Know Thy Collaborator: Seven practices

Focus groups, opinion polls, tests and even ethnographers are enlisted to better understand clients. Why? If their needs, interests, emotions and concerns can be better understood, they can be engaged and their loyalty -- whether for purchases, influence or votes -- can be assured. Success in our society requires the action and commitment of others.
It's no surprise that innovation -- a social activity where trust is so vital -- also requires the engagement and loyalty of others. Unfortunately, many innovators just let this happen, counting on their own instincts and skills in relationships to get the job done.
Let's think about that. If building these ties comes so naturally, why do firms invest so much in studying clients? Why is such data coveted to the point that many activities (such as harvesting of clicks) have become privacy concerns? Perhaps, without crossing the line, it would be valuable for innovators to become more systematic about knowing and understanding their collaborators.
Since it is unlikely that a piece of the research or development budget has been carved out for this purpose, let's look at some low cost approaches to learning more about collaborators.

1. Know what you need to know. The biggest things to understand are the skills your partners can provide and how the collaboration benefits them. But it is also important to know what limits they operate under, what measurements are useful to them and many other of their parameters for success. The list can get long and particular, and it needs to be written somewhere. Don't forget the soft stuff, like attitudes toward promptness and pet peeves.
   
2. Listen. A lot of people are very good at listening. Few people are great. Many innovators are so focused on their ideas that they form their next sentences as the other person speaks and listen with half an ear. Or they may even interrupt. Listening involves not just paying attention and letting people finish. It involves creating opportunities for them to talk (such as having regular calls and putting them onto the agenda). It means watching body language, hearing intonation and hesitation and looking beyond what the words denote to their implications. What the people are really saying.
   
3. Practice contact management. Make it a practice to be in contact on a regular basis with everyone who is a potential collaborator. Keep track. If you can see the person face-to-face at least every 90 days, that makes a big difference. If you haven't done a favor (which can be connecting with a useful contact or just passing on an article of interest) within 90 days, that partner is not part of your network anymore.
   
4. Work together. This is a great way to get to know collaborators in small ways. Project like presenting a paper together or doing volunteer efforts in the same group can provide a sense of style, mutual commitment and trust. Playing together is good, too. (Sometimes better.)
   
5. Ask. Innovators have an advantage over pollsters, they can actually engage in real conversations with the potential and current collaborators. For the former, they can get answers to outstanding questions. For the latter, they can, like one-time NYC mayor Ed Koch, ask "How am I doing?" Of course, open-ended questions that can't be answered yes or no are best.
   
6. Keep score. Track the benefits provided, the success in improving the relationship, the contacts from both sides -- whatever can allow you to keep active and gain insights. Don't count on your memory alone.
   
7. Share prudently. You are not the only one connected to your collaborators. Others have insights and information. And you have all that you've learned to offer them, as well. Naturally, you need to be careful of gossip or violations of trust. But the knowledge and perspectives of others can augment what you have and provide a reality check to some of your assumptions.
   

This is not a comprehensive list. And, none of the steps is done and finished. They all move into the future with repeating, enriching and editing. But this can be a starting point for those who are just beginning to get systematic about the relationship side of collaborative innovation. The benefits? By understanding partners, you become a better person to work with: more considerate, more valuable and more interesting. It becomes easier to determine who the best collaborator is for a given opportunity. The collaboration itself becomes more productive, and new, more ambitious projects become possible.

Peter Andrews, coauthor of Innovation Passport -- This post reflects my own views and not those of IBM.
(I still am going through materials from Atlanta. More on that in a future post.)