by Russ Linden
Are your agency leaders talking about collaboration now more than five or six years ago? Are you seeing considerably more collaboration in your agency today?
When I pose these questions to managers, 80 to 90 percent answer “yes” to the first question, but less than 30 percent answer “yes” to the second question. Why is there this yawning gap between the rhetoric and the reality about collaboration?
Increasing the level of collaboration in an organization requires a major culture change. John Hancock, a colleague at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) observes, “Changing organizational culture isn’t rocket science—it’s harder!” Hancock’s point is spot on; greater collaboration is a cultural change that involves values, attitudes, history, and professional identity—much of an agency’s DNA.
Culture can change and adapt over time, but it is difficult. Mid-level and senior managers are concerned about what they have to lose. Front-line employees clearly see the need for change, but also encounter a variety of interpersonal barriers. Indeed, culture change is difficult for anyone who works at an agency where people “talk collaboration,” but hire, train, evaluate, and promote workers based on their individual skills.
Six Key Collaboration Factors
The good news is that there is a discipline to this challenging but critical work. I’ve learned from two decades of researching several successful—and not-so-successful—collaborative efforts that six factors form the foundation of collaboration:
- Partners have a shared, specific purpose that they are committed to and cannot achieve (as well) on their own.
- Partners want to pursue a collaborative solution now, and are willing to contribute something to the effort.
- Appropriate people are at the table.
- Partners have an open, credible process.
- The effort has a passionate champion (or champions) with credibility and clout.
- Partners have trusting relationships.
Having a Shared Purpose
Having a shared, specific purpose that partners are committed to and need help to achieve may seem obvious, but it isn’t. Have you ever participated on a team in which the goal seemed clear to you, only to learn that other members had differing notions of the purpose?
People join collaborative groups for a variety of reasons; some even join because their organization is threatened by the initiative and send someone to slow it down. Identifying the shared purpose and gaining commitment is critical. In fact, this was the top-rated factor by one of the work groups at the 2009 Strengthening Trust in Government Conference, which was sponsored by The Public Manager and the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA).
When it’s unclear whether each partner is committed to the same purpose, some collaboration leaders approach the partners one-on-one—outside of team meetings—to learn what each sees as the goal and hopes to get out of it.
Collaborating and Contributing Now
Wanting to pursue a collaborative solution now and being willing to contribute something to the effort is another success factor. The two key words are “now” and “contribute.”
Collaboration works far better when the timing is right—and when there’s a sense of high stakes. Stakeholders need to be more than interested; they need to contribute time, effort, ideas, problem-solving skills, and other resources. One strategy for raising the stakes is to include customers on the team. Allow customers to describe why the project is so important and the difference it will make in their lives.
Gathering the Appropriate People at the Table
The appropriate people must be at the table. Many rate this factor as the most challenging element to achieve. We can invite others to collaborate with us, but when they work in other units or agencies, which is what collaboration is all about, we can’t direct or demand their involvement.
Ideally, the appropriate people have subject matter expertise, interest in the project, access to resources (including people in other organizations), and the ability to speak for their part of their organization. It often helps to identify the specific people you want from each partner organization and ask for their involvement, rather than wait for each agency to send its representative.
Creating an Open, Credible Process
Process, is a long “four-letter word” for many people, especially when it’s “process for process’ sake.” In collaborative teams, a credible process is critical to producing positive results.
The process for successful collaboration needs to include an able convener, agreed team norms, joint ownership of the initiative, transparency (no side deals made without the team’s knowledge), metrics to gauge progress, and knowledge of what each member brings to the table. A trained facilitator can be extremely effective in helping the team work through these issues and create an open, candid climate.
At the 2009 Strengthening Trust in Government Conference, one break-out group offered another important aspect of a credible process: use of a common language. When those from different cultures work on a team, they often speak past each other because the same words have multiple meanings. For example, ask colleagues in five different agencies for their definition of “program,” and you’ll likely receive five different meanings.
Gaining a Passionate Champion with Credibility and Clout
The effort must have a passionate champion (or champions) with credibility and clout. You might assume this refers to senior leaders, and there’s no question that strong senior support is essential for many—but not all—collaborative efforts.
I’ve seen some collaborative initiatives do very well when they fly beneath the radar and stay out of the leadership’s focus. However, I’ve never seen an important collaboration succeed without a passionate champion at the table. A working-level champion is one who has credibility, clout, and is passionate about the initiative.
Trusting Relationships
Effective partnerships require trust. Some collaborative groups spend months working on the formal aspects of their partnership: the governance structure, the parties’ roles and responsibilities, funding, the project plan, and so on. Yet, ultimately, they produce very little because they fail to realize the power of a trusting relationship.
All of those formal tasks are important, but the group must build trust before such tasks have any meaning. No piece of paper, structure, or plan has the power of respectful relationships built on trust. With trust, a great deal is possible; without it, little is.
Best Practice: IADS
The six key collaboration factors were at work when a group of analysts from various agencies within the intelligence community began looking for a better way to produce data and analysis.
The result: Integrated Air Defense System (IADS), a virtual team comprised of professionals from the intelligence and defense communities. IADS includes analysts and managers who work together to analyze the air defense systems of countries that pose threats to the United States. There are three customers for this sort of analysis: war fighters, policy makers (in Congress, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Air Force), and the acquisition community.
Their solution has been an enormous success and has improved security in the United States.
From Jigsaw Puzzle to an Integrated Whole
Prior to IADS, the different intelligence agencies produced their own reports on particular aspects of other countries’ air defense systems. For example, agencies couldn’t give a complete response about how an entire defensive “kill chain” worked in a specific country. One agency could report on early warning radar and another could analyze surface to air missiles, but there were no integrated reports. A single agency could not answer critical macro questions such as, “Can U.S. aircraft be detected and tracked by Country X?” As one analyst expressed, “The customer got parts of a jigsaw puzzle and had to put the parts together.”
In the years following the 1991 Gulf War, analysts at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) and other intelligence agencies began discussing an integrated approach for analyzing air defense systems, and brought the issue to their supervisors. A new approach was required. In 1994, John Berbrich, chief of scientific and technical intelligence production at the Defense Intelligence Agency, became a strong advocate for the concept, making it a priority. He urged a group of managers to flesh out the concept and identify significant hurdles.
Change occurred in both a top-down and bottom-up fashion. Supervisors and their managers suggested formation of an integrated team of analysts from across the intelligence community to work on air defense. Phil Davis was enlisted to develop the program and negotiate with the agencies involved. Davis and Phil Lathrop spent several months meeting with managers within key agencies, listening to questions, and seeking concurrence. Some of those agencies’ leaders saw this new program as a threat; it didn’t belong to any one agency, and it would require new resources. They feared it meant that they might lose some of their current mission elements.
Davis came up with a detailed proposal for IADS and gained general support from the agencies. He briefed Joan Dempsey, who then was in charge of intelligence production as deputy director for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). She agreed with the need for an integrated team and suggested a two-part structure, with DIA leading a coordinating group of managers from the agencies involved and the U.S. Air Force leading a second group made up of working level analysts. The directors of the agencies approved the structure, and detailed work on developing IADS began in earnest. Dempsey became IADS’ senior champion.
Questions and Concerns
Despite their support for the IADS structure, senior managers of IADS’ partner agencies had a host of concerns. To address their questions, Lieutenant Colonel Ty Johnson, the first chief of the coordinating group, met with each of the managers before IADS went into operation. He explained the overall concept of IADS, then invited their input and listened patiently to their questions and concerns.
One of their leading concerns was that IADS might take something away from their individual agencies: control, key staff, mission elements, or other resources. Johnson’s explanation of the important roles the managers on the Coordinating Group would play helped address their need to maintain some control and influence over the direction of IADS. Also, the fact that IADS was a virtual team, rather than a new organization requiring a realignment of the intelligence community structure, reduced their concerns. Dempsey and Johnson demonstrated a great sensitivity to the politics and personalities involved, working with each partner agency to gain commitment. IADS was formally launched in 1995.
Two-Part Structure
IADS is led by a coordinating group made up of mid-level managers from various IADS agencies. Twice a year they identify the highest priority countries for analysis—those that require new or updated studies based on several factors, including the threat each country poses, and customers’ requirements. They then commit their agencies to work on those priorities.
The actual IADS work is performed by air defense analysts who are part of the analyst group. They create a schedule for producing reports on each country and then arrange for the studies. When a new study begins, the authors attend a kickoff meeting; after that, 90 percent of the communications is done via email, phone, or video teleconferencing. VTC.
The major authors of IADS studies are analysts at NASIC, the Missile and Space Intelligence Center, the National Ground Intelligence Center, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Other authors and contributors include the National Security Agency, DIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial Agency, and the Transportation Security Administration.
When the analyst group sets the production schedule, the coordinating group members obligate their agencies to meet that schedule. Inside the analyst group, NASIC takes responsibility for pulling together the various pieces of analysis prepared on each country study. It seeks consensus when there are differing opinions, acts as referee when consensus is needed, and makes any necessary changes to the final products. As Figure 1 illustrates, this structure is easy to understand on paper, but requires a lot of give and take and can be arduous to implement. One example is in establishing priorities for the country studies. Requirements come to IADS at two levels: 1) member agencies receive them from their individual customers and 2) the IADS program receives requirements directly. For instance, the U.S. Air Force might be tasked by a customer to focus in one region, while DIA is given requirements to work somewhere else. Each customer, of course, sees its need as the highest priority. Resolving these conflicts and scheduling resources to each priority requires a huge amount of patience and understanding.
Making an Impact
IADS has been successful, providing its customers with the kind of integrated, timely reports they require. One of its successes occurred in the fall of 2001, when much of the country was still reeling from the 9/11 attacks. Immediately following 9/11, IADS analysts began a study of Afghanistan’s air defenses, assuming U.S. military would soon strike.
Within three days, the group produced a product ready for war fighters in what came to be called “Operation Enduring Freedom.” The analyst group had to produce a tremendous amount of work in very little time, and they had to get it right.
According to one of the IADS analysts, “There’s no way we could have produced a quality product so quickly before we had IADS. It was only possible because of the years of experience working together on the IADS analyst group and the existing structure to pull in whatever resources we needed. Sure, Afghanistan didn’t posses an integrated air defense system. But it had a lot of ways to shoot aircraft down! And its assets weren’t organized in any obvious way, which actually made it harder to analyze. Our intelligence agencies had virtually no information on the country’s air defense capabilities in September, 2001. They needed a huge amount of data and analysis, immediately.” IADS filled the need and demonstrated its value.
Lessons Learned
What can other agencies learn from the development and work of IADS? One lesson has to do with tempo. There’s a saying among entrepreneurs: “You go slow to go fast.” When a new venture starts, it takes time to figure out the product; find customers; design the first solution; and get it out the door, receive feedback, and modify it. As the kinks are worked out, customer satisfaction rises and word starts to spread. Then the product really hits its take-off point.
Successful public-sector innovators often use a similar process. They buy the time and good will to develop their concept, get the right people to the table, develop trust and confidence, find a senior champion, gain needed resources, demonstrate the ability to meet or exceed customer needs, and market initial results. IADS’ leaders demonstrated the wisdom of the “go slow to go fast” model. As one of its analysts explains, “It was good to start with a success.”
IADS also reflects the power of having the six key collaborative elements in place. Managers in the agencies had a shared goal, one they couldn’t meet on their own. They wanted to work together toward that goal because the problems with the former process had been amply revealed in the 1991 Gulf War, and powerful customers were angry with that process. Also, the managers got the right people to the table to develop a new way for producing analytical studies, led by senior advocates (Berbrich, then Dempsey) and working-level champions (Lathrop, Davis, and Johnson), who developed the detailed plan and worked through agency managers’ concerns.
And the IADS model helps create open communications and trust. Middle managers don’t feel threatened by IADS because they help to make key decisions and they feel informed about what their analysts are working on. Analysts (who do most of their joint work via collaborative software) begin each new study by meeting face-to-face, allotting time to work out goals, roles, timelines, and develop trust with members of the team.
Once IADS was up and running, it benefited from other smart moves:
Ample recognition. IADS analysts give each other credit for good work. They let each others’ managers know, too. The products are Department of Defense (DOD) studies authored by all agencies, not by any one agency.
The two-part structure. The coordinating group provides a forum for discussing issues. It deals with hurdles facing analysts, provides leadership, and helps anticipate and prevent problems. The analyst group coordinates the subject-matter experts and provides a means for resolving differences.
Good answers to the “What’s in it for me?” question. IADS is briefed and marketed well within the agencies involved, which makes everyone look good. IADS reports are shared across many agencies and with senior government policy makers, which is an incentive to be involved. Further, IADS is generating real results; thus, the managers of these agencies put pressure on their employees to participate. They want to benefit from the program’s successes.
A reward system focused on both “me” and “we.” In Competence, Courage, and Change: An Approach to Family Therapy, psychologists Edith C. Lawrence and David B. Waters describe two fundamental human needs that they have discerned from their many decades of clinical practice: 1) the need to be, and be seen as, competent and 2) the need to belong to something larger than oneself. Consider these the “me” and “we” needs. Most of us need to be acknowledged for individual contributions, but we also need to belong to a larger entity that gives life meaning and purpose.
Effective collaborations need to meet both needs, as IADS does. IADS analysts are eligible for individual awards given within each partner agency, based on their own award framework. The analysts are also eligible for team awards given by the intelligence community. Beyond such formal systems, IADS relies on the individual expertise of the analysts, but that expertise only satisfies customer needs when it is integrated with expertise from different agencies, producing a comprehensive product that no individual could develop. IADS participants can meet their “me” needs only through a commitment to their team’s overall mission.
Ongoing, fluid communications between the coordinating group and the analyst group. In most cases, the managers on the coordinating group supervise the analysts who produce the studies on each country. Thus communication happens quite naturally. If you’re an analyst on the “Country A” team, your manager goes to coordinating group meetings at which your team’s reports are discussed and decisions are made about your team’s future assignments. This helps keep managers and their IADS analysts on the same page. Communications has been a major strength of IADS.
Future Collaboration
In his book The Next Government of the United States, Don Kettl argues that government managers have to learn the skills and tasks of collaboration because of the great amount of government work that is now conducted through networks.
To illustrate his point, Kettl describes a long and difficult illness experienced by his mother-in-law. She saw dozens of people from various organizations during the ordeal and received expensive 24-hour service, all of which was covered by the government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs. Yet, when Kettl looked back on the situation, he realized that she never spoke with or was served by a single government employee.
His mother-in-law was helped by a network of nurses, physicians, administrators, pharmacists, dentists, social workers, and physical therapists who worked for private or nonprofit agencies. The care was fine, Kettl reports, but it had to be organized and coordinated to have the intended results. And it’s not only the 45 million Medicare recipients and 60 million people on Medicaid who receive their services and benefits through complex networks. Customers of many human services, natural resource, emergency management, scientific, and other programs are also served through networks. These services do not perform well unless government employees are collaborating with each other and with non-government providers to share information and coordinate activities.
Consider John Gardner’s quote, “Behind all the current buzz about collaboration is a discipline…. If it contained a silicon chip, we’d all be excited.” There is no silicon chip, but the discipline is becoming known. Our challenge is to learn and use the discipline of intelligent collaboration.
References
1. Competence, Courage, and Change: An Approach to Family Therapy (W.W. Norton & Co., 1993).
2. The Next Government of the United States (W.W. Norton and Company, 2009).
Russ Linden has been teaching and consulting with public-sector managers since 1980. He’s an adjunct faculty member at the Federal Executive Institute, the University of Virginia, and the University of Connecticut. His clients include several intelligence, military, and homeland security agencies; the Departments of State, HHS, Treasury, and Education; and several nonprofits in the United States and Israel. His work focuses on change management, collaborating across organizational boundaries, strategic thinking and planning, and creating customer-focused agencies.
Parts of this article are excerpted from Linden’s new book, Leading Across Boundaries: Creating Collaborative Agencies in a Networked World (Jossey-Bass, 2010).