Lynda Gratton on cooperation and collaboration

Cooperation is something that happens when lots of different things are done right. Basically, it's about the way that an organisational culture is designed to create goodwill. It's about the way that the practices and processes are developed, so there is a whole discipline around that which is about the way that people learn habits as individuals.

The reason I'm working on this is that I believe that as knowledge development intensifies, and as you've got to be much smarter about being innovative, so old-style competition becomes too slow, too bureaucratic, and too uninteresting. As a consequence of that, organisations will need to become more cooperative and they will need to develop higher collaborative skills.

Competition was great when the world was simple, and all you had to do was to become the best as an individual. Most innovation these days is created by teams of people working together. In fact, there is no innovation that we can find, in the last 50 years, that's been about individuals. It's always been about teams. So, innovation now comes from working in teams.

The real trick with cooperation is to understand that the greatest amount of innovation and new ideas comes from people who work together in very distributed networks. They're working across time zones, and so on.

Working effectively in these sorts of projects is really complicated. To succeed you just can't be competitive, because if you are then the whole process breaks down. If you don't create sufficient goodwill, then the relationships become very transactional. Once that happens, then you have to get lawyers involved, and everything just slows down. So, if you want to be fast and fleet of foot, you have to build cooperation. That's a completely different imperative to 50 years ago.

What I've done is distinguish between what I call cooperative hotspots and cooperative cold spots. Cooperative hotspots are places where cooperation flourishes.

In our research we've identified some of those, so the question is what drives cooperative hotspots? What is it that organisations need to do to create places where they have cooperation which is capable of building innovation, capable of building knowledge, capable of building initiatives? That's the fundamental question of the whole research.

Well, BP has peer groups, for example. The way that BP has developed a structure that enables them to move ideas around the organisation is an example. It has created a big horizontal hotspot in BP. The way that Nokia manages the development of its new products creates a cooperation hotspot. The way that Goldman Sachs puts its partners together to serve clients is a cooperative hotspot.

So, the question I'm asking is what is it that these organisations do to develop that and what can other organisations learn from that?

Not necessarily. In fact, there has been a lot research done on cooperation across companies. My basic argument is that cooperation is important wherever the boundaries are located. So one of the papers that we're writing is a paper on boundaries - and that boundary could simply be between you and somebody in another function. Or it could be between you and somebody in another company.

As organisations become more diffuse, so the boundaries become more commonplace, and of course, more complex. So, what I'm arguing is that the practices, the processes and the habits which I believe to be critical are important wherever the boundary is located.

Yes, one of my arguments is that creating an organisation of goodwill is largely about stopping doing things.

In particular, it is about stopping recruiting people who are very assertive and aggressive, and who are going to destroy those norms. It is also about stopping reward systems that reinforce competitive behaviour and prevent the necessary socialisation processes.

The first thing that you notice is that organisations which are cooperative have transformed quite a lot of what you might call transactional processes into relational processes. So that's one thing. The second thing is, just on an individual basis, what you find is that individuals in cooperative hotspots are personally better at cooperating. They've got the habits of cooperation.

Now, some of those were habits they got because they watched other people. Some of those are habits that they were friends, and some of them were habits because they were selected to have those habits.

So, for example, at Goldman Sachs, a massive amount of the selection process that goes on to get into Goldman Sachs isn't really around how clever you are - because everybody they interview is already clever – rather, it's about whether you're prepared to cooperate with other people in Goldman Sachs.

So the habits are really important, and the creation of collaborative tests is really difficult. It's really difficult to get that right because you have to get the pacing right, you have to get the sequencing right. So, we've also found that there's a set of practices and processes associated with that.

The basic argument is that we've spent hundreds of years perfecting the language, practices and processes of competition and we now have to start creating a language, a set of practices and a set of processes about being cooperative. And actually, it turns out that cooperation is more difficult that competition. It's not the easy way out. It's actually really difficult to get right.

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• Dear Lynda,

  I agree that cooperation and relationship skills are essential for successful cross boundary/cross functional organisational collaboration, and as you say, this will require the development of higher collaborative skills. I am currently doing my masters research on 'Negotiation training as a catalyst for collaborative enterprise'; recognising that Negotiation skills will become one of the key competencies of the modern organisation. It appears that advanced Negotiation skills are essential for the Collaborative Tacticians, Boundary Spanners and Leaders to facilitate the development of collaborative networks and at least basic negotiation skills for organisational members to develop and maintain effective working relationships. Many collaborative enterprises identify 'opportunities, ignite, harness and drawn upon the energy of 'hotspots until the fire goes out, and as such their organisational life is often temporal in nature and this form of organising requires the swift development of group processes and importantly, trust. I am exploring the potential of intensive negotiation training (experential learning) to develop collaborative competencies of trust and relationship building, commitment to a common purpose, negotiation of roles, responsibilities, creating value through diversity, conflict management etc. Where do you consider the role of negotiation would fit amongs the essential elements of cooperative hotpspots?

  Peter Spence, Australia

• In contrast to Porter's competitive strategies of the 80's for, both within a firm and outside. There is 'shrink' in the business activities of the world in this chaodic economic environment. The battle field for 'elephants' winning over the the 'ants' is slowly fading. The winner takes strategies does not prevail anymore. This is because of the many reasons such as innovation, social environment etc..compelling to exploit all expertise from all the facets of life. This needs co-operation. But accompanied by collaboration. The two phenomenons require organisations focus if they want to sustain business in this millenium of technology explosion.

  T

  Thando

• Dear Lynda,

  This article is very impressive. I am doing a research study for Masters degree on strategies of collaboration and cooperation for business development. My research examines the link between cooperative and collaborative strategies and business to find a positive correlation and the role these strategies play in business development. I will greatly appreciate reading some of your articles or the book you wrote on this topic.

  Regards, Thando.

  Thando