Collaboration (Hard vs Soft)

(Cover photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash)

(This was supposed to be posted several months ago, but regular writing has been a struggle the last few years...)

At a gathering earlier this year, someone made a statement that has stuck with me for a few months now: not enough people in Kenya (regionally?) are actively and purposefully building businesses and strategic alliances. Essentially, not too many people and companies are collaborating, and as a result they do not realize their full combined potential ("1+1 > 2"). He also implied that people are rather guarded in sharing what they are doing - "my idea will be stolen!" - and would rather ‘go it alone’ than take the time to build up strategic alliances. True?

This got me thinking of possible reasons behind this, especially as we experiment on a collaborative product development and venture model (more on this another time). Is this state of affairs a function of our local context as a low trust society? Or is it due to the effort required?

Collaboration is HARD WORK. Building trusted relationships both within and outside of an organization is sheer effort. It doesn’t always work out, and takes lots of patience, time and investment. It takes time to understand what skills, networks, resources each person and organization brings to the table, clarify shared values, mission and vision, and collectively agree to chart a common path.

It is about people at the end of the day: as a technologist, it is important to understand that a (tech) business isn’t really about tech. Quoting Tom Peters from his recent white paper [PDF] where he talks about The Speed Trap:

“Soft” (people, relationships, organizational culture) is “hard.” You get things done, for example, on the basis of your patiently developed network of relationships. You imbed a captivating and effective culture by living and reinforcing “the way we do things around here” day after day after day, in fact hour after hour after hour— forever. And the focus on people? Here’s the thing, an organization is nothing more and nothing less than “people (our folks) serving people (our customers and communities).” And for the leader, who is fulltime in the people business, it’s all about people (leaders) serving people (our folks) serving people (customers and communities).

If this is true about company building in this part of the world, what ought to happen in order to have more 100+ employee 'tech' companies?