"Ten Principles of Collaborative Organizations"

S. Beyerlein, S. Freedman, C. McGee, and L. Moran

Journal of Organizational Excellence

Spring 2003, pp. 51-63

This article starts with the premise that "competitive pressures require collaboration across teams, levels, projects, functions and organizational boundaries-including the need for collaboration with customers, vendors, business partners, and governmental and other nonprofit agencies."

The following ten principles are discussed as keys to making collaboration effective:

1. Focus collaboration on achieving business results—This creates a common purpose and context for decision making;
2. Align organizational support systems to promote ownership—This fosters commitment to and understanding of the overall goals of the organization;
3. Articulate and enforce "a few strict rules"—This creates the necessary cohesion to foster goal-directed cooperative effort while maintaining the flexibility to respond to changing demands and opportunities;
4. Exploit the rhythm of divergence and convergence—This provides the necessary balance between generating new and exciting ideas and the discipline necessary to do the job;
5. Manage complex tradeoffs on a timely basis—This provides the information and disciplined processes for making the complex decisions in new situations;
6. Create higher standards for discussion, dialogue, and information sharing—This ensures that more information is considered and more potential consequences are anticipated in each example of collaboration;
7. Foster personal accountability—This ensures that each individual fulfills his or her role effectively and provides some value-adding contribution;
8. Align authority, information, and decision making—This ensures that the team has the information necessary to make good decisions and the authority and accountability to implement those decisions;
9. Treat collaboration as a disciplined process—This ensures that the correct information is considered, the deliberations are focused and balanced, and the decisions are workable; and
10. Design and promote flexible organizations—This fosters multiple grouping across members to meet the changing requirements of the organization to do the work.

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