Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Build Common Ground, and Reap Big Results [Hardcover]

Increasing collaboration sits at or near the top of most executives' to-do list, and much has been wrttten about it. A search of amazon's business and investing books for the keyword "collaboration" turns up nearly 37,000 books. Why, you might ask, do we need another one? Hansen has not written "a" book about collaboration, he has written "the" book on the topic. Hansen's "Collaboration" makes a bold promise--to provide the definitive treatment of the topic. It delivers on that promise.

Hansen starts with fundamentals. Firms exist to create economic value (as well as to capture and sustain value into the future). In most business books, collaboration is unmoored from any consideration of economic value creation and treated as an inherent good. Hansen, in contrast, anchors his analysis in a hard-nosed economic analysis of when collaboration creates value, that includes not only a project's benefits, but also the costs of collaboration and the opportunity cost of foregoing alternatives. The author's analysis leads to counter-intuitive findings--not all collaboration is good and more is not better. His analysis slices through the fluff of so many books on collaboration and brings readers to the hard edges of value creation.

The book follows a clear structure. After framing collaboration in terms of its benefits, Hansen provides a systematic list of obstacles that inhibit cooperation in many firms. His list is the closest to a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive taxonomy of barriers that I have seen. Hansen also includes a diagnostic to help managers assess the specific barriers to cooperation that they face. The book then provides extremely practical steps to enhance coordination within a firm. It closes with reflections on the leadership traits required to foster collaboration. The writing is clear, and the examples--a mix of familiar and novel--illustrate Hansen's points to a tee.

Many business books fall short in the solutionons they offer, veering at one extreme into a long laundry list of superficial or obvious actions or at the other into a "one size fits all" solution ill-suited to the complexity of real world organizations. Hansen strikes just the right balance. He introduces three actions, that are non-obvious and eminently practical. Among his many useful suggestions, I found T-shaped management and the simple rules for nimble networks to be particularly powerful. Hansen clearly spends a great deal of time with managers in the trenches, and his deep knowledge of the real world shines through in the recommendations.

This book is "academic" in the best sense of the word. Hansen does not conjure up his conclusions based on superficial observation or war stories. Rather, he draws on a rich body of scholarly research on collaboration that stretches back over decades. This firm grounding in research gives the book a solidity and credibility that many business books lack. Although the author is too humble to trumpet his own achievements, much of the best research is his own. The book achieves both academic rigor and practical relevance.

Every company wants collaboration, but few know how to go about it.

Collaboration by Morten Hansen is highly recommended reading for those who want to create collaboration rather than just read about it. Collaboration is often held up as a universal virtue - something we all should do to be good citizens. This makes books on collaboration preachy, reading more like a sermon than a serious analysis. This book is serious analysis presented in a clear, logical and actionable way.

Hansen covers this complex issue in 169 pages of tightly focused, well researched and action oriented approach. This makes the book, highly recommended for executives and managers looking to figure out how to create the right kind of collaboration in their companies.

However, the book has some serious limitations and hence the 4 star review. First it does not address technology at all. This is a major weakness given the flowering of collaboration technologies and systems. A book in 2009 without a discussion of this is somewhat incomplete. The second major weakness is that Hansen talks almost exclusively about executive/corporate collaboration - head office type of work rather than the operational, sales, service problem solving collaboration that drives and sustains performance. Both of these gaps seem to be due to his limited research base (large companies and product development)- perhaps areas for a second book, which would be welcome.

Hansen provides a realistic and practical view of collaboration. He points out that the need for collaboration is a balance and that there are four traps for collaboration:

* Collaborating in hostile territory
* Over collaborating
* Overshooting the potential value
* Underestimating the cost
* Misdiagnosing the problem
* Implementing the wrong solution

These traps cause collaboration that is characterized by high friction and a poor focus on results (p.14) Hansen then goes on to provide insight into how to address these traps through overcoming four barriers and their root causes. The list is provided here so you can see the depth contained in this book.

The not-invented-hear barrier
Insular employees
Status gap between employees
Self-reliance as a virtue in the management culture
Fear that keeps people from sharing and working together

The hoarding barrier
Competition keeps people from sharing
Narrow incentives
Too busy to help others
Fear in the loss of power from sharing

The search barrier
Company size
Physical distance
Information overload
Poverty of networks

The transfer barrier
Tacit knowledge
No common frame
Weak ties

These barriers and how you overcome them are the focus of the book. They create a clear set of actions and tools that make this recommended reading.

Strengths:

Well reasoned and structured: Hansen uses his extensive research to create a logically structured argument that he lays out clearly rather than embarking on a preachy discourse of the merits and virtues of collaboration. This is what really sets the book a part.

Tools and tables: the book has multiple assessment tools, tables and graphics that support both Hansen's argument and your application of the ideas in the book. Tools on how to assess the business opportunities for collaboration (p. 37), creating unifying goals (p. 78) and assessing your personal barriers to your collaborative leadership (p. 161) are particularly helpful.

Comprehensive: the book looks at social, technical and managerial issues related to collaboration proving that this is a complex challenge without a single simple solution. This book goes beyond collaboration in the small to challenge larger management issues of leadership, measurement, organizations structure and mission/vision.

Failure mode/barrier construct: the book is practical and focuses on what does not work and how to fix it. This gives the reader a clear and concise discussion of the issues and focused actions rather than a virtuous lecture.

Challenges:

The book is based largely on research conducted in the 1990's so it has little to say about technology in general or new collaboration technologies. This is a gap and one that could have been plugged, but it is dismissed in the final chapter as the author resets his goals on formulating the underlying management architecture for collaboration. This is unfortunate particularly for a book published in 2009.

The issues of collaboration are mainly discussed for corporate/ executive/higher management tasks such as decision-making, product development and the like. It does not address lower level collaboration required for customer service, sales, operations, etc. This is a big gap in the book and part of its 4 star rating.

The use of "T" skills in the book is more aligned with how you spend your time than the knowledge you have--this may be confusing to people using the "T" skill term in other ways.

Overall a good book, recommended but the challenges are pretty big given the importance of this issue, the use of technology available, and the need to focus on lower level collaboration.

This is a clear and concise description of business collaboration and the associated advantages and pitfalls. In addition it provides a very clear set of principals to effectively manage this complex topic.

I think the issue has far greater importance than many people realize. Even as a student of business this book gave me a very important awareness of collaboration and strengthened my skill set.

I now realize there is far more to the dynamics of workplace collaboration and understand its enourmous impact on shareholder value.

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