<div class="artwork-narrow"><div class="credit"></div> </div> <p>As business buzzwords go, “collaborate” and its derivatives are surely modern favorites. Applying for a job? Emphasize your collaboration skills. Courting customers? Promise a collaborative relationship. Wooing new hires or investors? Talk up your collaborative culture</p>

Any business works better when its employees, teams, divisions, and leaders share ideas and resources to pursue a common goal.

Four new books offer advice

You’ll find the most interesting case studies—of organizations getting collaboration right and of those felled by the lack of it—in <span class="mediatitle">The Silo Effect,</span> by Gillian Tett, an editor at the <span class="mediatitle">Financial Times</span>

Tett shows us how Sony missed the digital music revolution because its competing divisions couldn’t agree on products, platforms, or strategy;

how UBS, the venerable Swiss bank, lost billions through lack of coordination between its New York and London credit derivative desks and its three risk departments (credit, market, and operational), which left everyone clueless about the enterprisewide threat

nd how tribalism among the world’s leading economists blinded them to the causes of the most recent global financial crisis.

Tett explains how Facebook uses a hierarchy-free orientation program, frequent job rotations, and regular “hackathons” to encourage cooperation among project groups

how the Cleveland Clinic reorganized its medical staff into teams that focus on ailments rather than their own skills to improve patient outcomes

how data crunchers infiltrated bureaucratic police departments to reduce crime rates in New York and Chicago.

Many readers will have heard those stories before, but the detail is impressive. And the lessons Tett offers at the end of the book are spot on:

Keep organizational boundaries flexible and fluid

use technology to disrupt them

share data and let different interpretations of it be heard

reimagine corporate taxonomies and experiment with new ones

tie compensation to collaboration

These are high-level, top-down recommendations. But she also has a few tips for any manager eager to fight silos from the bottom up

Think like an anthropologist—with curiosity, healthy cynicism, and an appreciation for how things relate to one another so that you’re able to recognize when systems no longer make sense

In <span class="mediatitle">Friend &amp; Foe,</span> Wharton professors Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer (see <a href="/2015/09/the-organizational-apology">“The Organizational Apology,”</a> in the September 2015 issue) present reams of cool research showing why, although humans are inherently social animals, we’re also wired to vie with one another when resources are scarce and conditions are dynamic or uncertain.

The most pertinent lesson for would-be collaborators: Build trust by showing warmth and competence, appreciating others’ perspectives, and revealing vulnerability.

In <span class="mediatitle">Collaborative Intelligence,</span> consultants Dawna Markova and Angie McArthur drill down into personal skill building.

They encourage leaders to understand their own and others’ “mind patterns” (six in all, based on one’s preference for visual, auditory, or kinesthetic information processing) and “thinking talents” (35, ranging from “adapting” to “wanting to win”).

The authors then describe how to use inquiry and mindset shifts to ensure that everyone is contributing to a successful shared future.

Appreciate the value in intellectual diversity, and approach every work partnership wondering, “What can we make possible together?”

Longtime management writer and consultant Ken Blanchard also believes that <span class="mediatitle">Collaboration Begins with You.</span>

to shift his and others’ hearts (intent), heads (thought), and hands (action) toward collaboration.

must build on differences;

He comes to see that leaders

talk openly about collaboration

craft a clear purpose,<span class="diigoHighlightCommentLocator"></span> values, and goals

nurture safety and trust;

empower themselves and others to spread it

Companies don’t fail at collaboration because not enough people will cooperate with one another. They fail when people work too closely in certain teams, functions, or departments without any regard for the rest of the organization.

Coaching for collaborative thinking and behavior <em>might</em> help them break through those boundaries.

But policy changes—such as the incentives and restructuring put in place at the Cleveland Clinic or the nudging mechanisms seen in Facebook’s orientations, rotations, and use of its own social network to forge surprising connections—are much more effective.

As Galinsky and Schweitzer note, the more cohesive and successful teams become, the less likely they are to cooperate with other teams, even within their own companies.

So, yes, let’s encourage people to get better at collaboration, even train them in it. But let’s also design organizations that make it energizing and fun, not forced.

<p>In 1904, the great sociologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber">Max Weber</a> visited the United States. &nbsp;As <a href="http://moisesnaim.com/">Moises Naim</a> describes in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Power-Boardrooms-Battlefields/dp/0465031560"><em>The End of Power</em></a>, travelling around the vast country for three months, he believed that it represented “the last time in the long-lasting history of mankind that so favourable conditions for a free and grand development will exist.”</p> <p>Yet while Weber saw vast potential and boundless opportunities, he also noticed problems. &nbsp;The massive productive capacity that the industrial revolution had brought about was spinning out of control. &nbsp;Weber saw that traditional and charismatic leadership would have to give way to a more bureaucratic and rational model.</p>

1. If it can fit on an org chart, it’s not a network.

Before Weber’s bureaucracies became predominant, most enterprises were fairly organic. &nbsp;People shared the work, helped out where they could and all pitched in to get the job done. &nbsp;At the end of the day, they went home and then came back the next morning, ready to tackle a new job, which was often different than the day before.

Yet the increase in scale that the industrial revolution brought about resulted in a difference in the kind of work that was to done. &nbsp;Jobs would be broken down into small, specific tasks and be governed by a system of hierarchy, authority and responsibility. &nbsp;This required a more formal form of organization in which roles and responsibilities were clearly defined.

As business became more complex, these rigid structures grew increasingly untenable and so management theorists began to look for another way—<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_management">matrixed organizations</a>. &nbsp;In addition to the hard lines of responsibility and authority, dotted lines were used to denote cross-functional authorities and responsibilities.

Yet before long, it became clear that <a href="/1978/05/problems-of-matrix-organizations">matrixed organizations also had problems</a>. &nbsp;Despite the often mind-numbing complexity of matrixed organization charts, they still could not match the complexity of the marketplace. &nbsp;So matrices, in a sense, led to the worst of both worlds, a cumbersome organizational structure and the inability to adapt to fast changing contexts.

The truth is that networks are informal structures. &nbsp;If it can fit on a traditional org chart, it’s not a network.

2. Silos themselves aren’t the issue.

The term “network” is often misconstrued. &nbsp;In management circles, it is often used to mean an organic, unfathomable, amorphous structure, but really a network is just any system of nodes connected by links. &nbsp;So, in that sense, any organizational structure is a network, even a formal org chart.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_coefficient">clustering</a>

For functional purposes, networks have two salient characteristics:

Clustering refers to the degree to which a network is made up of tightly knit groups

path length

path lengths is a measure of distance—the average number of links separating any two nodes in the network.

We often hear about the need to “break down silos” to create a networked organization, but this too is a misnomer. &nbsp;Silos are functional groups and they need a high degree of clustering to work effectively and efficiently. &nbsp;The real problem in most organizations is that path lengths are too great and information travels too slowly, resulting in a failure to adapt.

The most efficient networks are <a href="http://www.digitaltonto.com/2010/the-story-of-networks/">small-world networks</a>, which have the almost magical combination of high clustering and short path lengths.

So silos aren’t the issue—high clustering promotes effective collaboration—the trick is to connect the silos together effectively.

3. Small-world networks form naturally, if they’re allowed to.

The idea that clusters of close-knit teams can somehow increase the flow of information on their own, simply through shorter social distances, seems unlikely. &nbsp;Yet actually, small-world networks often form naturally, without design or complex organizational engineering.

In fact, in their <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v393/n6684/full/393440a0.html">initial paper</a> describing the phenomenon, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_J._Watts">Duncan Watts</a> and <a href="http://www.stevenstrogatz.com/">Steven Strogatz</a> found the neural network of a roundworm, the power grid of the western United States, and the working relationships of film actors all followed the small-world network pattern. &nbsp;It takes effort to design a traditional organization, but small-world networks form naturally.

traditional organizations actively discourage connectivity. &nbsp;They favor strict operational alignment within specific functional areas while doing little to foster links between them.

4. Networked doesn’t mean flat.

The latest management craze is flat, <a href="http://www.digitaltonto.com/2012/the-leaderless-organization/">leaderless organizations</a>. &nbsp;Much has been made about <a href="/2015/05/making-sense-of-zappos-war-on-managers">Zappos’ recent efforts with holacracy</a>, but as Tim Kastelle recently <a href="http://timkastelle.org/blog/2015/05/zappos-just-pulled-off-the-boldest-change-management-move-ever/">explained</a>, the jury is still out whether the effort—and those like it—will be ultimately successful.

&nbsp;My own feeling is that flat structures will work for some cultures, but not others.

The important thing is that an organization does not have to be flat to be networked.

<p>In his new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Team-Teams-Rules-Engagement-Complex/dp/1591847486/"><em>Team of Teams</em></a>, General <a href="http://mcchrystalgroup.com/our-team/">Stanley McChrystal</a> explains how he drastically reinvented how his forces operated, but didn’t changed the formal structure. &nbsp;The changes mainly had to do with informal structure, communication and forging a shared purpose.</p> <p>General McChrystal’s Special Forces command was still hierarchical and clustered into small operating groups. &nbsp;What changed is how they were interconnected. &nbsp;Rather than a collection of units, they became a <a href="http://www.digitaltonto.com/2014/the-synchronized-organization/">synchronized organization</a> that acted as one.</p>

So what really needs to change is not how we describe our organizations, but the <a href="http://www.digitaltonto.com/2014/the-new-role-of-leaders/">role of leaders</a> within them. &nbsp;Whereas before, it was the role of managers to direct work, in a connected age we need to instil <a href="http://www.digitaltonto.com/2010/the-passion-economy/">passion and purpose</a> around a <a href="http://www.digitaltonto.com/2014/how-your-mission-drives-your-strategy/">shared mission</a>. &nbsp;The networking, if encouraged and not inhibited, will take care of itself.

The author of this article has found that many organizations fall close to one of five natural “configurations,” each a combination of certain elements of structure and situation.

When managers and organizational designers try to mix and match the elements of different ones, they may emerge with a misfit that, like an ill-cut piece of clothing, won’t wear very well.

The key to organizational design, then, is consistency and coherence.