Collaborating for Results

Book excerpt: Where collaboration is needed and silo working creates barriers to achieving this, the cost to organisations can be very high: a lack of shared learning and innovation; unproductive conflict and stress; and significant financial costs due to programme failures. Collaborating for Results focuses on the human reasons for unproductive silo working in organisations, combining psychology with broader organisation development theory and practice. The central theme is that a visible agenda for building and maintaining working relationships across organisations is required by those seeking competitive advantage. It describes the contours of working relationships at three levels - individual, team and organisation - and proposes practical actions en route to collaboration and high performance. In doing so it acknowledges the complexity of people and relationships, the interrelationship of the three levels and explains the value of developing Open Teams at the heart of an integrated approach to business and organisational development. Organisation silos can feel like different countries, or even parallel worlds. Even in a single organisation, people in separate divisions or teams can talk a different language and have different work cultures that they each find difficult to understand and relate to. David Willcock’s Collaborating for Results reframes organisation culture to bridge the divide, develop working relationships that save time and money and improve organisation performance.