Do You Collaborate?
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November , 2022
Do You Collaborate?
In the November 2022 Newsletter
Collaborate to Deliver Results / Radish News / Events
Do You Collaborate?
To collaborate means to work together, one with another; cooperate usually willingly; to build coalitions; to join forces; to team up; to pool resources.
At work, at school, in volunteering, in relationships, and at play there are often opportunities to collaborate. How can you improve and expand on these chances, both within your organization and with external stakeholders?
Benefits of Collaboration Learn More
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Can feel good and rewarding
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Stimulates engagement, resulting in higher satisfaction and loyalty
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Encourages better problem solving and generates more ideas
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Increases efficiency and shortens the time to deliver a solution
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Allows people to learn from each other
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Eliminates vertical hierarchy
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Allows you to be seen as a team player, which can lead to career advancement
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Helps participants and companies achieve more
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It’s often required in the workforce as well as in school and other settings. |
Downsides of Collaboration Learn More
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May take more time and resources, which outcomes do not justify
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Participants may not carry their weight, resulting in others doing more than their fair share
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Can lead to conflicts and diverting of energy when there are differences of opinion
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Participants may not always get their preferred way
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Loss of flexibility in working practices
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Complexity in decision-making and loss of autonomy
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Damage to or dilution of a company’s brand or reputation
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Lack of awareness of legal obligations
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Stakeholder confusion. |
My Story
Throughout my work and life, I have brought people and organizations together with a purpose, realizing that in both public and private sectors there is a need to collaborate in order to achieve goals.
THE CHALLENGE. As CIO of the State of Colorado, I needed to build an effective coalition, both internal and external, to meet the goal of serving Coloradans through a modernized Colorado Benefits Management System.
CONTEXT. The Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS) is the critical system that determines eligibility for vulnerable Coloradans who rely on food, medical, and cash assistance. Each day it processes more than 7,000 eligibility determinations and 6,000 benefits authorizations. CBMS requires a coalition with many players, including: state agencies, the Governor’s Office, the 64 county health departments which administer and run the system for over 1.3M needy Coloradans, the federal agency administering and funding Medicaid, the Colorado legislature overseeing and funding the systems beyond Medicaid, system integration partners, and more. Over its life, the system has had many challenges.
ACTION. To ensure smooth operation of CBMS and its enhancements, there is a complex governance structure used among the coalition partners requiring ongoing communications, political savvy, collaboration, and interpersonal skills to build high integrity and honest relationships. As the CIO and Executive Director of OIT, CBMS was my largest IT system as measured in number of county users, coalition partners, teammates and strategic partners, lines of code, and budget.
I actively participated on and initially led the CBMS Executive Steering Committee with the coalition partners. We worked to strengthen and streamline this structure, where the CDHS and HCPF agencies would be accountable, own the system, and lead the Steering Committee, rather than only have OIT manage it. We needed to let go of one way of collaboration and be open to other ways. This was part of the “Reimagined IT” State of Colorado IT operating model transformation.
Additionally, when challenges in the CBMS enhancement project occurred, the Executive Branch Executive Directors including me met weekly to partner, problem solve, negotiate, collaborate, and determine action plans for success. Other teams did likewise.
My team and I met with county leadership and explored how best to meet their needs. I sat with county users, saw them use the system, and learned what worked and what did not.
I regularly met with my OIT staff (over 100 members alone working on CBMS) and our strategic partners to ensure we were efficiently working toward common goals. There were many other opportunities to collaborate.
RESULTS. OIT completed the three-phased CBMS Transformation Project to modernize the 15-year-old system by moving it from locally maintained servers to Amazon Web Services, a secure, cloud-based platform, and launching significant enhancements to make the system easier to use. This robust, scalable system enabled the state to be more responsive to county and client needs. As a result of this project, 7 million lines of code were reduced to 700,000 and the county user screens were improved. Collaboration is essential. OIT used lessons learned from CBMS in other IT programs.
Practical Pointers for Improved Collaboration
Harvard Business Review summarizes eight findings to Build Collaborative Teams. I added a ninth that has proved useful to me.
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Build bonds among the staff, in memorable ways.
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Role model collaboration among executives, which helps cooperation trickle down to the staff.
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Mentor. Managers support employees by mentoring them daily.
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Relationship-skills training, such as communication and conflict resolution.
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Build a sense of community by sponsoring group activities.
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Have leaders who are both task-oriented and relationship-oriented.
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Trust. Populate teams with members who know and trust one another.
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Role clarity and task ambiguity. Define individual roles sharply but give teams latitude on approach.
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| 9. | Create psychological contracts. Identify and discuss expectations of working together with other people as described by Dr. Wayne Boss, organizational leadership professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. |
Summary
Collaboration offers many benefits including efficiency, engagement, and enjoyment. While there can be risks and obstacles, try these approaches to improve collaboration: set expectations in a psychological contract, use role clarify and task ambiguity, populate teams with members who trust each other, have leaders who are both task-oriented and relationship-oriented, build a sense of community, offer relationship skill training, model collaboration from the top down, support employees by mentoring them daily, and build bonds among the staff.
Radish Brings Visual Collaboration
ChoiceView® from Radish Systems offers businesses the opportunity to make dramatic improvements through visual interactions with their customers, for both automated and live agent use cases.
Radish is pleased to announce that ChoiceView Visual IVR and ChoiceView Visual Agent are now listed as products in AWS Marketplace. Learn more.
Selected Events
December 6, 2022. Meet Theresa before or at the Corporate Boardbound Alumnae Gathering. 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM MT. At Janus Henderson Investors in Cherry Creek.
Theresa M. Szczurek, Ph.D.
C-Level Executive, Corporate Director, Consultant, and Colorado CIO of the Year
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