Introduction

You may be familiar with the old African proverb that states: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together’. This wisdom resonates strongly with most of us on an intuitive level, but applying it can be more complicated than it seems at first. In many aspects of business, leaders face the dilemma of balancing the need to engage in deep specialisation with the equally pressing need to encourage varied perspectives and contributions. 

Cooperation within the same ‘tribe’ of professionals can be straightforward. Individuals often share similar backgrounds and adopt the same language and other cultural norms, which can help to boost the quality and efficiency of their work. Within the tribe, there is often little or no need to earn the respect of one’s peers, as this commonality means everyone understands their colleagues’ roles, as well as having a sense of how the overall hierarchy fits together.  

However, once we start to scale up an organisation or introduce other tribes, conflict can come about pretty quickly. Here are just a few examples of common stumbling blocks:

• One team blames another for ‘taking short cuts’
• One profession feels that the other doesn’t work as hard
• People working in one office say that another team ‘doesn’t understand the real world’
• Delays or poor attention to detail in one area slow down productivity in another. 

When left unchecked, this can all too easily become a downward spiral of attribution and adversity. This emphasises the growing importance of investment in communication and collaboration as organisations increase in scale. As a leader, you are in a unique position to see across different teams and design interventions that unite people.

Effective cross-community dialogue invites all-important feedback, giving teams a fresh perspective on their work and ultimately sparking innovation. As a leader, engineering an environment in which these ideas can be shared can bring quantum shifts in performance, enabling each element within the organisation to view problems and solutions from a different angle. 

One way to encourage better communication is through the use of dedicated activities designed at an individual, group or corporate level. Here are three areas to explore in more depth, as well as suggested activities that you can immediately introduce without busting the budget.