Today, Cranky Middle Manager Wayne Turmel talks to Morten Hansen about his book Collaboration- when should we collaborate, how do we collaborate and when should we not bother? Also we look at the Underground Railroad as a model to aspire to and there’s still time to sign up
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Morten Hansen looking like the happiest Norwegian ever.
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Show Notes
0:00 Welcome to the show. Today we’re talking about collaboration and overcoming silos- and when we shouldn’t bother. Something you haven’t heard before I’m sure. We dedicate this show to one of history’s great collaborations, The Underground Railroad. Stop whining about slow bandwidth and just get on with it….
2:55 The quote of the week is from Oliver Wendell Holmes- ideas often work best when transplanted from brain to brain… I just hope you have more luck with that tranplant than I had with The Duchess’ geraniums.
3:45 Welcome Dr Morten Hansen. What the heck is collaboration anyway? It’s to work across boundaries to achieve goals and results. That means sometimes it’s the right thing to do and sometimes you shouldn’t do it. Research shows sometimes you’re worse off playing nicely.
6:11 Does collaboration always get better results? Nope. There are three rules for deciding when to collaborate:
Be very picky
Identify the barriers to collaboration
Put in place a stated, explicit, compelling common goal
9:19 How do you quantify the opportunity to collaborate and how do you have the conversation without sounding like you’re not a team player? This is an important discussion if you want to keep your life your own.
13:30 There are two barriers to collaboration- willingness and ability. Mostly we have the ability which means people are inventing reasons not to collaborate.
18:35 We don’t spend nearly enough time on setting long-term goals and making them explicit. Who does what and why would they bother? Set a goal, whether it’s landing a man on the moon or just getting that %@%%ing code finished.
20:00 One of the really great concepts in the book is “T-Shaped” management…that a manager needs to be both expert in their niche as well as able to span departments and functions well. Me, I’m a butterfly..
…. but if that’s how you’re measured, that’s what’s going to happen. How about asking the other teams what they’re working on so you know what’s working against your project?
Morten’s Resources
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