Collaboration and Execution – Ideas for Impacting the workplace to generate results and impacts around people and performance.

When would more collaboration among your workers and managers have real benefits to your organization’s innovation and performance?
Where do you want your people to be more involved in the collaboration around, and execution of, your key projects and organizational challenges? How do you see yourself impacting the engagement and active involvement necessary to implement change and innovation?

Leaders can’t stand back and wait for collaboration to happen, because it just isn’t a natural thing in most organizational cultures. Sure, there are a couple of people that will generally see some need and step up to fill some gap. But do you really expect the other 90% just to jump in? And what about the bottom 25%? Have you asked them for their help and for their ideas? Might their engagement have positive overall impacts on results?

Effective leaders and managers will get into the arena and engage. And most of us have had a few exceptional leaders in our work histories who simply modeled the behaviors they wanted and showed that they were part of the team — not acting as judge, referee or commentator. They were not just sitting on the sidelines hoping for some improvement…

For senior leaders seeking effective organizational collaboration and teamwork, your call to action is simple:

“Level the playing field and put on your game gear. Get everyone, including all your managers, off the sidelines and into the game of engagement and innovation. Stop having the silly expectations that watching the play will somehow make a difference. Coach for improved performance. Control and management does not generate engagement and commitment.”

Think of collaboration as an investment in innovation and performance.

Heidi K. Gardner, a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School and a business consultant wrote:

“The benefits we’re talking about— revenues, profits, client loyalty, and so on—all take time to flow in. It takes real stamina, faith, and courage to keep investing [in collaboration], but people often give up too early and return to their individualistic ways of working.”

“They go back to the celebration of the ‘hero’ at the expense of valuing the team. And when that happens, it just breeds cynicism. That’s a huge risk for organizations.”

Are you treating your employees like an audience for your performance? They are! They will react and make progress on those things that YOU focus on them improving. If they have a mental path forward, they are much more likely to move in that direction. So, look to see where you can give them a motivational and challenging workplace environment so that they might choose to do something differently. Maybe share the vision and ask if they have any ideas for improvement.

Remember that The View from The Front is NOT the same as The View from the Back!

And keep your communications around understandable missions, visions, goals and expectations and ask for their commitment to do things differently. People need focus and if everything seems to be important for them, they will see NOTHING as really important. Keep your communications focused on the key ideas and goals, allow for collaboration and alignment, and give them the tools that they need to execute and implement.

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For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools.
Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant who is trying to retire!! He now lives in Cuenca, Ecuador.

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Learn more about Scott at his LinkedIn site.

Here is a link to a press release about The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine teambuilding exercise and its 30 years of positively impacting people and performance. Dutchman is a world-class, powerful and easy to use tool for generating collaboration and teamwork.

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