Demystifying collaboration: Togetherness

Myth #2: Collaboration only happens when working together

Since the origin of the word collaboration is ‘work together’ this may initially seem to be a bit of a rogue thought but: Does working together dictate the work is happening in the same space? Or at the same time?

Can work outside of the same space and time (i.e. when not trapped in a meeting room together) count as collaboration? Given most of us have experienced asynchronous and remote work at some point during the pandemic, we should at the very least tempt the idea that it’s possible. Certainly not always easy, but possible.

The dictionary definition of collaboration is: “the action of working with someone to produce something” such as to “complete a task or achieve a goal”, so it appears we are indeed in the clear on any semantic constraint of time and space.

But if you don’t have to be in the same space at the same time to be collaborating, couldn’t anything count as collaboration? Are two employees working within the same organisation, pursuing the company’s mission as part of their typical day-to-day role also collaborating? That feels like a stretch. This clearly needs to be pinned down a little more.

Collaboration as ideas space

In my opinion the essence of collaboration hinges on one fundamental aspect more than any other, which is to hold in balance the space for divergent thinking; allowing for the creation of a multitude of ideas, before moving to a space for convergent thinking; allowing for the best possible choice from the group to be made. It’s this first vital moment of divergence that is sadly all too often minimised or marginalised by common misperceptions of what it means to collaborate. (See Myth #1)

© IDEO

However, in my experience at least, it’s virtually impossible for divergent thinking to happen entirely synchronously, or 100% in the open in relationship with others. This is because we naturally stress test or sanitise ideas in our heads before sharing with a wider group. In environments of reduced agency and trust, when we don’t perform this conceptual self-validation, we can err on the side of caution and hesitate or censor the act of sharing them.

Despite the fact that ideas are cheap, creating ‘good’ ideas doesn’t just happen on a whim. Although we can foster techniques and methods to better generate ideas as part of a rote routine, a certain amount of time for internal reflection, as ideas emerge and form, can be useful to hammer them into a more valuable shape.

This is the moment when collaboration doesn’t necessarily demand co-collaborators be together in the same space, or even at the exact same time. As long as there’s a reasonable and clearly understood milestone for the end of this divergent phase, ideas can be accumulated in a variety of ways and still constitute collaboration. Indeed, gathered in this way they can also better accommodate a neurodiversity of creative thinking behaviours and personal preferences.

In some cases, the act of forcing collaborators to come together to surface ideas can, ironically, stifle the very outcome it’s trying to foster, and push it towards its opposite: Groupthink, rather than better ideas. This is often because each collaborator needs to trust that the cultural norms of the group won’t be resistant to novel ideas, or reject such ideas outright. Most working environments don’t intuitively support random batshit ideas unfortunately (going to coin this ‘Guano Thinking’™), even if that’s the stated ‘modus operandi’ of a particular moment (e.g. “Go crazy”, “No bad ideas”, etc). This is where facilitation plays a key role.

After such ideas have been sufficiently nurtured into being, collaboration inevitably begins to assume a more familiar form: towards a phase of understanding ideas as fully as possible, together as a group. This requires the dialogue and synchronisation we typically expect of archetypal collaboration; a moment for each co-collaborator to enquire, and for each author to elaborate, for all to build upon, maximising both the collective awareness of the group and everyone’s individual agency in the choices to follow.

But imagine a collaborative process that doesn’t fully engage a wider group not only in the choices to be made, but the genesis and evolution of such choices? Well, we don’t have to think hard to imagine this, as it’s more often than not the default version of ‘lip service’ collaboration.

Collaboration in this case is more often hemmed into a reductive remit of “collaborative decision-making” or unnecessarily excludes broader group participation on dubious grounds. Even where more genuine generative collaboration does exist, commercial or budgetary pressures compress such processes towards the allocation of feeble amounts of time and effort for such ideation. Divisive roleplaying by more worthy ‘creatives’ or ‘innovators’ end up consulting exclusively within the boardrooms of their clients. In this case the quality of ‘togetherness’ in the collaboration is so weak as to be ineffective.

So we need to ask not whether effective collaboration is done together, in a specific place and time, or not (a bit of both is healthy), but what constitutes a suitable level of authentic togetherness to any collaboration.

If we limit the exposure of our organisations and communities to more diverse and radical choices, we likewise limit our potential next steps. Worse than that, what we’re left behind with is stagnant ideas and inbred solutions that lead to nothing but an impotent future.

Myths of collaboration

1. Collaboration is a way of making decisions
2. Collaboration only happens when working together
3. Collaboration is too slow
4. Collaboration is cooperative
5. Collaboration needs facilitation

Part of a series on Demystifying collaboration: explorations into better ways of working together.