The Art of Collaboration

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together

When you discuss organizations such as NASA or PIXAR? What comes your mind? You might say, “Rocket Science,” “Great Animation.” However, the critical element for their success is collaboration. 

Collaboration is complicated for many working in an organization. Why? Deep inside, all of us are running a materialistic-power-race with one and another to make our lives better. Our desire for securing job credits and the power structure dictates and guides our level of willingness to collaborate with others. Many find collaboration stressful and exhausting. Most seem to prefer a working style of teams of individuals with distinct lines of authority. The insecure prefers a narrower and more isolated path. Everyone is not a natural collaborator, and it needs a stronger mindset and practice. Cultivating such a collaborative mindset is rewarding and produces high-grade effective results. Experience of working closely and collaborating with someone is very different. 

What is Collaboration?

The action of operating with someone or many to produce or create something, it is working together within a co-creation space. Collaboration comes in several forms in an organization; at its heart, collaboration is a method to drive diverse set of talents towards innovative solutions to problems. Just remember collaboration is also very challenging, hence throwing “collaboration” at every cooperative situation might end up in inviting too many into a co-creation space and slows everything down.

When to Use it?

Finding Solutions for Complex problems: Collaboration brings in diversity. Solutions for intertwined problems demands unique skills and materials. Engaging a diverse group of people together goes far than working in a silo. Collaboration ties together diverse skill sets, thought process, cultural perspectives, gender perspective, and many more perspectives that channelizes diversifying strengths and experiences to solve a problem. Hence fostering healthy collaboration solves complex problems and helps generate more potential solutions, and tests of those solutions immediately.

Clearing fluff and ambiguity: Collaboration is incredibly powerful when dealing with the unknown unknowns. Such a situation has no clear, structured path forward to find a solution. In such circumstances, collaborations can work correctly by blending the skills and perspectives of a group and avoids pitfalls that a single person thought process often misses.

Getting alignment:  Precise alignment demands time, and space for teams to vent difference. There is always friction when getting alignment. When people collaborate, vital decisions span several types of thought process and perspectives that build a shared understanding of the situation and how to approach it. Collaboration reduces friction quickly.

Engaging Teams and ownership attitude: Collaboration creates a sense of mission beyond the management executives. Collaboration fosters trust between employees, which is a competitive advantage because collaborating team usually deploy their expertise at a faster velocity.

To conclude, successful collaborators enable trust and respect for others. Promoting genuine respect for one and other is crucial for creating a collaborative environment, but it doesn’t come easily for many. When you struggle with your ego, collaboration gets hard. Some leaders with authority mow down people below in the quest for finding success. Effective leaders collaborate. They use it to tap into an employee’s strengths, and they use it to balance or fix weakness or gap. In the end, collaboration builds happy teams resulting in productive outcomes, which translates into better service for your customers.

We are in the Smart Machine Age. What you know or how much you know will not be a scale to define your smart quotient. AI can do many things better than humans, and our knowledge and abilities are limited when compared to intelligent machines. In the smart machine age, you will not be defined by what you know or how much you know but only by the quality of your thinking, listening, relating, and collaborating.

Good luck.