There is one very important part of collaboration: taking stock of where you are. Highly productive teams and collaborative networks sometimes need to understand “where they are”. The question is, when to do this?

You might see it on their faces; that’s probably the most obvious time to “take stock”. However, the best practice I’ve experienced would be building “the feedback loop” into the collaborative process. In other words, when building the collaborative team, remember it’s collaborate, evaluate and take stock. The following model might suggest how to actually accomplish this:

• Collaborative team is formed: roles, responsibilities, objectives, champions
• Collaborative goals outlined: what do we want to achieve and when
• Collaboration project management program launched to support goals
• Collaborative feedback time frame: what have WE accomplished and how close are we to reaching the goals

I read an interesting article from InsideKnowledge magazine. In the article, they asked the broader question about feedback. However, they incorporated the concept of culture:

Understanding your collaboration culture
What is your organisation’s collaboration culture? Is it focused on rewarding only divisions or teams, or does it embrace the wider organisational community and connect to the looser networks, inside and outside your walls? Is collaboration forced, or even stifled by vertical rewards structures? Or is it a natural practice, like breathing? Are you aware of the collaboration culture at the individual, team, organisation and even network level?
There are some basic indicators of a strong collaboration culture that work across all levels of collaboration. They include:

1. Reflective practices are valued. Reflection enables individuals, teams, communities and networks to learn and improve their collaborative practices. This includes all types of ongoing communication and feedback;
2. A receptive environment for learning from mistakes. Mistakes are discussable learning moments rather than shaming moments. Being ‘right’ is not the only thing valued so being wrong is not hidden, hiding learning and collaborative moments. This includes constructive criticism and critical thinking in general;
3. Transparency is the sets of tools and practices that supports reflective practices and the culture of learning from mistakes. Most importantly this includes speaking up when something is wrong and doing it with respect and good intent;
4. Awareness of, and balance between, competition and cooperation. Awareness of the impacts of competition – how much focus to put on individual, team and organisational achievement;

Willingness to surface and share expertise. This means people are encouraged to and are allowed the time to share what they know in addition to focusing on their own work.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 9:07 am and is filed under Blog.