Where Is Your Barrier?

Leaders interested in developing a more collaborative approach to the sales process must first overcome the significant organizational barriers that typically discourage the smooth and timely transfer of information. So argues UC Berkeley School of Information professor and collaboration expert Dr. Morten Hansen, who lists the following four collaboration obstacles he says business professionals are most likely to encounter:

1. The Not-Invented-Here Barrier
Team members can feel disinclined to reach out beyond their individual silos for a number of reasons, whether because of an insular culture within individual offices, a perception that some units enjoy a higher status than others, or a belief that seeking help is a sign of weakness. Only by casting a critical eye over their internal operations can leaders hope to identify these obstacles and begin to change such collaboration-unfriendly attitudes.

2. The Hoarding Barrier
There’s no doubt that competition is an impediment to collaboration. Coca-Cola executives never call up their counterparts at Pepsi and say, “Hey, let’s share recipes!” Incentive plans that encourage competition will likely also discourage the free exchange of information and ideas. In other cases, people are simply too busy or afraid of losing power and as a result do not participate in potentially beneficial collaborative efforts.

3. The Search Barrier
Unlike the first two barriers, which are driven by individuals who are unwilling to collaborate, the search barrier is caused by the structural inability to collaborate. Large companies, physical distances between team members, information overload, and a lack of linking networks all combine to hamper efforts to access information in a timely fashion – or at all.

4. The Transfer Barrier
Even people from different company units who are willing and eager to work together can face unforeseen challenges. The problem, Hansen says, often lies in the difficulty of transferring so-called “tacit” knowledge – expertise that can take years to acquire and is not easily passed on with a simple PowerPoint presentation.