Cooperation vs. Collaboration
I was working for a small company that was acquired a few years ago. Soon after the acquisition was finalized, our senior VP invited his new boss to come visit us and meet with some of the leaders of our organization. I was invited to that meeting and introduced as someone who had been leading the agile transformation within our group. I remember shaking this guys hand and thinking he was probably some sort of ex-college football player. He was enormous, sporting a giant smile, and he did what he could to set us all at ease. He exuded confidence and power. After all, he was an exec with a fortune 10 company.
We were all given a chance to ask him questions. I wasn’t feeling very smart at all that day. In fact I was a little intimidated if the truth be told. So I asked what I thought was a pretty lame, if harmless question, “How can you help to promote collaboration between our two groups?” Like I said, weak stuff. His answer was priceless,”Collaboration? Isn’t that what they shot people for in World War II?”
Right then, I knew I was in for a rough ride.
I’ve been reading a book by Yves Morieux and Peter Tollman called “Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexity without Getting Complicated.” Yves Morieux first caught my attention in Ted Talk that he gave a few years ago. In that talk he made a compelling case for the over-complexity of today’s large organizations. His argument was that you needed fewer rules and constraints, not more, in order to improve. It turns out, he is speaking from experience. He has tried his approach out with multiple European organizations with some success apparently.
One of the things that he emphasizes early on is the importance of establishing and reinforcing cooperation rather than collaboration. Collaboration is good, he argues, but it’s too limited in scope. It can mean a little as we talked together, but perhaps didn’t actually do much. Cooperation, he argues, implies that at least one side had to give up something, and actually accomplish some work together. So he sees cooperation as a stronger statement than collaboration. Perhaps it is.
Do they shoot people for cooperation?