Working together - Leveraging the benefits of diversity in collaboration and cooperation

Working together

Leveraging the benefits of diversity in collaboration and cooperation

Seeing the grand vision presented for the Metro in Riyadh made me reflect on the art of collaboration, and how it generally differs in expat environments and can make extraordinary creations possible.

There are many counterproductive misconceptions about collaboration. Like the idea that getting differences and conflicts out in the open or that trying to reach mutual understanding is beneficial.
Instead, it is likely to rather amplify emotional strains and be detrimental to relationships. Collaboration is difficult even in culturally homogenous groups and in culturally diverse expat environments it is even more complicated.

Yet it is here that optimal conditions exist for maximising yield from manpower. Paradoxically, it is not due to these environments encouraging understanding, acceptance or tolerance between groups through increased interaction and exchange of ideas.

No, it is because the precise opposite is seen as being ordinary. Roles and tasks can more easily be demarcated between groups and the “how’”or “why” of inequalities can go unquestioned.
The value from having clear structure, focus and theme in a collaboration gets amplified when effective categorisation and control of resources is possible. Highly diverse environments consisting of groups with little interconnection allow for better stratification to allocate function according to utility.

Consider that it is rarely unclear what resources and actions are required to achieve a certain outcome. The challenges lie in accessing the resources and having the necessary measures to ensure that the work gets done. Access to both dramatically changes what is possible.

Think of any of the greatest collaborative achievements of any historical civilisation. From Machu Picchu, the pyramids, to the Great Wall, such projects were possible due to extreme power differentials between workers and their masters. The greater the concern for fairness, the more restricted labourers’ capacity appears to be.

The enabling element in highly-diverse expat environments is that what gets defined to be normal and acceptable is not precisely clear. This is not due to how things are discussed, but rather what is being kept out of the discussion all together. Fragmented social groupings further inhibit shared norms to form and take root.

As a mental experiment, consider how it would not be possible in the US today to ship in tens of thousands of workers on an industrial scale from the Indian sub-continent to live in labour camps under strict control, at fractions of the living standards and salaries expected as minimum by its local population.

But more significantly, the same is equally impossible to achieve in the home countries of these same workers. How expat environments differ is that the lack of a common framework of norms to benchmark against, and being away from home, will increase the tolerance levels of what are seen as reasonable working demands.

My upcoming book, Bargepole Management (BPM), describes how power differentials can be created deliberately in organisations to leverage the leeway for more decisive and direct action to be taken.

The ability to practice “bargepoling” appears to be in direct proportion to an organisation’s absence of shared social identity, i.e. degree of diversity. This, in turn, determines to which degree bargepoling is necessary for maintaining organisational stability as a means of minimising risk of conflict.

The BPM strategy involves promoting diversity in name, but as a means of restraining wider interaction and social mobility in practice. Thereafter, convincingly projecting legitimacy of power differentials is paramount.

Otherwise, discontent and demoralisation can spread quickly simply from allowing merit of positions and hierarchies to be objectively questioned. That’s when diversity becomes a liability more than a fuzzy feel-good buzzword.