Most large organizations have been focusing on a functional organization structure for quite some time. Those that did not have one were aspiring for it. Featured articles on running successful businesses talked about this approach in order to achieve excellence.
Here, each employee was responsible for excellence of their “function”… and of course, through focus on individual achievements. One needed to do that… after all, when comes year-end, you would literally be competing with your best friend on a forced ranking forum (Oh…that is if one has friends at work!!)
Our brains are thus tuned to work and achieve individually, and compete all the time.
And suddenly, today it’s all about collaboration… Collaboration within functions, collaboration with other functions and in some cases, removing the functional boundaries altogether.
Not much talk about how to achieve it although. Not enough attention on the little thing that’s the biggest challenge – “The mindset”. It has thus far been embedded that one needs to focus on individual achievements. That’s going to be hard to change. How do you make these same people collaborate? Collaborate within their own team, in x-functional teams, and more.
Then again, why is it so difficult to work together, towards a single goal? Why does collaboration sound so alien?
I hear about projects stall simply because people in the project needed help from an expert outside the team… well, if the expert is not a part of the project, a looming possibility that they won’t get credit for the help extended.
I’ve sadly heard senior people say, “I have moved out of the particular function, contact one who replaced me”. I say, just because one moved out of the function, do we end up handing over what’s in our head soon after the transition?
Today we are so tuned to working as selfish individuals, we’ve forgotten what we learnt in school, “together we can achieve anything”.
There’s an African saying, “If you want to walk fast, walk alone… If you want to walk far, walk together”. The time has come indeed to walk together.
So, here is what I’m leaving you with…how should this change be dealt with? Does our change leaders understand collaboration? Can collaboration be forced upon? How can supervisors be an integral part…how can senior management lead by example? And finally, is this so easy to achieve?