Industry

Industry settings have developed a haven for collaborative working environments. A once hierarchical structure with an abundance of silos, the collaborative workplace environment has grown to be endemically within the industry setting. This profound transformation is in part due to the leadership transformation from a job to a function of strategic direction. While its origins are on power on authority, the cultural realignment has led to see leadership as a skill within workers to engage people in coming to consensus about critical decisions (Marshall, 1995). This shift has led to cultural changes within workers leading to values and beliefs that mirrored those by the organization. It creates standards and expectations that are driven by a collective endeavor rather than individual success, while also rewarding individual creativity.

Marshall, in his seminal essay and later turned into a book, The Collaborative Workplace, spent hours interviewing workers at several organizations to understand the 21st century workplace, as he called it, and derive with important conclusions that are continued to be considered in the design of workplaces. The cultural framework is seen as the antithesis of hierarchical work environments where the goal is to create a uniform alignment of “ownership”. Workers spent considerable time in the workplace which is indicative of a considerable influence on behavior and culture. The ability to trust their colleagues knowing that candor, honesty, and integrity is reflective not only in the values of the organization but that of peers, creates a sense of ownership.

Moreover, it is also common that work needs to develop a sense of growth and a never ending learning experience. As new methods are introduced, workers are more likely to easily accept them due to the new cultural framework environment in place. This cultural framework is grounded in the collaborative workplace, a place that communicate expectations and establishes goals that are reflective to the goals of the individual workers and organization. As you can see in Table 1., each of the list items are what a collaborative workplace fosters. Similarly, it is the cultural framework that organizations design. More specific, it functions at five different levels of success that collaboration helps with derived from Marshall’s essay:

1. A decision-making framework - Collaboration provides a basis for making business and organizational decisions based on principle rather than power or personality, whether that decision is about strategy, customers, people or systems. Collaboration helps us decide when and how to use any particular program or technique to improve performance, and how to engage the workforce in its implementation. It is just as concerned with relationships and the company’s reputation as it is with bottom-line results.
2. A common denominator for relationships - Collaboration provides a common denominator for engaging all members of the workforce since its core values and beliefs are the basis for building trust-based relationships.
3. A business transformation methodology - it is a way to transform the way we work, complete with the methods, tools and processes that help the workplace become aligned, take ownership of and responsibility for the success of the enterprise, and build an organization's system that produces sustained high performance.
4. An organization gyroscope - Collaboration helps us manage our way through the paradoxes of change. In the face of extraordinary pressures from both outside and inside our companies, it helps us maintain balance and focus.
5. A new work ethic - Collaboration provides a long-term stability for the workplace because it is a work ethic that recognizes that work gets done through people, that people want and need to be valued, and that any change must be owned by those implementing it if it is to be successful.