Recently I've been musing over a number of blogs focused on two very important issues: collaboration and a customer-centric approach to business.
In one the authors rightly emphasize the necessity of a strategic orientation that’s focused primarily upon the customer, not the organization’s product line. The recommendation is spot on. That's been a widespread emphasis of strategy ever since Tom Peters got hold of the business world, shook it, and made it see the light. But a customer-centric approach is not nearly as easy to implement as some would think.
Just this past week Herminia Ibarra and Morten Hansen wrote a blog on getting collaboration right. They underscored the challenges that companies face and discussed the organizational traps of under-collaboration and over-collaboration. It was a very useful and pertinent discussion of an issue facing many organizations today. But in their focus on organizational collaboration, they, too, ignored the immense interpersonal difficulties underlying collaboration.
I've worked with senior clients and their teams on these subjects for years. My own experience with executives reveals a huge amount of difficulty with both of them. They talk about them and use the appropriate buzz-words. But when it comes to the needed implementation of collaboration or customer-centered relationships, the stuff really hits the fan.
It’s very difficult to develop a customer-centric approach when you spend 95% of your time on the firm’s product, rather than the customer. General Motors was a classic example of the problem. The firm’s focus on its auto resulted in a failure to understand the customer—so the Germans, Japanese and Koreans ate their lunch. But it’s a problem a clear majority of firms must deal with.
Collaboration has shown itself to be a very specific kind of talk. Numerous clients have revealed that it also takes a great deal of courage. The fears underneath collaboration, especially in client relationships, make it especially problematic. Furthermore, the language is quite new to most people, not something they have either experienced or observed.
Why then are some skills so difficult--almost impossible to learn? That's a question demanding an essay, not a one sentence answer. But here is some research that answers that question. Ummmm. Be aware that the research is not especially intuitive. It’s not common sense. So you may have difficulty accepting it. But it's well done and quite systematic.
The underlying assumption in my coaching and training business has been that if a needed behavior is not showing up on the radar screen, whether collaboration or a customer-centered approach, there are three possible reasons. And I've even got some statistics, compliments of Virginia Satir, that long-gone genius at changing behavior. In one-percent (1%) of issues, the person is malicious. In two-three percent (2-3%) of situations the person is thoughtless or careless. And in ninety-six percent (96%) of situations there simply are no relevant tools in the person’s toolkit. Those statistics seem to stop people in their tracks. Why of course, they suggest, people understand customer-centered or collaborative relationships. I remind them that understanding a subject has little to no relationship to being able to practice the competency. I understand how to play a clarinet, but you wouldn't want to hear the noise coming out of it with me on the mouthpiece. Getting people to apply this research to themselves or their colleagues is like pulling teeth. However, since my clients ask to work with me, they'll accept it at face value . . . and then eventually do an "oh, shit," when they experience its truthfulness. But this is research that takes a while to stick. It takes a long time to become a fundamental rationale for explaining failure, and then setting out to do something about it.
Given that no tools in the toolkit is often an issue, why are some skills so hard to learn? There's a great deal of research that shows that one of our primary--and fastest means--of learning is through analogy. In other words, we understand and learn to handle a new situation by transferring knowledge from well-understood situations in the past. But what happens when the structure and skill demands of effective collaboration cannot be compared to any of our past experiences? Nearly all of our education and our experience of problem solving, for example, is done alone. We're individualists and many of us have practically no experience of effective problem solving--of collaborating--with others. The research indicates that people who have experience at only one extreme of an experience distribution (such as individual, rather than collaborative problem solving) do not have the smarts to operate under other conditions--and especially conditions at the opposite extreme.
Furthermore, research that builds upon the previous studies finds that even if a person perceives something new, without comparable memories it's difficult to understand and learn. If something is not on a person's radar screen, it's often because there is no memory material (neuro-receptors) to attach the information being dished out. In short, when we try on something new, without a comparable experience we're very liable to be resistant and defensive about the learning--but largely out of ignorance. And as often as not—more often than not—collaboration and customer-centric strategy languish in the deep, dark ocean of the Doldrums.
Implementing some skills, like collaboration or a customer-centric strategy, is just very difficult stuff. It’s not going to happen overnight or on a three-day training session. The bad news is that it will require frustration over the way things have been going, extensive practice, mentoring and coaching, adaptation to feedback and an eventual integration of the new behaviors. The good news is that any set of skills can be learned.