What young companies should consider

Cooperation is very important in many companies and start-ups, be it in the founding team, with the first employees, with business partners or suppliers. But what exactly does “collaboration” actually mean? A contribution by Carsten Lexa and Ralf Hasford.

It is often unclear what cooperation actually is. However, a careful distinction reveals the success of collaboration. In this post by Ralph Hasford and I am therefore concerned with the different levels of cooperation. Also: the special features, areas of application and selection criteria.

Cooperation as a strategy

“You have a strategy for collaboration?”. This question was the starting point that got the systematic consideration of cooperation rolling. Because collaboration is something that is always and everywhere talked about, especially in the entrepreneurial field. However, a strategic approach to cooperation is often not recognizable, let alone seen as the need for it.

The importance and design of cooperation, if properly understood, can lead to significantly faster and better decisions in the choice and design of the interaction as well as the selection of people and contracts. In addition, a strategic approach facilitates communication and understanding.

If cooperation is approached correctly and thus strategically, it has a positive effect on the quality and quantity of communication, the decision-making and reporting paths, as well as the efficiency of the value-added process and ultimately on the results to be achieved themselves.

In other words: a strategic approach to collaboration ultimately saves time and money – which young companies and start-ups in particular do not always have at their disposal in unlimited amounts.

Cooperation as a vague term

For a long time, many terms have been used without reflection for cooperation, and a clearly defined use is often missing. Sometimes people talk about ‘teamwork’, ‘collaboration in a team’ or ‘cooperation in the company’ without focusing on a specific characteristic. Under “New Work” and “Work 4.0”, collaboration is then often mixed up with leadership and corporate culture issues.

How can a classification of cooperation look like? One solution is to draw on whatever need a person, business, organization, or society wants or needs to satisfy with collaboration. The form of cooperation generally depends on:

• the overriding goals compared to one’s own possibilities (professional skills and abilities, reputation, attitude / basic attitudes, ethical values),
• the tasks to be completed, in particular with regard to quantity (number of pieces), quality (degree of difficulty) and process (repeatability),
• the decision as to whether a purely internal or partly external service provision is aimed for in the value creation or the percentage share of the cooperation in the volume of the value creation,
• the dates or a time frame,
• the monetary equivalent / monetary value and the availability of resources (including the price/performance ratio and the associated availability and implementation time),
• the locations and also the sectors,
• the laws, regulations and political interpretations (regulators),
• an involvement of stakeholders (organizational context) and even
• those of religious and ideological restrictions.

Categorization of collaboration

Taking into account the dependencies and characteristics mentioned above, four main forms of cooperation can be clearly distinguished. These are ‘the marketplace’, ‘the collaboration’, ‘the cooperation’ and ‘the teamwork’. Each form represents an independent level, which is retained in the next higher level.

1. Marketplace: The marketplace is dominated by trade, i.e. supply and procurement, by products or components or by services and the necessary advertising. To this end, retail and sales place independently developed offers. Purchasing and procurement create demand. Likewise, capacities for contract manufacturing and recurring services are offered and in demand.
2. Collaboration:Collaboration focuses on joint competence-related developments, in particular the joint use of competences for development, production or project implementation. The initiator leads the cooperation and will in most cases claim the result for themselves. In relation to 3) and 4), the initiation is much easier and quicker to complete.
3. Cooperation:The goals of marketplace and collaboration remain, but collaborations are based on shared ethical values ​​and strategic goals. This makes the initiation much more complex and lengthy. In cooperation, a) factors that complement the process of value creation or b) the same competencies (scaling of value creation) can determine the focus of the cooperation.
4. Teamwork:Finally, as part of teamwork, there is also the assumption of responsibility for people, technology and resources and thus the temporary or permanent retention of people with a focus on their skills and their will to work for the purpose on which the work is based. In return, they receive social security in addition to wage equivalent. The initiators (employers / project management) assume a duty of care, including social and economic security, and ensure that the workforce is utilized to capacity. The highest form is the partnership.

definition of work

Before describing each form of collaboration in more detail, one important question needs to be clarified, because the answer to this question plays an important role in determining the level of collaboration: what is meant when you say “work”?

In order to make the following explanations, both in this article and in the following articles in this series, more understandable, a definition of work is necessary in order to explain the stages of cooperation based on this.

1. Work is a physical and/or mental activity. It takes the form of social interaction that is purposeful, conscious, and planned to create or maintain value. The terms “value retention” and “value creation” are often used in this context.
2. Collaboration is a coordinated, effort-sharing performance of activities to enable greater complexity (effort) and/or scaling (adjustment of the number) of products and services.
3. A basic prerequisite for work and cooperation is communication between the participants. Communication (designing, specifying, coordinating, scheduling, deciding, securing, reporting, negotiating) initially includes the planning of activities. It is about initiation, control and motivation. Communication is also used to report on the progress of the execution and its results. Furthermore, communication is necessary in order to show the value of the work in the subsequent trade or exchange, to agree on compensation obligations and ultimately to be able to realize these by means of a redemption/compensation or a wage.
4. In order to ensure the quality (repeatability) of the activities (with regard to value retention / value creation), it is necessary to define, implement and monitor comprehensible processes and their resource requirements and to document compliance with them.

Conclusion and outlook

Companies complain again and again that cooperation does not bring the desired or expected results. However, the reason for the lack of success often lies in the unspecified implementation of cooperation.

It therefore makes sense for every company, especially for young companies and start-ups, to deal with the concept of cooperation and its various stages.

In the next episodes of this series of articles, we will therefore take a closer look at the different forms of the marketplace, collaboration, cooperation and teamwork.

About Ralph Hasford:Ralf Hasford is a systemic facilitator in the areas of strategy & organizational development, collaboration and decision-making. For more than ten years, his focus has been on successful communication between people.

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