From good to great: the key to successful collaboration.

Cross-functional and multi-disciplinary collaboration are almost universally viewed as a good thing, a necessary thing in a fast-changing world with inter-related, complex problems.

Organisations are often advised to break down silos, transcend boundaries, and work together in cross-unit teams in order to innovate, solve complex problems, and create bigger impact.

In the business world, collaboration is increasingly viewed as a strategic imperative to gain a competitive advantage, and many companies invest a lot of time and resources into creating the conditions for cross-functional collaboration. These include promoting collaboration as a company value, providing open physical spaces to encourage communication between teams, investing in technology, monetary incentives, etc.

The unfulfilled potential of cross-functional collaboration

Unfortunately, these efforts often do not produce the outstanding outcomes expected.

Research has consistently shown that cross-functional teams underperform. One study estimated that 75% of cross-functional teams fail in multiple areas, including (among others) meeting client expectations and maintaining alignment with their company’s corporate goals.

There is also an additional, often overlooked cost to collaboration: people become overwhelmed with the demands of collaborative work: excessive goals set by too many external stakeholders, misaligned or competing priorities, and too many concurrent collaborative initiatives. Collaborative work can be messy, political, and frustrating.

For many organisations, this translates into wasted resources, increased costs, and importantly, in the persistence of complex problems despite well-intended efforts to solve them.

 Why traditional models for collaboration fail

Ineffective collaboration is often thought of as the result of unclear goals, poor communication, siloed thinking and lack of trust and psychological safety.

All these things matter, a lot, but there is one key factor that is massively overlooked and that can catalyse effective and successful collaboration.

Often, the assumption is that, bringing a group of different people together and identifying a shared goal is enough for collaboration to succeed.

That is not always the case. It is not the case when…

…each person assumes that barriers to success are other people’s behaviours or decisions.

…people blame a ‘faulty system.’

…each person assumes that it is the others who need to change.

…each person is thinking about/working on their own part.

…people do not appreciate how their own actions can contribute to the problematic situation at hand.

…people do not appreciate that their actions can have ripple effects that make it difficult for others to do their part.

...people have a competitive, zero-sum mindset. 

A new paradigm for collaboration

True collaboration requires more than just bringing people together. It requires a mindset shift. For real impact, teams need to be open to each other’s perspectives, to be able to work well across silos and disciplinary boundaries. They need to see how their work fits in the bigger picture, how it impacts others and contributes to the overall outcomes.

Only by having this mindset can they be truly motivated and capable of generative collaboration, i.e. collaboration in order to co-create and support the desired outcome.

In other words, it is not enough to bring people together. It is just as essential that they think systemically.

How systems Intelligence can catalyse effective collaboration

Systems intelligence is the ability to take intelligent action in the context of complex, changing environments. It is the awareness of interdependencies in changing, complex environments, combined with the skills to act on that awareness to drive meaningful change.

For teams of collaborators (whether from the same organisation or across different ones), this means understanding how their work relates to that of others, and how their actions impact the overall outcome. It means taking a big picture view, and understanding how desired outcomes can emerge from collective action.

 Systems intelligence catalyses collaboration by:

1. building awareness of the bigger picture, and the interdependencies between the actions of diverse teams or stakeholders.

2. establishing a common collaborative language that bridges gaps and reduces friction, fostering trust and shared objectives.

3. enabling teams to anticipate challenges, adapt in real-time, and move from reactive to proactive collaboration.

Let’s get more practical

Imagine you have brought together a multi-disciplinary group of people to work on an important project/issue. How do you begin to address their different perspectives and (potentially competing) interests?

How do you establish common ground and enhance their ability to work together?

Here are some tools that I have used and tested. I don’t use all of these all the time, and they are not in a particular order.

• Story circle(s) to establish an initial connection, zoom in and out on aspects of the situation, or to add a time dimension (e.g. past, present, future)

• Storytelling to bring out people’s experiences in a gentle, psychologically safe way

• Identifying common patterns and themes in people’s stories, to establish some early common ground

• ‘Art critique’- style discussions to encourage multiple-perspective taking

• Teams mapping exercises to identify biases or gaps in collaborative projects

• Systems mapping to visualise some of the shared experiences and start to build a richer picture of the situation

• Feedback loops and causal loop diagrams to develop a deeper understanding of interdependencies, and /or unintended consequences

• Stock-flow diagrams – I use my own simple versions of these, not the ones that look like a tap and have a cloud at the end (I have a serious allergy to those)

• Free-style, unbounded discussions, or individual journaling, anytime I feel that the group is stuck

Do you use any of these tools? What other tools do you use to enhance collaboration? What types of challenges do you encounter when collaborating across disciplines of functions? Hit the reply button and let me know!

One last thing

True collaboration isn’t just about bringing people together; it’s about transforming how individuals understand their own roles, each other’s work, and the broader system in which they operate. Systems intelligence is not a quick fix, but it provides a powerful framework to help teams shift from fragmented efforts to unified, collective action, and to unlock the full potential of cross-functional collaboration for greater impact.

November thought experiment

Your thought experiment for November comes from an article by Francesa Gino.

Ask people to work in pairs to think through how to divide an orange. Before they start, instruct each partner, without the other’s knowledge, why they want the orange: Ask one of them to make juice, and the other to collect the peel for a muffin recipe.

The optimal way to divide the orange is if one of the partner gets the peel and the other gets the orange to make the juice, but they will only find that out if they explore each other’s interests.

If they don’t, they may decide to split the orange in half, which means each partner will get less of the orange for their purpose. They might fight for it, and according to the article I linked to above, some people end up quitting when they cannot get the whole orange.

If you decide to try this exercise, please let me know what you find out😊

 And that’s all for this month!

Until December……wishing you all the good things!

Houda