But I'll be honest, it's a little more complicated than Collaboration = Influence. It’s more like
Collaboration = Influence = Outcomes = Scale
Let me explain.
Early on in one of my roles, I worked with a product team that had asked for many things—more development resources, more investment, more time—but one thing they had not asked for was research. This product already had a huge backlog, and they told me that the last thing they needed was someone coming in and uncovering more problems for them to solve. My challenge, then, was to figure out how to help this team now, so that in the future they would be ready to use research to its full strategic potential.
This is how I approached it:
One thing that added to the challenge was that the team was co-located on a different continent than I was, so I began by meeting with the team in person. While I was in their office, I conducted a workshop to uncover their priorities, focusing on what unknowns would have big product impact if only they were known.
From this, I was able to get a clear picture of what was important for my stakeholders and, because they were able to give direct input into my work, they were already a little closer to being bought in to the idea of research.
In the following months, I did several research projects for this team, tackling immediate product work while also trying to get insights on those areas that my stakeholders had prioritized. But even though I was working on roadmap items, at this stage I was still "pushing" research, and not yet a strategic partner.
As usually happens, some team members were more engaged with research than others, so I focused on making sure I was adding value for these folks each and every time they engaged. I made time for their questions, I brought them with me on customer visits, and found ways to offer them value. At the same time, I took every opportunity to tell others in the company about their great work.
During this stage, the folks who engaged with research not only got to enjoy the benefits in their own decision-making, they began to be recognized around the company for it.
This is when my work with this team really took off. First, I was brought on to help with a small but strategically important initiative. I advocated for it and made time, and helped the team deliver successfully. Then came the moment I'd been waiting for—the team decided they needed to invest heavily in foundational research to inform some large strategic decisions ("Should we integrate these two products? If yes, what should we tackle first?")
By this time, I was supporting many teams and products, so we knew that I would not be able to do the research for them. The moment had come—I needed to scale research beyond what I could deliver.
By now, I had a strong partnership with this team, and they felt able to do the legwork of recruiting and conducting interviews. In turn, I consulted with them on the early stages and then took a more active role in the later stages, helping them synthesize and prioritize what they'd learned.
When I think about the outcomes of a project, I'm really thinking about two things. First is the direct impact of the work—what decisions were made because of this research? How did it affect the business? But the second outcome I think about is—how will this work set research up in the future? How has it grown our impact?
Because this project successfully informed the product strategy, giving strong direction in the question of whether to integrate two products, it absolutely checked that first box. But even better, it also checked the second. Based on this project's success, the engagement model we used was adopted as a best practice across the product organization. And because the team felt both supported and empowered, they became powerful evangelists for research.
All of this—the business outcomes, the recognition of research as a strategic partner, the scaling of research—none of it would have been possible without a wholehearted commitment to collaboration. So remember
Collaboration = Influence = Outcomes = Scale
;-)