Collaborating on Complexity
Why is collaboration uniquely able to address complex problems and issues? In large part, the strength of collaboration comes from the diversity of perspectives and experience that a group of people can bring to a problem. Add in the creative nature of collaboration, and you’ve got the right mixture to tackle a complex problem.
Women Make Us Smarter
We are collectively smarter when we work in groups and we make better decisions when those groups include women.
A bit deeper on task and relationship conflict.
In a quick synopsis of a research paper on task and relationship conflict, it becomes clear that trust can be a key driver in keeping conflicts focused on the task and not the relationship. On the other hand, the way people behave, like being loud or being positional, have a less definitive influence.
Three books.
Three good books that have influenced my life and which I have given as gifts. Interestingly, they all have some element of behaviour science.
Task vs. Relationship Conflict
In this short recap of an Adam Grant interview on the podcast Hidden Brain, where he speaks to task and relationship conflict and how it shows up in successful and failed teams.
Four Lessons from a Horse (repost)
Here’s a repost from last year that I thought I would share again, because I like how I was seeing the lessons of horsemanship translating to the world of collaboration.
5 Reasons Collaboration fails (and how to avoid them) - repost
A repost of an article penned by Annemarie Marshall that outlines 5 ways collaboration can fail and importantly how to avoid these traps in the first place.
Collaboration empowers people.
Collaboration is a force to empower people, whether its to participate, be creative, apply critical thinking, or be a leader.
Sparkplugs!
Where does collaboration start? Or rather, who starts it? Really, everyone can be a collaboration sparkplug. Read on to see some of the traits you might see in someone how sparks collaboration.
Embrace the change
This last year has taught us a lot with one big lesson being to embrace change to see what it can offer. In collaboration too, little changes are like experiments we can run to see how things might work.
A Christmas-time thought.
There are similarities between our experience in successful collaboration and our experience at Christmas. Our togetherness makes us stronger.
Seeing Stakeholders Differently
When we are trying to figure out who should be part of our collaboration, we start making lists. People who are affected. People who have a ‘stake’. People with power. Perhaps we need to reexamine our thinking to see ideas and perspectives and not artificial categories of thinking. In this post, we examine some different ways of thinking about participation.
Lessons from Kugluktuk (repost)
A repost of a lesson I learned while working in Canada’s north about authenticity, collaboration, and a boy named Eli.
Do you remember the telephone?
Sometimes we need to adjust our approach, which is the point of this post on adapting to the emerging realities of virtual meetings and overlapping, competing virtual meetings.
The Orchestra that is Collaboration
Imagine you were a flute player, or a saxophone, or a violin, and you are the best in the world. And then, one day, you discover an orchestra filled with people who are all the best in the world. That’s what collaboration is.
Why is it so unfair?
People are wired to have strong emotional reactions to real or perceived unfairness. It lights up certain parts of your brain like a Christmas tree. And it doesn’t even need to be real. If you imagine unfairness, you still get the response. And it affects how we make decisions, even to our own detriment.
Is Collaboration Just a Buzzword? (Repost)
Collaboration is a word often used. And equally as often, it is used without a complete sense of what it means or what makes collaboration unique. I propose a clearer definition and describe a framework for understanding the main parts of collaboration.
Vivien Twyford on the newest episode of Cool Collaborations
Here’s a sneak-peak into the latest episode of the Cool Collaborations podcast conversation with Vivien Twyford, where we talk about Vivien’s experiences of successful collaboration, the systematic approach to collaboration laid out in the Power of Co book, and some of the things that set Vivien on the path to becoming a collaboration specialist.
Showcase: The Complexity Project
In this showcase post, I highlight the work of Ken Banister and The Complexity Project. The project is an exploration of the complexity we experience in our lives through stories and studies that highlight some of the hidden connections within complexity.
Four Lessons from a Horse
If you’ve ever stopped to really watch a skilled horsewoman communicate with her horse through subtle unspoken signals, you’ll also see some of the very same aspects of good collaboration. In this week’s post, I point to four aspects common to both riding and collaboration.