Oddly enough, I have seen a real steady decline in how well people can collaborate. Some folks insist on being the star and want every decision made by the group to be the decision that seems personally best to them. "Compromise? Support others? Why would I do that?? We need to do it my way." Others, of course, want to kick back and let others do everything. "You guys are great. Keep doing what you're doing. I'll be over here surfing facebook."
It's hard to be a good leader. It is also hard to be a good follower. Collaboration is about knowing how to do both.
Collaboration is hard. You might think that schools teach people how to collaborate, but I think somehow the opposite lesson is being learned.
For every collaborative pack there is leader. Akela is to be followed.
A system in which excellence is rewarded and incompetence is marginalized is not necessarily a bad thing, is it?
During my first year of college, back in the 70’s, I got all “A’s”.
Then the whole system switched to a Pass/Fail model. Show up- you pass. Don’t show up- you fail.
So boring, stupid and useless, I quit, got married, became a full time musician.
“Collaboration is hard. You might think that schools teach people how to collaborate, but I think somehow the opposite lesson is being learned.”
I agree with you. Having worked in both small entrepreneurial businesses and large corporations, one of the most powerful things about a well managed small business is the team spirit and flexibility to get things done on a moment’s notice. Priorities can shift due to the demands of the marketplace and a small business, at the direction of the leader, can shift focus to capitalize immediately on opportunity or respond to a customer problem. Large businesses, with many layers of management and job description defined limits on freedom of action have a much more difficult time making decisions and responding, even when a shift is mandated from the top.
As you described, collaboration is hard, even without the politics and rules of a large organization. Leaders of big companies talk about the need for collaboration, flexibility, and entrepreneurship but they rarely invest in training employees how to collaborate. Collaboration requires a high level of trust and if the corporate culture does not inspire trust, employees will not collaborate. Certainly the Steve Ballmer and Jack Welch forced ranking performance systems does not work well with teams whose total output can be measured but the individual contribution to the team effort is difficult to discern objectively.
“You might think that schools teach people how to collaborate, but I think somehow the opposite lesson is being learned.”
Schools are teaching equality and every opinion is as good as the next. This also means EVERYONE IS A CHIEF AND NO ONE SHOULD BE AN INDIAN.
The only problem is that when everyone is a chief, there is no collaboration.
What needs to be taught is that if someone is better than you, that guy gets to be the chief and you are the indian. When you improve enough to be the chief, you get to be chief. The problem is, most of the kids should never be chiefs and that would damage their self esteem. The parents of the persistent indians will also come down on the teacher too.
In most self evaluation surveys, about 90% of the students rate themselves as “above average”.
Most adults when rating themselves on a scale from 1-10 rate themselves a 7.
You are pretty much describing the electric paower systems lab group I was in when I was in college. Two members of the four person group I was in I call “Captain Head” and the “Stomed Ranger” since they liked to partake in a lot of weed. The course was on a Monday morning, so you can accurately guess what state they were in (and we’re working with 480 volt 3 phase, and it’s amazing no one got killed!). When it was time to do the group lab report, instead of meeting a t the agreed upon time and place, Head and Ranger were at the Student Center playing pinball. When the other lab group member and I reminded them of the shared responsibility, we get called before counseling services to get lectured about tolerance - as in we were suposed to accept people showing up stoned.
What's being learned is that if one person does the work, they can all get credit. My preferred model (seldom used) is that everybody spends some individual time studying a problem and coming up with solutions before the group meets. Everybody would be graded on both their individual contribution sheet and the group result. Too often, without this step, the independent thinker with unique ideas isn't even given a chance to explore them.
Collaboration is also the means by which mediocre and lower performing employees (”teammates”) can ride on the coattails of real high achievers and performers. If “everyone gets a trophy for trying their hardest, gosh darn they ought to share in the winnings too” is the new group-think pervading our corporations. Sorry, this approach is in direct conflict with my capitalistic heartbeat so I will speak out against it. “Rank and yank” does work if it is not corrupted by the PC police and group-thinkers. The primary focus of the approach is to tell the employee where they stand in relationship to others - sadly, managers are not taught honesty skills and those that struggle with telling the truth will never be able to use the system as it was designed.
Our schools used to teach about independent excellence and achievement and instead, the schools are turning out dumbed-down, group-think idiots that can’t process on their feet or use critical-thinking skills. Businesses use it (collaboration and small groups) because that is the caliber of people they are getting from the system and it almost like a new sub-culture with its own language and thought processes.
The classmates who did complete projects with me thanked me for showing them how to do team projects correctly, how to make the assignments and schedules, and how to turn out the best product. In the end, it wasn't reading the management books that got them ahead, it was having someone who could show them how to actually make collaborating work.
The real-life translation of this:
In school projects ("groups"), two members of a five-member group do all the work, and the other three show up at the last minute to claim the credit.
In work situations, see above.
When my kids were going through school and had “group projects” coming up, I told them to always try to team up with Poindexter and just tell their friends they’ll catch up with them after school. Get the ‘A’.
It didn’t make me feel like a team player. It made me more conservative. I’d rather do a paper and turn it in than do twice as much work and see others get the credit.
More than once, I had to do the group project by myself because I couldn’t sync up schedules with others or was paired with a slower kid who did nothing but put a name on it.