Reaction to: Collaboration.1– 6 Questions to evaluate collaboration in your organization.

I wrote this reaction to a great post by former Toyota Manager Levent Turk.

Love it! Have no discomfort at all with your statement

“It’s the era of collaboration now, and we need to change accordingly.”

Collaboration is key and the lack of it may very well be at the root of just about all the problems we face.

I have a critical note though on the order of questions. The questions are great but if you want to use them as levels to gauge current relations I think a different order is needed. This is my first take on that:

1. Do they take quick action with the information they have instead of searching for the responsible?
2. Do they take accountability instead of assigning responsibility and blaming?
3. Do your employees fully utilize their [current] capacities at work?
4. Do they believe a common purpose with minimum conflict of interests?
5. Are they developing their capacities continuously?
6. Do employees support the development and utilization of their peers’ capacities?

For me there is a logic in this sequence. The first 3 questions asses current problems in increasing order of assessing difficulty.

The 4th question addresses the most likely cause of the behavior found in the previous 3.

The last two question show the desired behavior in increasing order of difficulty. I think a shared purpose is a prerequisite to develop this kind of behavior.