Some teams within a company collaborate better than others—and businesses that fall short pay the price.
Just ask workers. Four out of 10 enterprise employees say that due to poor collaboration, they’ve left a job or would consider quitting, according to a survey from software company Corel. Roughly two-thirds say poor collaboration costs them at least three hours’ worth of productivity a week. And about three-quarters blame leadership, arguing that it could do more to promote collaboration.
With that in mind, I put a leader on the spot.
Halsey Cook is president and CEO of industrial manufacturer Milliken & Company. From Milliken’s HQ in Spartanburg, S.C., Cook leads a business with some 8,000 associates in 15 countries. The Polartec maker has four divisions: textiles, flooring, chemicals, and health care. How does Cook ensure effective collaboration on such a scale?
For him, it starts with having a common purpose. To that end, Milliken spent a year choosing the 14 words of its purpose statement: “Together we strive to positively impact the world around us for generations to come.”
Then comes trust. Leaders might be tempted to use fear to manage their people, Cook notes: “But the long-term success and long-term health of the organization comes through a completely different management mode, which is building trust.”
In Cook’s experience, trust lays the foundation for working on team dynamics. “You have to exercise the Golden Rule and treat people fairly and give everybody a chance to pipe up and give their best inputs,” he says of trust-building. “But there also has to be a performance factor.”
With the right people in place, a team can start to collaborate and achieve business goals. And who are those right people? They’re less interested in their own glory than in seeing results for the team and the business, Cook maintains.
He points to what Milliken calls its community of innovation—the 300 or so scientists, engineers, and other experts who power product development. (This year, Milliken was named one of America’s Most Innovative Companies by Fortune and Statista.) All work in their own business units, but twice a year they meet for peer review.
“There’s a culture of sharing and supporting while also challenging each other,” Cook says. “Part of trust is that people have to take the risk of asking for help because they’re stuck.”
Those exchanges drive the business model at Milliken, which Cook describes as a technology company that lives on its patent portfolio: “Collaboration is at the core of how we create a flywheel of innovation and find innovative solutions for our customers.”
Like everyone else, senior leaders should ask for help, Cook reckons: “Those types of moments can be super powerful in terms of the team formation, and the need for people to rally together in order to come up with a new set of possible solutions.”
Leaders should also call out people who aren’t living the company’s values, he adds—for example, by discounting a colleague’s input or excluding them from a collaborative experience.
Collaboration plays a key role in Milliken’s sustainability efforts. At its more than 40 plants worldwide, the company has reduced carbon emissions by 30% over the past six years, Cook says. “That’s come by teams coming together, identifying issues, and then going out and implementing them across our various businesses.”
Celebrating collaboration matters too. Milliken holds an annual awards ceremony to honor associates and teams making an impact. Of the 34 winners at last year’s event, 24 were teams and 10 were individuals. “Our bias is to recognize a broader group of people, to be inclusive,” Cook says.
Talk about taking one for the team.
Nick Rockel
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