Tips for Successful Collaborations

Collaborate (verb):
to co-labor; to work together

Collaboratory or Collaborative (noun):
a group of people who have come together specifically to collaborate. Generally signifies a sub-group comprised of interested parties from groups that have decided to collaborate around a specific goal.

Collaboration is a skill — a learned behavior — but there aren't many venues that teach it! At the same time, more and more corporate, organizational and community entities in the United States are advocating the use of collaboration as a process that gets them more for their money while boosting creativity and break-through thinking.

Learn to collaborate! What do you need to be successful?

Trust
Groups that have trust among their members are more effective than those that don't. The same thing is true for collaborations, but the trust is required between groups. The more trust you've built, the more you can accomplish together. While collaboration is a great means of building further trust with another organization, you need to start out with a little trust in the first place. How?

Respect

Each member must respect “the other” no matter what discipline they emerge from. No one discipline is “better” than another.

Motives. — People begin to make judgments about trustworthiness from the moment they meet someone or experience a new thing. We all have ideas about what is appropriate or not, based on the mental models that we have developed in life. The first thing anyone wants to know about in a new situation is what other peoples' motives are. Judgments about motives often form the foundation of judgments about trustworthiness. It helps to have thought through what your motives really are, and what you hope to achieve with this other group. Begin to consider what their motives might be for working with you…but don't make any judgments about this until you actually ask! So, start off with a discussion of your motives in order to begin defining your goals and building trust.

Roles. — We each make judgments about the roles that others play, and whether they are behaving appropriately in fulfilling those roles. If you decide someone isn't behaving according to the role you are expecting him or her to play, you lose trust in that person, right? For this reason, it's important not to assume that everyone knows what role each group or each person will play. Discuss the roles each group/each person will take, and how you will know that they have been successfully fulfilled. If you're assuming that someone is playing one role, and they assume they are playing a different role, you're both bound to lose trust in each other!

Figure out how each role contributes to the overall success of your shared "Collaboratory," because the roles may need to be tailored to the overall good. If you've played a particular role in another group, you may be tempted to assume that you would play the same role the same way this time around. But, if that role hasn't been tailored to really contribute to the particular goal and needs of the collaboratory, you may be playing it in a way that will cause others to lose trust in you and in the process.

Outcomes. — Defining success in advance — together — means that you'll all recognize it when it comes!

Power
There is no way to avoid the fact that issues of power show up in every human interaction. What you do with the power issues makes the difference! In a Collaboratory, you want as much equal input to the process as possible. You want the process to be as open, creative and "flowing" as possible: this is how "breakthrough thinking" happens. Power imbalances can block your process from really developing. How can you try to balance power issues? Pay attention to:

Territory. — Seek out neutral territory. Try to avoid doing your planning or meeting in a place that "belongs" to one group more than the other. Having the "home field advantage" gives you power that you might not be trying to get! Groups who have to go into someone else's territory are not going to be as comfortable, and you can end up blocking your open, creative, flowing process.

Size & Balance. — Though the originating groups may be of drastically differing size, the membership of the Collaboratory should strive to fairly equally represent each group. Would you want to join a Collaboratory if you felt that you and your group were so insignificant compared to the other group, that you and your ideas would never be heard?

Resources. — Different groups have different amounts and types of resources. Try not to let the large financial resources of any particular group dictate the overall Collaboratory. If you default to "He who pays the piper calls the tune," you will no longer be collaborating. You may be coercing.

Information. — It's important to keep all members of the Collaboratory equally well apprised of all developments. Remember, "Knowledge is Power." If you're trying to make sure that power stays as balanced as possible, you will need to make sure that information does as well. Keep good records of your meetings and make them available to all participants. Transparency builds trust. Secrecy builds suspicion. Even just the perception of secrecy can seriously erode trust!

Credit
It is important to remember to share the credit for a successful Collaboratory, and to be as public about the acknowledgment as you can be. If your effort was really a Collaboratory, each member will have contributed something different and important. Each member needs acknowledgment that they played their agreed upon role in a way that their Collaboratory partners agreed was appropriate. And, each member needs to learn about the inappropriate things they may have done as well. Trust is built through honesty and through people caring enough to stick their necks out to really be honest.

A group that has earned and built trust has created a capacity to get things done. A collaboration, done well, can generate power now and build power for the future!