POCKET CLASS: Why collaboration isn’t always the best move
When Dr. Amy Zidulka and Dr. Ingrid Kajzer Mitchell began their research on interorganizational collaboration – the act of organizations working with others to produce or create something – they noticed something that caught their attention.
“While much of the literature talks about what professionals should do to improve collaboration, it ignores the fact that systems often aren’t setting people up to succeed,” Zidulka says.
Kajzer Mitchell adds that while “collaboration sounds really good, in practice, real collaboration means shared power and shared decision-making. Too often people are invited to the table but never given a real seat.”
These realizations sparked a deeper question: When is collaboration the right goal to strive for and when is it really worth our time?
In her RRU Pocket Class, Zidulka argues that collaboration between organizations isn’t always the best move.
“Collaboration is an important skill. It’s how we solve some of the biggest challenges in society today,” she says. “But it has a cost.”
During the course of their research, they noticed that people often collaborate at great self-sacrifice.
"The people doing the heavy lifting – nurturing trust, coordinating across organizational or sectoral silos, managing relationship dynamics – are frequently unsupported and unrewarded," Kajzer Mitchell says.
While Zidulka says collaborating and building relationships is “real work,” it’s often invisible and not recognized by HR systems or in work plans.
Zidulka also notes that collaboration — the pursuit of complex goals based on collective responsibility and power — is inherently challenging, resource intensive and can have low odds of success.
Organizations need to ask themselves if they’re really empowered to make decisions jointly before entering a collaborative relationship.
“Do you have commitment to true collaboration? Is this really going to be a joint decision in the end? If not, that’s not collaboration, that’s consultation,” she says. “That’s fine, but be clear upfront so no one feels misled about their role or influence.”
To help teams do that, Zidulka and Kajzer Mitchel have developed a practical assessment tool to help decision makers understand when collaboration may be needed and when less resource-intensive strategies might be more realistic.
“Collaboration isn’t the only choice. It’s not the only option to working with others,” she says. “Sometimes information sharing or joint planning is enough to move things forward.”
Her advice? Think of collaboration like a bold spice. “Collaboration is not something you throw into every recipe, she says. "It's a spice you want to use occasionally. It’s not your table salt.”