Making Collaboration work in the post-Covid era

When it comes to teamwork, collaboration seems to be key. A lot has been spoken about collaboration in recent years and its merits. The voice for collaboration has become louder after the Coronavirus crisis, given the realization that more and more people will work remotely over the coming years and the only way to build powerful teams is to collaborate amongst like-minded people.

Although collaboration is a beautiful sounding word, it turns out that collaboration is not a natural human talent. It requires much thought and planning to create conditions that augment collaboration within teams.

There are many different things that need to fall into place for collaboration to work like magic. Let us look at four factors that have been seen as common within teams where collaboration has worked.

On the surface, the Covid-19 pandemic united much of the global workforce, as office workers across the globe began to talk about common issues that they were all facing. In developed nations as well as in developing nations, knowledge workers began to share the pluses and minuses of working from home. Although the nature of these topics appears the same on the surface, if you peel off a few layers, you begin to realize that the same topic had different implications in different countries or regions due to cultural differences.

As the 'people factor' has become very important in organizations today, organizations have taken a lot of effort to ensure that their employees are in good shape as far as physical and mental health go. Organizations have become more sensitive today about the needs of their employees than they ever were. Towards this, some organizations, with a workforce spread across the globe, have been quick to learn, and adopt new HR policies which are in tune with the changing times...a time when remote working has become a norm across industries. Here’s one thing which stands out: a 'single-culture' approach to fixing problems that are cross-cultural just does not work.

When one talks about teams being set up within organizations to achieve a certain goal, they are generally understood as teams that comprise some members who may have been picked up because they were free. Secondly, when teams are set up, the last thing you want is conflict amongst team members. So, a general tendency is to include members who are not seen as confrontational and who get along well with others. Fair enough.

The trouble is, when everyone is agreeing with everyone else most of the time and the goal is a common consensus, you do not really get the best solutions coming from such a team. When you are not looking at things from different perspectives and challenging some of these perspectives, you are likely to have rather average outcomes. Now, this may work well for regular, mundane stuff that you need to get done. But good teams can get much more done than the regular stuff. They can transform organizations, industries, and society. However, this does not come easy. This comes with a bit of confrontation, a bit of ego, and a lot of energy. It happens when you set up teams comprising of stars. If you are looking at transformative change, you have to invest in setting up such teams.

In teams where each member is like a genius….members carry a bit of an ego….but the results are usually outstanding. It is not easy, but, more often than not, it is worth the effort.

Much is spoken about teamwork and collaboration these days; like as if that is the magic potion that will ensure business success. Well, certainly the chances of business success are far higher when teamwork is in place than otherwise; but is it really the magic potion that it is made out to be?

There are certain situations and some reasons for teamwork to fail. It is important to understand what these are so that we learn from elimination and ensure that we do not make these mistakes.

This is additional learning and starts upon the elements required to build a great team, and the rewards of doing so. The elements required are derived from the book 'The Startup Equation' by Steven Fisher and Ja-Nae Duane.