If the key to unlocking innovation is collaboration, then the questions leaders face is, “How do I get my people to do it?”
At OrgHealth, we often go back to Peter Senge’s The Fifth Disciple: “The faster we go, the slower we need to be.” If you think of organizational health as the measure of your company’s ability to achieve effective long-term results, as is evidenced by the happiness and engagement of your client/customers and your workforce alike, it should be acknowledged that this stuff is a moving target. In the same way that the market for the once-smash-hit Razr flip-phone has dwindled out as newer technologies showed consumers what they could expect in a phone, the open-floor office was the popular solution everyone wanted in that same timeframe, and today’s workforce doesn’t even want to be in the same building five days a week. What people used to be happy with changes. And that’s not wrong! But it requires us as leaders to keep a constant pulse on the reality our people are living in.
Getting our people working together well depends on us understanding our people. This is Collaborative Culture, the bedrock of organizational health, and it may not be what you “signed up for” as your job—it may even feel backwards to your instincts—but it is what enables people to work together, accomplish greatness, and still feel like whole, fully realized individuals.
Remember, collaboration isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s a must. And culture happens whether you create it or not. So… intentionality around creating that environment is simply a part of the job.
What Is Collaborative Culture?
What does a Collaborative Culture look like? It’s walking into work, and encountering people who want to be there, who feel energized by their contributions. It’s an environment in which information flows freely, and efficiently, without being inhibited by pervasive, and erosive, silencing behaviours. It’s a culture in which people feel safe to have ideas, present constructive feedback (especially to senior team members), offer resources and time across teams and departments willingly, and ask for help without fear that it will make them seem “weak.”
Sounds good, doesn’t it? It is, and that’s why Collaborative Culture is at the core of the OrgHealth Ascent Model. Every other piece of organizational health extends from this one. You’ll notice it is the upside down triangle because it often feels backwards, and can take some work to get going. But it is absolutely vital to Leadership Accountability, Strategic Momentum, and Talent Magnetism. For example, your strategy will not work if your people are not motivated and don’t communicate. They won’t trust their leaders if there isn’t authenticity from the top-down. Reality: People quit all the time because of how they are being treated—or how they feel they are being treated. Collaborative Culture is in the middle for a reason: it holds all the elements of organizational health together.
Key Elements of Collaborative Culture
Even if we know and recognize that Collaborative Culture is important, what do you do in real life? Let’s start with three key pieces to the Collaborative Culture puzzle:
1. Psychological Safety
Safety initiatives work. Thanks to advances in workplace safety, worker deaths in the US dropped from 38/day in 1970 to 13/day in 2020. During the same timeframe, injuries and illnesses declined from 10.9% to 2.9%. Unfortunately, there is far greater resistance to accepting that mental health struggles are real (and sometimes just as dangerous), and to taking action to ensure not only physical safety but psychological safety.
Amy Edmonson is a pioneer in this space; in her TED Talk exploration of building a psychologically safe workplace, she defines the term as a “belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.”
As the Harvard Business School professor and author says, “It turns out, no one wakes up in the morning and jumps out of bed because they can’t wait to get to work today to look ignorant, incompetent, intrusive, or negative.” And it’s easy. Don’t want to look ignorant? Don’t ask questions. Don’t want to appear incompetent? Don’t admit to mistakes or show “weakness.” Don’t want to seem intrusive? Don’t offer ideas. Don’t want to come across as negative? Don’t buck the status quo.
Don’t want to grow and innovate? Don’t build a culture where people feel psychologically safe. But if you are interested and ready to build that culture, it has to (one more time for those in the back: has to) be modeled and embraced by the most senior leadership. If there isn’t collaboration there, it won’t be anywhere. And keep your eyes open for those who might be leaders, even if untitled, in departments and teams who are modeling and making safe spaces. Follow their lead, learn from them, and celebrate their work. It’s invaluable.
2. Collective Wins
“You need to compete to be competitive.” This is a myth (and a corrosive one at that). Competition typically divides a company internally whereas collaboration allows diverse people to work together to achieve great things. You can be competitive in the marketplace and foster a Collaborative Culture. In fact, that may be the only sustainable way.
A strong Collaborative Culture recognizes and celebrates successes, and also efforts and learning on an individual and team level. When your goals and mission are clear (think Strategic Momentum), winning together feels good. It encourages us to identify and notice different contributions each person gives towards the goal. And as we do that, we can more easily see, and show, value for those folks. We start to realize that we can approach new people when we’re ideating or problem-solving, and communication will flow far more productively.
Intentionality is key to building a culture that actively looks for ways for everyone to win together. When it’s real, you’ll see people picking up balls before they are dropped, initiating connections and opportunities, getting help before an implosion, and hitting targets before the schedule demands it.
3. Lived Values
Here’s the deal: Those posters on the wall espousing your values don’t make people feel safe. Until the values are lived out, those are just paper—and sometimes they actually illuminate how untrue those sentiments are! Collective wins don’t feel exciting just because you say they should. As a leader, it’s time to go beyond the aspirational. What is your company really about? What type of environment are you committed to creating and nurturing?
Keep those values at the forefront, and keep measuring your own behaviour against them. It might be hard to recognize inconsistencies between your actions and your values. But if you constantly lament, “If only they got to know me, they’d realize…” then you have an opportunity to do some work here. People respond to what they perceive; either you’re not vulnerably expressing your inner self in ways people are able to see, or you’re not seeing your own inconsistencies (it’s usually both). You have a chance to get curious about how to make the values real. There are many ways to start: Hire for those values. Make decisions by those values. Plan strategy from them. They must be real for everyone, not just for the poster on the wall.
Learn and Unlearn
In the Western world, our business cultures tend to reward certain actions and traits. While this is changing, a lot of us will need to unlearn behaviours and challenge our own value systems in order to build a Collaborative Culture within our organizations. This is big and it’s challenging. Really. But the workforce is demanding it, and we are past the time where it’s acceptable to simply ignore it. The faster you want to go, the slower you need to be—so plan, set your intentions, commit, and above all, start. Consider sharing this article and these ideas with your team—the best Collaborative Culture starts with collaboration.
