Collaboration, from the ground up

As intranet people, we’re often to be found facilitating or participating in conversations and initiatives relating to collaboration. And especially with the intranet becoming more and more a medium for these ways of working. But let’s step back a moment, and get our hands dirty with this collaboration business, from the ground up.

While participating on a discussion forum recently, the topic came up around our willingness to collaborate and share. One posting in particular encouraged sharing from members irrespective of how they perceived their knowledge or experience, or whether they thought that they had the “right” answer. And it went on to point out that only through our shared experiences and conversations will we generate new knowledge and answers.

We know this! And at a fundamental level, trends such as knowledge management and Web 2.0 encapsulate an almost intuitive reaching out towards these kind of interactions and the value they can create. Yet the barriers to these interactions remain formidable, even with technology increasingly available to support them. At one level, these barriers are about the traditional structures of corporate culture which are largely proving incompatible with more open, emergent ways of working. But these structures didn’t appear as if by magic, and so at another level, we get to look at the personal values and behaviours that we have as individuals around collaboration (online or offline). And to make these values and behaviours at the centre stage. Otherwise, we can debate all things 2.0 until we’re blue in the face, and until the trend fades away leaving little real change in our organisations.

So, what are these values? This is not an exhaustive list, but here are the one’s I would start with as being key...

Willingness (to be wrong!) - as in the example I started with, we have to be willing to share the knowledge and experience we do have, and take it from there. A good litmus test is: how willing are we to ask the so-called “stupid” question?

Responsibility for our actions - doing things because we know they will add value for the organisation, our colleagues and ourselves (not because they’re in our end of year objectives).

Openess about our activities, looking for the synergies between our projects and others, blogging (for example) about these projects and their real progress (rather than “controlling the message” when something doesn’t go quite to plan).

Spirit of adventure in all that we do! Being prepared to experiment, and see the opportunities for using the tools available in perhaps uncommon ways to create value.

We all have our areas for improvement, but an individual embodying the majority of these values in an organisation no longer has the need for “engagement” or “empowerment”, rather a guiding purpose and supportive framework to go about their business. Now that’s what you call changing corporate culture from the ground up! Ok, so we can’t avoid the other barriers, but it’s always refreshing to look at these things from the perspective of what individuals can do. And who ever failed to be inspired by someone who truly lives these kind of values? As intranet people we get a unique position in the organisation (not to change the world, though it is tempting) to facilitate some of these conversations around collaboration, and influence them by example.

Update: I've just been reading David Gurteen's March Knowledge Letter - he expresses this well as the "Thinking 2.0" or "Mindset 2.0" that we need if "Enterprise 2.0" is going to live up to it's potential.