"The young Alexander conquered India. Was he alone? Caesar defeated the Gauls. Did he not have even a cook with him?” asks Germany’s Berthold Brecht in his poem about the myth of great men who supposedly create history alone.

We have slipped into the habit of believing that it is only management who are responsible for a company’s success. This view does not take sufficient account of other factors. Now more than ever, in the economic crisis, we can see how little individuals – managers or employees – can do to protect their companies from damage, or lead them to success.

Time for a paradigm change

In recent years, most companies have invested time and money to professionalize their management. This does not allow for the fact that this minority – often some 10% of the entire workforce – is not really in a position to significantly influence the way 90% of the workforce collaborate. The way a large social system with complex inner structures performs is largely based on how most of its members work together.

In other words, it isn’t the quality of management that shapes how well large, complex social systems can be steered. The overriding factor is the quality of the collaborative habits that govern how most of the employees share their knowledge and capabilities. Not management, but better and more efficient collaboration will improve a company’s performance.

That does not mean companies need to be reinvented. We just need to look at them in a different way. Companies aren’t machines – they don’t work in a mechanical way. The inner lives of firms don’t follow a plan. Companies are complex social organisms. Cooperation is the core function that holds these organisms together.

Good talk

We all have an intuitive idea of what good collaboration at work is. And what it is not. We can spot good cooperation by some of the following characteristics:

• Employees communicate energetically together
• Employees mainly communicate directly
• When problems arise, employees initiate contact with as many of their colleagues as possible, as fast as they can. They use different perspectives, experiences and expert knowledge to find solutions fast
• When difficulties arise, those involved talk together directly and openly, without necessarily involving direct superiors. They clear up difficulties as soon as possible
• There is a natural, spontaneous exchange of specialist and everyday information, transcending departments and hierarchies

It would not be hard to extend the list. These characteristics are based on concrete patterns of interaction that are practiced naturally by the members of a section, a department, or a whole location. Or not. And if that is the case, in the long term, the company has a problem.

Developing a culture of cooperation

One way to make optimal use of employees’ capabilities is a process that works closely with these habitual social routines. It goes like this:

A company’s locations are divided up into "cooperation zones" – a little like building blocks. A cooperation zone could be a floor in a building, an open-plan office, or a production hall, for example. If an employee enters the zone, they automatically take part in the process of optimizing communication that is underway there. When they leave the zone, the employee then loses their status as a participating element. Standard patterns of social interaction are optimized within the cooperation zone.

This way, working on how people discuss issues, introducing problem-solving techniques, improving information processes, changing a style of communication, or readdressing processes and interfaces, is no longer primarily organized by management. Instead, employees address these issues themselves, wherever they are.

Practice makes perfect

At the start, each zone is allocated a cooperation profile, and a pyramid that defines the ideal mode of cooperation for that particular place. A consultant acts as a cooperation agent within the zone over a period of months. They and the employees work on agreed cooperation routines, provide feedback, correct patterns of communication, and help develop and establish more efficient modes of interaction.

By delineating the cooperation zones and actively involving all employees, a consultant can optimize areas that include up to 80 people. The process is based on the same mechanisms and principles used by social organizations as they create and establish cultural patterns. When people consciously use these processes and systematically shape their modes of social interaction, they can professionalize the way that they interact in the cooperation zone.

The first step first

Developing a strong and healthy culture of cooperation in individual locations provides the necessary basis for all further, related solutions. Only when the majority of employees share an agreed cultural basis can the next step be taken to improve collaboration between parts of a business beyond individual locations.

In the future, only businesses that are able to bring all their employees together to serve their chosen goal will succeed. So what businesses need now, more than ever, is perfect collaboration: no more, no less.