The art of alliance holds key for collaborative professionalism

In the wake of Covid-19 and our survival owing to collaborations of increased intensity and varying sorts, competitiveness cannot be seen as the chief propeller of productivity. To this end, collaborative professionalism appears to be the path to traverse in the future

There's a theory that says that life is based on a competition and the struggle and the fight for survival, and it's interesting because when you look at the fractal character of evolution, it's totally different. It's based on cooperation among the elements in the geometry and not competition

- Bruce Lipton

There are many arguments extended in the favour of competition today. In the domain of work particularly, competition has often been seen as the antithesis of sloth and a catalyst for productivity. This belief has impacted several policy decisions, ranging from deregulation of sectors in OECD economies to everyday work cultures where employers pit workers against each other. Yet, this widespread belief in the efficacy and relevance of competition is not necessarily rooted in substantial empirical evidence. Furthermore, in the wake of Covid-19 and our survival owing to collaborations of increased intensity and varying sorts, competitiveness cannot be seen as the chief propeller of productivity. To this end, collaborative professionalism appears to be the path to traverse in the future.

At the workplace, it is realistic to acknowledge that no singular actors will be good at everything. Collaboration thus accrues synergistic benefit to the company. Shawn Kent Hayashi, the CEO of CEO of The Professional Development Group writes for Forbes,

If you want to create a culture that will produce breakthrough results, collaboration trumps competition by a long shot. You want people to understand what their individual strengths are so they can pool those strengths and move toward a common vision. The opposite happens when competition starts showing up. People hoard systems, information and support staff. They're less likely to share all kinds of resources — physical and intellectual. Those who see solutions for problems don't share them until they can be sure they'll get the credit. It's impossible to get to the best ideas when people refuse to share and work through thinking together.

This finds verification in empirical findings. A survey conducted by Bit discovered 86 per cent of employees and executives citing lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures and 54 per cent of employees saying that a strong sense of community with great coworkers, celebrating milestones, a common mission kept them at a company longer than they would have expected. Furthermore, with the rise of remote working, the need for collaboration has only been escalated.

During and beyond Covid-19 lockdowns, company cultures were rebuilt entirely. Through flexible work-from-home strategies, brainstorming and ideation sessions were carried on through Zoom and related tools, fatigue was fought, goals accomplished. All of this took place in an environment where empathy and mutual understanding took center-stage in an increasingly fragile reality as the world battled widespread disease and devastation. The space for collaboration went beyond individual companies as the crisis required cooperation and collusion among diverse entities, including competitors for tasks to be carried out. Management of resources, supplies and operation of businesses had to be done virtually through an ecosystem with several stakeholders.

For instance, on 30 March 2020, the European Commission commented that it "acknowledges that cooperation among businesses may be crucial in order to ensure the supply and fair distribution of essential goods and services, as well as to mitigate as much as possible the negative economic and social consequences of the crisis." These comments came as the Commission announced the launch of a dedicated website to help companies assess the compatibility of their cooperation agreements under EU competition law.

In fact, collaboration between competitors has been in vogue for a while. As a 1989 article in Harvard Business Review noted, General Motors and Toyota assemble automobiles, Siemens and Philips develop semiconductors, Canon supplies photocopiers to Kodak, France's Thomson and Japan's JVC manufacture videocassette recorders. This spread of "competitive collaboration"—joint ventures, outsourcing agreements, product licensings, cooperative research— has been at the forefront of strategic alliances since the 1990s. Cooperation has for long been, a low-cost route for new competitors to gain technology and market access.

This tells us that collaboration within the company and beyond it has always been a strategic opportunity for businesses. It is time for us to wholeheartedly embrace this phenomenon and deepen the avenues for the same. Healthy and necessary competition might stay, but we must never stop working under the inescapable umbrella of cooperation. It is a world of rejuvenated connectivity and our interdependencies cannot be done away with. Collaborating can thus take us further than heedless competition will and like all the battles humanity has fought and won, we will inevitably emerge stronger together.

(The author is Chief Impact Officer at Recykal Foundation)