Thought leader

The Centre for Competitiveness has examined the approaches of over 500 professional firms and identified critical success factors for managing change and competing effectively. The findings, summarised in the book Transforming the Company1, reveal that successful practices or ‘winners’ display attitudes and behaviours for building relationships that differ from those of ‘losers’ that struggle.

Successful and unsuccessful firms pursue very different approaches to avoiding disputes, handling confrontation and encouraging collaboration. People associated with ‘loser’ practices are cautious collaborators. They stress the time, effort and expense required to establish and build relationships, and they often conclude that the likely results do not justify the investment required.

In making such choices, losers act as though working with others is an option rather than a necessity. At heart they are reluctant to share and would prefer to operate alone. They keep to themselves in an attempt to avoid becoming entangled in rivalries or drawn into disputes, and collaboration is seen as a constraint upon their freedom.

Winners, on the other hand, are more willing to work with colleagues and co-operate with other complementary suppliers of professional services. They see and seek the advantages of collaboration, which might enable them to learn, develop, offer a wider range of services to their customers and pursue a broader range of opportunities.

Once contact is established with a potential business partner, winners do not mind the possible confrontation and argument needed to create mutual respect and a meeting of minds. They endeavour to find common ground, resolve conflicts and promote shared interests and goals.

Consortium responses to invitations to tender for complex and large-scale projects are also increasingly common in certain sectors. Only by working together may the respondents be able to assemble the capabilities required.

When they need to work with others, losers tend to seek out potential collaborators with similar characteristics to themselves. As a consequence, they sometimes find in crisis situations that the whole is not necessarily greater than the sum of the parts.

If the parties endeavouring to co-operate are very different, however, they may not have enough in common to cement a relationship. But winners are more likely to understand that lasting relationships often involve dissimilar but complementary partners that allocate roles and responsibilities according to comparative advantage.

Winners recognise that if internal and external relationships are to grow and deepen, they should be acceptable and mutually beneficial to all the parties involved. Instinctively, when negotiating, they look for win-win outcomes and they avoid rushing, as some parties will take longer to adjust and integrate than others.

Collaboration should not be pursued at any cost or become a distraction. But some losers devote great effort to achieving ‘teamwork’ that may conceal or sideline differences and gloss over concerns to achieve a bland consensus. What is really needed is a more entrepreneurial approach, which encourages open and frank discussion. And, on occasion, it will be necessary to create waves to make faster progress.

Discussion, informed debate, a willingness to challenge and a degree of confrontation is sometimes desirable. It can prevent complacency, spur innovation and lead to higher performance. Disputes are usually better in the open – where efforts can be made to resolve them – than hidden where they can fester.

Finally, customers and business partners should also be encouraged and helped to raise concerns, express viewpoints, explore issues, reconcile opinions, foster collaboration and share learning.

Reference

1. Coulson-Thomas, C., Transforming the Company, Manage Change, Compete and Win, published by Kogan Page, 2002

Colin Coulson-Thomas has reviewed the processes and practices for over 50 companies, and helped over 80 boards and management teams to improve corporate performance. He can be contacted at colinct@tiscali.co.uk.