What is the 'Collaboration Deception'?

Two accused street smart school students sit in separate rooms awaiting a visit from the Principal. The Principal knows that both of them committed the crimes of which they are accused but she has no proof, and the students know this.

What they don't know is that the tactic the Principal will employ is one of the most powerful methods used to elicit the correct solution in a situation like this. She privately offers each of them a deal. The deal is that if they both confess they will get one detention each, if they both deny the crime they walk free, but if one confesses and the other does not the non-confessor gets expelled while the confessor walks free.

This tactic – commonly known as the ‘prisoner's dilemma' – plays with the internal conflict we all have as humans between what we know is right for ourselves and what we know is right for the group. And this principle is not only be seen in human groups. Even animals like bats can find themselves in a prisoner's dilemma situation: bats who feed each other are better off than bats that do not, however while bats that take food but do not give it are best off, bats that give food but do not receive it are worst off.

Back to the schoolyard. This time we're focusing on an experimental classroom across the playground where an additional 30 students sit, each in a private cubicle with their fingers on buttons. Each student will get $1,000 after ten minutes, unless someone pushes their button, in which case the person who pushed the button will get $100 and everybody else will get nothing. What do they do? What happens when the right decision for the individual becomes the wrong one for the group?

Welcome to the collaboration deception, where humans struggle with the ambiguity of collaboration in a culture that breeds self survival and competition. Where organisations use individual bonuses as the ultimate form of recognition, saying they focus on team building while ultimately reinforcing the office tournament zero sum game.  TV reality shows work on the curious ambiguity that while groups need to form teams to survive, in the end it's each person for themselves.

Even cigarette companies have had to learn how to work this principle. They may eventually have smiled quietly to themselves when governments imposed advertising bans recognising that most of their advertising is about winning users from the competition. Almost  equivalent of the annual spending on the arms race was spent on advertising aimed at trying to beat the competition, if one company pulled out they would significantly lose market share and as a result advertising skyrocketed.

In the end do we often have to choose between personal benefit and group gains. What, then, is true collaboration?

2: EXPLORATION: How to win at an impossible game?

Does true logic lead to collective disaster? And if so, how did we get this far?

Scientists believe that in many parts of nature the parts work together to make up a whole only because of elaborate mechanisms to suppress mutiny, not because the driving motivation is to support group cohesion.

Both the collective harmony of a bee hive and our individual bodily functions working together to create a working whole body clearly demonstrate this principle at work. It has also been shown that behind many acts of altruism lie basic survival needs, which indicates that while the outcome is collective the motivation is still individualistic. It seems that the natural bias in many areas of life is towards personal benefit rather than group gain.

All computer models show that as soon as someone in a team defects it becomes a race to the bottom. This is well illustrated by the way the ‘commons' (shared park areas) deteriorated in village communities in England in the past when one person failed to stick to their allocation and overused the resources. As soon as one person defected from the common good, all others tried to ensure they didn't lose out, and all became self- rather than community-focused.

The underlying reasoning individuals have when such a defection occurred was that if the commons is eventually going to be used up, whoever makes the greatest use of the space stands to benefit the most. As Hersey and Blanchard have identified, "The productivity [and focus] of a work group seems to depend on how the group members see their own goals in relation to the goals of the organisation."

The process of defection can prove to be infectious. Defecting sets off a chain reaction where trust ends up the victim. In the absence of collaboration a small number of misbehaving entities can have a devastating effect on the whole group. At the root of the tragedy of commons is the unrestrained self-interest of some individuals. A culture of non-collaboration eventually causes those who initially gained to lose.

The Inside job reflecting on the Global Financial recession shows that It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. In 80% of airplane accidents, pilots made mistakes that could have been prevented if the crew were able to learn to work together.

Are we forced to agree with Dawkins conclusion that "We are just survival machines –robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes."

3. ACTION: Creating a collaborative environment (in often  a cut throat competitive workplace)

Option 1: Defect and make the others lose

In a tournament people are paid for relative performance – for how well they do in comparison to others doing the same thing. But there is more than one way to win –such as making the others lose. In over three-quarters of poorly performing companies, executives set their successors up for failure, or deliberately chose weak successes in order to make themselves look good. (Collins, Good to Great).

Leaders that defect in this way and set up a tournament–style approach can impact the organisation as a whole. One Australian study comparing 23 firms found that those giving big pay rises encouraged workers to put more into the job, (ie take less days off work etc), BUT is also showed that these workers refused to lend equipment and tools to their colleagues.

So before introducing a tournament style motivation and incentive system it's important to identify first whether each worker's efforts to improve performance will outweigh their efforts to drag others down (Hartford).

Option 2: Play ‘Tit for Tat'

‘Tit for Tat' players cooperate with co-operators, punish a defector by further defection, and return to cooperating after a mutual defection. However the outcome of this approach would mostly result in inconsistency and mistrust. (Ridley)

Option 3: Create a Collaborative Environment

By creating a constructuve collaborative environment it is possible to effectively deal with deceptors and face challenges successfully. The next installment in this 'Collaboration Deception' series explores practical ways collaboration can be established in the organization.

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