviewer may ask the candidate to describe ‘what obstacles have you faced in a previous job that prevente you from doing a quality job? How di you overcome these obstacles?’ In many companies the interviewer would be satisfied with a response showing that the candidate managed to take care of the situation and solve it all by herself. However, for Roy’s Restaurants, that kind of answer would likely indicate that this person possibly is someone who do not ask for assistance when in trouble and communicated the situation to colleagues. Asking for help indicates a collaborative orientation, Roy’s Restaurants would claim.
2. Give the assignment centre a twist
Hansen brings up another example on how to recruit t-shaped people. The example is from Southwestern Airlines, a hugely successful airline company in the U.S. In this company the interviewer in an assignment centre context would ask applicants to spend a some minutes preparing a statement about themeselves that they are supposed to present in front of the group. Job applicants may think that they are being tested for their oral and communication skills. However, what they are really being tested on is their listening skills. Is the applicant listening actively and supporting the others when they are making their statements? Od to they mostly look into their papers, concentrating on their own statement? In case the candidate doesn’t manage to listen provide the other with attention and feedback, this would indicate low degree of collaborative orientation.
Some useful input on how to establish a specific, expected output on your company’s intranet.
I guess it’s really about having a strategy.
How would you challenge default work tools as email, telephone, face to face interaction and saving ones documents on your local drive?
I’m a strong believer in the power of web 2.0 tools. They can offer leaders and workers the possibility of increased transparency in organisations, better transfer of knowledge and better products and services. Not to forget about revenues – o la la.
Transform the way we work, please
However, if you were to take on the challenge of transforming these fundamental ways of work, where would you start? Is it possible to change our ways of work as dramatically as I guess is necessary in order to change these four powerful streams of work routine? I’m not sure if it is necessary to get rid of them. However, alternative tools for cooperation and communication must prove more valuable in order to be viewed as relevant alternatives.
The reason I’m asking is that I’m currently involved in a project that is about to roll out a set of online collaborative tools that will hopefully alter the way we work across our company. I find it quite hard to actually believe that the majority of people will actually switch to sharing their work documents online, collaborating online, edit a common workspace (wikis, if you like), leave their email behind and unless it demonstrates quickly that it contributes financially or practically to improve the end product or service. I think this is the core challenge of social media: it hasn’t yet proven relevant to most of the people.
I’d be happy to listen to feedback and ideas on this.
I’ve spent two years working for Schibsted, a European media group. Upon leaving the company I’ve tried to summarise my learnings as an employee.
- Media will prosper: The web has enabled us all to become media producers. That’s fun! The big question is how to capitalise on heaploads of people who are actually sharing their insight through the channels offered by interactive web sites, blogs, Twitter, YouTube, chat clients, etc. One day someone will understand how to make money on online news. That’ll probably improve the quality of the journalism as well as serving shareowners with higher value and customers with better user experiences. I’ve no clue on how it will become reality, but I’m looking forward to it.
- Respect to everyone making profit: Business is about creating value for your customers and shareholders when it’s a public company. That’s actually quite hard. Thus, when the advertisement market plummeted for many of our companies during second half of 2008, crucial veins of income dissappeared. Then, what do you do if you’re in charge of a company? You’ll have to cut costs. People tend to be the largest post on the budget. I was downsized (together with 25 percent of the head office’s staff) and it does make sense.
- Diversification is king: Schibsted has survived the economic turmoil after Lehman Brothers hit the ground in September 2008. This is much thanks to Kjell Aamot, the visionary CEO of Schibsted, who acquired a large, online classified company (previously knowns as ‘Trader’, now Schibsted Classified Media). The steady incomes from the classified business made us capable of leaning on this revenue stream when incomes from printed and online news shrinked dramatically.
- Knowledge work requires long term perspective: I’ve been part of a company where its primary asset is its employees’ ability to create ideas that they transform into viable, commercial initiatives. These will next need to trigger incomes for the company. When one business model dissapears (advertisement incomes steadily pouring in) and new ones are still at the stage of being invented, there is logically a stark contrast between income and costs. Nevertheless, it is necessary to invest over time in knowledge workers in order to make them prosper.
- Organisational transparency requires courage: In 2008 Schibsted managed to launch an intranet that was available across the group. Even though it’s still in its moulding pot, it’s steadily growing its traffic and unique visitors. However, my impression is that a lot of people find it tiring to share knowledge outside their own cubicles because it requires an extra effort that it is hard to gras p if will be reciprocated soon, later or never. Thus, high ranking leaders must repeatedly drive forward the value of sharing, involving ’strangers’ and building upon each other.
- Feedback is underestimated: My own company is not good enough at providing its employees with systematic, constructive feedback. Even though several segments of leaders in our company has carried out 360-degree feedback processes, employee surveys tend to highlight the need for leaders to acknowledge its employees. Of course there are exceptions (both companies and individuals). But why on earth can’t our business get a grip on the crucial, motivating power of continuous feedback to people. It’s all about being valued and developed.
- Change is good: Sudden changes can help one prioritise and discover until then hidden possibilities. The two years I’ve spent at the company has been a constant flux of work tasks: designing a performance management system for young professionals, rolling out a 360-degree feedback process for executives, developing leadership training programmes for executives, implementing learning initiatives across corporate and national cultures, and implementing arenas for knowledge sharing across companies within the group. It’s been a joyride – and at times quite demanding.
That’s some of my reflections. I guess more will be drippling ino my head the next few months.
When did you last reflect upon your own job and what you get out of it?
Boston Consulting Group and Jeanie Daniel Duck shows how organisational change can be tamed.
Duck has written a wonderful book about how people can experience change as a dreadful force. However, she makes you realise that it is perfectly possible to control that fear. Her book may be useful for anyone in charge of managing an organisational change process.
Take a look at her visual introduction of the book. The author has posted it as a part of the book’s presentation online. It sums up the mesage of the book.
Unfortunately, it looks as if the visualisation only works with Internet Explorer web browser, and not in for instance Firefox.
