Hudson’s Collaborations
Hudson, Lucian The enabling state: collaborating for success Foreign & Commonwealth Office October 2009
Summary
This report is both a comprehensive account of what makes for effective collaboration and partnership between and within organizations, and a contribution to the debate about how at a time of pressure on resources, governments, business and NGOs can do better for less. Collaboration is a simple idea, yet it is often much more difficult in practice.
Collaboration begets collaboration. There is a proverb used in reconciliation efforts in Rwanda: “to go fast, walk alone; to go far, walk together”. In an interconnected world, it gives us more choice in how we tackle apparently intractable challenges because it tries to tap more of the ideas, aspirations and concerns that are critical to successful delivery. In so doing, it builds legitimacy and commitment, and generates options. Whether the initiative begins at the top or on the front line, collaboration makes it possible to weave together different contributions. Power comes through effective interaction rather than from who operates which lever. The secret of effective leadership is to use one’s strengths while not crowding out the strengths of other people and to create the conditions in which responsibility and credit are shared.
Introduction
Why Collaborate?
Such collaborative approaches will also need a live focus on issues of power and values and intentions. Adam Smith, when expounding the notion of “the invisible hand of the market”, warns us that unequal or unexpressed power issues can distort the outcomes we desire. We must be alert to what our collaboration is for. Complexity thinking emphasises that what is there will play itself out. Collaboration is influenced as much by what is not expressed as well as what is; and choosing to disconnect or control will still play its part in the process, whether
we intend it or not.
Charting a course for collaborative entrepreneurs
The best way to plan for uncertainty is to increase one’s options. Collaboration creates additional possibilities whether the problem is “tame” (that is, open to a solution) or “wicked” (not easily lending itself to a solution). But collaborations will not generate possibilities unless the group can function as a group rather than as a vehicle for the blind implementation of one set of interests.
Chapter 1: Understanding collaboration
Collaboration is more than negotiation
Collaborations are not usually one-off settlements. Collaboration is an integration of common purpose, participation, resources,teamwork and group dynamics — dealing at its most complex with multiple issues, multiple parties and at multiple levels. They are dynamic, responding to emerging changes over time. At their best, they become more effective in response to change. This means not only tolerating but embracing complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity.
Empathy and understanding the other’s perspective
Because collaboration has a high element of uncertainty to it, in my view it is prudent to increase one’s options and show both cognitive and compassionate empathy. To engage effectively requires both engagement with the issues and engagement with others. To be authentic, that engagement must be based on trying to connect with the other’s needs, interests and values. But connection does not imply agreement.
Globalisation
Globalisation produces complexity and uncertainty, challenging boundaries that may be economic, political or cultural. We can see the possibility of tackling common challenges and exploring common opportunities; yet we are also more aware of how deep the differences are. These we might choose to ignore, overcome or accept and even appreciate. Collaboration can be both a symptom of complexity and a way of working though difference. Uncertainty may make us more vigilant about whom we choose to trust or do business with. But this vigilance also obliges us to look as much for the opportunity as for the threat. And because we cannot control even most of the consequences, we have no option but to work with others. In stable environments, we can occupy ground, compete for it, reach accommodation with our competitors or destroy them. With the growth of globalisation, the world is changing at such a pace that it is more likely that we will have to work together. If the focus of organizations becomes what happens when they interact, collaboration will effectively become their centre of gravity.
Chapter 2: Effective collaboration
3. Managing risk
If leadership is about the mingling of reality and possibility, it must be about risk taking. Not just calculated risks, but taking risks in the absence of information; or despite, rather than because of, the information available. Unless this barrier is crossed, risk is domesticated rather than seen for what it is: wild and uncertain. The risks that collaborations run cannot be mitigated by a tick-box exercise in judging risk on the basis of past experience alone or by the risks being made somebody else’s problem. Contingency planning exercises are useful — but not if they give false comfort.
4. Managing complexity and other challenges
The final quarter of challenges, complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and difference can produce a cacophony when not understood or appreciated. How then to turn the noise into mu[1]sic? The default is to live with them or ignore them. The better way is to work with them, and get the best from them.
Einstein once said, “Keep it simple — but not [too simple]”. Making a collaboration work is about getting the mix right between planning and adapting; controlling and giving discretion; giving direction (pushing) as well as helping out as others take the lead (pulling); orchestrating and maintaining alignment of interests and efforts; yet “letting a thousand flowers bloom.” It is like navigating a ship, working with both external changes (steady or turbulent waters) and internal ones (if rebuilding a ship at sea, one aims to replace the planks without losing direction or sinking).
Chapter 3: Collaboration and its impact on organizations
Collaborations change the way that people relate to one another, and to the environment in which they operate. The collaboration shapes the participants and the participants shape the collaboration. If a collaboration gets stuck, this is because it is not adapting to the challenges of the wider environment, not dealing with its own internal tensions or not demonstrating that its response is the best way to tackle the problem.
1. Collaboration and crisis
Crisis provides a way of rethinking the purpose and design of an organization. I am defining “crisis” for this purpose as a situation that is likely to get much worse unless immediate and decisive action is taken.
Applying the collaborative partnerships model
President John F. Kennedy once famously remarked that the word “crisis” in Mandarin is made up of two parts: “danger” and “opportunity”. Working with the QinetiQ team at Malvern and others, I have designed a way in which collaboration can be used as a way of adapting to changing environments — and, in particular, to an emerging crisis.
[This next part is slightly edited to incorporate the appendix to which it refers.]
We can see the value of collaboration if we draw a graph of a growing crisis plotted against time. [For which see the paper.] It looks something like the letter N — rising [‘indicator value’] first, then starting to dip, falling and finally resuming its climb (see Appendix:[below]).
The graph shows the different environments in which collaboration can occur, moving from steady or
turbulent and, ideally, back to steady again. Zone 1 [‘a steady environment’] shows a steady rise [where “things are going well, and we can always do better” and collaboration is seen as complementary to the main focus of organization]. After approaching a ceiling [(zone 2 ‘uncertain’) where “things look good but it doesn’t feel good” and collaboration is even more of an option], the graph falls in zone 3 [‘crisis: a turbulent environment’ where “things are going wrong, and unless decisive action is taken they will get worse” collaboration is essential] before [hopefully] recovering in zone 4 [‘a possible new steady state’ where “things are better, everything feels back to normal but can we count on that?” and collaboration may increasingly be seen as optional.]
[Thus as] the crisis becomes greater, collaboration becomes ever more necessary. By understanding what stage an organization has reached, its leadership teams are better able to plan and time their responses.
The graph provides for a range of options for organizations emerging from zone 3, depending on the choices they took along the path from zone 2.
For policy-makers and managers, the challenge is to respond early enough to signs that things are deteriorating, mitigating the crisis by taking joint action with others. By collaborating, their joint action will have greater impact. Taking the right decisions ahead of a trend will give organizations an advantage over those that do not act.
2. Collaboration and organization culture
Crisis, Collaboration and Decision-Making
This provides a useful characterisation of the above four zones, together with much other advice drawing on experience of UK crisis management in the early 2000s, of which there was much.
Chapter 4: Social collaboration: how can it work
1. The role of Government
Combined teamwork makes the difference. Other roles exist for all actors, including the citizen, and we miss opportunities to exploit the potential of collaboration if we do not go in with what Kant called this “enlarged mentality”, achieved by looking at problems from the point of view of all concerned before reaching a judgment.
Although he is best known for The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote in The Theory of Moral Sentiments: “Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, they never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations.” (pp 3-4).
Chapter 5: Collaboration: and its implementation
“Wonder also means being able to see one’s own position, assumptions, perspectives as strange, because it has been put in relation to others. Respective listening thus involves attentive and interested questioning. But answers are always gifts. The transcendence of the other person always means that she can remain silent, or tell only part of her story, for her own reasons.”
Iris Maria Young, “Asymmetric Reciprocity” (taken from Ronald Beiner and Jennifer Nedelsky,
Judgment, Imagination and Politics: Themes from Kant and Arendt (2001) p223).
Defining problems and appropriate leadership response
A wicked problem is complex, rather than just complicated. It is often intractable with no unilinear solution. There is no stopping-point. It is novel, any apparent solution often generates other problems and there is no right or wrong answer, merely better or worse alternatives. There is a huge degree of uncertainty involved and it is associated with leadership. The leader’s role with a wicked problem is to ask the right questions rather than provide the right answers because the answers may not be self-evident and will require a collaborative process to make any kind of progress.
Collaboration: using new tools of policy analysis
Professor Peter Allen and Dr. Jean Boulton at the Cranfield School of Management are leading efforts to bridge complexity science and planning in conditions of uncertainty. Complexity science presents a different worldview about the way the world is and therefore how we have to behave. The traditional ‘scientific, ‘professional’ worldview is that the world is predictable and controllable – and therefore we are safe. Complexity science presents a view of the world as inter-connected, prone to shifts in regime, not entirely predictable, new things can emerge. This requires a big shift emotionally for people and takes away a sort of safety and security.
4. Conclusion
Collaboration is the right idea for our times. Systemic problems need collective and concerted action by different actors participating increasingly as equals and committed to working in long-term relationships across organizational and other boundaries. Collaboration does not offer magic solutions, and is often tough-going. But if done for the right reasons and in the right way, it can open up possibilities. It builds on a commitment to engage with others by agreeing to work with them.
… The growing global role of the East only serves to remind many in the West how much many Asian cultures are built on the importance of relationships and the value put on trust and reciprocity.
Most of our most intractable problems require greater collaboration. Where collaboration is most difficult, it is often most necessary …
What makes collaboration so challenging yet potentially so rewarding is that it can help redefine not only our interests, but also change our perspective, and even our position. One of the more challenging lessons is that sometimes the best way to influence is to let oneself be influenced. If we want more of a dialogue, we have to be prepared not just to listen but to want to listen and to accept the limits of engagement. Just as we cannot give way on an issue, others will not. Yet we can still work on the relationship and even deepen it, whether we agree or disagree.
My Comments
This report emphasises the importance of considering ‘complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity.’ It commends the thinking on complexity of Peter Allen and his associates, which was subsequently discussed by them at length in their book ‘embracing complexity‘. This has a useful discussion of mathematical modelling, ’emergence’ and ‘tipping points’. It has a fleeting reference to Turing’s seminal work on morphogenesis, but otherwise confines itself to models of ‘structural change’ as if one was modelling situations that had conventional structures that changed, which I think one should at least be uncertain of, particularly where collaborations are concerned.
More to follow.
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