Collaboration and our most valuable assets

As we have already discussed at length in previous posts, the implications of failing to implement alliances successfully are serious. Money and resources are wasted, reputations are ruined, fire-fighting and wrangling use up management time and, you could even end up in court. We have covered key topics such as success factors, business processes, organisation arrangements and leadership/management requirements however, we have so far omitted to bring together the many threads of the impact on our most valuable assets; our people. After all, in this day and age of almost ubiquitous partnerships of one sort or another, their reactions to collaboration initiatives will always have a considerable if not dominant influence on enterprise success or failure. When you actively involve your people, they'll want the project to succeed and everybody wins.

 This crucial topic has been touched upon only in passing and often just from an organisational point of view. It is generally missing from any discussions about collaborative working and business relationships. In our next two posts we will compare the staff reactions, attitudes and behaviours in negative situations with those, where joint working between organisations has been established effectively. Difference is stark.