Hi, we are “The Amenies”, nice to meet you here.
From left to right: Jenny HUNG, Gwennie TAM, Mel HY.YUEN, Dr Frank YU, Amor XU
Jenny HUNG : An experienced training specialist in the apparel industry
Gwennie TAM : An experienced management secretary in the electronic industry
Mel HY.YUEN : An experienced service management executive in the hospitality industry
Dr Frank YU : Our subject professor
Amor XU : An experienced business development executive in the FMCG and ICT industries
Why “The Amenies”?
This is how we give birth to our group name:
Names of our group members in alphabetical order:
Amor – Gwennie – Jenny – Melanie
Essences of our names being extracted, then the name of the group being composed – “The Amenies”. ( Amor – Gwennie – Jenny – Melanie + s )
We “The Amenies” is a team of four 1MSOCM students who appreciate the individualities among us. We recognize that each teammate has his or her own intrinsic or indispensable character and personality (the essence) that make him or her so unique or identifiable. When as a team, we are more than happy to synergize and to meet or even surpass the set objectives. The numerous formulas and magnitudes in blending the extracted essences remind us of the many possibilities with and outcomes from team dynamics, efforts and intelligence. Without doubt, we strive for High Performance Collaborations!
Team Goals
See our team logo? The logo symbolizes the input of our joint but individualistic essences to the team. We expect synergy within us when we are performing our roles towards the team objectives. In the course, we anticipate dynamic interactions among us: knowledge to be enriched, soft skills to be enhanced, experiences to be gained… all these ultimately are the treasures that our team will finally share!
“High Performance Collaborations” are the honey of meaningful work and life. The standpoint of our team is to respect our own inherent essence in one way, and to capitalize and continuously develop oneself on the other. To achieve this, understanding the researches and theories behind the topic, knowing the ways to putting forward the essential information and knowledge to develop the strategic mindset and intelligence, and seizing the opportunities to practicing the crucial behavioral and interpersonal skills for the ultimate collaboration results are the goals of our team.
Favorite Topics
What weekly topics will excite our team most? Nearly all! Actually the coming experiential and action learning exercises in and after the classes will stimulate considerably the flow of our team blood!
Any additional topics that our group will like to know? Well, how about “Taboos in Collaborations”? It is amusing if not superstitious to know that some foodstuffs mutually conflict, like 2fresh onion cannot be eaten together with honey. Well, same applies to collaborations? How to produce or preserve “High Performance Collaborations” as the honey of meaningful work and life, yet mindful to any fatal conflicts?
A Myth: Collaboration is always good for business.
A Myth: Collaboration is always good for business.
We are taught that:
Ø Collaboration is good;
Ø Collaboration is problem solving;
Ø Collaboration means enlarging the pie;
Ø Collaboration means win-win.
Many business leaders then like to believe that the more their staffs or teams collaborate, the better off their business will be. They suppose that collaboration will have a positive relationship with business success. With this mindset, business leaders often tempt to motivate their staffs or teams to frequently collaborate in the hope of establishing even more successful business. As a matter of fact, collaboration could be detrimental when business leaders overlook the downside of it or when they overdo it.
Amusingly, the research result indicates that the greater the collaboration effort (measured by the hours of help the team received), the worse the business result (measured by the number of new contracts received). The research further reveals an astounded finding that experienced teams didn’t learn as much from their associates as they thought they would be. And the knowledge they gained was often offset by the extra time being used on their collaboration effort.
So what goes wrong?
Majority business leaders who unhesitatingly direct their staffs or teams to collaborate for business reasons may have neglected or failed to plan the best prescriptions.
What hide behind collaborative actions then?
Consider the team players and group dynamics: are they professional in one area but amateur in the others? How about their personalities, culture, value and belief…in relation to the business objectives? (And more? Of course! Feel free to elaborate….)
Consider the best timing, stages, duration etc. for the collaborative actions: when the collaborative actions and their stays will add values to the business revenue instead of becoming an extra burden?
Consider especially the 3“collaboration cost”, which is the amount of cash flow a company would lose owing to problems associated to collaborative efforts.
Collaboration cost could be an immense item and should never be underestimated!
Business which involves working across organizational boundaries or cross companies, collaborative efforts would mean extra travelling, extra coordinating work, extra time and cost spent over communication, negotiation and sharing of information.
Moreover, collaboration always consumes valuable resources that might have been better allocated somewhere else, like the valuable meeting time that could have been used for new product development!
Additionally, extra cost of collaboration always occurred when players are uncooperative and reluctant to share resources or information. This always happens after merger of companies, when two teams with different goals are forced to collaborate.
In short, our team considers “collaboration is always good for business” is not an absolute truth. Business leaders need to be more sensitive not to overlook the downside of it or to overdo it.
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References
1 Master of Science in Organizational and Change Management
2 Bulliet, R. W., Crossley, P. K., Headrick, D. R., Hirsch, S. W. & Johnson, L. L. (2008). The earth and its people: A global history vol. I. Boston
3 Hansen, T. Morten (2009). Harvard Business Review on Collaborating Effectively, Boston : Mass.
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Extension
Responding to classmates’ comments on our Blog
52386135_BELIKOVA_ANAFeb 3, 2012 10:48 PM
52557414 (MAK SM)Feb 5, 2012 02:00 AM
92036234_CHEUNG BernieFeb 6, 2012 06:50 AM
52317861 Lam GaryFeb 4, 2012 11:03 PM
52357385yingyingFeb 5, 2012 04:32 AM
52280285 AU-YEUNG PhilipFeb 5, 2012 08:46 PM
50342769 Lau WinkyFeb 6, 2012 07:39 AM
Few comments highlight the important role of leadership in collaborations. Relating to our myth topic, collaboration may not be always good for business but with good leadership, collaborative efforts may come a lot easier. It’s a common phenomenon that for groups which exhibit high levels of collaborative behaviors usually comes with leaders with clear vision, management competency and a lot of human skills. In short, this type of leader could be summed up into someone who is both task and relationship oriented. The task oriented leadership side allows leader to turn teams’ collaborative efforts into actions by guiding them with clear goals and visions, and come up with practical action plans for teams to follow. The human/relation oriented side foster collaborative behaviors when bonding of team effort is needed, or when managing conflict is involved, especially when the nature of the task is complicated.
In addition, we agree with some classmates regarding the importance of ‘Teamwork’. Being good leaders, they really need to take the lead for sharing and communicating vision and mission to employees so as to achieve company goals. Employees should be empowered to have full participation in work as a team for practicing leadership and achieving better results.
It is true that not every task is requested to collaborate and not every task can be managed by one individual. As such, leaders and employees have to make decision how to perform it well no matter what approach we adopt after the following assessment.
Individual decision making:
1. Individual decision making is more speedy
2. Individual decisions have clear accountability
3. Individual decisions tend to convey consistent values
Satisfaction implication for managers:
1. High consistency between employers and employees on perception of job shows significant association with employee satisfaction.
2. Satisfaction is greater when job minimizes interaction with individuals of lower status.
3. Larger groups are associated with lower satisfaction.
I think you touched on a very interesting topic - is the team more productive than an individual? Today we are bombarded by the messages that we must be teamworkers, that collaboration is the key to success, that the most successful companies are those that create tight work teams. While I certainly do not want to downplay the importance of teams, in my opinion it tends to be the star performers that ultimately do most good for the company. For startes, effective groups rarely just happen naturally. Due to clashes in personality, opinions and preferences teams rarely are able to operate as a single unit towards a single goal by themselves.
ReplyDeleteUnderperforming companies are always brough back by someONE. It is always someONE who rouses the employees, inspires them, pushes and persuades them towards a bright vision. Thus I believe management leaders and students should spend just as much time on nurturing the talents as they do on teamwork.
Your team’s myth is really interesting which, I think, is challenging our course itself.
ReplyDeleteBut it is too early to summarize the effectiveness of collaboration. It really depends on “HOW” collaboration effort being put.
For example, not doing collaboration because someone “wants” to, but “needs” to. The situation had to be evaluated to see what the best solution should be. If really think that collaboration can maximize the outcomes, leaders could start planning for building collaboration partnership.
Leaders are the one who are responsible to set a good platform for collaborations, such as recognizing opportunities for change; mobilizing people and resources to create changes; developing a vision of long-term change; seeking support and involvement from diverse and non-traditional partners; choosing an effective group structure; building trust among collaborators and developing learning opportunities for partners.
Continuous monitoring of the collaborate group is required to ensure the engine is on the right track and provide necessary guidance, sometimes, is the core task of leaders, too.
I appreciate for the group's creativity. Your group name is a combination of members' name which is really encourage the continuous of reading the blog.
ReplyDeleteFor your myth, I also agree that it is not always true. As most of us know that, collaboration may not work under some situations which emphasis on independent effort. I would regard this myth is true under the degree and scope of the problems. If the problem involves many people and more parties are needed to cooperate to solve, then this myth would be a good description. Take the European sovereign debt crisis as an example, it covers the whole European states/countries. It is not possible to solve the debt crisis by one party. Collaboration is essential to solve this kind of great business issue. Leaders of those countries stress on how to cooperate with each other to tackle the current adverse situations. Overall, I believe this myth is good for discussing.
Many thanks for bringing this topic up for discussion.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, there is noting except the sun comes up on east, is always true. For example, not every tasks are required to collaborate and at the same time not every task can be managed by one individual.
However, in the 21st century, it is believed that most of the tasks are being more and more complicated and in order to successfully tackle the problem, experts from different fields are required to join the working force to manage the problem. Since experts from different fields have different training backgrounds, and different members have different socio-cultural factors and personalities, knowledge in success collaboration is essential job skill in new era.
Sometimes, it may be frustrated when you collaborate with the others with different backgrounds, but you may see it as an opportunity to learn the underlying thinking mechanism and reason about different individuals. A Chinese proverb "三人同行，必有我師" - In a party of three there must be one whom I can learn from. The underlying meaning is that you can learn from the others, not necessary from the professional knowledge but can be in other aspects, like social skills, communication skills and etc. We should not see collaboration as a mean of solution to the problems, but should perceive as a learning and training opportunity in real life.
First of all, I appreciate that this group brings out a good question that we should think about it deeply: Collaboration is always good for business? It seems the answer is negative. However, in normal way people do agree that collaboration should be positive to all the circumstances. Now we need to know that it also can cause a dark side on collaboration. I agree with the group mentioned that collaboration may cause longer decision time and the high cost. Collaboration is not handling in a good way, it may cause a huge consequence. Here is a real example from the company I had worked before : we got a complaint from the top 2nd customer about the quality issue. The boss had pulled all the related departments: Sales & marketing, engineering, purchasing, and quality control together to find out solution. He would like to solve it through the collaboration. However, after weekly review meeting within six months, the quality issue was happen and happens again. As there are involved too many departments, and they are tends to push the responsibility to others, and the ambiguity in roles and responsibility. Finally, the customer is real mad and cancel all the orders and asking for all her economic lost.
ReplyDeleteI like this group's myth quite much and the explanation is very clear and impressive.
ReplyDeleteAs for the myth "Collaboration is always good for business",I'd like to do the disconfirmation just like the Amenies did.
Collaboration exists in many forms, for example, in a team, in an organization or even between the rivals. Actually, when talking about collaboration, teamwork is the first word that comes to my mind. As a student of Msc Marketing, I need to do a group project of almost every course, so how to cooperate with other students is very important for me. We always want to form a good team in a class with people of different personalities and different strength but most of the time, we can only form a team randomly. Then lots of problems will appear, some of the members have absolutely opposite opinion and can't convince each others, sometimes no one in a team is good at the topic we're going to do. As a result, we have to spend quite efforts to resolve the conflicts and can't reach the best decision, instead, we can only agree on the mean plan in order to keep the collaboration.
I mentioned this example just in order to say that it's very different for one plus one to be greater than two in real life. If we want to keep the collaboration in the best situation, we need to spend much more efforts than doing it by ourselves.
I like this group's myth quite much and the explanation is very clear and impressive.
ReplyDeleteAs for the myth "Collaboration is always good for business",I'd like to do the disconfirmation just like the Amenies did.
Collaboration exists in many forms, for example, in a team, in an organization or even between the rivals. Actually, when talking about collaboration, teamwork is the first word that comes to my mind. As a student of Msc Marketing, I need to do a group project of almost every course, so how to cooperate with other students is very important for me. We always want to form a good team in a class with people of different personalities and different strength but most of the time, we can only form a team randomly. Then lots of problems will appear, some of the members have absolutely opposite opinion and can't convince each others, sometimes no one in a team is good at the topic we're going to do. As a result, we have to spend great efforts to resolve the conflicts and can only agree on the mean plan just to keep the collaboration going.
I mentioned this example just in order to say that it's very difficult for one plus one to be greater than two and there would be many conditions to be fulfilled. If we want to keep the collaboration in the best situation and receive the best result, we may spend much more efforts and time than doing it by individuals.
I agree that “collaboration is always good for business” is not an absolute truth. As your group mentioned, there are many factors make the collaboration less effective, such as cost and group dynamics, etc. I think “human” plays a very important role in affecting the effectiveness of the collaboration because collaboration is about “people work together”. But how? For example, a supervisor wants to design an online survey and asks IT department and Marketing department to work together. Sharing of information and/or knowledge is necessary. However, not all the people are know how to do so or willing to do so. I don’t think it is something that born with us. In this case, the supervisor should pay attention to the grouping of the team members if he wants to have effective collaboration between two department.
ReplyDeleteAmenies has brought out an interesting topic that inspires me a lot on business management. The group concludes with the suggestion of “Collaboration is always good for business” is not with absolute truth.
ReplyDeleteAfter making a revision on what we have learn from the lecture of “Negotiating among diverse individuals to arrive at Win-Win outcomes” Collaboration only apply on those we have both high concern for relationship and high concern for goals.
Apart from that, other negotiation styles like compromise, accommodate, avoid etc. can fit with different concern for goals and relationship. I agree on what Amenies has mentioned on the calculation of 1) Risk 2) Cost and 3) Benefit.
The myth is interesting that take the meaning of collaborate to the root.
ReplyDeleteCollaboration is considered to tweak people having different information, ability and views together. In the good side, it can collect everyone in the organization/group to interdepend and interact with each other toward the common goal more efficiently and creatively. In the bad side, there is cost of time consuming and the content can be lost during the collaboration process. Even worse, it may lead to groupthink, pressure to conform by the dominants and ambiguous responsibility.
Simply say, Collaboration is always good for business requiring an effective team that can synergy capability more than the sum of each individual. There are some general ways to make it be more effective team,
1. Making a positive & attractive short term goals to achieve within teams
2. Build rapports & cohesive at first by establishing team anchors, e.g. team name, jargon used, and communication channels.
3. Induce individual’s capability to encourage the interdependent and interactive within the organization /group.
4. Encourage contribution by joint ownership to rotate leadership
The below website has more details on how to build an effective team,
http://www.ksl-training.co.uk/high-performance-teams.htm
I really like your group's argument about collaboration is not always as efficient what we might thought.
ReplyDeleteAccording to your group's myth, collaboration often measured as under performance compare to individual work. I assume your idea is about let say a group consist of 5 people and the 5 people's performance is not as efficient as 5 individual who perform their own task.
As we might know, each transaction in human communication will have an information distoration, the level of distoration depending on the people who transfer the message. Since a group require information exchange and communication, information distoration will exist. Therefore, in theory the larger the group, the more information distoration might lead to inefficiency compare to the sum of individual work.
But one thing we should consider is that, not every work can be done individually. For examples construction work, it require extenstive collaboration. Once collaboration is inevitable, we have to find a way to minimize the "distoration" even though we understand collaboration might not be as efficient.
I would very appreciate your myth “Collaboration is always good for business”. In a real life, people rely on family, friends and colleagues. You are never work alone. I believe that you can’t live independent. So that, collaboration is much important for our daily live especially for business.
ReplyDeleteMy view is that collaboration overall is a much more important element. Whether you are in an innovation team, a sales team, a production team or operation team, collaborating with all of the great knowledge in your team or company will surely bring better results than working in alone.
A good collaboration with good team spirit can have an improvement and encouraging others. For instance, this type of employee is always willing to collaborate, help others and still, do the best job ever, which means he understands everyone with his colleagues. Good collaborating are always efficient and have no problem collaborating and sharing, they feel secure about what they do. It is no doubt that collaboration is always good for business.
The Myth “collaboration is always good for business” is a good questions for the business to duel with conflict. Cost, Risk and Benefit were factors that in related to collaboration cost. Our group also brings out that “Meeting is a good platform for collaborations!” Most of the time we waste a lot of time for discussion, for information search and make conclusion. At the end we may not collaborated after thousand of meetings and it comes up with cost and risk.
ReplyDeleteI suggested the “win win” situation which we learned from the lecture. We have to eliminate the pie-expanding error and find out the best solution like package deals or multiple offers. In additional, collaboration can be easily made by good relation among teams and they have same goal. Although collaboration cost is a bit high, the collaboration is always good for business in some circumstances.
Thanks for this team bringing out this topic. Actually I have also been thinking about this topic for this round of blog writing. I don't agree collaboartion is always good for business, but sometimes which has less optimistic. Do you think there is a truly perfect collaborate organisation in the world that everyone is agreeing each other. I never ever hear about it. I think I am a more practical person, the perfect collaboration is just like a dream that you can't achieve. Then, if you think collaboration is always good for business, which pleasing and getting all of the peole happy, I don't think you would make any decision.
ReplyDeleteFurther more, the interest of all people does not mean it is right. For example, every workers are looking for pay raise. But, it is the best way to make people make. I don't think so. As I know money it is the motivator to make people happy, but just happy people less-unhappy or happier for really short term. Company may suffer high cost burden after paid raise. As I say in another blog, decision is neccessary relevent to the organisaiton goal. I think collaboration is important, and the skills that we are going to learn in our course help us to gain more collaboration, but the best collaboration need to relevent to organisaitonal objective which may not make some people happy!
Collaboration is part of relationship management. Members of the team are held together by interdependence and collaborate to achieve common goals and maintain a good relationship at the same time. Most key strategic decisions involve tradeoffs (Carpenter & Sanders, 2009), and collaboration cost is part of the tradeoff cost in operating business. There is no doubt that collaboration involves time, effort and resources. However, a well-organized plan increases productivity and minimize unnecessary cost or waste down the road. In addition, comparing to the cost of conflicts in a company, the collaboration cost would be lower and better for the business as a result.
ReplyDeleteDespite the disagreement on the collaboration cost as a reason to support the claim, I agreed that collaboration is not always good for business. Groupthink might be one of the approaches the team member use when they seek to collaborate. Groupthink is more than conformity; it concentrates on how judgments go disorderly when team members aim to maintain harmony. Groupthink is likely to occur when the team members have a powerful sense of social identity (McShane & Travaglione, 2007). Since groupthink and peer pressure exist, it has blind sides if team members agree to everything. The concept of devil's advocate (a form of critics) is the opposite of collaboration. Yet, it does not mean hostile attitude or uncooperative toward the company. Devil's advocate challenges the assumptions of the plan. Furthermore, it points out the fundamental flaws to the ‘single-minded collaboration’ (groupthink). Often, the collaborated team overestimates the sales projection and underestimates the risks involved. In absence of devil's advocate, collaboration might have imperfections in the strategic planning, and, thus, impaired to the business.
Carpenter, M. & Sanders W. (2009). Strategic Management: A dynamic perspective concepts and cases (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
McShane, S. & Travaglione T. (2007). Organizational Behavior on the Pacific Rim (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
I totally agree with MAK SM,
ReplyDeleteIn the new globalization era we can't avoid collaboration only for the possible risks but we have to find solutions for better improve collaboration!
In my opinion collaboration means innovation and the possibility to discover new talents and improve knowledge among partners, employers and employes.
Different skills can complicate the collaborative process and sometimes slow down decisions but different skills bring new ideas, innovation and also the occasion to enter in new markets and new segments, giving the possibility to improve the business and the value of a company, basically increasing competitive advantages over other innovative companies on the market.
The presence of technology facilitated the collaborative approach that can be easily adopted among employee and partners, at low costs (The economist Intelligence Unit, 200&)
So, I sustain the thesis that "collaboration is always good for business".
Your team’s myth is really interesting which, I think, is challenging our course itself.
ReplyDeleteBut it is too early to summarize the effectiveness of collaboration. It really depends on “HOW” collaboration effort being put.
For example, not doing collaboration because someone “wants” to, but “needs” to. The situation had to be evaluated to see what the best solution should be. If really think that collaboration can maximize the outcomes, leaders could start planning for building collaboration partnership.
Leaders are the one who are responsible to set a good platform for collaborations, such as recognizing opportunities for change; mobilizing people and resources to create changes; developing a vision of long-term change; seeking support and involvement from diverse and non-traditional partners; choosing an effective group structure; building trust among collaborators and developing learning opportunities for partners.
Continuous monitoring of the collaborate group is required to ensure the engine is on the right track and provide necessary guidance, sometimes, is the core task of leaders, too.
Thank you for using the large size of words, which really help after reading all blogs…thanks!
ReplyDeleteFor your myth “Collaboration is always good for business.”, might not to totally true. Sometimes, when more staffs or teams collaborate within a company, some problems may happen. When they are too closed to each other, they maybe follow to the “rules”, and bring negative effect to the business. That why some management don’t want staff to be too closed, of course that is only by my own experience.
Thank you for sharing your opinion of the myth. Actually, I like your group name very much as it is so meaningful. I think the myth is partially true. My company, for instance, formed a special team in many years ago. The team was formed by staffs from different divisions and their goal was created a new service for the company. As it involved different divisions, the working group could have a whole picture of the company and analysis that what service could be added with using existing resources. Finally, a new service was created and the company’s revenue was increased significantly. However, in some industries such as IT (same as your example), it develop rapidly and the turnaround time is short. If working processes of these industries involve many parties, it would reduce work efficiency as time for communication is increased. Therefore, the myth is true or not is based on 1. form of collaboration(such as my example, the working group only designed a new service as broad information and ideas are good for planning and could reduce a risk, the project was executed by another team); 2. business industry or pattern.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your opinion of the myth. Actually, I like your group name very much as it is so meaningful. I think the myth is partially true. My company, for instance, formed a special team in many years ago. The team was formed by staffs from different divisions and their goal was created a new service for the company. As it involved different divisions, the working group could have a whole picture of the company and analysis that what service could be added with using existing resources. Finally, a new service was created and the company’s revenue was increased significantly. However, in some industries such as IT (same as your example), it develop rapidly and the turnaround time is short. If working processes of these industries involve many parties, it would reduce work efficiency as time for communication is increased. Therefore, the myth is true or not is based on 1. form of collaboration(such as my example, the working group only designed a new service as broad information and ideas are good for planning and could reduce a risk, the project was executed by another team); 2. business industry or pattern.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your opinion of the myth. Actually, I like your group name very much as it is so meaningful. I think the myth is partially true. My company, for instance, formed a special team in many years ago. The team was formed by staffs from different divisions and their goal was created a new service for the company. As it involved different divisions, the working group could have a whole picture of the company and analysis that what service could be added with using existing resources. Finally, a new service was created and the company’s revenue was increased significantly. However, in some industries such as IT (same as your example), it develop rapidly and the turnaround time is short. If working processes of these industries involve many parties, it would reduce work efficiency as time for communication is increased. Therefore, the myth is true or not is based on 1. form of collaboration(such as my example, the working group only designed a new service as broad information and ideas are good for planning and could reduce a risk, the project was executed by another team); 2. business industry or pattern.
ReplyDeleteThe myth is not always true, at least in my working environment it's good to Corporate level but bad to technical level. My working company is a IT total solution company that partnered with a famous vendor to sell and deploy their products to customers. Customers always contact the consultant from vendor before tendering. The consultants provide the draft or proof of concept design to customer and the customer start a tender and we bid for it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, their design sometimes sucks and we have to do a lot in technical level. The most challenging thing is that when we hit problem during the deployment, the vendor's supports are helpless and cannot provide appropriate solution. Customers "surprised" that we have partnered the vendor but still has bad response to the problem from them. So from the point of my working company's view, it can make money by collaborating with the vendor. From the point of working staff view, we are always tricked by the vendors' consultant and their supports.
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