Business Fit Magazine August 2017 Issue 1 | Page 39

Article 37
projects where children have to collaborate, present their results
and getting scored as a team are getting included in the education
process. But not only schools are still focused intensively on individual
performance, also large corporations as well as managers are
perpetuating this traditional approach. Performance Management
as well as benefits that are often impacting salary treatments are
centered on the individual. Certainly businesses have now started to
realize that these traditional approaches are counterproductive for
collaboration. Thus according to a recent Harvard Business Review on
the “The Performance Management Revolution” more than one-third
of U.S. companies are abandoning the traditional appraisal process,
where annual reviews of the individual performance are held. This
process is getting replaced by providing immediate feed-back to
the employees to enhance their learning and experience but not
linking it to a rating process. Equally bonuses are getting detached
from individual performance but linked to the overall performance of
Business Units or the company as a whole.
“Mapping the value of
employee collaboration”
One very prominent example where the team has been successfully
placed front end center over and above individual stars, was the
German national football team in the world cup 2014. Their slogan was
“One Nation, one team, one dream!” This focus on the team transpired
through all communications may it be through interviews, statements
or advertisings, where it was emphasized that for the German national
team the TEAM was the star. Specifically in sports, even more so in
football, the players are already stars at very young ages. Certainly
during the match it is crucial that all players as individual performers
are playing at peak performance. Thus this approach was very unique
but at the same point in time very successful. Everyone was focused
on contributing their best for the success of the team, which also
meant at times to step back for the benefit of the team. This specific
team spirit succeeded over teams with superior individual players
with in the end Germany winning the world cup.
So the question is – what is the core of collaboration, what makes
collaboration so critical and what makes collaboration successful?
Wikipedia defines collaboration as follows: “Collaboration is a
purposeful relationship in which all parties strategically choose to
cooperate in order to achieve shared or overlapping objectives.” A
definition I personally like even more is: “The work and activity of a
number of persons who individually contribute toward the efficiency
of the whole to produce better results than each individual would
have been able to achieve on their own.” An antonym would be e.g.
alienation. Collaboration can happen at different levels with different
results e.g.:
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•
•
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Between a team of employees
Across different Business Units
Between different companies
Across countries and industries
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- (e.g. a project within a department)
- (e.g. M&A deals)
- (e.g. Go to market deals)
- (The EU is a classic example)