Transcript
Lou Quinto:
Hi, welcome to Q&A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto.
Craig P. Anderson:
And I'm Craig Anderson.
Lou Quinto:
Today topic we're going to cover is the importance of collaboration. Then the previous or in a previous video what we did is we looked at what is collaboration? Today we're going to actually talk about what are the benefits of collaboration. The three areas that we're going to cover are going to be one, it helps in problem solving, two, it opens up communication channels throughout the entire organization. Then lastly, we're going to talk about how it increases employee proficiency.
Craig P. Anderson:
Great. Well, so our first topic is how does it help problem solving and decision making? Lou I think you have a customer that you worked with and really helped them out of them out of a buy-in.
Lou Quinto:
Yes, it took a week to help them out of a buy-in, but it was a situation of a company that had a national chain of stores and they were implementing a new point of sale technology. What ended up happening was during their implementation processes, they were facing it in, the system shut down. The system shut down, and it just happened to be on labor day, back to school time. All these people had to leave the school store because they could not pay for their product with either a credit card or a debit card. They could only pay cash. As most of us today, we don't carry around cash, so there were just baskets we'll have back to school supplies just sitting there.
Lou Quinto:
What happened was the company brought me in to help facilitate a week long process. What they did was they took individuals from very different areas that were affected by the situation. You had the store management, you had the IT folks, you had the CIO in the room, a representative there. What we did is we looked at the problem from different areas, which helps to really take our blinders off to make sure that we weren't looking at it from one particular angle because in most situations and problem solving, many people come into the room already and they already have an idea of what that problem may be and then they are biased to try to prove that what they believe the problem was was actually the problem. But when you brought all those different people together, it really helped in the problem solving because it opened up areas that we wouldn't even consider before.
Craig P. Anderson:
Isn't it funny how companies do on the back end, what they should have done on the front end? You could have saved a whole lot of problems and made a lot more money had you just brought in all those people on the front end. I can think of a number of times through my career where everything blows up and then like, "Hey, let's get somebody from here and here and here. Instead of getting all the senior leaders, let's actually get people are living and breathing it in the meeting to actually figure out how we got this thing so screwed up," and nobody seems to learn that lesson. Yeah.
Lou Quinto:
Yes. And it goes back to breaking down the silos. Everybody's problem, it impacts and affects other people and we need to bring them into the situation also. The second one is opening those channels of communication. I just previously mentioned breaking down the silos, but when you have people from different areas, all of a sudden they start to talk to each other and they realize that things may be happening. You shared a story with us about sticking people in a room for, what was it? Two months a year? I forget.
Craig P. Anderson:
For me it felt like a year. Yes, we talked last time how I had a product team who locked themselves in a room for two months and walked out of the product and went ta-da and all of a sudden everybody looked at it and just lost their minds over it because there were so many things not accounted for. After that we actually had a new person doing our product who is much more collegial in nature and actually pulling the team together and came in to leadership team meetings and actually work to figure out solutions to say, all right, as a team, where do we need to focus on these things? Then took that down the next layer was their own team and had collaborative groups closer to the front line, working on all the issues.
Craig P. Anderson:
Then opening up all the channels of communication suddenly had everybody around the table much more relaxed, much more relieved because they knew that their issues were being considered in the larger issue of what we were trying to fix as opposed to getting blindsided by something where their needs weren't even considered. Opening up those channels of communication actually has a pallet of effect on the whole group where everybody's just in a lot better place on moving together and moving forward.
Lou Quinto:
So the question comes up, why don't more people do this at the front end instead of at the back end after they realize they broke something, they've got to fix it now they've got a whole bunch of rework to do?
Craig P. Anderson:
Well, I wish I had an answer for that, but I do think what it does tell you in your hiring process, really thinking about the kinds of people you want on your team. Do you want someone to come in, how important is collaboration and how are you finding people who have that collaborative mindset on your team? Rather than trying to fix those people, let's try and get them in and make sure we build that and make that part of the larger culture and say, this is how we work. If you don't like working in this area, this is probably not a good opportunity for you.
Lou Quinto:
Well, and it's funny you say that because the world economic forum just recently did a study where they interviewed CEOs and they asked CEOs, what are the top competencies that people need in order to be successful in your organization? Number one was critical thinking skills. Number two, was teamwork and collaboration skills.
Craig P. Anderson:
There you go. Yes, it's crucial to get your company moving forward. Let's talk about employee efficiency. We brought this up earlier.
Lou Quinto:
Yes. With employee efficiencies, one of the things that collaborations does is, again, I see collaboration as a cure for silos because everybody is working on the same thing as opposed to working in their individual areas. If you work in an organization where you're familiar with the silo effect, and I've had the opportunity to consult and help break through consulting, or breakthrough silos collaboration by bringing people... Again, looking at the problem from different areas in the company as opposed to one group dealing with it.
Lou Quinto:
In many instances when you get into process improvement, which requires collaboration, all of a sudden one group starts realizing they're doing the same type of tasks, they get the same results that another group is doing, and then they start looking at each other and saying, well, why are you doing that? We're doing that. Right away you're starting to identify some efficiencies when you bring those people together to be able to improve the process because they're breaking down those silos and don't even call it breaking down.
Lou Quinto:
They're tearing them apart and they're dissecting them and saying, what are you doing compared to what we're doing and how can we refine these things so that we're all headed in the same direction, but we're not duplicating... We don't need redundancies. We're not a, we're not an IT framework architecture where we need all these redundancies. But I think if we look around companies, I know coming in from the outside, I look around and I see there are lots of redundancies, but there's that turf protection. Well, if I give this up, am I not going to be as important as I am right now because I'm not doing that?
Craig P. Anderson:
Yes. I think some of the other side effects or side benefits to this is around employee engagement. Where you've got collaborative environments and everybody's pulling together. One that gets people tied into the mission of the organization because they start to see what their role is in it. When you go to measuring things like complaint engagement, you look at like psychological safety, all right, I am part of a larger whole here, I am bringing value.
Craig P. Anderson:
You look at utilization, are my skills being fully utilized? I have a lot of good ideas, how come no one's asking me about that? You start pulling in some of the key aspects of engagement, now you're going to have better retention rate, better employee morale, and you're going to have people who are pulling together because, "Hey, I was part of that solution and now I own it." That helps to get the employees to stick with you longer.
Lou Quinto:
Well, that goes back to the long time ago this suggestion box. Companies used to have a suggestion box where employees who were on the front line doing the work actually made suggestions that may not be visible to people up in upper management. A lot of those suggestions ended up being breakthrough technology when it came to getting things done within a company because upper management just didn't realize what was going on by the people who were actually doing it. They may need to go back to the suggestion box to help collaboration.
Craig P. Anderson:
Well, I certainly think if nothing else, and it's a topic probably for another day, but are you pulling your frontline workers into your processes and really understanding, are you just dictating or are you actually saying, "Well yes, I thought it would work this way. But now how does it actually work"? But yes, sure, we can bring back the suggestion box, that works. All right.
Lou Quinto:
Okay. Key takeaways for today. The one key takeaway I've found out is when it comes to collaboration, do it up front, not at the end. After you broke something and you've got to fix it now with a whole bunch of rework. One of the things I would take a look at is look at your problem, look at your situation, whatever it may be, and sit back, stop, think, before you just put a bunch of people in charge of solving the problem. Look at who are the people that are affected, who are the people that are impacted or what groups or organizations and make sure there's representatives on all of those so that you get a good collaboration for the better problem solving.
Craig P. Anderson:
Yes. I think my takeaway is just the importance of getting everybody wrapped around getting the problem solved, similar to what you're bringing up here, and make that time valuable and employees will feel like they're part of your company and part of the solution and stick with you better if you have a collaborative environment where you're moving things forward.
Lou Quinto:
I like that psychological security, providing that.
Craig P. Anderson:
Oh yes.
Lou Quinto:
Good. All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed this segment of Q&A on Breakthrough Leadership. If you like this video, click on the like button down in the bottom. Subscribe to Q&A on breakthrough leadership so that you know when the next episode will be out. And again, have a great day. I'm Lou Quinto.
Craig P. Anderson:
And I'm Craig Anderson.
