Collaboration is a popular word in business circles. For most projects it is the single best way to get something done. In our world of lone-gun business managers, it rarely works as it should.
To effectively collaborate with others we need to be willing to make a few concessions to our need to get the credit. Collaborating with others can make a project that looks daunting or impossible reach a successful end.
One of the most important components of creating a process that will succeed is to find the players who bring the skills that are needed. If you are a serial soloist in the project department, develop your ability to ask questions and listen. Once you identify someone you want to work, with pose the problem to them and let them provide their take on it without any input, unless they ask questions, of course. This will help you to determine if your choice is a good one. This can also create buy-in from an individual if you let them talk themselves into helping.
To illustrate how collaboration can work, let me give you an example of a project I was involved in. Recently, Colorado began enforcement of NOX emissions in the Denver Metro area. NOX emissions are primarily caused by high-combustion temperatures and failures are usually the result of EGR system-related problems or worn out NOX beds in catalytic converters. Most of these repairs result in a part replacement.
My primary supplier for these components is NAPA. We found that the inventory in Denver was not a match for the types of problems we were seeing. The problem was how could I provide any qualified data to help my supplier and other Denver-area parts suppliers adjust their inventory? The solution was out of the box, but it worked.
I needed the help of those who gathered emissions data. When I approached the contractor company who does emission testing for Colorado, they said something to the effect of, “I’m not sure we can query that data for that matter.”
An opportunity came when a pair of the Colorado Department of Health and Environment employees were guests on my radio show. I posed the question, “Can you create a list of Make-Model-Year NOX failures so that we can repair vehicles faster instead of waiting on special order parts?” After a good deal of thinking out loud and asking questions the answer was “probably.” A couple of months later I received an email with a spread sheet designed by the environmental scientists at CDPHE, compiled by their IT staff and provided to me as the chairman of Automotive Service Association to deliver to any interested parts suppliers and repair shops that wanted it.
The lessons were that as the project manager, I did not have to do a lot of management. By identifying people who possessed the expertise I did not, they, in turn, identified the folks who could do the things they could not. The result was an out-of-the-box, full-circle use of data that helped consumers, repairers and suppliers. Collaboration is a beautiful thing.