EFFECTIVE SME COLLABORATION

Small to medium size enterprises are beginning to collaborate more and more. Such collaborative enterprises are beginning to challenge some of the bigger commercial organisations as co-operative ventures NISA, Mole Valley Farmers, The Co-Op are all examples of successful mutual collaboration. Now with customers becoming more and more environmentally sensitive and more concerned with the local impact of the big five supermarkets there is a growing opportunity for local collaborative work to truly challenge organisations with a large environmental footprint.

So if SME's wish to collaborate, what are the key tenets of effective collaboration? After all collaboration is simply working in a leaderless team!

Vision as ever is vital and it must be common. A shared and well communicated vision will hold collaboration together and empower those within it to achieve.

Trust Collaborators must trust each other. If they don't collaboration won’t work. Trust is two way and trust is important when there is no leader to arbitrate.  Trust allows the collaboration to be honest and forthright in its internal challenges without fear of dissolution. Trust also breeds respect and respect ensures that listening to and comprehending each other's point of view is part of everyday life.

Communication is the essential life blood of collaboration and it has to be effective without a leader to interpret messages. Communication in the early stages makes for stronger collaboration. That early communication is important in establishing members’ expectations and boundaries. For collaboration will crash without all those involved understanding each others expectations and boundaries. The most important part of communication is honesty in terms of being honest in what you will do and not what you may do! It is also vital to communicate any change in your intentions- for to announce that you haven't done something on the day you promised to deliver it breaks trust!

Clear Responsibility and Ownership boundaries are enhanced by clear delineation of responsibilities; they make for effective work and control and ensure accountability within an organisation. Ownership of issues and tasks has to be clearly understood by all those involved. And all those involved have to be prepared to accept responsibility and accountability.

Results Without outcomes which match or exceed expectations no collaboration can survive for long as members look to others to satisfy their ambitions.  A collaboration and the individuals within it must focus on results.

Well it’s easy really when you know how. Then why is it so difficult for SME's to achieve successful long term collaborations? Follow these simple principles and suddenly many doors and avenues of opportunity are opened.

Leadership-Self Sabotage and Self Awareness

Sometimes leaders just don't understand what the true consequences of their decisions and actions are. Self sabotage by leaders comes about through ignorance, over confidence,  omnipotent self belief and delusion. One only has to look at the musings of dictators as they come to the end of their terms in power to draw examples I rest my case with the current furore around FIFA. The problem is that rarely is an autocratic leader told the truth by subordinates. The confidence required to reach power can quickly become the confidence that ensures the fall from power.
Leaders need to have a trusted sounding board somewhere in their team such as  Josh Bolten, George W Bush's chief of staff,  who always tried to encourage others to be frank in front of the president."I took it as my role as chief of staff where an issue was truly presidential to insist that the disagreement be aired in front of the president in full glory. So I found myself needling cabinet officers and senior advisers and prodding them into taking the extreme form of disagreement that I knew existed outside the room to give the president a real chance to make a decision, and for the boss that I served." The role of trusted adviser becomes essential when in a crisis.
However that  sounding board has to remain enlightened and cannot become like the leader dizzy and deluded on power.  True "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" and yet when one truly reflects on the great transformational leaders of our time they are some of the most humble: Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. All possessed self awareness  and all possessed a deep understanding of humanity. Humble, yet their legacy is far more powerful and omnipotent than many of the organisational leaders made in our modern capitalist society.
I believe that self awareness in a leader is a rare talent. As people reach the upper echelons of power they begin to believe in their omnipotence they are constantly worshipped by their teams of obsequious followers who in themselves are dependent upon the leader to preserve their own social status. A study done by Coopers and Lybrand a few years ago indicated that when asked CEO's indicated that only ll% of their employees believed they were taking risks to deliver any bad news up the chain. However, the middle managers felt differently. 33% said bad news in their company (Fortune 500) was a career limiting risk and 50% of lower level employees agreed with the middle managers
A leader who reflects on personal actions and decisions, one who rejoices in their teams achievements and not their own; a leader who empowers their people without pomp and ceremony;  one who recognises the fragility and weaknesses of being human in themselves and all those around them is the real thing. For it is to them and only them that the true trust  of followership is given.
Self awareness whether self-induced or externally initiated is key to keeping a leader straight and true for self-sabotage can easily slip into a leaders repertoire without it. And when it does there will inevitably be a fall as the leader arrogantly chooses the wrong path.