www.hbrreprints.org

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams

by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson

Included with this full-text

Harvard Business Review

article:

The Idea in Brief—the core idea

The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work

1

Article Summary

2

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams

A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further

exploration of the article’s ideas and applications

11

Further Reading

Even the largest and most

complex teams can work

together effectively if the right

conditions are in place.

Reprint R0711F This document is authorized for use only by Tylecia Westbrook in WMBA-6633-2/MGMT-6621-2/MHRM-6510-2/MMSL-6660-2/COMM-6506-2-Mentoring & Coaching-2022-Spring-SEM-Term-

wks-9-thru-16-(03/07/2022-05/01/2022)-PT4 at Laureate Education – Walden University, 2022.

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams

page 1

The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice

C O

P Y

R IG

H T

© 2

0 0 7 H

A R

V A

R D

B U

S IN

E S

S S

C H

O O

L P

U B

L IS

H IN

G C

O R

P O

R A

T IO

N . A

L L

R IG

H T

S R

E S

E R

V E

D .

To execute major initiatives in your organization—integrating a newly ac- quired firm, overhauling an IT system— you need complex teams. Such teams’ defining characteristics—large, virtual, diverse, and specialized—are crucial for handling daunting projects. Yet these very characteristics can also destroy team members’ ability to work together, say Gratton and Erickson. For instance, as team size grows, collaboration diminishes.

To maximize your complex teams’ effec- tiveness, construct a basis for collabora- tion in your company. Eight practices hinging on relationship building and cul- tural change can help. For example, create a strong sense of community by sponsor- ing events and activities that bring people together and help them get to know one another. And use informal mentoring and coaching to encourage employees to view interaction with leaders and col- leagues as valuable.

When executives, HR professionals, and team leaders all pitch in to apply these practices, complex teams hit the ground running—the day they’re formed.

The authors recommend these practices for encouraging collaboration in complex teams:

W HAT EXECUTIVES CAN DO

•

Invest in building and maintaining social re- lationships throughout your organization.

Example:

Royal Bank of Scotland’s CEO commis- sioned new headquarters built around an indoor atrium and featuring a “Main Street” with shops, picnic spaces, and a leisure club. The design encourages employees to rub shoulders daily, which fuels collabora- tion in RBS’s complex teams.

• Model collaborative behavior.

Example:

At Standard Chartered Bank, top executives frequently fill in for one another, whether leading regional celebrations, representing SCB at key external events, or initiating in- ternal dialogues with employees. They make their collaborative behavior visible through extensive travel and photos of leaders from varied sites working together.

• Use coaching to reinforce a collaborative culture.

Example:

At Nokia, each new hire’s manager lists ev- eryone in the organization the newcomer should meet, suggests topics he or she should discuss with each person on the list, and explains why establishing each of these relationships is important.

W HAT HR CAN DO

•

Train employees in the specific skills re- quired for collaboration: appreciating others, engaging in purposeful conversa- tion, productively and creatively resolving conflicts, and managing programs.

• Support a sense of community by sponsor- ing events and activities such as network- ing groups, cooking weekends, or tennis

coaching. Spontaneous, unannounced ac- tivities can further foster community spirit.

Example:

Marriott has recognized the anniversary of the company’s first hotel opening by rolling back the cafeteria to the 1950s and spon- soring a team twist dance contest.

W HAT TEAM LEADERS CAN DO

•

Ensure that at least 20%–40% of a new team’s members already know one another.

Example:

When Nokia needs to transfer skills across business functions or units, it moves entire small teams intact instead of reshuffling individual people into new positions.

• Change your leadership style as your team develops. At early stages in the project, be task-oriented: articulate the team’s goal and accountabilities. As inevitable conflicts start emerging, switch to relationship building.

• Assign distinct roles so team members can do their work independently. They’ll spend less time negotiating responsibilities or protecting turf. But leave thepath to achiev- ing the team’s goal somewhat ambiguous. Lacking well-defined tasks, members are more likely to invest time and energy collaborating.

This document is authorized for use only by Tylecia Westbrook in WMBA-6633-2/MGMT-6621-2/MHRM-6510-2/MMSL-6660-2/COMM-6506-2-Mentoring & Coaching-2022-Spring-SEM-Term- wks-9-thru-16-(03/07/2022-05/01/2022)-PT4 at Laureate Education – Walden University, 2022.

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams

by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson

harvard business review • november 2007 page 2

C O

P Y

R IG

H T

© 2

0 0 7 H

A R

V A

R D

B U

S IN

E S

S S

C H

O O

L P

U B

L IS

H IN

G C

O R

P O

R A

T IO

N . A

L L

R IG

H T

S R

E S

E R

V E

D .

Even the largest and most complex teams can work together effectively

if the right conditions are in place.

When tackling a major initiative like an acquisition or an overhaul of IT systems, companies rely on large, diverse teams of highly educated specialists to get the job done. These teams often are convened quickly to meet an urgent need and work together virtually, collaborating online and sometimes over long distances.

Appointing such a team is frequently the only way to assemble the knowledge and breadth required to pull off many of the com- plex tasks businesses face today. When the BBC covers the World Cup or the Olympics, for instance, it gathers a large team of re- searchers, writers, producers, cameramen, and technicians, many of whom have not met before the project. These specialists work together under the high pressure of a “no retake” environment, with just one chance to record the action. Similarly, when the central IT team at Marriott sets out to develop sophis- ticated systems to enhance guest experiences, it has to collaborate closely with independent hotel owners, customer-experience experts,

global brand managers, and regional heads, each with his or her own agenda and needs.

Our recent research into team behavior at 15 multinational companies, however, reveals an interesting paradox: Although teams that are large, virtual, diverse, and composed of highly educated specialists are increasingly crucial with challenging projects, those same four characteristics make it hard for teams to get anything done. To put it another way, the qualities required for success are the same qualities that undermine success. Members of complex teams are less likely—absent other influences—to share knowledge freely, to learn from one another, to shift workloads flexibly to break up unexpected bottlenecks, to help one another complete jobs and meet deadlines, and to share resources—in other words, to col- laborate. They are less likely to say that they “sink or swim” together, want one another to succeed, or view their goals as compatible.

Consider the issue of size. Teams have grown considerably over the past ten years. New technologies help companies extend

This document is authorized for use only by Tylecia Westbrook in WMBA-6633-2/MGMT-6621-2/MHRM-6510-2/MMSL-6660-2/COMM-6506-2-Mentoring & Coaching-2022-Spring-SEM-Term- wks-9-thru-16-(03/07/2022-05/01/2022)-PT4 at Laureate Education – Walden University, 2022.

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams

harvard business review • november 2007 page 3

participation on a project to an ever greater number of people, allowing firms to tap into a wide body of knowledge and expertise. A decade or so ago, the common view was that true teams rarely had more than 20 members. Today, according to our research, many com- plex tasks involve teams of 100 or more. How- ever, as the size of a team increases beyond 20 members, the tendency to collaborate naturally decreases, we have found. Under the right conditions, large teams can achieve high levels of cooperation, but creating those conditions requires thoughtful, and some- times significant, investments in the capacity for collaboration across the organization.

Working together virtually has a similar impact on teams. The majority of those we studied had members spread among multiple locations—in several cases, in as many as 13 sites around the globe. But as teams became more virtual, we saw, cooperation also de- clined, unless the company had taken mea- sures to establish a collaborative culture.

As for diversity, the challenging tasks facing businesses today almost always re- quire the input and expertise of people with disparate views and backgrounds to create cross-fertilization that sparks insight and innovation. But diversity also creates prob- lems. Our research shows that team members collaborate more easily and naturally if they perceive themselves as being alike. The differ- ences that inhibit collaboration include not only nationality but also age, educational level, and even tenure. Greater diversity also often means that team members are working with people that they know only superficially or have never met before—colleagues drawn from other divisions of the company, perhaps, or even from outside it. We have found that the higher the proportion of strangers on the team and the greater the diversity of back- ground and experience, the less likely the team members are to share knowledge or exhibit other collaborative behaviors.

In the same way, the higher the educational level of the team members is, the more chal- lenging collaboration appears to be for them. We found that the greater the proportion of experts a team had, the more likely it was to disintegrate into nonproductive conflict or stalemate.

So how can executives strengthen an orga- nization’s ability to perform complex col-

laborative tasks—to maximize the effectiveness of large, diverse teams, while minimizing the disadvantages posed by their structure and composition?

To answer that question we looked carefully at 55 large teams and identified those that demonstrated high levels of collaborative be- havior despite their complexity. Put differently, they succeeded both because of and despite their composition. Using a range of statistical analyses, we considered how more than 100 factors, such as the design of the task and the company culture, might contribute to collabo- ration, manifested, for example, in a willing- ness to share knowledge and workloads. Out of the 100-plus factors, we were able to isolate eight practices that correlated with success— that is, that appeared to help teams overcome substantially the difficulties that were posed by size, long-distance communication, diversity, and specialization. We then interviewed the teams that were very strong in these practices, to find out how they did it. In this article we’ll walk through the practices. They fall into four general categories—executive support, HR practices, the strength of the team leader, and the structure of the team itself.

Executive Support

At the most basic level, a team’s success or failure at collaborating reflects the philosophy of top executives in the organization. Teams do well when executives invest in support- ing social relationships, demonstrate collabo- rative behavior themselves, and create what we call a “gift culture”—one in which employ- ees experience interactions with leaders and colleagues as something valuable and gener- ously offered, a gift.

Investing in signature relationship prac- tices. When we looked at complex collaborative teams that were performing in a productive and innovative manner, we found that in every case the company’s top executives had invested significantly in building and main- taining social relationships throughout the organization. However, the way they did that varied widely. The most collaborative compa- nies had what we call “signature” practices— practices that were memorable, difficult for others to replicate, and particularly well suited to their own business environment.

For example, when Royal Bank of Scotland’s CEO, Fred Goodwin, invested £350 million to

Lynda Gratton

([email protected]) is a professor of management practice at London Business School and a senior fellow at the Advanced Institute of Management. She is the author of Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Work- places, and Organizations Buzz with Energy—and Others Don’t (Berrett- Koehler, 2007). Tamara J. Erickson ([email protected]) is the president of the Concours Institute, the research and education arm of BSG Alliance. She is based in Boston and is a coauthor of several articles for HBR, including the McKinsey Award winner “It’s Time to Retire Retirement” (March 2004).

This document is authorized for use only by Tylecia Westbrook in WMBA-6633-2/MGMT-6621-2/MHRM-6510-2/MMSL-6660-2/COMM-6506-2-Mentoring & Coaching-2022-Spring-SEM-Term- wks-9-thru-16-(03/07/2022-05/01/2022)-PT4 at Laureate Education – Walden University, 2022.

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams

harvard business review • november 2007 page 4

open a new headquarters building outside Edinburgh in 2005, one of his goals was to foster productive collaboration among employ- ees. Built around an indoor atrium, the new structure allows more than 3,000 people from the firm to rub shoulders daily.

The headquarters is designed to improve communication, increase the exchange of ideas, and create a sense of community among em- ployees. Many of the offices have an open layout and look over the atrium—a vast trans- parent space. The campus is set up like a small town, with retail shops, restaurants, jogging tracks and cycling trails, spaces for picnics and barbecues—even a leisure club complete with swimming pool, gym, dance studios, tennis courts, and football pitches. The idea is that with a private “Main Street” running through the headquarters, employees will remain on the campus throughout the day—and be out of their offices mingling with colleagues for at least a portion of it.

To ensure that non-headquarters staff mem- bers feel they are a part of the action, Good-

win also commissioned an adjoining business school, where employees from other locations meet and learn. The visitors are encouraged to spend time on the headquarters campus and at forums designed to give employees opportuni- ties to build relationships.

Indeed, the RBS teams we studied had very strong social relationships, a solid basis for collaborative activity that allowed them to ac- complish tasks quickly. Take the Group Busi- ness Improvement (GBI) teams, which work on 30-, 60-, or 90-day projects ranging from back-office fixes to IT updates and are made up of people from across RBS’s many busi- nesses, including insurance, retail banking, and private banking in Europe and the United States. When RBS bought NatWest and mi- grated the new acquisition’s technology plat- form to RBS’s, the speed and success of the GBI teams confounded many market analysts.

BP has made another sort of signature in- vestment. Because its employees are located all over the world, with relatively few at head- quarters, the company aims to build social

The Research

Our work is based on a major research ini- tiative conducted jointly by the Concours Institute (a member of BSG Alliance) and the Cooperative Research Project of London Business School, with funding from the Advanced Institute for Management and 15 corporate sponsors. The initiative was created as a way to explore the practicalities of collaborative work in contemp orary organizations.

We sent surveys to 2,420 people, including members of 55 teams. A total of 1,543 people replied, a response rate of 64%. Separate sur- veys were administered to group members, to group leaders, to the executives who evalu- ated teams, and to HR leaders at the compa- nies involved. The tasks performed by the teams included new-product development, process reengineering, and identifying new solutions to business problems. The compa- nies involved included four telecommunica- tion companies, seven financial services or consulting firms, two media companies, a hospitality firm, and one oil company. The size of the teams ranged from four to 183 people, with an average of 44.

Our objective was to study the levers that executives could pull to improve team perfor- mance and innovation in collaborative tasks. We examined scores of possible factors, including the following:

The general culture of the company.

We designed a wide range of survey questions to measure the extent to which the firm had a cooperative culture and to uncover employ- ees’ attitudes toward knowledge sharing.

Human resources practices and processes.

We studied the way staffing took place and the process by which people were promoted. We examined the extent and type of training, how reward systems were configured, and the extent to which mentoring and coaching took place.

Socialization and network-building prac-

tices.

We looked at how often people within the team participated in informal socializa- tion, and the type of interaction that was most common. We also asked numerous questions about the extent to which team members were active in informal communities.

The design of the task.

We asked team members and team leaders about the task

itself. Our interest here was in how they per- ceived the purpose of the task, how complex it was, the extent to which the task required members of the team to be interdependent, and the extent to which the task required them to engage in boundary-spanning activities with people outside the team.

The leadership of the team.

We studied the perceptions team members had of their leaders’ style and how the leaders described their own style. In particular, we were inter- ested in the extent to which the leaders prac- ticed relationship-oriented and task-oriented skills and set cooperative or competitive goals.

The behavior of the senior executives.

We asked team members and team leaders about their perceptions of the seni

Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers

Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.

Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS

Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?

Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.

We write plagiarism Free Content

Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.

Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.