The importance of Personal Relationships in Effective Collaboration

John KeleherIT Manager, Crittall Windows Ltd

Agenda

• Collaboration• Case Studies• North America v UK Construction Market• Company 1• Company 2• Personal Relationships

col·lab·o·rate (kə-lāb'ə-rāt')

working with enemy — the betrayal of others by working with an enemy, especially an occupying force

working together — the act of working together with one or more people in order to achieve something

Collaboration

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

- Henry Ford

Case Studies

• Not the whole story• Names withheld to protect the innocent• Interesting comparison of the fate of 2

successful companies looking to expand into new markets

UK Construction Market

Source: thepeoplebrand.com

North American Construction Market

Source: thepeoplebrand.com

Company 1

• 80 years’ successful trading• Focussed on UK residential market• No 2 in UK• Entered UK Commercial Market

Company 2

• 160 years’ successful trading• Focussed on UK Commercial Market• No 1 in UK• Re-entered North American Market

Outcome

Company 1• February 2010 entered

administration

Company 2• April 2010 won Queen’s

Award for Enterprise in International Markets

Why are people important?

Source: PIECC Project

Source: PIECC Project

Collaborative IT Project

Collaborative IT Project

• 4 developers based in– Brisbane– Fort Lauderdale– Braintree– Aberdeen or anywhere in the world

• Web based Collaborative Tools• Most productive period?– 1 week all 4 spent together working face to face

Personal Relationships

• 2002 fire in comms room– All servers condemned– No formal disaster recovery agreement– Back up and running in 4 days• Email same day• CAD next day• Commercial systems 4 days

• Different responses from different vendors

Responses

• Radan (CAD)– Engineer finished his day’s appointment and arrived Braintree 9 pm.

Worked till midnight then again in morning.• Centric (Email)

– Responded immediately (Sunday), visited site & then setup virtual Exchange Server

• Data General (Main Unix Server)– Engineer next morning, spent 3 days locating and setting up a loan

server• HP

– Rang us late next day to say our support contract didn’t cover fires, and we would have to place a purchase order before they would send an engineer.

Reasons for Great Responses

• Radan – 15 year relationship, – the engineer had worked on original installation

• Centric– New business but –

• MBO from our web developers• 5 year relationship with technical team

• Data General – 20 year relationship– the engineer had worked on original installation

Conclusion

• Companies don’t collaborate people collaborate

• Technology is a great enabler, but you have to want to collaborate for it to be successful

• Long term partnerships enable the development of trust and foster great working relationships