1. Collaboration

Collaboration That Serves The Self.

Collaboration is often one of those ideas that everyone agrees is crucial as long as they (Personally) don’t have to change the way they work to make it happen.

Real collaboration means compromise. It means understanding and respecting the perspective of everyone involved in the collaboration. It requires an attitude and attention of mind that’s prepared to listen, be open to others ideas and present a clear signal to others that it’s OK to share ideas in order to improve the task or result of the collaboration.

It demands that we are empathetic to others who have different perspectives and that conversation and discussion is the path. It means finding ways for very different personalities and strengths to combine their contributions.

The most powerful tool for collaboration in teams is having a common purpose and goal that transcends individual agendas.

“To push home the point ‘collaboration’ is the opposite of forced partnerships, convenient arrangements or the exploitation of employees under the banner of collaboration.”

Collaboration is hard, very hard.

We’ve witnessed many times that teams of people tend to find it far easier when there is a crisis. This seems to override the day to day order. The crisis is caused by many factors and urgency becomes the binding force. The focus switches to resolving that issue and pride — sometimes approaching a collective hubris takes over — but in that scenario at least the day to barriers of egos and ‘agendas’ are likely to be put to one side.

The Spectrum Of Collaboration

Traditionally collaboration can be observed along a spectrum. It can be anything from simple/shared project responsibility to a full blown joint business venture.

In our experience (with notable exceptions) whatever the scenario it’s rare to see pure collaboration. It’s not the normal behaviour whatever the size of the team to see a situation where ALL (we mean all) parties share in the pain and gain equally. Our definition of collaboration redefines and rests on the concept of ‘mutuality’.

This is a world where everyone has no fear of putting their contribution forward, there’s no chance that the idea is summarily dismissed because it isn’t the originators idea, there’s integrity and authentic respect for every contribution and where the rules of the game, the philosophy and ethos, are inspiring to everyone.

In Summary — being in The INTEGRATION business

We live in a world where integration, in all its forms, is a foundational strategy and often the business mission. The idea features in most conversations — ‘platforms are the future foundation'.

In a world like that a far more meaningful definition and practicing of collaboration is not optional. The integration (often through digitalisation) means that the business is increasingly transparent. Internally and externally everyone is but one click away from every moving part. It’s a world where knowledge has to be shared willingly and readily.

The interactions physically make up the business and are easily accessible to all comers. This is the new theatre for real collaboration where every contribution is observed as having impact and newly recogniSed and valued.