Agile Innovation: The Revolutionary Approach to Accelerate Success, Inspire Engagement, and Ignite Creativity by Langdon Morris & Moses Ma & Po Chi Wu

Author:Langdon Morris & Moses Ma & Po Chi Wu [Morris, Langdon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781118954201
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-08-27T14:00:00+00:00

Facilitating and Managing Collaboration

Self-organizing teams are, by definition, proficient at collaboration. The factors that support effective collaboration include choice, trust and respect, an open flow of information, honest debate, active participation in decision making, interaction, and accountability.

Choice

People are most effective when they have choice about the work they do. Most of us do not expect or require total control or autonomy, but we also don't work well when we lack structure. Consequently, proficient leaders collaborate with their colleagues to identify the right projects, roles, and responsibilities that meet the needs of the organization and the individual. During times of crisis, of course, we all pitch in and do whatever's needed, as we saw in the short case study on Southwest Airlines' 10-minute turn, but during less intense periods we like to have some say in what's expected of us.

Trust and Respect

Trust and respect are, of course, very closely linked, and people are simply not inclined to respect those they don't trust, and vice versa. (This is another reason that having the wrong people on a team can have such a detrimental effect—lack of respect degrades trust, and a downward spiral ensues.)

“Trust is the confidence among team members that their peers' intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group,” says Patrick Lencioni in his very interesting study of team dynamics.1 Trust enables team members to share their half-baked ideas without fear of ridicule, and because they're innovation pros, they also know that the greatest ideas often began as half-baked ones.

Respect comes from understanding other people's roles in a project and recognizing their competence to fulfill those roles. Engineers who understand how product marketing contributes to project success, and product marketing people who acknowledge engineering's essential contribution to product design and manufacturing (to take two engineering roles) will be more effective team contributors because they will naturally be inclined to rely on the expertise of their teammates.

Open Flow

Complex systems, such as large project organizations, are characterized by interaction and information flow. Too little coordination and information can result in teams that diverge too far, making integration a nightmare. Too much coordination and information flow, on the other hand, can mire teams in constant meetings and lead quickly to information overload.

In our experience, it's much better to create project systems based on information pull rather than information push. There should be an abundance of information available to each individual and to the team as a whole, but most of it should reside in a well-organized repository that people can browse, search as they require, and retrieve from as needed. The amount that is pushed out in the form of instructions, requirements, and announcements should be minimized.

Another dimension of openness is a key factor in the success of the idea collection process. As described earlier, the development of a widespread innovation culture means that people throughout the organization are encouraged to share their ideas whenever they arise. Sharing ideas frequently occurs via an idea portal of some kind, an online submission tool.

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