Achieving a successful Employee Collaboration with The Doughnut Model
Nicolas BEHBAHANI
Global People Analytics & HR Data Leader - People & Culture | Strategical People Analytics Design
??Effective collaboration in this hybrid working model is harder than ever.?
Two of the major forces reshaping collaboration in real time are Hybrid work and GenAI. Hybrid work is introducing new challenges and Generative AI is coming, and it will upend collaboration. Improving collaboration isn’t as simple as writing a check to purchase the latest collaboration technology and that's why introducing The Doughnut Model Of Collaboration can help highlight shortfalls in the fundamentals of human factors and shows overshoots due to excessive demands, according to a new interesting research published by Forrester using data from interviews of leaders at 30 organizations and surveyed 811 employees to understand the changing nature of collaboration and how hybrid work, AI, and human factors are converging to create a new collaboration paradigm.
?Return to office is not solving the lack of Collaboration
Researchers found that all leaders nearly unanimously believed that in-person collaboration remains crucial to their success BUT simply bringing people back to the office - which remains a struggle, with?low adherence rates ?— doesn’t?by itself?lead to better collaboration and, in some cases, can make it worse.
?GenAI required Human foundations to make it work
AI is coming to collaboration and productivity tools in a big way via 微软 365 Copilot, 谷歌 ’s Bard, and other generative AI solutions.?
Copilot will allow Microsoft Teams - Communities users to catch up with long messaging conversations, extracting key takeaways and the viewpoints of different team members. Researchers believed that it's stunning stuff, yet it comes with risks of its own and requires?human foundations?to make it work. Indeed such tools are designed to help employees - Copilot is there to help you, not replace you !
?The Doughnut Model Of Collaboration
Researchers get inspired using the Doughnut economics model - The Doughnut consists of two concentric rings: a social foundation, to ensure that no one is left falling short on life’s essentials, and an ecological ceiling, to ensure that humanity does not collectively overshoot the?planetary boundaries?that protect Earth's life-supporting systems. The Doughnut is the core concept at the heart of Doughnut Economics.?
Researchers get inspired using the Doughnut economics model - The Doughnut consists of two concentric rings: a social foundation, to ensure that no one is left falling short on life’s essentials, and an ecological ceiling, to ensure that humanity does not collectively overshoot the?planetary boundaries?that protect Earth's life-supporting systems. The Doughnut is the core concept at the heart of Doughnut Economics.?
Forrester research found that the approach handily applies collaboration, too.
With this Doughnut model of collaboration, researchers can analyze:
?? Shortfalls in human factors foundations.?Inside?the doughnut lie foundations, without which you come up short on collaboration outcomes.
They defined 7 critical Human factors:
??Creating a positive employee experience (EX)
??Having the right tools and resources,
??Developing shared goals and visions, among others
??Mix of skills
??Culture of Energy
??Robotics Quotient (RQ)
??Emotional Design
?? Overshoots from excessive demands.?Outside?the doughnut lurks the overshoot, where employees are subjected to excessive demands on their time and attention.
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Researchers have found some excessive demands that can affect their ability to collaborate:
?Pushing employees into too many meetings
? Zoom fatigue
? Bad meeting experiences
? Long commutes
? Organizational silos
?Burnout
?Process complexity
? Technology complexity
?Productivity pressures
?? Success when you land on the doughnut itself.?The doughnut itself — the green ring in the figure is where you want to be. It’s a Goldilocks zone in which you’re supporting collaboration by improving the human factors that underpin its success while not placing excessive demands on employees that yield diminishing, and eventually negative, returns.
?Four Steps to develop your Collaboration Strategy
Researchers offer a four-step methodology to achieve a great collaboration:
1?? Develop your problem statement.
2?? Identify two related overshoot concerns from the overshoot section of the doughnut.
3?? Target one to two human-factor foundations from the human factors section of the doughnut.
4??Convene a structured-collaboration working group to make improvements.
?? Finally researchers emphasize that solving collaboration problems at your organization isn’t a simple or quick exercise, but following our methodology, you can effectively identify, frame, and address these challenges.
Thank you ??? Forrester ?researchers team for these insightful findings:??
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1 年This is an excellent insight into our new working environment and the importance of a focus on collaboration in the workplace. It also highlights the basic requirement for a solid knowledge management and knowledge-sharing culture to help organizations be successful in the areas of BOTH standardization and innovation. GenAI will certainly help improve work processes in a lot of areas but the human aspect will still be at the forefront of innovation. ????
Co-Founder at Empactivo | Digital Culture & Employee Experience Enthusiast | Sustainability & People Engagement ??
1 年For the first time in the employee experience, I saw the right and wrong summarized in a single image; I found it impressive Nicolas, thank you ???? Also, I have a suggestion to add to the "Overshoot" field... Employees may have to work hard to achieve a result under insufficient resources.. And even this situation, Not getting a proper appreciation for the extra efforts causes people to reach burnout level faster. Therefore, I think that a culture of appreciation will be an important support to create a successful colloboration environment ????
Founder & CEO @ Lever Talent | Host of The Lever Show | Helping leaders develop talent strategies that leverage a tech-empowered future.
1 年This seems like a good framework to address collaboration issues, Nicolas. ?? I think there is a mania around trying to make hybrid and remote collaboration happen. To the point where there are now meetings about collaboration. ?? The goal is not to figure out how to collaborate virtually IMO, it's to figure out how to collaborate asynchronously. I think GenAI, and its ability to summarize, recommend, and keep team members updates definitely promises to increase the quality of asynchronous collaboration. That said, for as much mania as there is about AI, it's important to remember that we are still super early. The moment you adopt an AI tool and it works, there will be another one right behind it that is that much better or more in line with what you need. I think you should be able to make a process work without AI to start. Then plan on using AI to enhance it. Cheers to asynchronous collaboration!
Speaker, Author, Professor, Thought Partner on Human Capability (talent, leadership, organization, HR)
1 年Nicolas BEHBAHANI Fun to see this thoughtful research. A number of years ago, I became the leader of a local church congregation. I told the other leaders that I would practice "doughnut hole" leadership which mean that I would work to empower each leader and individual to take charge of their stewardship: to use my power to empower them. This is another definition of "doughnut hole" ... this research fleshes out how to do what I intended (and may not have done very well). Leaders often do the best leadership when the enable and empower others to lead. This was also in a great article called "substitutes for leadership" by Steve Kerr
Lead consultant in HR Strategy & Value Management. Enhancing Value through Human Performance. Delivery of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Training. Lecturer and International Speaker on HRM and Value Management.
1 年Interesting research Nicolas. One of the biggest problems that I have been finding with remote/hybrid collaboration is that both employees and leaders seem to have overlooked the fact that managing the Network Structure, introduced by remote working, requires different thought processes (by both parties). You might be interested in this article: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/productivity-innovation-creativity-paradox-working-george%3FtrackingId=UsJDpWd2ILqPtlMySEPdRA%253D%253D/?trackingId=UsJDpWd2ILqPtlMySEPdRA%3D%3D The Doughnut Model that you have highlighted will only go so far in ensuring that the communication and collaboration required to generate value is established. With regard to generative AI - this will need to be established on one platform (integrated IT systems across the organisation) before it will add real value. Thank you for sharing such thought provoking posts Nicolas.