To collaborate or not to collaborate

It seems that everywhere there is a drive to collaborate, without any real regard to the challenges of collaboration, the behavioral and cultural changes necessary for success. Collaboration has become an end in itself, rather than a strategy that has the potential to deliver value to both parties under the appropriate circumstances.

For a collaboration to be successful, there are two pre-conditions:

1. There is a genuinely important shared goal, and the goal is powerful enough to drive resource allocation decisions in both collaborators
2. The reward systems of both parties recognise the importance of achieving the goal.

Without these two preconditions, there is little chance of the collaboration doing anything more than take some time, probably cover someone’s arse, and perhaps give the appearance of something useful  happening.