James B Rieley's "Collaboration" tackles the ever-relevant topic of organizational collaboration, pertinent now more than ever in the era of remote working. This second edition, inspired by the pandemic's impact on remote working, aims to dissect the challenges and provide tools for effective collaboration in a hybrid work environment. Rieley's methodical approach, characterized by categorizations and models, is evident throughout the book. Employing an engaging survey to gauge an organization's collaboration health and vivid examples, he uncovers the pitfalls of dysfunctional collaboration. The book navigates through crucial aspects like gaming the system, dissecting meetings, and charting organizational dynamics.

The heart of the book revolves around practical exercises, detailed models, and insightful diagrams. Rieley proposes a "collaboration structure matrix" and tools like causal loop diagrams to diagnose and improve collaborative environments. The emphasis on facilitation services might seem self-serving, yet it's a pragmatic strategy for mending disrupted collaborations. One thing digital readers should be aware is that while the Kindle version struggles with figure clarity, the book offers profound insights. Readers might find certain conceptual frameworks overwhelming, but the book encourages cherry-picking applicable strategies rather than buying into every theory.

Overall, "Collaboration" offers a wealth of wisdom on fostering effective collaboration, suited for those navigating online and hybrid work environments. It's not a one-size-fits-all guide; instead, it encourages selective adoption of strategies for enhanced collaboration.

Special thanks to NetGalley, BooksGoSocial, and the editorial team for giving me the opportunity to review the ARC and to you, my reader, for taking the time to read this honest personal book review.

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Collaborate to make the whole more than the sum of the parts

Collaboration is a ‘one for all and all for one’ Musketeers approach that can be applied to businesses, projects - even local groups and societies. For it to work all of the people involved, within and across teams, have to work towards the overall goals of the business, there is no place for hidden agendas or personal empire building.

While these are laudable aims I think these may make it easier for newer smaller companies to adopt than older businesses where vested interests and established processes and mindsets may stand in the way.

Applied in it’s truest sense collaboration gives companies the opportunity to build a culture, business and teams where people can express their views, ask for help, feel valued and share knowledge and resources to achieve business goals. Developing a reputation for having a collaborative culture could deliver additional benefits by attracting and helping to retain the best talent available to a businesses advantage.

Well worth a read.

I was given this book from the author via netgalley only for the pleasure of reading and leaving an honest review should I choose to.

This is the second edition of a book first published in 2014, the author Dr James B Rieley being a business consultant with a doctorate in "organisational effectiveness" and business experience as former president of a plastics manufacturing company. The second edition was inspired in part by the impact of the pandemic-driven lockdown and the rise in remote working, and a chapter has been added on this.

The subject is a critical one. Organisations whose employees do not collaborate successfully are unlikely to perform well. Equally, collaboration is something that is hard to enforce, personalities vary, and when it goes wrong people become entrenched in their positions and it difficult to recover.

Rieley is the kind of writer, or analyst, who understands things by organising them into categories and lists, and the book starts by categorising you the reader. Are you a "vacationer," a casual reader, or a "sophisticate" who thinks they already know the answers? Or a "prisoner" reading the book under instruction, or an "explorer" who is keen to learn about the subject? Personally I fit more into the last category, which is just as well as he says this is his primary target reader. Can readers really be categorised so neatly though? Probably not, but forming such models is a valid means of analysis; if it annoys you too much, you probably will not like the book.

I read the book on a Kindle which is not ideal as there are some important figures (illustrations and charts) which don't reproduce well. Still, it was good enough.

The opening chapters cover what collaboration is and explain a condition he calls gaming the system, which is where staff "perform actions that make it appear that they are doing what they have been told to do" but in fact are just playing along. In these cases collaboration has failed.

There is also a rather brilliant 5-option survey for discovering whether collaboration is working in an organization. You ask staff which option best fits how they think about the company, from "like a war zone" to "my contributions are valued, our differences make us better." I think this could work.

Some anecdotes and examples of failing collaboration follow and they sound all too common and plausible. How do we avoid of fix it? You need "the right fundamental systemic structures in place," the author argues, before introducing us to what he calls a "collaboration structure matrix," a small table with columns for things like Desired Future Reality and Action Steps, and rows like "the patterns of behaviour that support a collaborative environment." The idea is that people fill out the matrix and then discuss with a group.

More suggested exercises and ways to analyse an organisation come next. I loved a paragraph on organisation charts. "An organisation chart description only explains who has the most number of people … they do not explain how work actually gets done," the author states. True in my experience. Then we get another diagram type, called a causal loop diagram, which is meant to explain how work gets done.

Another insightful section describes meetings and the difference between what was said and what was heard, often not at all the same thing.

Now to the heart of the matter: how can an organisation improve its collaboration? "For any of the exercises shown in this book, or to begin working to improve alignment, it is important to use a trained facilitator," writes the author. Is the book just a pitch for the kind of services which the author himself offers? I think there is a bit of that, but equally it seems plausible that when collaboration has gone badly wrong, a facilitator is a huge help in getting various parties to understand each other better.

An appendix goes into more detail on some of the diagrams and models used, including the matrix diagram, the causal loop diagram, tree diagrams, and a thing called the "Ladder of inference" to help discover why decisions do not always make sense to others.

I liked this book which has plenty of common sense and insight into how collaboration does and does not work. I do not think it is for everyone and some will find concepts like the "interlocking spirals metaphor" and all the diagram types and models a bit hard to take. The answer is to focus on what is most useful to you; you do not have to buy into everything the author describes in order to learn about how to collaborate more effectively.