Role of 'Process' in Collaboration

 As I mentioned in my earlier posts, "Collaboration" is not only about working together ('intent' implicitly included), it also includes being able to work in an aligned manner. It is all about ensuring that every stakeholder (or Collaborator) knows his own role in the larger picture, and also knows what to expect from other collaborators. And, when 'this' holds true for ALL the stakeholders at an individual level, would one see the RHYTHM of collaboration.

When the team of collaborators is within ONE degree of connect, and for a short period of time, the RHYTHM is sustainable. However, when the span increases to bring in more stakeholders OR heterogeneity in profiles of stakeholders (culture, geography, seniority, skills-sets, background, etc) OR duration of time of the project, one needs to move towards 'Processes' to derive the maximum leverage from collaboration.

What is a 'Process'? Simply put, a process is a manner of completing activities or tasks (individually or collectively), in a pre-defined manner, consistently. In robust processes, both the route and the destination are known to all in advance. This pre-definition helps in setting roles and responsibilities for different stakeholders in the entire process journey. And, this is where the power of the Process combines with the lever of Collaboration.

It is all about being able to 'Sprint a Marathon', wherein each individual is not capable to accomplish the goal by oneself, but with the collective power of many like-minded resources, is able to beat a nearly impossible challenge. In such a relay race, one knows till where he needs to carry the baton to, and how would the baton travel from thereon at the sprinting speed by others that would make the team win. This clarity of understanding about self and expectations from others, makes the task of collaboration much simpler. And, this is one of the MOST important ingredients to a successful collaboration model. Hence, if you wish to bring scalability to a particular assignment that requires Collaboration, then the presence of 'PROCESSES' is a MUST! Without this, CHAOS, instead of COLLABORATION, shall prevail.

However, this is not where the story ends...

The other day, I was reading the Scion of Ikshvaku, a fantasy book by Indian author Amish Tripathi (Scion of Ikshvaku), where he brings forth a concept about a 'masculine' society and a 'feminine' one. In a Masculine society, the focus is more on processes and walk-the-talk philosophy. Highly objective and rational behaviour is expected from all. In contrast, the Feminine society is more about emotions and empathy. Being able to understand the context, and therefore being able to live together is the essence of the Feminine society. Forgive-and-forget towards any non-compliance in the larger interests of societal harmony, is more likely to find acceptance in a feminine society than a masculine one. Of course, it goes without saying that neither of them is superior than the other, but each one has its own merit and relevance given the current state of a given society (or an organization).

Hence, integrating learnings from this thought into our Process-and-Collaboration discussion...if you need to bring in scalability along with passion and accountability of all your collaborators, then along with the processes (masculinity), a mix of context empathy and emotive adaptability (femininity) is also needed. This would ensure that not only the baton gets carried and passed through to all other collaborators, the team also wins...with a passion!