Do you have a Collaboration Contract with your team?

When establishing a new team or starting on a new project, people acknowledge that they will collaborate; but often they don’t discuss how they’re going to collaborate.

This can sometimes lead to disconnection and even frustration between team members, as not everyone is on the same page. For some this might be due to a lack of familiarity with the tools chosen, or for others it may be due to different working styles.

The reality is that we are all different, and have different ways of working.

To help with this, fellow MVP Sue Hanley and I put together the guidelines for establishing a ‘collaboration contract’, which is not just about tools — it’s about people and how they work together, as well as tools. Tools won’t fix problems created by people, and so a ‘collaboration contract’ focuses on connecting the people to each other as well as the tools; so that everyone is more successful when working together.

(And while we’re both Office Servers and Services MVPs, it isn’t restricted to just users of Office 365.)

Originally published at Loryan Strant, Office 365 MVP.