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(More customer reviews)Let's begin with the assumption that many (if not most but certainly not all) limits are self-imposed. Then let us assume that it is in any organization's best interests to eliminate all limits to effective communication, cooperation, and collaboration. If you accept these two assumptions, then you will share my high regard for this volume in which Mankin and Cohen offer a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective four-phase "action framework" to achieve "collaboration [as well as communication and cooperation] across time, distance, organization, and culture." To their credit, they concentrate almost entirely on explaining HOW to apply basic principles, citing benchmark examples which include the John Deere Construction & Forestry Technology Program, Radica Games Group, and Solectron Corporation.
Obviously, all organizations have boundaries and many of them are essential to achieving success. For example, non-negotiable values to which everyone involved is held accountable. Without appropriate behavior, there would be chaos. Also, there are limits on available resources which means that priorities must be set and then served. No organization can afford to be everything to everyone associated with it. Boundaries are inevitable. That said, Mankin and Cohen assert -- and I wholly agree -- that there is an interdependence of structure and relationships which can enable any organization (regardless of size or nature) to collaborate effectively, and do so "across time, distance, organization, and culture." The core concept of this book is a metaprinciple which is explained in Chapter One. With exquisite care, Mankin and Cohen use an especially apt metaphor -- jazz -- to illustrate how the metaprinciple provides the "theme" and the action framework (please see pages 5-8 and Chapters Seven and Eight) provides the "score." Extending the metaphor, Mankin and Cohen urge their reader to use the theme to improvise on the framework and create collaboration within her or his own organization and such efforts will "transcend all boundaries to produce deeply fulfilling performances."
Not all of those who read this book will be willing and able to make and then sustain the commitment required. It may be helpful to recall Henry Ford's assertion that, whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right.
If you share my high regard for this book , please check out Arthur Rubinfeld and Collins Hemingway's Built for Growth: Expanding Your Business Around the Corner or Across the Globe, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne's Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant, Constantinos C. Markides' Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets, and Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change co-authored by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, and Scott D. Anthony.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Business Without Boundaries: An Action Framework for Collaborating Across Time, Distance, Organization, and Culture (Jossey-Bass Business & Management)
Traditional forms of collaboration are not sufficient for competing effectively in the more complex and dynamic environment of today's business world. Face-to-face meetings between people of similar backgrounds have given way to increasingly complex working relationships. Organizations must be able to gain rapid access to knowledgeable people to meet constantly changing conditions and demands. More fluid, flexible, and easily reconfigurable collaborative relationships are necessary to produce the innovations that can make or break organizations¾even entire industries¾ and provide the opportunities that attract the talented and motivated employees who will make the difference between success and failure.
Business Without Boundaries helps managers address these challenges. The authors explore a number of wide-ranging, real-world cases to identify hands-on principles for successful collaboration. They offer managers and executives practical steps and tools for creating, facilitating, and supporting complex collaborations throughout their organizations. And they explain how to "team" across boundaries in the new global economy. The recommendations are specific enough to apply to particular forms of complex collaboration (for example supply chains, global product development teams, interorganizational alliances) but general enough to apply to new forms that have yet to emerge.
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