03-wir-03-2012-english

‘Our thoughts can diverge and
still remain friends.’
thinking outside the box
Which pairs of images go together? It’s not immediately
obvious … Have fun with this ‘better together’ memory
test!
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challenge us, and we think they’re reasonable and sensible. Yet having similar
views or even identical views doesn’t do much to help us push the boundaries
of our knowledge. We get much more stimulation from people who think
differently, yet they’re exactly the people we don’t like so much and with
whom we’re therefore more reluctant to cooperate. That’s one of the key
problems of cooperation.
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Are there incentives, though, that can encourage us to cooperate?
Definitely. Corporate culture is a key factor. It’s vital to have a consensus
that cooperation is meaningful, especially where there are disagreements
and differences. It’s possible to achieve a lot in terms of cooperation by
means of guidelines and corporate principles, good role models among
senior managers, and management training, but some structures tend to
have a negative impact on cooperation. For example, the more you force
people to compete with each other – for pay, esteem or status – the more
rapidly cooperation will break down.
The Austrian experimental poet Ernst Jandl wrote that our thoughts can
diverge and still remain friends. That should underpin all our efforts. If we
can create a corporate culture that reflects that ideal, people will start trusting
each other. And then those who don’t want to cooperate will be carried along
by those who do.
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Can you force people to cooperate?
Up to a point, yes, and it then becomes a duty, but that’s not usually enough.
Being forced to cooperate tends to lead to a situation in which everyone does
the bare minimum to create an impression of being cooperative, but it doesn’t
produce real cooperation. For there to be genuine cooperation, we need
people who think independently and see the bigger picture, who spot an
opportunity and seize it, who discover things and pass them on because they
realise that others will also find them helpful. And that isn’t something you
can simply tell people to do. You can create the structures that will encourage
it, but for genuine cooperation, you still need the right attitude.
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Interview by Sandra Voglreiter
Contact: schollwo@cms.hu-berlin.de
Answers:
01/09: Raspberry ice-cream, 02/06: Ladybird, 03/08: Pot of gold at the
end of the rainbow, 04/07: Tea-bag, 05/10: Sherlock Holmes and the
magnifying glass
wir: 03_2012 | GIZ staff magazine
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