Hansen Collaboration: Good or No (Part 2)

Last time we talked about the concept of a rational collaboration from Morten Hansen and focused mainly on what it is all about and why everything is so bad with it in modern realities. Now it is time to present the second part, optimistic, which outlines ways to correct the situation and move on to the management model of productive mutual aid. The abstract under the cat covers the chapters on the three levers of influence that the author proposes to apply for transformation, as well as a special section on the formation of a collaborative leadership style.

Lever one: while we are one

In 1954, psychologist Muzafer Sheriff organized his own summer camp for children in order to study group behavior in a controlled environment. Over the next few weeks, he easily quarreled at first the boys from the two teams on the shift, and then just as quickly rallied them into a single team. This experiment clearly shows: the management decides everything; by its actions the leader largely determines the atmosphere in the team. Accordingly, on his shoulders lies the formation of a proper attitude to cooperation.

There are three main mechanisms of unification that allow leaders to awaken in people the desire to work together:

1. Creating a unifying goal;
2. Presenting teamwork as a value;
3. Mastering the language of the collaboration.

These mechanisms help to initiate and strengthen the desire for cooperation, reducing the “not invented here” barrier and the barrier of hoarding.

Creating a unifying goal

It is obvious that the common goal to which the team can move together in full force is a fundamental element of the unification strategy, the motivation that people lack in normal conditions. When choosing a goal should be based on several criteria:

Criterion 1: The goal should set the overall direction of development

Focus will only work if all groups (including leadership, as we will see later) need to come together to fulfill the goal. If it affects only part of the groups, it may lead to separation from unreached employees.

Criterion 2: The goal should be simple and specific

The team is easier to penetrate the goal with a clear, intelligible wording that does not require additional explanation. Concrete works better than abstraction, simple - better than complex, measurable - better than immeasurable.

Any ambiguity is bad in that it makes work disorganized (different employees understand the goal differently). Simplicity eliminates such a mess. But simplicity has its own complexity. Many leaders, trying to be simpler, choose fuzzy and abstract, rather than specific goals.

For example: “to become a leading X in your industry” is not a goal. It needs to be revealed: what exactly does the leading position imply - high profits, reputation, number of clients?

Criterion 3: The goal must motivate to action

Truly powerful goals hurt and inspire. To do this, they do not have to be noble or outstanding - new experience and, in particular, excitement and rivalry can also be motivated to work.

Criterion 4: The goal must make competition outside the company

Little unites people better than having a common enemy. But the “target” for competition in this case must be outside the company, in any case not inside. Only then can rivalry charge people with energy, while not bringing about losses from internal conflicts.

Many managers make the mistake of stirring up competition between employees. The reason is that the principles of “working in a team” and “being the best” are seen by them as mutually exclusive. But this is not the case: the presence of an “external enemy” allows one to show the will to win while maintaining cohesion.

The competition is outside, the collaboration is inside.

Teamwork as corporate value

So, the goal is defined, now you can proceed to action. But before starting the process, it is necessary to stipulate three common mistakes that undermine the effectiveness of any efforts and which should beware of from the very beginning.

Mistake number 1: Local foci of collaboration

When managers begin to implement teamwork in their departments, but do not go beyond them, this leads to the emergence of local foci of teamwork, and not to interaction across the company.

To eliminate this danger, leaders need to understand and emphasize that teamwork to achieve a common goal implies uniting the efforts of the entire organization.

Mistake number 2: Everyone works as a team ... except for managers.

Mandatory conditions for the unity of the company - a solid team of managers. Top leaders must themselves practice teamwork that they advocate. If conflicts constantly arise at the highest levels, no declaration of the importance of cooperation will be taken seriously.

Mistake number 3: Teamwork becomes the meaning of everything.

“The boss thinks we should work in teams, so we always work like this.” People stop thinking about when they need to unite, and when they can work autonomously. Cooperation turns into a chain of formalities.

Leaders implementing a rational collaboration should build a clear relationship between teamwork and results. The goal of teamwork is not teamwork itself, but good results.

Collaboration language creation

The first step to the transition to a new mode of operation - oddly enough, words, not actions.

Language, which is preferred by the leader, is of great importance in the formation of behavior. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, a professor at Stanford University, have firmly stated that the language of management has an insidious tendency: words become true, even if initially the actual state of affairs did not correspond to them.

Words form beliefs.

Leaders need to actively promote the value of teamwork. New values ​​should be recorded in the declaration, specified in all regulations and spelled out in the list of requirements for leadership qualities.

Here you can cite as an example the experience of Henrik Madsen, the CEO of DNV, who revolutionized her management system. Having headed DNV, in the initial stages he spent about 20% of his work time promoting new policies both at internal meetings and at meetings with clients. This tireless appeal, repeated hundreds of times by Madsen and his top team, was eventually imprinted in the minds of the employees. He was heard and understood.

On the other hand, talking about goals, teamwork and cooperation is certainly important, but you cannot get very far with words alone. Conversations must be supported by actions - the rules governing the procedure for hiring, remuneration, career advancement and dismissal of employees. When forming this set of rules, T-shaped management is applied, which is described in the next section.

Lever Two: Cultivate T-Shaped Management

As a rule, a company team, where a rational collaboration has not yet been introduced, consists of four types of workers in various proportions:

• “Laggards” are a weak link, people who work in isolation and not too successfully.
• “Single stars” are people who show first-class results, but do not adhere to the principles of teamwork, in principle or because of personal characteristics.
• “Butterflies” are those who, on the contrary, are very gifted in all that concerns interaction, but are not able to do their own work well.
• "T-shaped managers" - employees who successfully operate in two directions. The vertical part of T denotes their work on their own responsibilities, the horizontal - the exchange of information and assistance to other employees of the company.

It is easy to see how the T-shaped managers are different from the “butterflies” and the “singles” - they are able to perform both types of activities necessary for a rational collaboration. Such people should be the backbone of the collaborative company. But by themselves they appear in the team rarely - they have to be grown.

There are two fundamental ways to “grow” a team of T-shaped managers — selection and change.

Which approach is better? Usually combined. A large company employs various people - both those who resist personal change and those who treat them positively. Therefore, an optimal transformation program implies both the elimination of the former and the development of the latter.

Work on the formation of the state consists of four steps:

1. Dismiss "lagging behind. In order to create vacancies and attract new collaborators, you can dismiss several “lagging” ones or you can encourage natural turnover among this category of employees.
2. Hire and enhance people with T-shaped behavior in the vacant positions.
3. To be financially rewarded for T-shaped behavior in order to pull up workers working in the company of "butterflies" and "lonely stars" (more on this below)
4. Hold coaching sessions for those who show particularly good potential.

It is necessary to note one more thing: often the leaders try to influence the attitude of people - they convince them to change. But research shows that, in fact, this approach is not very effective. It is more rational not to require internal changes, but gradually form the desired behavior from the outside. It is not the arguments, even if convincing, that are better motivated to act, but the presence of a clear plan and necessary conditions. So it’s not enough to change the views of employees — the environment, the order of work, and the expectations from outside should change.

The turning point is usually the moment when T-shaped employees start to dominate the company, rather than singles or “butterflies”. After this, the pace of change dramatically accelerates as the rest of the staff adapts to the dominant pattern of behavior.

It is often the case that the behavior of employees, which is achieved by a collaboration leader, does not correlate with the established reward system. In order to create T-shaped behavioral models, it is necessary to introduce the practice of evaluating the results according to two criteria: to encourage people both for individual results and for contribution to the work of other departments.

Collaboration Measurement

To advance in this direction, leaders need to establish criteria and indicators for cross-promotion. The broad notion of “teamwork” should be transformed into concrete behaviors, compliance with which will be monitored and bear consequences.


A popular circular technique will be useful for tracking. Thanks to her, supervisors, subordinates and colleagues have the opportunity to anonymously participate in the survey to assess the employee. It is called circular because the evaluation is conducted from above (the head), below (the subordinates) and horizontally (colleagues). The strength of this tool is collegiality: those who do not work directly with an employee of the company have the opportunity to assess the assistance that he provided to various departments.

This information should not just be “taken into account”, but processed, in order to form the basis for decisions about incentives (for those who show good results in both directions) and sanctions (for those who have not distinguished themselves neither there).

Specificity of rewards

Motivation systems are based on the assumption that if managers encourage someone for their desired behavior, employees will act accordingly. In fact, everything is much more complicated. When it comes to interaction, encouragement often creates difficulties. In particular, two popular schemes can suppress cross-collaboration.

Bad motivation system number 1: Only for the results of the department

If performance indicators and wages are completely dependent on the results of the unit, the priorities will be appropriate. The team will begin to think in the interests of their group, and not the company as a whole. This correlation has already been addressed in the first part of the book.

Bad Motivation System No. 2: Corporate-wide incentives

With this approach, the calculation system looks like this:

• 50% of bonuses are based on personal results.
• 50% of bonuses are based on overall company results.

The employee's earnings, therefore, are partly determined by how well the company works as a whole. It is reasonable to assume that everyone will work hard for the benefit of the company. But here we return again to the problem of personal responsibility. On the scale of a whole company, individual efforts are easy to “get lost” - some will be tempted to put a minimum of effort, others will be demotivated.

What alternative can be offered to these systems?

The right motivation system: directly link the payment with the cooperation

All you need is a slight change to the above formula. Let the bonus is 50% of salary, but it consists of the following components:

• 50% bonus based on personal results;
• 50% of the bonus is based on the personal contribution to the collaboration (and not in the results of the company as a whole).

Such a system of motivation well stimulates the interaction. It guarantees a direct link between the priority model of behavior, that is, an effective collaboration, and the material incentives of the employee.

Lever Three: Flexible Networks

The two described leverage. as you remember, they are more intended to eliminate motivational barriers - the unwillingness of people to contact each other. Now you need to make sure that they will be able to do it.

For this purpose, collaborative companies are building networks, that is, informal working relationships between people, covering formal channels of communication. If the formal organizational structure shows a division of responsibilities, then the networks demonstrate informal organization - how people work together at the moment.

The key components of the network are employees who act as a bridge - those who, using their personal contacts, can unite many islands of the company and help people to establish contacts with each other. The more of them, the more efficient the network and the easier the cooperation.

The rational construction of flexible networks is hampered by several common myths:

Networking is always useful

As in the case of the rational collaboration as a whole, the need to connect to the network is determined by specific circumstances. Often the employee or team has enough resources to cope with the task on their own.

The bigger, the better

Thousands of contacts are not always practical, given that they require time and effort to create and maintain them. For networks to be valuable, the benefits must exceed the costs.

Success is achieved only socially gifted

In the collective consciousness, a person with a wide range of professional contacts is a charismatic, witty, attractive extrovert. Therefore, many do not even try. In fact, the correlation of the number of connections with personal qualities is very weak.

Networking is an art

Psychological barriers also give rise to the belief that connections are irrational, arise spontaneously, their formation cannot be predicted, traced or corrected. All this refutes the fact that researchers have already studied in sufficient detail the maps of networks and their patterns.

To summarize, the principles of networks repeat the principles of a rational collaboration: the goal of networking is not networking itself, but improving results. A number of rules are needed that would limit spontaneous networking and help build flexible, result-oriented networks.

Six network rules

A leader striving for a rational collaboration should first of all understand the advantages of networks. Firstly, they help to determine the possibilities of the collaboration (to find out what technologies, ideas, experts, partners the company has in general). Secondly, networks allow to use the value of the found resources in those contexts where it is needed and to benefit from it.

The first four rules of the following refer to the definition of opportunities, the remaining two - to maximize benefits.

Network Rule # 1: Outside, Not Inside

Some employees tend to communicate primarily with colleagues from their departments. As a result, a system of separate networks is formed, connected only by separate bridges. To avoid this, it is necessary to apply the first and practically fundamental rule of networks: you need to create connections primarily with other departments of the company.

However, it is impossible to overdo it. If the employee in other departments has more connections than his own, he runs the risk of becoming a “butterfly” - to turn off from the work process.

The interaction matrix, which was discussed earlier, will be useful for reducing the balance - on its base you can build a network map that displays all existing connections between teams. With their help, managers can accurately identify obvious gaps and understand where gaps are permissible (that is, there is no need to interact), and also to check if people are not involved in irrational collaboration.

Network rule number 2: Variety, not quantity

As already mentioned, the number of contacts does not matter. Diversity is much more important: it is good when connections are established with people with different specialties, experience, skills and points of view. The selection criteria for this may be very different, depending on the specifics of the department: from nationality to work methods.

Network Rule # 3: Weak Connections, Not Strong

On an intuitive level, you might think that close friends — that is, our strong ties — are more confusing because good relationships encourage them to help us. But in fact, weak links are more useful in non-woking for two reasons: they take less resources and serve as a bridge to areas that we have not yet mastered (with closely-known people usually have more intersections). In other words, it is better to superficially contact with a wide range of people from different groups in order to know how things are and who can help.

Network Rule # 4: Use Bridges, Not Friends

Studies show that in difficult situations, we turn to friends or just to those who are at hand. This is an ineffective strategy - usually these people know no more than ours. For good networking, it is necessary to identify the bridges of the company - that is, people who effectively redirect requests - and use their services. Usually these are employees with great experience, who have worked in different teams and who understand a wide range of issues.

Leaders building powerful networks in a company need to make sure that they have enough employees to act as bridges. If there are few of them, people with the greatest potential should be identified and they should be given time to do the relevant work.

Network rule number 5: do not go to the goal alone

If you and the employee with whom you communicate have many common connections, it is much easier to achieve productive interaction - it will be more located to help you. Use the tactics of the environment: prepare the ground for cooperation, enlisting the support of significant people to contact.

The rule of networks number 6: to resort to strong ties when the weak do not work

As mentioned, weak links have their advantages. However, they are often associated with a transmission barrier — strangers have a harder time communicating. If some other aggravating factors are added to this, for example, complex knowledge, relations should be strengthened, teams should be given the opportunity to know each other better. So connections will begin to generate more value.

Collaborative leadership style

To date, the book has described how leaders can cultivate interaction between employees of an organization. But tools alone are not enough. Leaders introducing rational collaboration support words with deeds — they themselves exemplify a collaborative leadership style.

The collaborative leadership style consists of three behaviors:

Put personal goals and interests in the background

In many cases, the conflict between own interests and the interests of the company does not arise, but sometimes they diverge. In such situations, collaborative leaders follow a clear rule — to give priority to broader goals.

Encourage others to go beyond their own goals

Collaborative managers are trying to achieve mutual understanding between people with different goals and issues, to find common ground. They invite different people to take part in the decision-making process, take different points of view seriously and welcome the discussion. They hold themselves so that people can calmly speak out without fear of consequences. In this case, however, they leave the final decision behind them, not allowing the discussion to be too slow and go around in circles. The combination of ability to unite and convince makes collaborative leadership powerful.

Take responsibility and drop charges

The stranger effect and the tendency to social laziness indicate a serious problem of collective work: when people can hide behind someone, they often do so. The third model of behavior in collaborative leadership — a high degree of personal responsibility — can be an antidote to this ailment. It must be educated in itself and seek from the rest.

Here you can remember one of the leaders of the company Nissan, Carlos Gona. He took office when the company was on the verge of a disaster, and the team was in a state of cold war. In order to destroy the culture of mutual accusation and achieve quick results, Gon put the following condition: if the necessary goals are not reached on time, the entire top management, including himself, will retire.

The collaborative management style is found “in the wild” very rarely - according to the statistics of the author, only 16% of managers meet all the requirements. This is primarily due to personal factors - the main ones are listed in the table:


These behaviors can be expressed to a greater or lesser degree; in severe cases, they turn into character traits. However, the possibility of personal transformation is always preserved. The leader, who has chosen the collaborative style of work for himself, just needs to honestly define his internal barriers and work on them - just like the employees of the “butterflies” and the “loners”.