Collaborative solutions development, broadly understood, is used in many areas of business including in:
General Business Activities
| Problem Solving |
Problem solving involves:
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knowing the current conditions |
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understanding what needs to be changed in the current conditions |
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creating a view of a future state with changed conditions, and |
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making a plan to get to that future state |
The current "problem" conditions are created and/or held in place by activities (or the absence of activity). Accordingly, changing those conditions requires changing activities.
Viewed this way, the steps above are a version of the basic cycle of process development. So, what we call "problem solving" is in practice the same as process development.
When the problem area is sufficiently complex, it requires a collection of people working together to deal with it, which makes the activity collaborative solutions development.
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| Planning |
Planning requires a view of the intended results of the plan, as well as a set of steps to create these results. Again, for complex situations, this is collaborative solutions development, in which the plan is a "one-pass" process.
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| Decision-Making |
When decision-making reaches a certain level of complexity, it requires collaboration in the form of combined inputs and cooperation of multiple parties. For sufficiently complex situations, effective decision making requires an understanding of a) the current state, b) the change plan, and c)
the consequences of the change. Once again, this is collaborative solutions development.
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| Team Building |
Team building has two major components. One is relationship building. The other is building a shared understanding of the common task, along with an accepted distribution of responsibilities and a shared commitment to that task. This second component is precisely collaborative solutions development. Also, relationship building occurs more rapidly when it involves concrete, productive activities. The structure of collaborative solutions development provides a road-map and framework for such activities.
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Specific Applications, Disciplines and Organizational Functions
Collaborative solutions development capability is a critical resource in many specific business/technology applications, disciplines and organizational functions, including:
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Project Management |
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Customer Solutions Development |
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Systems Engineering |
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Complex Selling |
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Systems Integration |
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Customer Support |
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Business Process Management (BPM) |
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Audit |
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Business / IT Alignment |
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Business Process Outsourcing |
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Strategic Planning |
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Training & Training Development |
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Mergers and Acquisitions |
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Recruiting & Career Counselling |
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Total Quality Management |
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Organization Change Management |
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Product Lifecycle Management |
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Manufacturing Process Engineering |
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Negotiation |
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Legal |
Specific uses and benefits of collaborative solutions development capability in many of these areas are described (referencing ActionMap's solution, the ActionMap Toolkit) on the "Focused Messages" page of the main web site menu.
This wide scope of impact of CSDC within organizations applies to all industry sectors, including .
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Agriculture |
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Mining |
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Energy |
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Distribution |
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Manufacturing |
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Utilities |
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Wholesale |
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Retail |
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Transportation |
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Finance |
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Insurance |
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Communications |
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Education |
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Health Care |
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Biotech |
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High Tech |
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Aerospace |
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Defense |
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Media |
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Entertainment |
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Hospitality |
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Public Safety |
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Public Services |
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Government |
In all of these activities the most critical resource is the core capability within collaborative solutions development, namely, process development and collaboration skills based human communications and learning around processes.
Strategic Impact on Organizational Effectiveness
Because collaborative solutions development is so widely used in organizations, small differences in overall levels of collaborative solutions development capability can have large impacts on an organization's overall effectiveness.
These levels of impacts can be large enough to affect an organization's long-term rate of growth and profitability, and its ability to respond to opportunities and threats.
This is the third major reason why collaborative solutions development capability is a strategic competitive competency.
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| Challenges and Opportunities |
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General Business Collaboration: Ad Hoc versus More Structured
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Challenge: A choice in the general business activities described above is whether to treat the required effort of collaborative solutions development informally, as ad hoc problem solving, planning, decision-making and team-building, or formally, as a deliberate use of collaborative solutions development skills.
Opportunity: Depending on the complexity of the problem, the choice to recognize that these activities are forms of collaborative solutions development can make a large difference in the time, cost and risk involved in solving the problem, creating the plan, making the decision and building the team.
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Too Many Methods
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Challenge: There are many methods and techniques offered by many organizations to support the general business activities described above. The sheer number of such methods can reduce their effectiveness, as training in them consumes more resources, choosing among them becomes difficult, and their effectiveness becomes diluted through lack of consistent use.
Opportunity: The opportunity in this case is again to recognize that the general business activities of problem solving, planning, decision-making and team-building are all forms of collaborative solutions development. Accordingly, the many methods and techniques that are intended to support these general business activities are essentially supporting techniques of collaborative solutions development. Because of this, collaborative solutions development can be used as a framework for screening these various methods and techniques and assigning them to an appropriate use.
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Effective Meetings
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Challenge: Meetings are an on-going target of complaint in organizations, in terms of being too many, requiring too many people to attend, lasting too long, and accomplishing too little. Yet meetings, whether in-person or electronic, are necessary in order to combine knowledge and build consensus on courses of action.
Opportunity: A large part of the work in meetings consists of problem solving, planning, decision-making and team-building. Approaching these activities as collaborative solutions development can provide a built-in agenda and set of techniques for conducting efficient, productive meetings.
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Focus on the Core Capability
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Challenge: There is a choice in each of the specific applications, disciplines and organization functions listed above. The choice is to:
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deliberately focus on increasing CSDC in these areas, giving attention to the
core capabilities of process development and collaboration skills; |
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see CSDC as a built-in part of these areas, that needs no further emphasis; or |
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allow CSDC to occur in these areas in an ad-hoc way, as one or more of the general business activities above. |
Opportunity: Choosing to focus on CSDC in these areas can increase the ability of these areas to contribute to overall organizational performance.
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Rate your organization on its relative position in the following areas:
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Recognize that problem solving, planning, decision-making and team-building are forms of collaborative solutions development.
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Recognize that the many different techniques used in problem solving, planning, decision-making and team-building can all be organized and assigned a role in the framework of collaborative solutions development.
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Use collaborative solutions development techniques in project meetings.
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Use collaborative solutions development techniques in general business meetings.
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Focus on the core skills of collaborative solutions development in the specific applications, disciplines and organization functions where collaborative solutions development is most used.
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