Manage to Engage

CHAPTER 9The Strength in Numbers Is Collaboration

If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far go together.

—African Proverb

What do Google, eBay, Apple, Intel, Twitter, HP, Microsoft, Ben & Jerry's, Procter & Gamble, and Yahoo have in common? All were born of collaboration. Two people came together to collaborate, they brought yet more people inside the collaboration, and then grew to be highly successful firms of their times.

In a healthy, collaborative environment, the workplace becomes a network of alliances working toward a common purpose – where everyone is giving their best to succeed. If one fails, everyone fails. More importantly, everyone chips in to help them get up: success is a group endeavor. Successful collaboration sees people come together naturally to achieve results. Like any business, it's a team sport.

Collaboration is hardly a novel concept – we understand the intent and intellectually we know the advantages. So how is it that at work, collaboration can still fail? It's not a lack of understanding the common sense benefits? No. Failed or ineffective collaborations tend to be very human ones: politics, power/territory battles, ignorance, or knowledge gaps, all of which need to be addressed. Sometimes, it's the fear that an individual will lose their stardom.

Collaboration reminds us, in the words of Margaret Heffernan, to “forget the pecking order.”¹ In her funny yet meaningful TED Talk of the same name, Margaret warns us against super chickens ...