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Collaboration and the Learning Organization
"Well-managed collaborations can help build brand identity and goodwill, reinforce employee commitment, and uncover new business opportunities and sources of revenue. And--essential in this knowledge society--they provide powerful opportunities for organizational learning."
--Frances Hesselbein and John C. Whitehead, foreword to The Collaboration Challenge
"A learning organization builds collaborative relationships in order to draw strength from the diverse knowledge, experience, capabilities, and ways of doing things that people and communities have and use."
--Mark Addleson, "What Is a Learning Organization?"
It was certainly no accident that Harvard Professor James Austin, author of The Collaboration Challenge, was asked to participate in the opening panel of the recent 3rd e-Philanthropy Conference in McLean, Virginia. Many of the success stories in the rise of e-philanthropy have sprung from collaborations both within the nonprofit sector and across sectors. At the same time, many initiatives that failed in recent years were characterized by a lack of collaboration.
For Austin, collaboration is key, but the issue is not simply that organizations must collaborate to survive and thrive. The issue is that organizations that possess the ability to collaborate well are the one most likely to survive and thrive. Scratch the surface of successful collaborations, and you are likely to find learning organizations at work--organizations that fit Mark Addleson's description. Scratch the surface of a learning organization and you will find…well, people at work.
But what makes these people and the organizations in which they work different? How is it that they come to form a learning organization, and what about such an organization sets the stage for successful collaboration? Every organization is as different as the community of people who compose it, but there are solid principles for learning and for successful collaboration that apply across the most diverse range of organizations. Not surprisingly, these principles have a lot in common.
The left column of the following table lists a set of seven principles that Peter Henschel, executive director of the Institute for Research on Learning, offers as "important guideposts for organizations." In the right column are Austin's "Seven C's" of collaboration from The Collaboration Challenge.
Learning Principles
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Collaboration Principles
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- Learning is fundamentally social.
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- Collaboration requires communication between partners.
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- Learning is an act of participation.
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- Collaboration demands commitment from the partners.
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- Knowledge is integrated in the life of communities.
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- Collaboration happens best when there is congruency of mission, strategy, and values.
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- Knowing depends on engagement in practice.
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- Collaboration requires connection with purpose and people.
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- Engagement is inseparable from empowerment.
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- Collaborations must be based upon clarity of purpose.
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- Learning requires access and the opportunity to contribute.
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- Collaborations depend upon the creation of value.
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- Collaboration necessitates continual learning.
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Even without detailed exploration of the two columns, it is relatively easy to see correspondences. The social and participatory aspects of learning, for instance, correlate with the communicative and commitment-driven aspects of collaboration. But, while an alignment of theoretical principles is understandable and illustrative, it is the application of the principles that confounds most organizations.
"Well-managed," the qualifier employed by Hesselbein and Whitehead in the epigraph to this article, becomes the critical phrase in the context of application. The manager's core work in this new economy, Henschel argues, "is to create and support a work environment that nurtures continuous learning." Achieving such a work environment requires a perspective on organizations that moves beyond traditional ideas of hierarchy or of employees as resources. It is important to realize that, as Addleson puts it, "People do a great variety of things in order to 'do their job' and learning is a complex process which happens as people make sense of their circumstances-for example identifying a problem or finding out how to do something-in the context of living and working with other people."
According to Addleson, the manager in the learning organization understands that "most of what people know and learn--and most of the knowledge that organizations need to function effectively--is not and cannot be taught or learned through training, but 'happens' in their day-to-day involvement with others."
Managing well, then, has to do with at once being conscious of the principles of learning, creating an environment in which the principles are acknowledged, and helping to facilitate "the complex process which happens as people make sense of their circumstances." This approach is as applicable in work across organizations as it is within a single organization. As Austin puts it, "Partners should view alliances as learning laboratories and cultivate a discovery ethic that supports continual learning."
How have the principles of learning and collaboration applied--or not applied--in your organization?
Sources
Addelson, Mark. "What Is a Learning Organization?" [Online]. Available: http://psol.gmu.edu/psol/degree2.nsf/Perspectives%20Frameset?OpenFrameSet (select "Articles" underneath "Perspectives" in the left column)
Austin, James E. (2000). The Collaboration Challenge: How Nonprofits and Businesses Succeed through Strategic Alliances. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Henschel, Peter. "The Manager's Core Work in the New Economy" [Online]. Available: http://www.fieldbook.com/ (available underneath "New Material" in the left column)
Hesselbein, Frances, and Whitehead, John C. (2000). Foreword. In James E. Austin, The Collaboration Challenge: How Nonprofits and Businesses Succeed through Strategic Alliances. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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