A Call for Collaboration
The kinds of problems we face in the world today are not the same as those of years past, which means many of our traditional ways of building solutions needs to change and keep pace.
For today’s post, I want to reflect some of the lessons provided by Sanyin Siang (Executive Director of the Centre on Leadership and Ethics (COLE) at Duke University) at a recent President’s Summit webinar presentation on the problems of today and for enabling greatness in teams and their leaders.
There are three key trends occurring today that are requiring us to take a different approach to solving problems:
Problems and opportunities exist as an ecosystem – they are not linear.
Most of the major problems facing the world are complex, meaning they involve multiple, often competing perspectives, have multiple potential solutions that can have ripples of positive, negative, and unintended consequences across the entire ecosystem of the issue.
An issue like climate change, for instance, involves economic, social, and environmental factors, involves political, scientific, legal, and citizen perspectives, and has different ramifications across economies, countries, and cultures.
As Professor Siang points out, the main implication is that to understand as many of the issues, connections, and implications as possible, “we need to see the big picture through diversity”. We need to involve a mixture of people with a broad spectrum of culture and expertise just to be able to understand today’s problems.
The rate of change is exponential
We see and feel overwhelmed by the fast pace of change that has come about because of a virus like COVID-19, where we have had to shift to a new ‘normal’ with social distancing, masks, virtual delivery of, well, everything in the space of a few months. As Professor Siang points out, “today is the slowest rate of change you will ever experience”.
The ever-increasing speed of change means we need to build resilience by working together in teams and through collaboration. It is becoming harder and harder for an individual or a single organization to succeed entirely on their own. To illustrate, Professor Siang pointed the disruption in normal business supply chains, where some businesses shared their supply chain with competitors or even with entirely different sectors as a result of COVID-19.
We are moving from known to unknown threats
Never has it been more apparent that the threats we will need to be able to overcome will be those that we didn’t see coming. While we may be able to predict general threats, it is the specifics of these unknown threats that require novel responses. COVID-19 is the most relevant example I can point to today. The globe has needed to address issues coming from COVID-19 in new and unique ways. Everything from home-printed protective equipment to shifting to virtual offices in the space of weeks. As Professor Siang put it, “we need to exercise imagination and think beyond the possible”. This kind of imagination can only come from groups of people working to address the threats we face.
The Takeaway
Ecosystem problems combined with an exponential rate of change and an increasing number of unknown threats signal a need to rely much more on teams of people who can effectively work together to create unique solutions.
Professor Siang offered her thoughts on how leaders and their teams can be more successful:
Realize that “people are our greatest assets.” Innovation comes from people, not data or technology.
Leaders need to be people first, which means there is more focus on connecting with their team.
Move beyond a competition mindset, where everyone is competing for the same slice of pie, to an abundance mindset, where “everyone is working together to expand the pie”.
Appreciate success. Most people don’t notice their own successes and only assume that others see their mistakes. Explicitly call out and appreciate people’s successes, which requires one to focus on assets instead of deficits.
I appreciated Professor Siang’s description of the trends occurring in the world today, because they intuitively lead you to understand the need for more and better collaboration. I also particularly like her assessment that success in large measure hinges on how we view the problem in the first place. Mindset is a key pre-cursor for effective collaboration and a trait leaders should model in their collaborations.
Scott Millar often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. Through Collaboration Dynamics, he periodically offers a program in High Performance Collaboration, where he guides groups to explore the nature of collaboration, inclusivity, and innovation, and acquire new abilities to create the conditions that enable groups to contribute and thrive in challenging environments.
