The Big Deal About Collaboration (Part 1)
Collaboration is a big deal. It’s how things are built, bought, sold, developed, and maintained. It’s why we have address books, phones, and computers. Collaboration is something we all do.
col·lab·o·rate – To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort. [American Heritage Dictionary]
In the context of work, collaboration is when authorized people communicate and perform relevant actions towards a shared outcome. But two major obstacles impair collaboration in business: proximity and timing. Fortunately, the Internet has made location virtually a non-issue. People in different places can get things done because innovative channels of communication exist. However, only a handful of solutions employ the Internet to address the issue of timing.
Timing is crucial to collaboration. For example, the difference between voicemail (communication) and a phone conversation (collaboration) is timing. Voicemail can effectively communicate, but we all know “phone tag” is not an acceptable way to do business. In a live conversation, the parties can respond immediately to what is being communicated.
In other words, the farther apart an action is from when it is communicated, the less likely collaboration is taking place. Communication is merely a transactional mechanism to facilitate collaboration. In contrast, the closer communication occurs to an action, the more it reflects collaboration.
Although communication is essential for collaboration to occur, it itself is not the end game. Productivity is the prize. Productivity increases when people are able to work on the same thing at the same time (aka “collaboration”). That’s why today’s Web-savvy employees seek out collaborative applications to make themselves more productive and more valuable to their employer.
