A collaborative framework for your organisation — why and how?

Part 2: guest blog by Jill Clancy, collaboration, change and coaching expert and Founder of Jill Clancy Ltd.

Before setting out on developing yet another form of management system or framework, organisations need to really understand why they want to build great collaborative relationships — what are their business drivers for doing it? Is it purely increased profit? Or reduced cost? Or more interesting work? Or more guaranteed work? Or reducing staff turnover? Or greater employee engagement? Or the ability to be more innovative or create more value? Or all of these?

Once you understand why, think about who you want to work collaboratively with? It won’t be all your ‘partners’ — collaborative working takes investment (time as a minimum) so make sure you pick those relationships that are going to help you deliver your business drivers — and don’t forget that some of those relationships may be internal to your organisation, especially if you are spread over a number of divisions, sites, countries, etc. These relationships are unlikely to be your stationery supplier!

After the why and who then comes the how.

You may already have a management system, that thing that says how you work, day to day. And the thing that most people don’t really think about until they need to do something they do rarely and need reminding about. If so, tweaking it to fit some additional things for collaboration is relatively simple. And there is even a British Standard to help you think about it in construction— BS11000 (soon to become ISO11000). As well as BS11000 there are other tools to help you identify and manage your relationships including many different forms of digital technology — you may already have a CRM system in place, or a system that connects your workforce with each other and other relationships, such as ProFinda.

Your collaborative framework needs to explain what it is that you need to do to build great relationships — from before you have won the work, through the complete lifecycle — successful and sustainable relationships are usually longer term. Most organisations have some kind of key account management or business development processes — how you nurture those clients you love to work with. It could be that you build on what you do to improve those, and to make sure that they are not reliant on any one person in your organisation (just in case they are no longer with you — and the relationship goes with them!).

At one organisation we were implementing the Miller Heiman sales process using Gold and Blue Sheets so we built the collaborative framework around this process — not inventing something new. The collaborative framework, from identifying and building those critical relationships, through bidding and winning work, to mobilisation and delivery including managing the exit was overlaid on the existing management system with a few minor additions.

The words joint and shared are key to collaboration. You can’t do it on your own. And a key element to making relationships work is to build a joint vision, with shared objectives, creating them together, and getting as many people as possible involved — which can be done using digital technology combined with group and team events. It means you focus on those things you are doing together and ensure progress is being made, or take action when needed. One way to bringing these together is creating a Collaborative Charter and this has been very successful in a number of significant projects within Rail. Publishing the Charter, putting it up on notice boards, on shared websites, on the smartphones, tablets and other devices used on site means that the workforce has a constant reminder of what they are jointly trying to achieve.

If you liked my blog, please click the little green heart below. Also — if you want to talk more about collaboration and the future of work — I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at: jill@jillclancy.co.uk.