William Buist

What could the classic movie Braveheart possibly have in common with issues facing modern small businesses? Well, in just three words, William Wallace was able to identify a common identity that bound the hearts of hundreds of men in the battlefield and captured their passion and desire to succeed. But how can this be translated into business? Team performance specialist William Buist explains why small businesses can maximise collaborative opportunities simply through defining the common interest that links customers suppliers and staff, if they can communicate it in a manner that creates shared passion.

Building collaboration in business: Who is involved in your business?

When businesses look at their operation, their products and services, and their culture and ethos, they often underestimate the real extent of what makes them great.

Customers are a business’s life blood and it’s their willingness to part with their money to buy our products and services that allow us to trade and build the business up. It is worth remembering though that our businesses, are also customers of our suppliers. What businesses get from their suppliers is the ability to add value to the their customers. Of course, that continues up the supply chain to supplier’s suppliers and down to customer’s customers.

Sometimes the person supplying the supplier is critical to our ability to deliver for our customers and likewise, sometimes it is our customer’s customer that is reliant on us. We may not know that, but if we did, it could change our priorities.

In Braveheart, on the Battlefield, William Wallace rode to stand in front of a group of Nobles seeking to negotiate and ordinary folk seeking to survive. Ok, perhaps not the same relationships as in business, but you can see the same effect.

Who should collaborate?

When we seek to determine who should be with us in business, it is often hard to identify the individuals and businesses that really matter. It’s good business practice to examine your profitable lines, to understand where the money comes from and where it goes. Cost conscious businesses seek to negotiate down input costs but doing so in a non-collaborative manner can lead to suppliers reducing quality or withdrawing supply.

Collaborative approaches with suppliers who understand the impact of change across the widest picture can enable businesses and suppliers to find the right solutions for both.

Collaborative approaches with customers helps to ensure that your businesses adapts along with changing customer needs and provides more market intelligence. Collaborative customers tend to be advocates and feel part of the ‘family’, and with this comes more loyalty.

In Braveheart, William Wallace understood this. He needed to get all the parties in the battle working together, for there were indeed ‘too many’ well armoured men in the opposing forces.

What’s the common identity?

What Wallace did was create an immediate common identity that applied to all the men on the field of battle. ‘Sons of Scotland’ gave them a peg to hang their identity on. The reaction in each of the men was that Wallace ‘is talking to me’ and so each individual listened.

In business, can you identify the common identity that you have with those around you in your business? Does the language you use in your marketing and sales material talk at your market, or embrace them? When you answer the phone are you talking to a member of your businesses collaborative team or (just) responding to a supplier or customer?

Wallace’s three words achieve that, but to do it in 3 words is hard. In 1976 Frank Muir accepted the Rectorship of St Andrews’ University. In a moving speech he discarded his notes and talked about seeing the whole town from one of the high points in the town. Opening his arms he said ‘This is my university’. His context was clearly one of joining the assembled throng as an equal and his success as Rector was assured immediately. So, are you creating a common identity for your team?

Where are you going?

A common identity is all well and good but all it does is put you together, To actually move forward together requires a mission, a purpose and a direction. Businesses that create a common understanding of their intention tend to get support from their suppliers and customers.

When Virgin entered the transatlantic airline business they made clear what they hoped to achieve in relation to standards of service and cost, much of which wasn’t deliverable on day one. And in Braveheart, Wallace use a similar tactic, Firstly he recognised a common feature of his team by saying ‘I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny’ and confirming that they were all free men.

He addressed current concerns (‘Run and you may live’) but painted a picture of a future which required action today to deliver. His statement of ‘… and looking back, many years from would you trade all the days from that day to this for one chance…’ (and the key point here that this is the moment by repetition) ‘… just one chance… …to tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they can never take our freedom’ takes the group into their passion, the belief of freedom, the need to take action now, and the binding force of collaboration.

In business we can paint an equivalent of what we are doing, and what we aim to do in a similar way, by painting a picture of the future we can have together. What are the common features, in your collaborative group, that you can draw on? What is their equivalence of the fight against tyranny?

If you can express your goals in a way that builds on the passions of those around you, that aligns those passions in a common goal and presents a journey that can be shared it will help your business to be resilient to the trials that lie ahead.

What happens If you don’t bring your partners with you?

Many battles in history failed because, ultimately, the team wasn’t passionately aligned behind the goal. But bringing the team with you doesn’t mean painting a picture of milk and honey though…

In Braveheart, Wallace didn’t shy away from talking of the risk of death. In another example, Churchill told his countrymen that he had nothing to offer but ‘Blood, Toils, Tears, and Sweat’ (a phrase first used by Theodore Roosevelt in 1897) at the start of the Battle of Britain. These honest, realistic, assessments and a clear belief that the right result will prevail, collect supporters from the ranks of the sceptical far more readily than over optimistic portrayals of possible futures.

When our suppliers don’t share our passions we are just a supply of money to them. When the going gets tough for us their willingness to help is limited and their attention is probably with those whom have built a shared passion with them. Sir Stuart Rose understood this well as when Marks and Spencer fell from grace, his job was not to resolve the issues overnight, but to rebuild the ‘contract’ that Marks and Spencer had built over many years with its customers for value and quality.

Our customers will have no loyalty with us if there isn’t a shared journey, if they can’t see that we are as passionate about them and their needs as they are.

The picture we paint of where we are going sends many messages, and the more that we can align the message with the passions we have, the more we can bring our suppliers and customers on board the more likely we are to be successful. Finding the powerful phrases that bind groups behind a common identity and a common journey will bind your business, your advocates, your suppliers and your customers into a collaborative group that will deliver more, faster and more reliably, than working just as a company that happens to buy from suppliers and sell to customers.

William Buist is director of Abelard Management Services, a consultancy specialising in improving team dynamics and performance. For more information visit www.abelard-uk.com

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