Rodd Wagner and Gale Muller’s book, “Power of 2," makes the case for improved job satisfaction and engagement in partnerships involving two people (Gallup, forthcoming, November, 2009). “In the workplace,” the authors write, “those with just one collaborative relationship are 29 percent more likely to say they will stay with their company for the next year and 42 percent more likely to intend to remain with their current employer for their entire career.
Five to ten “good alliances” signals engagement and happiness, Wagner and Muller find. However, 16 percent of people claim no work partnership at all, while 25 percent report that they’ve never had one. These statistics were gleaned from an online survey of 1,086 Gallup Panel members.
“Power of 2" states that work needs to be done on “correlat(ing) . . . strong workplace partnerships and productivity.” But consider the players in forming partnerships. Laurent Duperval, president of Duperval Consulting Inc., a leadership consultancy in Montreal, has observed pair programming among employees, where “two developers use one computer simultaneously to program the same piece of code.” Effective partnering reduces coding errors and accelerates learning among novices. But Laurent says that not everyone is satisfied, because “uber-geeks, used to doing everything on their own, can get frustrated if they have to work with someone who is slower or uses a different method.” Could this be because the organization, not the individuals, sets the partnerships?
Kathleen Ryan of Issaquah, Wash.’s The Orion Partnership OD consultancy, has noted a direct correlation between partnerships and productivity, “where innovation and breakthrough are important . . . (and) when people set out to accomplish something tangible.” These range from removing waste in a system to building a library or developing a product.
PROFITABILITY
Is collaboration less real or useful if it doesn’t produce a dollar sign? Maybe not. But isn’t profitability the main objective in strong workplace partnerships? Without profitability, there is no company, let alone employee engagement or productivity. Are we forgetting to correlate people, productivity and profitability to sales?
Only the largest workplaces have the luxury of not linking productivity and profitability. Why aren’t companies quantifying results from top to bottom so that employees expect to contribute with awareness?
Matthew O’Dowd, in charge of business development at New York City’s On Tour Advertising L.L.C., a cross-promotion and mobile marketing company for bands, correlates productivity with revenue generation, which ultimately leads to profitability. To meet the needs of one client, his organization teamed with TheLuxurySpot.com Inc., and generated $200,000. Is this an alliance between two companies or a strong workplace partnership between two of their people?
Trust is essential in collaborative partnerships, according to “Power of 2.” O’Dowd enjoys his trust with Bryce Gruber, founder and CEO of TheLuxurySpot.com. The partnership that grew out of a cordial business alliance is real, with no formal agreement:
“It’s just two friends and colleagues who can help each other out when the right opportunities come up,” O’Dowd observes. “We have an honest and personal relationship that is great for both. We openly discuss strategies, share leads and ideas and refer each other business even outside of our collaborative projects. We're not competing; so there is never any conflict over clients or other alliances. We even hang out socially, and I've attended many of her events for no other reason than to be supportive and have a great time.”
Still, O’Dowd, unlike authors Wagner and Muller, finds “trust in working relationships a luxury, not a necessity. It's a rare pleasure to work with someone who can be trusted completely. Partnering with people who can't be completely trusted is an inevitable fact of business.”
Dr. Mildred L. Culp welcomes your questions at culp@workwise.net. Copyright 2009 Passage Media.
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