Almost all organizations recognize the need to break down silos and become effective collaborators, both within the organization and across company boundaries. Consultant Elizabeth Lank's new book Collaborative Advantage points the way to creating “collaboration systems”—work teams, team-based organizations, and the collaborative organization—as well as increasing profits and building hard-to-duplicate competitive advantage.
The author begins by laying out the reasons why today's fast-changing, network-connected world demands that organizations be effective collaborators. No big news here. But collaboration doesn't happen by simply throwing a switch. Instead, organizations must build a culture that accepts shared responsibility, authority, and accountability for results. She also introduces the concept of “collaborative capital,” which “represents who we know and how well we work together.” (The term is similar to intellectual capital, which she defines as what we know and how well we use it. Like IC, CC is a new asset for the organization.)
The book details the tools, structures, roles, and techniques that organizational leaders must employ to create a collaboration system built around teams. Any executive pondering the fundamentals of creating a collaborative work environment would do well to study these pages.
The best news is that organizations that learn to collaborate aren't just being more productive and innovative; they are creating competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate, says Lank. “The collaborative network of relationships within an organization or across its boundaries with customers, suppliers, and partners cannot be bought, copied, or stolen; it must be created from scratch in competing organizations.”
Lank's book contains frequent citations of papers and other publications from academia, but her writing is practical. And there are plenty of case studies to consider. One example: Shenandoah Life Insurance increased application processing by 50 percent with 10 percent fewer workers after replacing its traditional processing area with “multifunctional work cells.”
In addition to her consulting work, Lank is a visiting lecturer at Henley Management College, INSEAD, London Business School, and the U.K. Cabinet Office Top Management Program.
- Sean Silverthorne