By Ute Diversi and Robert Holmes
December 2023
This is the first in a three-part series in which we will cover:
- The growing trend toward collaboration as a business model
- The challenge with a process view of working together
- The necessity for bringing in the whole mind (self)
Introduction
The ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ was research done by Robert Axelrod in the early 1980s. It was really a study designed to examine effective choice and decision making and resulted in him publishing the ‘Evolution of Cooperation’ a few years later. Stress and threat of incarceration created context for cooperation. We know that cooperation tends to occur in situations of extreme difficulty – and often under time pressure. America responded collaboratively with allies to the events of 9/11, Christchurch rebuilt after the earthquakes in 2010-2011 and manufacturers innovated at speed in Ukraine’s response to the Russian invasion in 2022-2023.
Collaboration also occurs when enormous requirements or challenges are faced by a community trying to adapt or innovate – for example, the development of COVID-19 vaccines, the Human Genome project, the Large Hadron Collider and the international Kyoto Protocol.
What is collaboration?
It’s an English term derived from the Latin collaborare – meaning ‘working together’ or ‘to work with’. It has a nuanced meaning across cultures. In Singapore for example it usually means corruption or taking a back hander! The Institute for Collaborative Working (ICW UK) defines it as, “Business relationships formed by committed organisations to maximise joint performance for achievement of mutual objectives and creation of additional value”.
What does that mean practically? Supporting one another, acting and behaving as a team, communicating out loud and on purpose, trusting one another, paying attention to shared goals and objectives, involving others, focusing on adding value to everyone’s undertaking and keeping our mind open to alternatives and growth opportunities.
There is a significant uptick in large scale public private partnerships (PPPs) - the embedding of commercial and industrial teams into large utilities and state government apparatus and creating collaborations down through supply chains. Such collaborations reduce conflict and delays, enhances innovation and effectiveness of problem solving, enables continuous improvement, increases trust and the speed of transaction, and creates a 15-25% bottom line improvement.[1]
So, are PPPs, alliancing and collaboration the same thing? Even though there is an overlap in the thinking that there are mutual benefits, the answer is no, they are not the same. Partnerships are a legal way of sharing financial and legal liabilities. The State Government of NSW (Treasury) enters PPP as: “a long-term arrangement between the public and private sector for the development, delivery, operations, maintenance, and financing of service enabling public infrastructure. PPPs offer opportunities to improve services and achieve better value for money in the development, maintenance and operation of service-based infrastructure.”
One step closer to collaboration are Alliances. The Association of Strategic Alliance’s (ASAP) approach includes ISO 44001. A Strategic Alliance is an arrangement between 2 companies: “…that typically has broad and long-term impact on corporate performance and valuation, often formed to create a competitive advantage for the partners in their respective markets.” Like PPPs, Strategic Alliance is about improving efficiencies and commercial growth.
Yet, collaboration is so much more than that. It is about committed organisations – full of committed individuals – building strong business relationships, maximising joint performance, achieving mutual objectives and creating additional value for all partners. Collaboration as defined by ISO 44001 goes further. It is all about shared values, true synergy and creating real win-win outcomes through trusting relationships and the commitment to joint working collaboratively.
The growing trend toward collaboration
Over the last 15 years there has been a growing trend toward collaboration as a commercial model for standing up large projects. The need can arise in one of a number of ways:
- Smaller companies collaborate to gain a larger piece of work.
- Competitors working together to bring complimentary skills to a complex project.
- A company trying to get efficiency out of a supply chain.
- That same company wishing to collaborate with itself (one division to another).
This is a growing international trend. In the UK Lockheed Martin, Babcock, Leidos, BSI and Emcor; in Sweden Swanska; in Italy Leonardo; and in the Netherlands Royal BAM have publicly articulated their commitment to using collaborative principles. In the United States the USAF have funded ongoing research into the adoption of collaboration at the Haslam School of Management.[2] In the US and UK federal and state agencies are designing their contracting mechanisms – adding positive and future-focused language – to include elements of collaboration.
In Australia, there is a growing adoption of true collaboration as a contracting mechanism in the water sector (since 2016), the energy sector (since 2019), at least one large scale example in the road industry (Connect Sydney, 2021) and recent announcements from sections within the Department of Defence. Chris Deeble, DepSec for the Capability and Sustainment Group (CASG) recently spoke at a nXus People seminar in Canberra on collaborating with Defence[3]. Collaborative working was also central to the panel discussion at this year’s ICCOM & AIPM breakfast among the principles of best practice project management.[4]
Most contracts attempting to adopt collaboration as the fundamental way of doing business have attempted to adopt the principles laid out in the international standard for business collaboration, ISO 44001. That standard, based on an earlier relationship management model from the UK (11001), was designed by engineers and project managers who realised that win-win situations and value add required trusting relationships across the business enterprise. As one reads the ISO 44001 standard, based on the ISO 9001 architecture, you are struck with the logical flow, tangible outputs and a step-by-step approach to create a relationship management plan. It’s a great framework, with practical steps and stages. However – that very strength can be part of the problem when implementing it in an organisation.
“The most significant challenge for adopting collaborative working is to change traditional organisational cultures and behaviours to accept more cooperative ways of working.”
-David Hawkins, ICW UK
In the next article we will cover how taking up a standard only gets us halfway toward collaborating, and the barriers that exist to overcoming organisational resistance.
[1] Chakkol, M and Johnson, M (2015). Benefits realization from collaborative working, Warwick Business School.
[2] Publishing for example, “From Tragedy to Triumph: How the Minnesota Department of Transportation turned the I-35 bridge tragedy to triumph,” (2011).
[3] Cracking the Collaboration Code – The Rhetoric and Reality of Effective Teaming, 23 August, 2023. The Commonwealth Club, Canberra.
[4] International Project Management Day breakfast, National Press Club 2 November 2023
