Implementing The Collaborative Way
For more than a decade, Lloyd Fickett & Associates has been supporting companies in implementing The Collaborative Way. These already successful companies had reached a point where the owner or company leaders recognized that to realize their vision for the company and/or meet perceived threats from an increasingly competitive marketplace they needed a more powerful way of working together. Through practicing The Collaborative Way, our clients have gained the competitive edge they were looking for.

You are invited to contact us to explore how we can work with you to produce this result for your company.

Lack of Mutual Support
Even though a company’s success depends upon our mutual support and teamwork, we too often focus on personal success. With this focus, our competitive drives push against each other rather than pull us together against outside competitors; or our support extends primarily to our immediate department, and battles between business units ensue. If something goes wrong in this environment, we are often quick to question each other’s intentions or jump to blame, slowing down the process of dealing with the real issue. We withhold support from others, which prevents us from dealing with individuals’ and departments’ performance issues until they reach a crisis point. All of these unproductive behaviors slow us down and make it more difficult to reach our goals. The practice of Being For Each Other deals with these issues and gives us both a great place to work and a more powerful company.

Being For Each Other
Committing to and practicing Being For Each Other makes a significant difference in overcoming a lack of mutual support in the workplace. It’s a measured and rigorous way of relating that moves support beyond being nice to each other. Through continued practice of Being For Each Other, we build an environment where we:

• Support each other’s success
• Re-direct gossip into productive discussions
• Actively and quickly deal with performance issues
• Quickly clean up issues and misunderstandings that affect our working relationships

"For me, being for somebody is a whole orientation to being for their success. And, if I'm really clear about that on a fundamental level and am really truly for someone's success, I simply ask myself, well what does that demand of me; if it demands that I have a difficult conversation, then that's what is necessary for their success. So, if they need to hear something from me to help them be successful, then no matter how uncomfortable that might be, if I'm for them, I have to do that. It's not about nice necessarily, but about being for them."
- David Friedman (President, RSI)

Company-wide benefits of Being for Each Other

• Competing against our competitors rather than against each other
• Working together across business units and departments for the success of the company
• Attracting and keeping the best and brightest people
• Employees who feel respected and part of a unified company
• Ability to deal with tough work and personal issues more quickly and effectively

"Part of the challenge we face in Being For Each Other is carrying out actions to support somebody else when it looks like it’s going to cause me some negative effects. Recently, the business unit I lead gave up some really talented personnel to support other business units, and, at first, it was hard to swallow. I perceived it as a weakening of our team at someone else's gain. Then I thought about it a little bit and realized it was the right thing to do. I saw it as an example of Being For Each Other and I fully supported it. Our unity in practicing this skill makes us, as a company, stronger and more competitive. And it’s another example of the way we use all of our principles of The Collaborative Way to collectively get better."
- Rob Baccala (VP, General Manager, American Infrastructure)