The many layers of "better collaboration"

When I first started talking about making collaboration work in 2016, I would get frustrated that people would assume I was interested in office layouts and software options (reader: I was not interested in those things). Other times i'd get frustrated that people might want a "collaboration training" but didn't want to talk about how the organisational structure was full of disincentives to collaborate, or that incoherence in the strategy meant it was hard to see what to collaborate on.

Then at some point I realised (as I often do) that the problem was me. What I was really frustrated about was my own lack of clear distinctions of the different ways we use the word "collaboration". If collaboration means something like doing good work together, it comes in multiple layers. Layers will include: workspaces we use, technologies and how they work (or don't), org structures, strategy, meetings (IRL, remote, hybrid), and the behavior/skill to get things done with people.

At Let's Go now we focus on reinvigorating organisations for complex times and this is much broader than the work we did in those early years. The Let's Go Model remains a powerful leadership tool in the work we do, but front and centre is the particularities of the situation at hand and what is needed to revive the sense of organisational spirit that makes work work. Basically: we are still org strategists and collaborative problem solvers as well as tool builders.

This year, I've become interested in a project Elise Keith and Dr Carrie Goucher are leading on "open ways of working" where the promise is that valuable IP can be used/leveraged/built out in interesting ways. The project is new but i'm contributing, curious to see where it goes. Elise drafted her Collaborative Ecosystem v1 as a way to articulate "what" you can design in a system (Let's Go model is really about "how") and we are exploring that as a basis of the Open WOW project. We've been discussing this and this article is a more formal attempt to document some of the thinking. Or at least where i'm at with it.

The basic structure is six layers - the design territories to make collaboration work in a complex system:

LAYER 1: Workplaces

The physical, digital and policy contexts in which work happens.

Work is hosted or homed in workplaces. This is where collaboration happens.

Examples of things you could do to impact collaboration:

• Changing/designing the physical spaces - adding a cafe or bringing people who you need to collaborate into one space/floor/building
• Digital workspace - adding new capabilities or unifying digital tools/platforms so more people can use them
• Policies around remote/hybrid work - who works where and when? What is mandated and what is open?

Real example: I'm working with a US business who were struggling with a totally open hybrid work model. People had the experience of commuting into "dead" offices just to sit on zoom calls with colleagues who were working from home that day. What's worked for them is mandating two specific days a week for everyone to be in the office together.

LAYER 2: Organising Structures

How divisions, teams, roles, forums and communities are formally ordered

Work is ordered or formalised in organising structures. Organising structures shape collaboration - either as a boundary (doing X becomes hard) or an incentive (doing Y becomes easy).

Examples of things you could affect to impact collaboration:

• Operating model - designing or optimising reporting lines and how teams work together
• Team responsibilities and structure
• Communities - how are people gathered into practice or interest communities? When and how do they gather?

Real example: We worked with a global org in the aftermath of a huge and rapid transformation. There was real progress but also significant growing pains - and live disagreements about how the new model should work vs how it was working. We brought well-meaning pessimists and well-meaning optimists together to get to a clear articulation of how it was working, how it needed to work, and what we could do to bridge the gap.

LAYER 3: Work definition and delivery

How work is defined, planned, deployed, managed and measured.

Work is described and directed through how we define work. Often this looks like a strategy (although that word is pretty elastic) and should orientate collaboration in an aligned direction. Put simply: What will we do? What matters most? What are we here to collaborate on?

Examples of things you could work on to impact collaboration:

• Strategic planning process - how and when do we decide on what is most important to us?
• Measurement - how do we define and track goals / OKRs?
• Managing and problem solving work to the plan - what are the accountabilities and forums in which we keep on track?

Real example: We just got to the point in a strategy project where you have the "that's it" moment. Where the strategy fits with coherence and clarity - setting out what maters most (and what matters less) in a way that is clear and motivating.

LAYER 4: Asynchronous collaboration

How work is documented and communicated across times and locations.

Work is recorded and modified through Asynchronous Collaboration. It's where collaborative work is iterated and improved.

Examples of things you could work on to impact collaboration:

• How do we document our work and who has access to what?
• Communication agreements - how can we reduce the barrage of email traffic? What expectation is there of instant messages? What protocols can we agree on (eg actions at the top in bold)?
• Knowledge management - How to capture knowledge and how to pass that knowledge on to people who need it

Real example: The other day in some broader discussions about bridging a global divide, someone shared how switching from email comms into a shared Teams chat made a significant difference to cohesion and communication. It no longer felt like them and us even though reporting lines stayed the same.

LAYER 5: Real time collaboration

The ways in which people interact live - meeting, communicating, gathering

Work is discussed and agreed in real time collaboration. This is conversations, meetings, zoom/Teams/phone calls and any other ways we intentionally gather to work together.

Examples of things you could affect to impact collaboration:

• What are the norms for communication and how do we get people's attention? Eg what changes must we make to free up attention for real collective work in real time.
• How do we improve our meetings culture - how do we think about meetings? how do we run meetings? how do we assess and improve meetings? Including how we collaborate remotely.
• How do we design and run the most important meetings/events that will dictate our success? Especially those that generate a lot of work or involve a lot of people or where the stakes are high.

Real example: With Accenture a few years ago we took a close look at meetings culture - and specifically how we could cut back on a culture of back-to-back meetings. This led to the Making Better Meetings toolkit which became the ICA-ATF accredited Facilitating Agile Collaboration course with Martin Kearns.

LAYER 6: Concepts and Capabilities

The ideas, norms, behaviours and skills that shape the culture of work

This is about how people behave and act and orientate. Work is encouraged and enabled by the right concepts and capabilities. This is how we show up as collaborative in this system.

Examples of things you could affect to impact collaboration:

• What behaviours do we need to contend with? (this could be through "values" or other mechanisms)
• What shared language or frameworks will help us (eg agile, design thinking, lets go model, etc)
• What competencies are important to grow or acquire?

Real example: We are currently embedding The Let's Go model into Ghirardelli Chocolate Company as a shared language for how projects and partnerships are going. At its most basic, it's five vital questions: Is there BELIEF in what we are doing? Do we have a good STRUCTURE in place? Have we got the right INVOLVEMENT? Are we making good PROGRESS?Are we investing enough in CARE?

Cultivating good collaboration

In writing this article, I've started to think of this framework like an onion, because it moves from the surface to the centre. From more hard/concrete/structural layers (workplaces, organizing structures) toward more malleable/abstract/behavioural layers (real time collaboration, concepts and capabilities). Like an onion that you eat, there is no difference in value between the layers - these are just different leverage points to design how your org collaborates.

Collaboration is cultivated through all of these layers. ie you collaborate in workplaces, that have organizing structures, where work is defined and then done, asynchronously, and in real time. To do that you need some concepts (agreements/rules/norms/frameworks) and capabilities (practices/skills) that shape how you do things.

Good organizational work must happen at all layers and probably change needs to happen on multiple layers to shift anything significant.

The best way to eat an onion is to chop it up

The point of an onion is not to separate the layers but to chop it up and cook it into a meal.

To mix metaphors - this framework lays out the ingredients, and the open WOW project will also need recipes. And then good org change work will need to ask the question: what is needed now? What are the small amount of good actions to make a difference in a particular org at a particular point in time? This framework adds some dimensions to that question:

• Which layers need more or less attention?
• Which layers are more or less possible to shift (politically or practically)?
• What is a lean mix of experiments we can run? So we can see immediate impact but also keep advocating for the deeper changes that we might need to campaign for, building a coalition of support.

Happy cooking.

R