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During my management career there was one reason above all others why large complex projects either didn’t get done, or took longer to complete than they should.
It had nothing to do with the ability of our managers. It wasn’t their experience or work ethic or diligence. It had nothing to do with the quality of our employees, who were hard-working and capable. No, it was something more fundamental.
It was collaboration (or lack thereof).
One key piece of solving the challenging puzzle of management is recognizing that very little gets accomplished in business without the support of other people. Often many other people.
In short, collaboration. The basic ability to work together in a constructive, productive way.
How many times in my years in business did I see big projects go off track because of turf battles, competing fiefdoms, personalities that clashed… or some other similar brand of dysfunctional corporate behavior? Let’s just say way more than a few.
All of these problems had one thing in common: They were needless. They could easily have been prevented by managers who placed a high priority on working closely and constructively together.
A core element of successful management is setting an example that others want, and find easy, to follow. Working well and productively with others is too often a neglected executive trait.
A Harvard Business Review article I recently read, “Collaborate Across Teams, Silos, Even Companies,” by Rebecca Newton, provides a number of helpful suggestions for managers who want to boost their collaborative EQ. The one I liked best was this thought: “As with negotiations and conflict resolution, one of the most important keys to successful collaborative leadership is focusing on interests rather than positions.” How true. In my own experience, when collaboration would go awry, managers were usually ignoring the clear common interests that they had (we were all of course ultimately on the same team) and were narrowly focused on their personal, departmental or divisional concerns. These intramural conflicts were marked by self-interest over company interest.
While this may seem obvious, I suspect most people who’ve spent a good amount of time around sizable organizations have this seen this dynamic at play. As I often say about management, just because something is common sense doesn’t mean it’s commonly practiced.
So what can managers do to encourage collaboration and help break a cycle of dysfunctional behavior?
One practical tactical way to move the “teamplay needle” in the right direction is to be sure that both informal and formal expectations are, as an old boss of mine used to say, “clear as a mountain crick.” For managers of managers, make sure the goal of collaboration for their direct reports is easily and widely understood.
A solid start is to build it prominently into job objectives.
Make sure managers realize that it’s one of the key attributes their own performance will be evaluated on.
Make sure they realize that displays of too much personal interest and too little company interest can adversely effect bonus and income.
Adverse effects on income have a way of quickly getting people’s attention.
This article first appeared at Forbes.com.
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Victor is author of The Type B Manager: Leading Successfully in a Type A World.
