Mon, Jun 12, 2006
Beating the Dead Horse of Collaboration: Thinking Versus Doing
#
My post on the
dangers of professionalizing collaboration spurred some good
thoughts
from ChrisDent, which resulted in some good discussion over IM. Chris
wrote: (KP6)
What one does when collaborating is always more important than
collaboration itself. (KP7)
In the ideal situation, collaboration disappears into the
background. If you find yourself enmeshed in the details of how your
group should interact, you've missed a step. (KP8)
This is so true, it bears emphasizing. Think about dancing. What
could be more collaborative? If you're thinking about your footwork
or your next move as you dance, you are almost certainly not dancing
well. On the other hand, how do you become a good dancer without
thinking about footwork? More importantly, how do you improve if
you're not self-reflective? Obviously, actually doing it is crucial
-- and in the end, it's the most important thing -- but there's still
room for self-reflection and discussion. What's the right balance? (KP9)
The key is a cycle of reflection and action. You think and you talk,
but when it comes to action, you forget all of that, and you simply
do. All of that thinking, regardless of how good or how deep it is,
is useless if it hasn't been internalized, if it's not actionable. If
it has been internalized, then thinking or talking about it is not
only unnecessary, it just gets in the way. (KPA)
Chris's point reminded me of something: People's best experiences with
collaboration often occurs when there's a sense of urgency.
Collaboration following disasters is a great example of this. A big
reason for this is that people don't have the luxury of overthinking a
problem, and so if collaboration is good, nothing artificial gets in
the way. (KPB)
In my essay, "Everything Is
Known: Discovering Patterns of Emergent Collaboration," I talk a lot
about WilliamLangewiesche's book, American Ground and the emergent
collaboration that occurred after 9/11. I didn't get to talk in
detail about what happened after the bulk of the recovery effort was
complete, although I
alluded
to it in a previous blog entry. Langewiesche writes: (KPC)
Safety restrictions were increasing by the day. Ken Holden was
philosophical about it, and, as his father might have years before, he
played a little word game -- something like metaphor-cramming. He
said, "When the smoke clears, the nitpickers come out of the closet."
And it was true: the regulators and auditors had arrived in force.
Those from the federal safety agency called OSHA were most in
evidence; they had been present from the start, and had been largely
ignored, but were suddenly multiplying now and gaining the upper hand.
They wore bright safety vests and had helmets equipped with red
flashing lights. One afternoon, with about a dozen of them in sight,
their lights blinking in the hole, Pablo Lopez said to me, "Look! The
Martians have landed and they're communicating!" A few days later one
of them asked me to don safety glasses or leave the excavation site,
and I remember my surprise when I realized that he was serious. It
felt sort of silly, like being required to wear sunblock in a combat
zone, but the truth was that the battle was over, and the hole had
become a tame place. Lopez's partner Andrew Pontecorvo explained it
to me as a fact of life that he had observed before. He said, "The
safer things get, the greater the restrictions." He was a realist.
He shrugged. (198-199) (KPD)
How do we avoid this trap? One key is to build a frequent, regular
cycle of intense collaboration followed by reflection into your
design. You can't do both at the same time, but you don't want to do
one without the other for too long. Deadlines are a pattern that
facilitates this behavior. (KPE)
If your team or community is aware of this cycle, then if someone's
self-reflection is preventing work from happening, you can call him or
her on it. Chris suggested having a HorseIsDead? stick, similar in
concept to a talking stick. I'm not sure exactly what you would do
with the stick yet -- beating the person over the head with it sounds
right, but this may not go over well with management -- but I think
he's on the right track. (KPF)
If the reason for collaborating is more important than the
collaboration itself, then what are the implications for metrics? Do
you measure collaboration at all, or do you measure whether or not
you're achieving your mission? The example I often use for this are
the 2000-2003 KobeBryant and ShaquilleONeal
Lakers. No one would point to
those teams as models of effective collaboration, but who cares? They
won three consecutive championships. Which metric is more important?
Well, they may have won three, but they should have won four, and they
had to break up the team because they couldn't get along. The point
is that you can't measure one in isolation from another. You need to
measure both, and consider one in the context of the other. (KPG)
/collaboration |
Posted at 12:25am
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