Scott Westerlaken

Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. In particular, teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources.

Having worked in communications through two large recessions I know that the companies that survive are the ones that can adapt to the conditions and own them….. I When times are good, we don’t think to much of a client sending one piece of a project to someone else, yet when times are tight we fight like mad to keep all the biz internal….whether or not it might be a good for the clients needs.

As the economy is starting to come to life like a 1976 Chevy pickup one defining practice will be how companies learn how to collaborate with each other.. especially with their competition… WHAT?! Really…  Think about it.  Take your best competition and their best resources and combine them with yours.  Not only do you benefit but so does your client and you gain a completive edge over any other competition!  This idea came to me a few months ago.  I was doing a SWOT on a new start up and one advantage I targeted was the ability to be able to offer varied solutions to clients based on their needs rather than the start ups offerings…a true reversal of “build it and they will come.”

I also looked at the main competition; small one to five person operations with small operating budgets and internal resources.  This was key, as the experience of the start up organization was competing against 5 to 30 person operations with operating budgets of .5 to 3 million and a vast array of internal resources..  Now imagine my glee when I thought of a company that could pick the best of another, combine with its own best attributes and offer it to clients.  Fantastic!

There are the sphincter tightening moments as you might imagine!  The moments where you feel so exposed that you wondered why you thought an idea was great in the first place!  One of my associates looked over at me during the first project we did this on and said “you got balls man…you realize they could steal this client like no ones business?” Ummmmm yeh…. But I had to have faith that the client could see the value we were bringing to the table and at the same time the competition would see the lack of value by stealing the client as it would end any more collaborations.

Now imagine if larger companies stared collaborating in the same way!  The resource power would be incredible…but here is the issue holding organizations back… A company’s ability to collaborate externally is parallel to how well they collaborate internally.  Look at any number of teams or divisions within a company and there will be issues with how they collaborate with one another…do they all fall on the sword when mistakes are made or do they all duck for cover? Not a good scenario for an external collaboration.

Regardless of how you believe this may or may not work for where you are now, one thing I believe is certain, a company’s lack of fear for collaboration will enhance its prospects of success.  No fooling, it is hard to do you and full of risks.  Clients, I believe, will appreciate that you are looking after their best interest and for the best solutions to their issues…. Now who is next?

SW

With over 25 years of award winning experience in marketing, television commercials, film, video, communications, web, radio, print, and events, Scott has the ability to maintain focus on the big picture and offer a wide range of solutions appropriate to the clients message and budget. He has been recognized with dozens of awards in business, communications, and filmmaking from around the world. For the client, this means a truly unique balance of hands on technical knowledge and high level strategic experience that always leads to unique and creative solutions.