by Stacey Dickinson | Nov 10, 2015 | Blog
I’d like to follow-up on the last blog article regarding the role you’re in for a collaboration effort and how effective you are in that role (or roles).
Let’s tackle the issue of influence, starting with the Individual Contributor (IC)—the person who actually completes a work item that is often integrated into a Key Component Dependency. The work item could be writing a presentation or document, developing or testing code, analyzing data, etc.
In my experience, the IC often feels powerless over the outcome of the final deliverable. Or, the IC feels stuck between meeting the daily job deadlines of his/her direct manager (DM) and the work item deadlines of the “Project Manager” (there are numerous titles for this role) for the collaboration effort. To further complicate things, it’s common that the DM and the project manager report into different management chains.
Since there are so many titles for the project manager or person who is accountable for a deliverable, but who has little or no authority over the individuals who help build it, I have chosen to call this role “Herder.” (This name came from watching old western movies with the cowboy moving the herd from one ranch to another many miles away.)
- ICs actually have a strong ability to ensure their work items meet the needs of both their DM and the Herder:
Schedule a meeting with the 3 of you (IC, DM and Herder) to set clear goals and expectations, determine and clarify resource requirements, and define the success criteria for the work item(s). If the IC has a different vision of what success looks like than the Herder, the work item will fail, and ultimately the Key Component Dependency and Final Deliverable will fail or not meet the needs of the Customer.
- Define priorities and be specific: What work items from the DM takes priority over the collaborative work items from the Herder? And vice versa.
- Establish checkpoints or milestones when you can meet with the Herder to verify the work item is on track to meet the defined success criteria. This overcomes the most common pitfall of ICs—they move forward and complete the work item without getting direction from the Herder or checking in along the way.
We all have work items where our role is that of an Individual Contributor. There’s no need to feel powerless. Take charge and control over your success.
by Stacey Dickinson | Sep 29, 2015 | Blog
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.
by Stacey Dickinson | Aug 18, 2015 | Blog
I wanted to follow-up on the first article in my blog this year with an acronym to help you to remember to think deeper about why you’re experiencing challenges collaborating with other teams or individuals. When someone on your team makes a statement such as: “working with Team X is frustrating,” start asking questions to help you discover the root cause of the issue so that you can determine the best, simplest and most practical solution to mitigate the challenge. When collaborating across groups, the root cause typically is associated with one of the following TRICs:
- Tracking/reporting: Is there a problem tracking deliverables by specific milestones/checkpoints and acceptance criteria? Or, is there a problem ensuring information is sent to or provided by those who need to be consulted or may be affected by specific decisions?
- Most tracking/reporting challenges result from the lack of a central, organized repository for collaboration information AND a designated individual who is responsible for disseminating information in a timely fashion and keeping the repository current.
- Risk/change management: Have risks been identified early and is someone responsible to monitor them or look for warning signs they are likely to occur? Have change management processes been defined?
- Most risk and change management challenges arise from a lack of consideration in the planning phase when collaborators can calmly evaluate options.
- Incentives: Are the incentives to work together clear for all collaborators so that the risk of work items being reprioritized is greatly reduced or eliminated? See my March 26th blog article, titled: Conflicting priorities are often related to poorly defined benefits or incentives.
- To ensure incentives are clear, consider if collaborative work items/goals should be added to individual employee performance reviews. For contractors, perhaps monetary incentives (or disincentives) should be defined in the Statement of Work.
- Communication: Have the goals of the collaboration been clearly defined for all parties? Do all collaborators know who is accountable for each work item? See the April 16th blog article, A tool to define collaboration success for more information.
- Have you written a Collaborative Success Definition (CSD)? Is it published and easily accessible? Was it part of your collaborative effort/project kick-off? Are you ensuring the CSD is reviewed with every new hire or contractor? Is it updated and announced when goals change?
Once you determine the root cause of your highest priority challenge, you can brainstorm ideas to alleviate the challenge. Start with the simplest solution; implement it, then check with the team a month later and ensure it really did resolve the problem. If not, ask more questions to confirm you found the true collaboration TRIC. Sometimes there can be more than one root cause.
by Stacey Dickinson | Jul 7, 2015 | Blog
I wanted to write a follow-up blog to the one I posted March 3 which I dug out of the archives from a podcast interview 5 years ago. As mentioned in that previous blog, the lack of a clearly communicated Collaborative Success Definition (CSD) is a big contributor to failed collaboration efforts.
To ensure the collaboration (or project) success is clearly defined and communicated, you must first be concise. Very few people have time today to read 25 pages. Summarize the CSD in 1-2 pages and ensure it includes the following 6 elements:
- What(product/service/initiative/policy/etc.) are you delivering?
- By when?
- Potentially include where(for example, if you’re not delivering globally, identify the countries or regions that will be receiving the “what”).
- For whom(customers, prioritized) are you delivering the “what”?
- With whom(partners—could be teams or individuals) will you be collaborating and depending upon to complete their key components in this effort?
- And how? List the major milestones/checkpoints and the level of completion dependent components will be in for each milestone as everyone works together to put the pieces together to meet the final deliverable and deadline.
To see an example of how I like to concisely communicate the CSD, check out this short video.
by Stacey Dickinson | May 26, 2015 | Blog
A common collaboration challenge is that a key component from a collaborator (team or individual) is delivered late or it does not fully meet your defined acceptance criteria. Very often this is due to the collaborator’s time being reprioritized by a competing project or initiative, typically by the team’s or individual’s manager.
To be successful, you must define the benefits for collaborators to prioritize your project or collaborative effort high on their list, as well as explain the consequences if they don’t deliver. Or, plan for the risk that the deliverable you’re expecting may not arrive on time or with the level of quality you anticipated.
Check out the video that gives you tips to define collaborator benefits and see what that has in common with a radio station…
