How shortage triggers collaboration
I grew up in communist Poland. This experience taught me many valuable lessons. One can argue that no matter where you grow up, you always learn. True. But living behind the Iron Curtain helped me develop a unique perspective.
It has taught me that people of all backgrounds, education, and experiences can unite to stand against their common enemy. This is how the Solidarity movement was born. A group of blue-collar workers, joined by doctors, university professors, and artists, inspired the nation to undergo transformational change.
It has taught me that oppressed societies can survive by laughing their way through challenges. Some of the best Polish comedies were shot in the communist era.
However, the most valuable of all lessons is how the constant shortage of everything triggered collaboration.
Throughout my childhood, I have experienced a never-ending lack of essential goods. We had to queue for sugar, flour, or meat. There were years when we could buy just one pair of boots per year. A bar of chocolate or a banana was a dream that only came true for Christmas.
When my parents were lucky enough to buy butter, they would always get more to share with our neighbors. Our neighbors had a family in the country. This is how we got fresh eggs. My parents helped my friends with math. In exchange, we could get tinned American ham for Christmas (a rare delicacy) or an extra voucher to buy fuel. In our small local communities, people always knew who can help with what. We were solving our deficiency problems together.
These memories came back to me as I was listening to Simon Sinek’s podcast A Bit Of Optimism. In the last episode, Jean Oelwang talks about her book — “Partnering”. The author uncovers the secret power of some of the most successful people on the planet. Guess what? It is not experience or technical expertise that matters most. The key to success is how people build deep business and personal relationships.
Our society emphasises individual success and over-indexes on leaders being heroes. We have built the culture of lone wolves who push forward no matter what. We tend to forget how important it is to partner and collaborate with others.
My childhood memories helped me observe an interesting phenomenon. Oftentimes, we try to cover for all the shortages and deficiencies on our own. We miss the opportunity to partner with others, learn from them and drive towards better outcomes… together.
I have seen many examples of amazing collaboration triggered in the situation of scarcity and lack.
- A team kicked off a project without the right expertise in the infrastructure space. We have defined a customer problem but we knew we would never succeed in addressing it without some help. The team reached out to the infrastructure experts. To our surprise, we discovered that they were trying to address the same customer challenge themselves. They lacked support from our organization, while we needed them to succeed. If we have hired an infrastructure expert into our team, we would never establish the partnership that helped us achieve more with less.
- Another team undertook an initiative that required deep front-end expertise. Oftentimes our default is to look for an experienced engineer to hire into the team. But this team chose the path of partnership. The team asked a front-end champion from a different team to coach one of their junior engineers through the project. The team delivered on the project and is now one front-ender stronger.
But there are also many other examples when teams choose to work in a silo and never ask for help.
Can you think of all the different situations when you went down the partnership path? Or do you tend to take a do-it-myself approach?
Partnering and collaboration do not always come easily. We aspire to “know-it-all” and “have-it-all” both as individuals and as teams. We are conditioned to believe that we have to become good at everything to be successful.
I agree with Jean Oelwang. The secret ingredient of success is partnering with others.
Next time, when you experience any kind of shortage use it as an opportunity to establish new partnerships and collaborate with others. This effort always pays off.
Images:
- Kasia Derenda
- Wikimedia Commons
