Let's work together: Some collaboration hints

By In the Works . Tim Kuhfuss
Network World, 10/30/00

Recently I participated in a chief information officer roundtable at an IT conference in Chicago. The topic on the table was collaboration. We got to describe some collaborative experiences we had and discuss lessons learned. My favorite piece of advice was "Bang heads until your folks start working together." I don't know about you, but if I bang two heads together all I get is potential collaborators moving on to new employers.

I've seen collaboration efforts work, and I've seen them die on the vine. Here are some suggestions for making them work.

Have clear and simple goals. Pick out a few grand goals. Make sure each is aggressive enough to trivialize petty politics and encourage nontraditional thinking. Once you've got the goals, talk them up.

Have a senior-level sponsor. At some point, every collaboration will meet resistance. Having a high-level sponsor will keep the critics at bay for a while. If you're brave, recruit your biggest critic as a sponsor.

Involve all stakeholders. If you are changing a process or product to benefit customers, ask them what they want. I'm always shocked to hear an insider present the customer's perspective. Get real customers as part of the team.

Create a sense of urgency. Grand goals are never achieved without deadlines. If you have to, make up a crisis to keep things moving.

Pay attention to vocabulary. The biggest hurdle in getting disparate parties to work together is to find a gelling function. Sometimes all you have to do is agree on terms. Force the parties involved to explain their terminology or agree on some common language.

Worry about relationships. Not many people willingly take on a project without knowing the folks they are dealing with. We once tried to create a top-notch research group by gathering the best and brightest across the country, and tying them together with the best technology. The group failed to reach its potential because they never formed trusting relationships. If I were to do this again, I'd have them spend at least six months in the same physical space before scattering them across the country.

Watch the generational mix. While I need to spend some time physically interacting with people to establish collaborative relations, the current teenagers and young adults don't seem to have this need. I've got a teenage daughter who has friends she's never seen. All it takes is an introduction by a mutual friend and some electronic magic seems to happen. I am positive that this ability to create virtual trust relationships will change collaborations in the near future. I'm equally positive that my generation is going to have trouble adapting to this phenomenon.

I hope this advice helps in your future endeavors. If you've got other secrets for making collaborations work, let me know and I'll pass them on.

Kuhfuss is CIO of Argonne National Laboratory, one of the U.S. Department of Energy's largest research centers. He can be reached at tckuhfuss@netscape.net. The views expressed are his own.