My interest is collaborative working – how we do it? Can we genuinely move beyond a culture of ‘me-firsts’ while retaining a balance with and healthy respect for personal drive and need for recognition? Are some roles more ‘important’ than others? And if not – what are the subtle messages that make employees feel that? Joyce Fletcher identified ‘Relational Working‘ (quiet, collaborative, supportive working that is valuable to business but usually ‘disappeared’)  as a legitimate and valuable business practice, but still today, and, I would venture, even within new business models it is hard to draw out and properly reward such behaviours, although they are inevitably going on in organisations. I’m interested in how old structures still play out, how much our own behaviours work to reinforce those structures and what might work – or already is working – to address these subtle challenges and other, more obvious challenges such as organisational scale and remote working. How do we change our practices to accommodate and ‘see’ this valuable behaviour while still,crucially, attending to commercial needs? What role does culture play? Do we need structures to support a good culture or does that interfere with the creative emergent properties of the new business models that embrace freedom and empowerment? In practice – what works and what doesn’t? I suspect one size will never fit all and all progress will be in fits and starts….but let’ see. There are many other related lines of inquiry into collaboration I will be exploring alongside this question: how do we manage counter cultural views -our own or those of others? What role does anger play? How do we tolerate and learn from it? What role does self-reflection play in business leaders? A powerful tool or analysis paralysis? So many questions! If any of these interest you please sign up to my blogsite and comment on any of the posts! Happy collaboration!