Coop­er­a­tion Begins Where Respon­si­bil­i­ty Ends

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go togeth­er. This African proverb cap­tures a truth that every­day work­ing life tends to obscure. We are trained to clar­i­fy respon­si­bil­i­ties, delin­eate tasks and deliv­er with­in our own remit. And that is pre­cise­ly why the most impor­tant con­nec­tions often lie where our respon­si­bil­i­ty ends.

Some time ago I was lead­ing a course and chose a join­er in the Bre­gen­z­er­wald whom we vis­it­ed on site. I want­ed the par­tic­i­pants to hear from him direct­ly what con­nect­ed­ness means. What hap­pened next taught me more about coop­er­a­tion than any spe­cial­ist debate could.

The right moment, not the next avail­able one

His work bears the sig­na­ture of the Bre­gen­z­er­wald tra­di­tion. But it does not stop there. He pays atten­tion to which trees are felled and where they come from. He looks at prox­im­i­ty and at qual­i­ty, but above all at tim­ing. Felling hap­pens dur­ing the dor­mant sea­son, when the tree has drawn back its sap. Not when the order book demands it.

You have to pause for a moment to see what is hap­pen­ing here. A crafts­man sets his rhythm not by his own work­load but by the rhythm of the tree. He coop­er­ates with some­thing that writes no invoice and signs no con­tract. It is a coop­er­a­tion with the mate­r­i­al and its ori­gin, and it begins long before the first cut is made.

Con­nec­tions that appear in no order book

Then he spoke about his financ­ing. He checks where his mon­ey comes from and on what terms his bank oper­ates, what it pro­motes and what it accepts. I had not expect­ed this from a busi­ness of that size, and it was the moment when the par­tic­i­pants fell silent. And because the place mat­ters to him, he opens his premis­es to artists from the region and gives them a stage.

Four con­nec­tions that else­where have long been sev­ered: to the mate­r­i­al and its ori­gin, to the rhythm of growth, to cap­i­tal and its con­di­tions, to the place and its cul­ture. None of them appears in his order book. None is remu­ner­at­ed. And yet they car­ry his work in a way no price can cap­ture. Coop­er­a­tion across bound­aries means exact­ly this: bring­ing back togeth­er the strands that a pure­ly trans­ac­tion­al log­ic has cut.

That takes per­se­ver­ance, because the results are rarely vis­i­ble at once. And it takes curios­i­ty, because the solu­tions often lie beyond one’s own field. The join­er could have made things eas­i­er for him­self. Buy tim­ber when it is need­ed. Choose the bank with the best rate. Leave art aside. None of that would have bro­ken a rule. And yet some­thing would have been lost.

Why we find this dif­fi­cult

In many organ­i­sa­tions we encounter the same dynam­ic, only often hard­er to dis­cern. Bound­aries are unavoid­able and often use­ful. Teams need cohe­sion, depart­ments need focus, organ­i­sa­tions need iden­ti­ty. Yet the very bound­aries that cre­ate belong­ing also cre­ate sep­a­ra­tion. Silos form between depart­ments, pure­ly trans­ac­tion­al log­ics between a com­pa­ny and its part­ners, and a dis­tance between organ­i­sa­tions and their sur­round­ings that tempts us to ignore our own impact.

The Jester:

Love­ly sto­ry. Just one ques­tion: whose num­ber ends up in which row at the year’s end?

„The very bound­aries that cre­ate belong­ing also cre­ate sep­a­ra­tion.“ Charm­ing. As if the sep­a­ra­tion were a regret­table side effect. It is not. It is reward­ed. Sales is mea­sured on deals, pro­duc­tion on capac­i­ty. Every­one duti­ful­ly deliv­ers in their own row. And the join­er? He can put the rhythm of the tree above the order book because no one holds his capac­i­ty against him as a quar­ter­ly fig­ure. Imag­ine if it were oth­er­wise.

The objec­tion lands. It shows that coop­er­a­tion across bound­aries is not a ques­tion of good will but of what we mea­sure and reward. The join­er can work this way because he him­self decides what suc­cess means for him. In larg­er organ­i­sa­tions a met­ric often decides that. And as long as this met­ric knows only the quar­ter­ly slice, every con­nec­tion beyond one’s own row remains a cost.

What coop­er­a­tion brings

Yet this is exact­ly where the blind spot lies. What organ­i­sa­tions car­ry in hid­den costs when coop­er­a­tion is miss­ing appears in no bal­ance sheet, until it strikes with force. The sup­pli­er who leaves at the first oppor­tu­ni­ty because the rela­tion­ship was pure­ly trans­ac­tion­al. The cus­tomer who switch­es to a com­peti­tor because she felt treat­ed as a buy­er and not as a part­ner. Coop­er­a­tion does pay off, only in a broad­er cur­ren­cy than quar­ter­ly prof­it: in resilience, because robust rela­tion­ships weath­er crises bet­ter than opti­mised sup­ply chains, and in trust, which can­not be bought.

Per­haps the more hon­est ques­tion is not whether coop­er­a­tion pays, but whether we can afford its absence in the long run. The join­er in the Bre­gen­z­er­wald has answered that for him­self. He recon­nect­ed the sev­ered strands with­out any­one ask­ing him to. And the par­tic­i­pants who fell silent under­stood some­thing in that moment that is hard to fit onto a slide: that the most load-bear­ing con­nec­tions are often the ones record­ed nowhere.

Stay curi­ous.