Callahan, Schenk and White state that ” today we all need to be collaboration superstars”.  The article discusses how a new environment for getting things done is evolving. Technology has made it easier to communicate, to share ideas and to work collaboratively without the need to occupy the same physical space and now with the pace of change we need to be link up with people with complementary skill sets to meet increasingly complex outcomes.

The article discusses that fact that collaboration skills do not tend to be taught. Having just completed a collaborative project using a wiki with my uni colleagues, I began to reflect. What collaboration skills did we use and how could we teach these?

Some of the skills that we needed were to be open and honest about our ideas and those of others in the group, to be receptive to other people’s point of views, to have the ability to take and give constructive criticism in a supportive and accepting way, to accept that it is a joint piece of work and you will not always agree with everything that is done, to not take over and to encourage others to share their ideas as well.

I have always thought that good team skills in really an extension of being a good human being and now I am starting to think collaboration is just taking good teamwork skills to the next level.

I think the big difference is that in team work often the work is parceled out and worked on individually whereas in a collaborative experience that notion of proprietary ownership is dismissed.

Perhaps it is best summed up by a statement in our group standards for our collaborative wiki project:
“Edit the entry as though it was your own, but with consideration and respect for differing viewpoints.”

 Thanks JuJu Members – it was a stimulating experience to work with you all. Truly the whole ended up being greater than a sum of the parts!

New environment for innovation and getting things done:

• no lone pursuits
• need collaboration
• changing skills so seek people with these skills

But:

1. Collaboration skills don’t tend to be taught – on the job or hit and miss.
2. Organisational culture will determine how collaboration is supported.
3. Many companies but ‘collaboration’ software they are not using well

“Technology makes things possible; people collaborating makes it happen”

…………………………………………

2. TYPES OF COLLABORATION

a) Team collaboration:

• members of group are known
• clear task interdependencies
• expected reciprocity
• explicit timelines and goals
• implies equal status/footing

b) Community Collaboration:

• shared domain or area of interest
• goal more focused on learning rather than task
• share and build knowledge as opposed to complete projects
• time periods for membership open and ongoing
• status can vary due to experience etc
• reciprocity but not one-to-one

c) Network Collaboration:

• moves beyond relationship-centric nature of team and community collaboration
• starts with individual action/self-interest, then accrues to networks as individuals add to it
• membership and timelines open and unbounded
• no explicit roles
• probably don’t know each other
• driven by advent social media and connectivity
• individuals can’t cope on own with so much info
• networks then mechanisms for knowledge capture, filtering, creation

3. COLLABORATION SUCCESS FACTORS

The article then lists a series of factors that contributes to success in this type of collaboration – they are all of value, but too long to mention, and mostly derived from the factors outlined above.

4. UNDERSTANDING AN ORGS COLLABORATION CULTURE

a) Leadership Culture:

Leader’s behaviours that mould the organisation’s culture:

• Do they pay attention to collaborative strategies?
• How do they react to critical incidents and organizational crises?
• Do they invest resources in collaboration capability?
• Do they model collaboration?
• What behaviours are they rewarding?
• Are collaborative talents sought and nutured?

(ie ‘how does one get ahead around here’)

 b) Team Culture:

• Are specific interdependencies between people valued and supported?
• Through: priorities, targets, learning, explicit team processes

c) Community Culture:

Community leaders usually lead from passion and need to gain support of members as involvement not compulsory.

• What incentives (positive and negative are there)?
• What sort of involvement/time participation is happening?
• Is it clear what teams can share with communities?
• What is the purpose of the community?

d) Network Culture:

• No centralised leadership – more reaction to signals, how do employees manage these?
• Who in org is good at cutting through info overload and are they encouraged in this role?
• Can employees differentiate between identity and trust?
• Are key employees being rewarded so other attractive employment options in network are resisted?
• How does company leadership culture sit with the distributed leadership in networks?

5. STRENGTHENING THE COLLABORATION CULTURE

a) Foster Collaboration Leadership and Support:

• Establish a collaboration coordinator who will:
  • Find opportunities for collaboration
  • Connect people and ideas
  • Help people learn and adopt collaboration practices and tools
• Build a group of collaboration supporters, look for people with:
  • Strong project-management skills
  • Curiosity and global thinking
  • Good ‘people connecting’ abilities
• Recruit and promote collaborative people

b) Communicate the fruits of collaboration:

• Initiate communication with leaders: tell success stories backed up with reasoning and data
• Go beyond the leadership: share stories with the wider community

c) Implement collaboration tools:

• First identify the collaboration activities to be supported.
• Then match the tools to these.

Basic technologies:

- telephone and conference call facility

- email and distribution lists

- place to share electronic documents

- ways to share ideas (eg wikis)

- people directories with photos

- instant messaging

- directory of relevant networks

- social bookmarking

- aggregators

May also have features like group calendar, discussion threads, photo and video sharing

d) Start communities of practice: