Collaborative Management

There are some significant challenges facing management if the desire is to create a more open and collaborative work environment. In short, managers have to learn to listen more, talk less, follow through and step back. Not necessarily in that order.

But first, before actively “managing” co-workers in a way that fosters collaboration, managers have to come to terms with the basic necessity of collaboration in the first place. It’s a significant change in orientation for older managers who still recall the days of “command and control.” The top-down management styles of the 20th century were often patterned after traditional, military control structures – which made sense, actually. So many men of the 1940’s and 50’s had served in the military which was orderly and organized enough to beat facism, the same management premises were bound to work at home, too.

Well, not exactly.

Technology has a way of rendering old-line organizational thinking obsolete. And, by the 1990’s, that’s exactly what we were facing. Advancements like cell phones, e-mail, globalization and a dozen other events (for more on this, read The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman) pushed the conventions of “telling people what to do” and “doing what you were told to do” to the side.

The marketplace was (and still is) changing to quickly and competition is now getting deadly. A mix-up, delay or error can cost dearly. Employees need to be able to react to a dynamic situation. They had to be creative and interdependent – calling on (and relying on) each other when needed; operating on their own (autonomously) when appropriate.

This is scary stuff, but it’s the world in which we now live.

I compare this situation to breaking a horse. I used to do that when I was a teenager. One thing you learned about riding is that sometimes when the horse gets going faster, the less direct control you exert, the more control you have. Trust the horse.

Managers have to trust their employees to “do the right thing” in order for the enterprise to survive and thrive in the future. Rest assured, nervous manager, trust is not blind. We recognize that your trust in your co-workers is based on the principles of collaborative management we touched on in the first paragraph. Management is work, it always has been and always will be. But now we can re-define what a manager has to do to in the new, collaborative workspace.

I’ve tried to break this down into four simple steps for the aspiring manager:

1) Listen more – As a manager, you need to know and understand what motivates all the people who matter to your business. That means you need to spend time with and listening to employees, customers, vendors, shareholders, management colleagues, the industry, media and community. Listening isn’t an easy skill to master. It requires concentration. More importantly, it requires natural curiosity. Hint: Show you’re interested, it will make a difference.

2) Talk Less – Stop blathering on about how things used to be done. It doesn’t matter any more. The way things will be done in the future depends on who’s doing them and what they can bring to the table. It also depends on how well they understand the vision of success that you, as a manager, are responsible for maintaining in their head. Everything you say should tie back to this vision. If it doesn’t, don’t say it.

3) Follow Through – Walk your talk. I love that line. It says exactly what it means. If you’re talking about what needs to be done to be a success, then do it. And make sure all the people who matter to your business not only see you following through but feel the consequences when they don’t perform up to par. This is the ugly part of managing. Nail the dullards and slackers and your top performers will perform even harder not out of fear but out of pride.

4) Step Back – Following through might be ugly, but stepping back is tough. Let the workers work. Concentrate on making course corrections rather than wholesale changes. If someone isn’t doing something right, it’s because they aren’t clear on the vision and what they have to do to make it a reality. Listen to them. Speak with them. Help them succeed. Then step back again.

All of this may seem like pretty straight-forward, management-speak. But in the collaborative environment, it’s all that’s really required. If you’ve done a great job of picking the right people and coaching them, they’ll start to innovate and create. Your job then includes spotting the innovations and making sure they’re shared – celebrating the successes and learning from the failures.

Be careful in selecting the right people, giving them the tools and the vision to work with and then let them do the job. You’ll be surprised just how far you can go.

Other resources you might want to consider reading include:
The Paradigm of Open Collaboration (from the Communication Overtones blog)
Grasping the Collaborative Paradigm (from The Daily Dog)

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