Secrets of successful collaboration: 25. manage the process of collaborative growth (3)

Here are the four main issues to address when managing the growth in influence of a collaboration:

1. Maintaining and enhancing the relevance and helpfulness of a collaboration's influence.
2. Freshening and diversifying a collaboration's influence.
3. Dealing with the consequences of a collaboration's influence, both for itself and for others it sits beside and/or collaborates with.
4. Ensuring growing influence is transformed into sustainable long-term benefits within mainstream practice.          

The key to doing the above effectively is engaging: engaging early, engaging continuously, engaging purposefully, and engaging widely and creatively.

Engaging early and with key people, groups, organisations and other stakeholders already active within a new collaboration's area of activity (be this geographical, sectorial, vocational or professional, etc.) will help ensure a collaboration's efforts and influence are not only immediately relevant and helpful but also readily welcomed and supported. 

Continuously engaging with the above people and groups, etc., will help ensure a collaboration's activities remain relevant and helpful and welcomed and supported. It will also help enable the timely identification of any unforeseen effects and consequences of a collaboration's influence and encourage action to address them.

Researching people and groups, etc., active within a collaboration's sphere of influence and purposefully engaging with those most relevant and significant to a collaboration's activity will not only help achieve many of the above aspects but also, most crucially, help transform current and growing influence into sustainable long-term benefits within mainstream practice. Commonly, the latter is achieved by encouraging influential and relevant mainstream organisations and institutions to get involved in a collaboration's activities and identify how emerging insights and new and innovative approaches could be incorporated into widespread common practice.
                                       
Identifying the shifting views and opinions of all the people affected by and who can influence a collaboration's work by engaging widely and creatively, through the use of social media and innovative conference and meeting approaches (e.g., unusual suspects conferences and scouting meetings) will freshen and diversify a collaboration's influence. It will achieve the former by encouraging a collaboration to change the way it goes about its work and achieves its goals, so altering the nature and manner of its influence. It will achieve the latter by increasing the amount and different types of people and groups, etc., a collaboration engages with, so adding to the channels of influence available to it.

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Secrets of successful collaboration: 24. manage the process of collaborative growth (2)

As a collaboration develops, it will usually grow in the following three ways:

1. In size
2. In complexity
3. In influence

To ensure a collaboration's continued and increasing effectiveness (and the ongoing development of meta-relationships) the above types of growth need to be carefully managed.

Here are the five main issues to address when managing the growth in complexity of a collaboration:

1. Dealing with the increasing complexity of rules and procedures. (This can be addressed by regularly bringing partners and key stakeholders together to track and review changes and additions to a collaboration's rules and procedures. The key focus of this review should be to identify and challenge the reasons and motivations for changes and additions that add complexity to a collaboration's agreed ways of working. Do these reasons and motivation's stem from a genuine desire to improve collaborative effectiveness or from uncertainties partners have about each other? If the latter, any changes and additions will be examples of the previously mentioned over-compensation and partners will need to focus upon improving the quality of their relationships rather than adding rules and procedures that will merely serve to increase mutual uncertainties.)                
2. Dealing with the increasing complexity of communication (including use of information technology). (This can be addressed by regularly bringing partners and key stakeholders together to review the different ways in which they communicate with each other. This review should ensure, as was the case in the previous paragraph, that any increased communication or increased complexity of communication is being done for beneficial reasons. It should also ensure that a healthy mix of communication methods is being maintained as the amount and complexity of communication grows. The latter can be achieved by encouraging partners to use the place/time continuum of communication to review their overall communication approach and identify where benefit would be gained from communicating differently and with increased diversity.)            
3. Dealing with the increasing complexity of relationships and understandings. (This can be addressed by bringing partners together to do a partner and stakeholder involvement, attitude and relationship mapping exercise. A tool for doing this is described at Appendix F of the 5th Edition of "Sleeping with the Enemy - Achieving Collaborative Success". Once partners have completed this exercise, they can take action to address any problems that are emerging due to the increasing complexity of their collaboration's relationships. They can also, of course, take action to exploit any opportunities that are emerging due to the increasing diversity and richness of their relationships.)         
4. Dealing with the increasing complexity of discussion and dialogue. (This can be addressed by bringing partners and stakeholders together to participate in structured dialogue that seeks to not only manage increasing complexity of discussion but also encourage and exploit the sharing of differing perceptions and ideas. A simple and effective tool that can help partners achieve these things is the "Co-Counselling Method", which is described at Appendix G of the Fifth Edition of "Sleeping with the Enemy - Achieving Collaborative Success". Also, encouraging Flock Thinking by using the tools described here will achieve the same things.)          
5. Dealing with the increasing complexity and interconnectedness of issues and problems. (This can be addressed by bringing partners together to explore the ever-evolving big picture context of which their collaboration is a part and identify how various issues are combining and developing to complicate existing challenges and create new challenges. Rich pictures and mind maps will enable partners to do this task effectively.)

When undertaking the above tasks partners must keep in mind that growth in complexity must be not only managed but also encouraged. This is because the challenge most collaborations face (which is to solve previously unsolvable problems) and the way they go about meeting it (which is to find new and useful ways to combine the differing perspectives and varied resources of a diverse and ever-evolving mix of partners and stakeholders) requires not only direction and purpose but also creativity and innovation.

This is why many of the approaches mentioned above are flexible, structured and participative: they are fluid and permissive enough to encourage complexity through the combining of diverse thoughts and ideas, directive and disciplined enough to manage complexity so that it progresses towards worthwhile outcomes, and participative enough to encourage contributions from a diverse mix of partners.

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Secrets of successful collaboration: 23. manage the process of collaborative growth

As a collaboration develops, it will usually grow in the following three ways:

1. In size
2. In complexity
3. In influence

To ensure a collaboration's continued and increasing effectiveness (and the ongoing development of meta-relationships) the above types of growth need to be carefully managed.

Here are the three main issues to address when managing the growth in size of a collaboration:

1. Moving from co and close locations to multi and wide spread locations.
2. Gaining additional partners, stakeholders and beneficiaries.
3. Managing the increasing number of boundaries between different spaces and different times.

Over the lifespan of a collaboration, a small and tightly knit group of partners working together in the same space or very nearby each other can develop into a large and diverse group of partners working at different times to each other in multiple spaces and widely spread locations.

Whilst growing in size in the above ways, a collaboration needs to safeguard and enhance its effectiveness and the quality of its relationships by ensuring it maintains a village feel and structure.      

The characteristics of a village feel and structure are as follows:

• Villages are composed of small distinct units: houses, pubs, churches, church halls, shops, doctors' surgeries, dentists, community halls, police stations, libraries, post offices, etc.
• Each unit has a clear and distinct function.
• In addition to the community halls mentioned above, there is usually common access to some other type of resource: common ground that villagers can use for grazing of cattle, or greens that villagers can use for social events, etc.
• The above units and common resources are, by design or natural development of villages over the years, positioned for ease of access and inter-communication.
• There is an informal feel and family structure within and to some extent between each of the above units.

The small size of the above units, the access to common resources, and the informal feel and family structure of day-to-day village life all combine to encourage an emphasis upon  relationship building and making progress through mutual understandings.

A collaboration can adopt and adapt the above village characteristics to ensure its growth in size is beneficial rather than problematic. By keeping its internal teams small, ensuring these teams are given distinct identities and functions, and giving each team a recognisable place that is accessible (either through physical proximity, regular face-to-face interactions or, as the collaboration grows in size, the supportive use of technology), a collaboration will encourage and maintain the informal family feel and interdependent structure that supports communication and cohesiveness and the development of meta-relationships.
  
Providing commons within a collaboration (i.e., space and resources jointly owned by and available to partners) will encourage partners to maintain and reinforce a sense of shared ownership and joint responsibility. This will help safeguard a growing collaboration's village feel and sense of community.

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Secrets of successful collaboration: 22. identify the signs of the key symptom of ineffective collaborative processes and address its cause

Always be on the lookout for the key symptom of ineffective collaborative processes: overcompensation. Overcompensation, in the following three forms, can seriously hinder or prevent the development of collaborative meta-relationships:

1. Hyper-vigilance

This manifests as excessive monitoring, checking and box ticking that makes partners feel they are not trusted (that someone is always looking over their shoulders). This will mire a collaboration within burdensome meetings and bureaucratic processes that can often slow and sometime stop activity and progress.
       
2. Redundant communication and activity 

This will manifest alongside and within hyper-vigilance but is differentiated from it by an excessive focus upon repetition: repetitive checking and repetition of processes, with each repetition done by a different partner; excessive restatements of a collaboration's rules and directives; sending and receiving excessive emails about the same thing. 

3. Blind carbon copying

The unnecessary use of the blind carbon copy can be particularly corrosive to collaborative processes and the relationships they support. This is because it introduces an unhealthy element of stealth to a collaboration's activities and processes that insidiously erodes trust by creating an environment of uncertainty and suspicion. 

Those sending blind carbon copy emails will inevitably have their perceptions and behaviour affected by what they write; those receiving blind copy emails will be similarly affected by what they read. This will lead to people interacting with each other according to the scripts of hidden missives rather than the visible "here and now" stimulus of each other's words and behaviour. 

People will sense this inconsistency between what is being said and done and what is being thought and perceived, and they will become uncertain of each other's motives and actions. These uncertainties will cause misunderstandings, which will increase hyper-vigilance and redundant communication (consequently inflaming the overall symptom of overcompensation).

The approaches described in the previous blogs of this series will, of course, help address the three intimately related causes of the above symptom: lack of understanding, lack of mutual support, and lack of trust between partners.

Doing the following three things will be particularly effective:

1. Creating opportunities for face-to-face in the same space interaction that encourages informality, openness, and the spontaneous sharing and discussion of problems and ideas.

Bringing partners together (well away from the formal meeting room environment)  encourages them to relax, mingle, get to know each other personally, and begin sharing their thoughts and feeling and problems and ideas. This enhances mutual understanding and appreciation between partners and helps partners feel comfortable enough to begin relying upon and trusting each other. As partners increasingly rely upon and trust each other, they will decreasingly engage in hyper-vigilance, redundant communication and blind carbon copying.
             
2. Co-creating and co-owning collaborative processes and practices.

Jointly creating and agreeing collaborative approaches will achieve three important things: 1. it will increase transparency (partners will know why processes and practices have been put in place); 2. it will motivate partners to use the agreed collaborative processes and practices; 3. It will encourage partners to motivate each other to use agreed collaborative processes and practices. As transparency of processes and the motivation to use and encourage their use increases, partners' hyper-vigilance, redundant communication and blind carbon copying will decrease.  
     
3. Making informal understandings and ways of working explicit and clearly visible. 

Using the previously mentioned rich pictures and pictor analysis to make informal understandings and ways of working explicit and clearly visible will help partners describe and share their thoughts and feelings about working together. This will highlight assumptions, perceptions and beliefs (a significant number of which having been planted by blind carbon copy emails) that have been stealthily and often negatively influencing partners' decisions, actions and interactions. As explicitness and visibility of understandings and processes increases, partners' hyper-vigilance, redundant communication and blind carbon copying will decrease.

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