In today’s complex work environments, we’re often dependent on some other department or colleague—either upstream or downstream—to generate the results we’re held responsible for. And yet numerous clients complain to me that their work gets blocked by another department’s poor decisions, inaccurate operations, or lack of understanding of their needs. Occasionally they’re also troubled by colleagues who mean well but are in over their heads or facing their own organizational challenges—either way, they can’t deliver as needed to their internal partners.
Existential issues can develop if the people you rely on don’t agree about what needs to be done, how to go about doing it, how urgent it is, or what your shared priorities are. The situation can get even worse if your colleagues are unreliable or somehow incompetent. Such challenges don’t only happen with that person you think of as your nemesis—they can also occur among well-intentioned people who care about the same overarching goal as you do. Small differences in philosophy or approach can turn out to be costly, disruptive, or both, setting you and your colleagues up for ongoing conflict, finger-pointing, or significant stress as you attempt to compensate, go around people, or otherwise adjust your activities to try to hit your marks.
Six Ways to Collaborate More Effectively
You might not have the power or control to help your colleague or their department, no matter how much you want to. And if you over-allocate your energy and resources to helping someone else, you may end up underserving other aspects of your job. So how could you think about what might seem like an impossible situation? These six approaches can help you bring interdepartmental problems into the light and find new ways to collaborate to meet your goals.
Start by assuming positive intent. Conduct exploratory conversations to map out plans and processes, make sure you’re on the same page, identify all the places where you’re not, and pinpoint where there may be confusion about the details of implementation.
Evaluate the problem and what is and isn’t your fault, burden, or responsibility. Check your agreements with the other department and compare internal specifications to see if everything is clear and accurate. Explore differences in expectations, training, working conditions, and even language—sometimes you may be using the same terms but meaning different things. Look for ways you could be clearer, timelier (according to your colleagues’ schedule), more accepting of your colleagues’ limitations, or more realistic about possible results. And try to determine whether a specific person is the source of the difficulty or there’s an organizational or structural problem that could be shifted by coaching or counseling any particular individual.
Identify whether it’s truly your responsibility to make your colleagues’ work easier or cover for any problems the colleagues may have caused. You may be willing to accept responsibility for pieces of the current problem, or in contrast, you might need to notify higher-ups that aspects of the situation are continuing to fall outside your responsibility or capability. And, if continuing attention or adjustment is needed, let upper management know they need to consult directly with your colleagues instead of with you.
If it’s appropriate, do the equivalent of informing the authorities. If you’re not going to meet a shared deadline, for example, or you need to manage customer or stakeholder expectations for delivery, you should disclose that there’s a problem slowing you down. Similarly, if you’ve tried to ameliorate the situation on your own without success, you may need to consult with your boss or someone in the other department’s chain of command to see if you can get support for changing the stakes, adding influence, revising the resource structure, etc.
Consider whether future or growth plans could help support a productive change. The organization’s future requirements or plans often create an opportunity to suggest that necessary resources be added to the other department or that responsibilities be reassigned for greater effectiveness. Use future goals as a reason to remap operating processes to highlight future organizational changes that you can take advantage of today. Specifying a concrete organizational reason to make changes is often more compelling than merely revisiting the current circumstances that have been disadvantageous to your department’s work.
If necessary, keep bringing this unworkable situation to an authority’s attention. Often someone without deep knowledge of a problem will assume it can be corrected through mutual dialog and compromise, but that doesn’t usually work if it’s a problem of resources, competence, or understanding. And if your colleagues have had a previously successful track record, it can be hard for senior decisionmakers to recognize that a situation can’t be fixed, not even with your best efforts. So if you decide you need senior intervention, regroup and treat the circumstance like a new problem. Reexamine it and figure out the costs and benefits you need to explain to your management, keeping in mind that you may be able to go to bat on your colleagues’ behalf as well as on your own.
And throughout the experience, consider who would benefit from improvement besides you. You may be able to identify potential allies who can contribute their resources, awareness, or other organizational capital to help resolve the issue.
Onward and upward—
LK