Coordination: Too much structure … or not enough?
Does too much structure get in the way of coordination? Are there structures (practices) that enable coordination? What can a work group do to better understand the coordination required to get their work done?
In an interesting short exchange of Twitter a few weeks ago @leebaker, in response to a fascinating discussion on the Knowledge Cafe led by @DavidGurteen, asked: “Can we overcome hierarchy so everyone can contribute?”, . My friend and colleague Stefan Norrvall @norrvall replied: “A well designed hierarchy does exactly that. It’s an enabling structure, not a power structure.”
I would add that a “good/useful” hierarchy particularly enables decision-making that keeps things moving as well as co-ordination and exchange of information across boundaries.
I was reminded by this exchange of the work done by Keith McCandles and Henri Lipmanowicz on Liberating Structures only to find that on the same day a free iphone and iPad app has been release making this work more freely available. If you want more detail there is also a book.
I was also reminded of the work by Jody Hofer Gittel on relational coordination which focuses on the processes of communicating and relating for the purposes of task integration and that of Amy Edmondson on teaming which focuses on the processes and practices thjat are needed for successful cooperation and collaboration for achieving tasks, perhaps in formal teams but equally across boundaries or in the absence of traditional hierarchy.
PRACTICE
The following exercise is influenced by the Liberating Structure called Generative Relationships STAR and the way in which Relational Coordination can be measured or assessed.
Begin by thinking of a situation in which coordination and collaboration among individuals or groups is necessary for successful delivery. I can’t imaging that will be too difficult!
Write down all the groups and/or individuals involved in that situation around in a circle, then draw lines linking them (or at least all of them that need to coordinate some of their work).
Then for each of the connections make some notes about:
- Reason to work together: the “content” of the relationship (what they need to coordinate about) and the benefits that are gained from working together
- Shared Goals: the degree to which their goals are mutual and conversely the extent to which their functional goals might generate competing commitments.
- Separateness: the amount of diversity in perspective, expertise, and background across the connection
- Tuning: the level of listening deeply, reflecting, and making sense of challenges together
- Mutual Respect and Shared Knowledge: the extent to which they know about and respect each other’s work and expertise and the degree to which appropriate knowledge and information is shared across the connection.
- Action: the number and type of opportunities to generate and act on ideas or innovate across the connection.
- Communication: the extent to which current communication structures and practices enable interaction which is frequent, timely, accurate and solution focused.
Facilitate a discussion about what’s been discovered and generate insights about where innovation and improvement might be possible.
As a final note, and to return to the beginning, it goes without saying that it’s virtually impossible to do this successfully by yourself as a “top-down” exercise.
Realistically you can only get rich enough information to generate insights if the people who live these connections are engaged in describing what it is like to try to make them work. The headings are only pointers. In my experience once started a discussions along these lines will open up themes, questions and areas for the discussion that aren’t on the list but are vitally important in the context..
Please feel free to contact me if you decide to do this and need some help on getting started or, even better, to let me know how it went.