Collaboration. It's what every leader hopes for in her team. It's the purpose behind much of our communication at work. And it can be a challenge.
There is a collaboration platform in the digital workplace for almost everything. Salesforce. Asana. HubSpot. Figma. Git. ServiceNow. Too many to name them all. Each tracks and assigns work items and enables us to collaborate through a system. The systems sit between us. They enable us to tell one another what to do online. Want something done, open a ticket. Want to feel productive, pound through your task list, and assign "work items" to the next person in the workflow. Fire, then forget.
Most of the time, this works just fine. The efficiency can't be disputed. But ask yourself a couple of questions. Are there times you assign a task in Salesforce and get back a result you didn't expect? Have you ever opened an Asana task and not known what you were being asked to do? Our experience tells us it happens all the time.
Communication scholars and system architects make a distinction between synchronous and asynchronous messages. Synchronous communications occur in real time and involve immediate back and forth between participants. Asynchronous communications allow for time delays. Workflow assignments are asynchronous. They happen independent of an immediate response. Sometimes, in fact, responses don't happen at all. Workflow makes it easy to make an ask of a colleague, assign a task to a subordinate, offer feedback to a collaborator. They also eliminate the synchronicity of a person-to-person "handoff."
Evidence suggests synchronous interaction makes us feel connected at work. It even fosters relationships, which make asynchronous communication on workflow platforms more effective. An intriguing study of software engineers proves it. The engineers worked in two buildings several blocks apart. In some instances, teams worked together in the same building. In others, the team members were spread across the locations. As is common in the software industry, the engineers used a platform to share code, give one another assignments, and provide feedback. Researchers found that teams of engineers working in the same building—that is, colleagues who had frequent synchronous interactions with one another—received 23% more online feedback—an asynchronous interaction—on their code than did those on multi-building teams whose members had less frequent face-to-face contact with one another. "Sitting near workers increases not only in-person but also digital collaboration," the authors write.
The collocated software engineers enjoyed the benefits of social capital: mentorship, coaching, learning, and collaboration. All were achieved through a digital tool that, when coupled with the opportunity for synchronous interaction, worked for and not against social capital. Everyone benefited, especially those newest to the team. Retention among newer joiners was significantly higher among collocated teams than dispersed teams. Young workers and women, the authors tell us, are "substantially more likely to quit the firm when they lose proximity to coworkers." Less feedback. Less connection. Lesser results. It's a lesson the system architects at Amwins, led by Ben Sloop, took to heart when they designed their collaboration platform.
Ben knows his way around a spreadsheet. A boardroom, too. Harvard undergrad. Stanford MBA. A stint as a management consultant at Bain, then a few years in private equity. The perfect pedigree for his current role as president and chief operating officer of Amwins, the nation's largest wholesale insurance broker. But there's more to Ben's success than his stellar resume. Ben told us, "One of the core requirements to gain more responsibility here is having deep, real relationships with our salespeople. I spend a disproportionate amount of my time talking to and staying connected with people in the field. Of all the people that I'll respond to, first is if one of our brokers reaches out to me. That's the top of my inbox."
Amwins' clients are retail insurance brokers and agents looking to find homes for complex, hard-to-place risks—think workers' compensation insurance for circus performers. The insurance carriers who advertise on the Super Bowl don't want the hard stuff. And so, retail brokers work with wholesalers like Amwins to get complex risks placed with one of a large legion of specialty insurance carriers. Each occupies a well-defined niche within the commercial insurance market. Each is expert in a particular type of risk. This creates a classic many-to-many problem. Thousands of customers, thousands of carriers and thousands of Amwins brokers sitting between them.
The challenge is having the right expertise at the right time. "Our brokers have to be specialists," Ben told us. "Our retailers don't want to work with someone that does everything a little bit, because that's kind of what they do. They want to deal with someone that's a deep expert." Enabling his brokers to always find that one expert within their large, decentralized organization became a key part of Amwins' founding mission. It's the hardest part of what they do, Ben told us. "In order to be a deep expert, what that means is that, well, if my client comes to me and they ask me for a construction wrap policy in Scottsdale that I know nothing about, I've got to know where to get them what they need inside our own firm. So, we don't lose that client, right? And so, this created this huge coordination problem."
The company built Amlink to solve it. Amlink is the wholesaler's proprietary relationship management system. It is a workflow platform, but it's different. Ben beamed with a creator's pride as he told us how it works. "I can look in the system and say, well, actually, we have a guy who lives in Scottsdale and does only construction wraps, right? And so, I can reach out to that person who I usually know personally, because we have all sorts of sales events. The point is to build connectivity with an internal coordination mechanism."
We both have seen lots of systems that tried to solve similar problems. All did it the same way. Type in "construction wrap in Scottsdale" and you'd get deal listings, PowerPoint presentations, maybe a white paper or two. Lots of stuff to wade through, maybe some good slides you can reuse, but probably not the answer you need. Amlink is different. It delivers names and contact information and forces conversations to happen. It's effective at both delivering expertise when it's needed and building relationships across the firm. Knowing who to turn to can make or break a deal. Amwins brokers don't just compete on expertise—they compete on connectedness.
Amlink is a unicorn. "I've never seen another system in the industry like this. Everyone says it's a people business. but they tend not to track [data] at the people level," Ben told us. He was clear to put the tech in its proper context: "We are a technology-enabled business. The thoughtful use of technology makes our people better. But we are fundamentally a person-to-person business."
Social capital matters at Amwins. It drives market results. It also creates an environment where people want to stay. "You know, it's funny. I joined 19 years ago, and I still think of myself as one of the newer people," Ben confessed, explaining that Amwins was the kind of place "good people stay for a long time. People typically don't leave just for money. People tend to leave because they just don't feel connected, don't like who they're working with, don't feel compelled by the strategy."
We probably should have introduced you to Ben at the very beginning.
"Social Capital at Work," by John Burrows and Seth Rachlin, will be published by Simon Acumen on Nov. 10. This article is excerpted from their book.
