I have just been reading a blog posted by Carol Tice from The Entrepreneur, who predicts a list of ten top trends for 2012. With item number 10 – she predicts:
‘More collaboration: the small businesses that stay afloat will be the ones that reach out to complementary businesses in their town or their industry and find ways to help each other’.
It reminded me of a conversation I had very recently with a training consultant I know very well who runs his own small business. At the start of 2011, he had been invited by his local private hospital to go and have a chat with the CEO about what could be done to improve the motivation and morale of his staff and managers. Redundancies had recently been made and the workforce had their chins on the floor. Not a good state of affairs in a hospital!
During the meeting the CEO made it very clear that he didn’t have the budget for consultancy fees, but wondered if my colleague could give him some advice, that he might be able to implement in-house and thus have his solution for nothing. Disappointed, that there wasn’t a chance of an order at the end of the meeting, my colleague mumbled something warm about how the world would be a better place if we all collaborated and went on to oblige. After three hours of unpaid work, he emerged from the hospital having provided the CEO with a detailed overview of what could be implemented to remedy the situation. Some months later, the CEO emailed my colleague and thanked him for his advice, which had worked and the CEO was delighted.
Last week, in the spirit of collaboration, the consultant called the CEO to ask if he would be willing to provide him with a reference. He was stunned when the CEO responded that he was busy and anyway he was leaving the organisation to go to pastures greener and new. No reference or anything else for the matter was forthcoming.
There’s a lesson here, which is loud and clear. Collaboration works, but only if it is structured. Key to the success of any collaborative activity should be:
- Ideally, collaborate with those you know and importantly, those you know you can trust
- Ensure that you are trustworthy and that you respect other people’s contribution as well as their time
- Agree a structure of how you will collaborate and set clear objectives
- Understand what each side will / could bring to the party
- Listen to the ideas of others – this is one of the benefits of collaboration
The sad outcome for my colleague is that he says he wouldn’t do it again. So I will add an item 6. If it doesn’t yield what was promised, don’t paint all collaborators with the same brush, I agree with Carol Tice, if we are to succeed as small business we do need to help each other.
By Kasmin Cooney OBE | Righttrack’s Managing Director