Collaboration - Getting to "We"

For anyone interested in teamwork, collaboration, collaboration technology, or the various web 2.0 tools that consider themselves to be collaboration technologies, the article Getting to "We" [PDF] (subtitled "Solidarity, not software, generates collaboration") by Peter J. Denning and Peter Yaholkovsky in the April/2008 Communications of the ACM is a very good read.

The article separates out collaboration into four levels: information sharing, coordination, cooperation, and collaboration. It also puts various so-called collaboration tools into one of the four levels. It groups them according to the minimum level it would fall into. So while a chat tool could be used for coordination, cooperation or collaboration, at a minimum it will be used for information sharing, so it is categorized there. A project management tool would get categorized as a coordination tool, etc. Using that standard may be a bit questionable, but it's not really the point. The key is that just because something can potentially support collaboration, it doesn't necessarily mean it does.

More interesting is the next observation, that collaboration on a project is not our natural first choice. When you ask different people to come together to solve a problem, the usual first instinct is to have a "here's my solution, let's mandate it" (authoritarian). Failing that, the next response is usually "we've got three different proposals, let's choose one" (competition).

For smaller problems, one of those two approaches is usually perfectly fine, so that's what gets used most of the time. But for the truly complex or so-called "wicked" problems, that just isn't good enough. There are too many competing interests and perspectives, and ignoring that fact just won't cut it. So when those things don't work out, perhaps people might actually be forced to work together (collaboration).

The best part of the article runs through how a well-done facilitated problem solving workshop would be structured (many approaches, but most follow along the lines presented). The process is about making everyone's interests known, group formation, the evolution of a group perspective separate from individual perspectives, and joint creation of solutions. When it works, these solutions come from the group as a whole, a group whose members honestly understand and try to take into account a diverse set of perspectives.

The article's conclusion, which could almost go unsaid, asks us to reflect on the richness of that process and to look at our so-called collaboration tools in that light. Let's hope that our ideas of what true collaboration can accomplish aren't deadened by what we all too often call collaboration today. (If we start thinking that a blog is inherently and fundamentally a collaboration tool, then what are we to make of the "collaboration" between left-wing and right-wing bloggers?)

For the really hard problems, the ones that matter, we'd better not forget what true collaboration and really working together is all about.