Member-only story
I feel great! I just ended a collaboration workgroup on enhancing a service journey and, while we did not achieve much, we did make progress.
To be honest, forming the collaboration workgroup was an experiment. Based on the current culture, I was not confident that we would be able to achieve any breakthroughs. But I was hopeful because I am a firm believer that many small gains added together, can be as significant as a single big gain achieved. But more importantly, I believe that collaboration is a process and that if we follow the process, the intangible gains to the organization will be more impactful than the tangible.
The workgroup started strong. Unfortunately, as expected, we lost the participation of a key stakeholder. While the workgroup was demoralized, I told them to remember why we started and to press on. Hesitantly, we continued, and amazingly, the workgroup gelled and began to identify processes to streamline, tasks to combine to reduce duplication, activities to eliminate and redesign, and areas to enhance coordination.
I was amazed to see the workgroup's dedication to the common goal, and the collective desire to improve on the service journey. Even junior members participated unreservedly and shared their ideas and suggestions.
