Cooperation and Collaboration

by John J. Trakselis Coaching Essay

“It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too): those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin

“The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation - a force for construction and destruction.” – Jonathan Haidt

Do you remember some of the old Western movies where the good guy faces down the bad guys? I think the image of the lone gunslinger is a part of our American culture, but if you look at those western shoot ‘em up movies again, you will notice the presence of someone who assisted our hero in accomplishing his task. Maybe it was a little boy who yelled “watch out” or maybe it was the townspeople who mustered their courage to provide that extra “oomph” so our hero could get the job done. Rarely did one guy win the day all by himself – especially when you consider the number of incidents typically leading up to the final “shootout.” Someone was always rooting for and/or standing by our hero in some way. Heck, even the “Lone” Ranger had Tonto.

“I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.” – Golda Meir

So what makes us think we have to do everything by ourselves? Yes, we have a responsibility to address those things requiring our attention. However, we must keep in mind there are a number of ways to go about completing our assignments, and asking for help is key. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion recently that there is nothing we get done as a result of our singular efforts.

Think “Win-Win”

One of the important principles in cooperating and collaborating with others is Stephen Covey’s principle of “Think Win-Win.” Organized sports, political races, winning an Oscar or a Grammy are “Win-Lose” in the minds of the general public. In many respects, this is unfortunate. Not to diminish those who catch the brass ring, but the fact is that “winners” all have one thing in common. They have someone behind them who enabled, empowered, assisted or even pushed them to get to where they are. The same is true for those who earn a place or get nominated for a significant accolade.

In my work as a Vistage Chair I get to see a number of speakers and business coaches whom the general public views as individual performers. Sure, they are often on the stage by themselves and they might be the center of attention. But, if you look at what goes on behind the scenes, you’ll see there are a number of things they accomplish that requires a supporting crew. In some cases it might be handling the administrative tasks – the details that would distract these professionals from concentrating and preparing themselves for what they get paid to do. In other cases, winners may have trusted collaborators who tell them the truth (as they see it) with the sole purpose of pointing out the blind spots which can hinder success.

I also work with a number of successful business owners, CEOs and senior executives, and I have not found one who doesn’t want a good team behind him or her to help drive the success of the whole company. In a team situation, you may have heard that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. What is a chain in a company? It is the myriad processes, systems and people who run the business on a day-to-day basis. A well-functioning group of purposeful people is a beautiful thing to watch. A dysfunctional team, on the other hand, can be painful to observe.

So, I encourage you to think about how you can accomplish more with the assistance of others.

Take in Feedback—Be Coachable

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson

At the personal level, I notice that in our rush to finish an assignment we may get irritated if someone suggests additional actions when we are ready to move toward completion. Notice your irritability! Take that extra minute and process that anger or fear or even sadness. Do you have an issue with the one who makes the suggestion? Not all “suggestions for improvement” are done with positive intent. While it may be hard to take disapproval of your work by someone who does not have your best interests at heart, see if you can focus on the quality of their suggestion. Is it helpful, practical or cost-effective? Will it add to the quality of the work? Will accepting the feedback improve your work, allow the project to be completed on time or be completed more economically? Is it part of the next phase or your work, i.e., is it essential now or for the future? Did you miss it when doing the work? Realize that it is rare when we can’t improve our work but also realize that you cannot reinvent the wheel every time you solve a problem, take on a challenge or pursue an opportunity.

Do You Belong Where You Are?

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” – Ryunosuke Satoro

At the organization level take a look at how your culture supports results by fostering teamwork. Is it a sharing culture or a hoarding culture? Is it hero driven or is it results driven? I like participative, collaborative and collegial cultures. More work gets done in this type of environment, and I think the people in the company have more of a sense of accomplishment and belonging. They feel seen, heard and accepted. Their work and the work of others have more meaning. The funny thing about cultures, however, is that no one individual fits all types of settings. In fact, one of the big factors that will determine the success of any individual is their fit. If you don’t fit in two things will happen: you will eventually be shunned and you will ostracize yourself—and not necessarily in that order.

What will Make My Cooperation and Collaboration Successful?

“Nothing truly valuable can be achieved except by the unselfish cooperation of many individuals.” – Albert Einstein

If we seek greater cooperation and collaboration, the following questions might be helpful in determining if we can work with a particular individual or with others in a certain company:

• Do I have clearly defined values?
• Does my task (or responsibilities) have a clearly defined mission?
• How do my mission and values correlate with the purpose and values of the people I want to work with – in other words are we in alignment?
• Am I working in or with a culture where I fit in?
• What will be my unique contribution?
• How effectively will I work with others, including team members and my boss?
• How strongly do I trust my answers to these questions?
• How can I validate my conclusions – who is capable and willing to give me useful feedback?

The Bottom Line

Give up the illusion that you have to do everything yourself, all of the time! You can receive a lot more help than you may realize and there is a a great deal of assistance available to you. Look for the opportunity to make 1 plus 1 equal to 3 or more. The Pareto Principle says that the first 20% of the effort produces 80% of the results. You can get a lot closer to that 100% if you learn how to cooperate and collaborate with others in your endeavors and in their assignments. Think about getting to 100% without more effort but with the backing of your collaborators.

“One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.” – Wallace Stegner

And, there is more, there always is.

Be genuine.

Have You Rewarded Your Fans Today? The Alarmingly High Cost Of Bad Customer Service

Some new stats are ugly: Nearly 70% of defecting customers would've stayed if a problem had been resolved with one call, instead of requiring multiple interactions. Here's Salesforce exec Peter Coffee on how to please the people you need most, and save your bottom line.

By: Peter Coffee

Customer churn is a headwind that companies can’t afford to continue fighting, especially as those winds are whipped by the power of social networks. Too many companies create that headwind themselves: a blowback from poor customer service and inadequate customer care. This tendency must not be merely minimized, but must be vigorously reversed.

It’s widely acknowledged that it costs six to 10 times as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep an existing customer, but a current report by Accenture finds roughly half of surveyed consumers saying that they had left at least one vendor because of poor service. More than half of those defecting customers say they would have stayed loyal if they had been rewarded for their loyalty; nearly 70% would have stayed if a problem had been resolved with one call, instead of requiring multiple interactions. Replacing these customers is commonly treated as an inescapable cost of doing business, in a classic case of failing to see a stationary object. It’s time for a different point of view.

"The urgency is increased when one considers that the typical customer tells an average of 16 other people about a poor service experience, but only tells nine about the good ones."

The urgency is increased when one considers that the typical customer tells an average of 16 other people about a poor service experience, but only tells nine about the good ones. This multiplier effect of poor service, combined with the high cost of replacing a lost customer, combine to make customer service improvement a strategic target: not only as an opportunity for existing companies, but also as an opportunity for innovators to devise and offer new tools that will soon become baseline capabilities.

From Damage Control to Affirmative Customer Care

The immediate priority is to get on the good side of the global conversations on social networks, where customers and prospects all connect. Ignored, the social community of billions of customers--an environment specifically designed to identify and highlight influential voices--is an echo chamber, where any dissatisfaction with a brand is reinforced and spread at pandemic speed. Engaged, that same community can be transformed from critics to advisers; when rewarded for their input, those advisers in turn become advocates or even zealots for a brand.

Don’t fight or evade the community: Play into it. It might be tempting, for example, to respond to an unhappy tweet with a deflection to email as the means of addressing the complaint, but this means that the Twitterverse only sees Act I of the play: “The Unhappy Customer.” Resolve the complaint in the forum where it was made: reply to a tweet on Twitter, reply to a Facebook update with a comment on that same post. The community surrounding the complainer then sees the speed and quality of the response, at minimum mitigating the harm; potentially, creating favorable buzz around the brand.

You don’t do this because it’s cool: You do it because it moves the needle of preference, leading to profit. American Express, in its 2012 Customer Service Barometer Study, found that 66% of U.S. consumers would spend more if they expected better service, with that group willing to pay an average premium of 13% to that end: Importantly, both of those numbers were up (from 58% and 9%, respectively) compared to the same questions asked in 2010.

These are not just hypothetical behaviors: The same study found 75% of customers saying they had already spent more with a company in response to superior service, up from only 57% in 2010. When people feel they have less time and money to spare, superior service has an increasing effect on where they spend both.

Transforming Customer Service Into Brand-Building

Increasingly, products are equipped with various means of network connection, for purposes ranging from smartphone-app remote control to routine updates of embedded software. Don’t stop with connecting products: Connect the company to the customer. For every product you make, ask how it might be possible to add a "Like" button (literally or figuratively) that would let customers tell you (and tell friends) when the product has delighted them; ask how it would be possible to give every customer, in the moment, a way to tell you when and how the product has disappointed.

Work by Eric Von Hippel at MIT has documented the growing expectation of customers that they will be able to engage directly in the process of product improvement; customers who do so become invested in the brand.

Again, this is not something that’s merely done because it’s cool. There are bottom-line incentives to do it. Connected products, wired with sensors and processors in the normal course of improving operational convenience, can generate vast amounts of data. These streams may reveal, using so-called “Big Data” techniques of exploration and association, unanticipated and useful pre-failure signatures. These can become a basis for voluntary service campaigns: acts of positive outreach made before a customer has even noticed a symptom (let alone experienced a breakdown).

Is this about “the cloud”? Only in the sense that a conversation about gourmet cooking is about running water, or a conversation about home entertainment is a conversation about electricity. Ubiquitous, affordable utility services disappear into the background as high-value markets build upon them.

It’s no longer novel to talk about a global web of connections, and a surging acceptance of delivering capability on that network rather than requiring people and companies to buy and operate their own infrastructure. What’s novel is to see the opportunity to stop treating service as a cost to be minimized, and see it as the next huge opportunity for competitive advantage.

"When people feel they have less time and money to spare, superior service has an increasing effect on where they spend both."

Incumbent market leaders must therefore get out of their comfort zone, and rise above costly mass-media marketing that maintains brand awareness but does not continually refresh customer delight. Social media engagement provides priceless, continual realignment of what the customer actually values with what the company’s marketing campaigns promise.

Industries with long supply chains must tighten and accelerate their feedback loops, using the potential of connected products to know more--and know it sooner, and far more accurately--about how their products are actually used, and how the customer feels about that experience.

Finally, new market entrants must recognize the opportunity and necessity to punch far above their weight, by being more accessible and far more responsive in making customers feel like clients and partners--rather than being merely buyers. Getting the buyer to invest in the vendor’s success, even if only psychologically, is the surest way to defy the winds of commoditization and create the next premium brand.

--Peter Coffee is vice president and head of platform research of Salesforce.com, Inc., an enterprise cloud computing company based in San Francisco, California. Follow him on Twitter at @petercoffee