Culture has nothing to do with collaboration.
Too often…I’m sorry…Way too often I read where culture is the make/break deal of a collaborative organization. I read it so often that I start to believe it myself at least until my common sense kicks in.
First let’s define Collaboration; Two or more people working together.
With that definition, where does a so called command-and-control culture stop that from happening? If the person at the top comes running into your workspace and demands that something get done, do you turn off all means of communication i.e. the phone, the computer, your office door and get it done? Of course not, you still depend on the help of others.
I can hear it now. A command-n-control culture nurtures a competitive working environment where no one shares. Again, our place of work generally consists of more than one person who is tasked to perform certain functions. But that doesn’t mean you don’t talk to each other, share your opinion about how to do something better or how to solve a critical customer issue.
Back in the day of working at a command-n-control company where egos where worn on the chest like medals of accomplishments and competition to look good was the primary motivation of success and failure was not an option, collaboration still prevailed. I had meetings with departments I supported to better understand their pain to architect solutions and deliver based upon expectation i.e. my job.
It doesn’t matter if you work for a GE/Jack Welch type of company or a CISCO/John Chamber type, two leaders on different ends of the perceived culture spectrum, selling collaboration to them is about value. If a new social media application can help improve collaboration to reduce the cost of customer service engagements, that’s value. If public side social networking is proven to increase market share, that’s value. If an enterprise wiki gets a new hire engaged faster, that’s value.
Culture does define value. Understanding the organization’s value is key to successfully identifying the type of collaborative solution and the strategy of selling it. Show me a failed collaboration effort and I will show you where you failed at proving the value.
Culture is a difficult thing to identify. There are as many business culture types as there are employees who work inside the organization. That’s because each one of us brings our unique spin on life and that spin is meshed with those we work with creating the infamous Heinz 57 label of having many ingredients.
To wrap this up, we practitioners of all things collaboration should not let culture stop us from practicing. Identify the value that’s important to your business and meet that challenge.
George is a collaboration freak. He has even titled himself as a collaborologist who seeks to help organizations perfect knowledge sharing through the use of social media and metadata management.