A revelation my clients often have is, “I never realized my team was in 3 different roles for this one collaboration effort. No wonder, things aren’t going so well. It never occurred to us that we were also the customer!”
The number of roles your group may be performing in a particular collaborative situation can compound the challenges or increase the risks you may experience. Let me define the 4 common roles and as you read each one, think about your current, highest priority cross group collaboration effort. Are you in more than one role? How many roles apply? What about your top 3 collaboration partners? How many roles are they each in?
Owner: responsible for (owns) handing off the final deliverable to the Customer. A “deliverable” is a work item (for example: a product, IT application, program, policy/procedure, or defined level of service) that you or your team is responsible to complete, or that collaboratively you are building together.
Key Component Dependency: responsible to deliver a specific component to the Owner for integration into the final deliverable. This component is key to the overall collaboration success and customer satisfaction.
Individual Contributor: responsible to deliver a piece of a key component.
Customer: responsible for providing a clear definition of the desired deliverable, specifying acceptance criteria and identifying priorities.
Are you (or your partners) being effective in each role? The most often overlooked role is that of “Customer.” We typically think only of the end customer. However, if you are in the Owner role, aren’t you also the Customer for each Key Component Dependency? Have you provided a clear definition of what you want and expect to receive? Have you defined what is most important to you: on time? On or under budget? Specific acceptance criteria? High quality? (Of course “quality” begs a definition with examples of what that looks like to you.) If your team is responsible for managing the hand-off of the Key Component Dependency to the Owner for integration into the final deliverable, aren’t you also in the role of Customer for each Individual Contributor?
No matter what role(s) you are in, think about what you can do to ensure successful collaboration in the planning phase, working phase, and wrapping up phase of collaboration. Something I’ll address in future blogs.