How Do We Collaborate?

How do we collaborate?

Collaboration is working together in a group to achieve what cannot be done alone. It is sharingof responsibility and working together synergistically. Collaboration requires involvement and participation of every member through models like meetings and projects. Communication and teamwork are critical for collaboration to succeed.Teamwork is simply listening to members’ ideas and thoughts and bringing solution to the problem at hand that has taken into consideration members’ opinions.

Collaboration is both a state and a process and once determined that collaboration should exist for a solution that go beyond individual resolution then the following questions should be answered beforehand: how is collaboration established and maintained. For collaboration to be successful one need to clearly define and develop the following three stages early on: Problem setting, direction setting and implementation structure. All members/stakeholders should agree that there is a problem that needs the effort of more than one person for the end result of the collaboration effort to succeed. Members should state their right to participate. Once members are onboard, agreement need to be reached on what actions and resources are needed and what resources to use. Finally by assigning of roles and responsibilities to members the collaboration process begins.

Today, technology has made it much easier and attainable to collaborate in all thethree dimensionalways virtually: Time, Place and Reporting structure. Because of different applications and tools meetings and working on projects even in different place and at different time scenarios have been possible. According to a study made by three researchers (Robert O.Briggs,JannaM.Crews and Daniel D. Mittleman), because of the different group support tools that are out there, asynchronous meetings among members who are located in different places are possible. This study, after a year of research, has found the challenges asynchronous meetings faces but has also confirmed that they are a possibility in this age.

To better understand the importance of collaboration, it would be necessary to consider what working relation would look like without it.Two is always better than one and more is even better. The more participant are there in solving problems the more ideas and solutions that could be generated. Collaboration can lead to work being accomplished more effectively and efficiently and is becoming more valuable to many companies and organizations. And on top of that if you add the possibility of virtual collaborationwithout the hassle of travel and other logistic arrangements, the concept becomes attractive to more audience.

Collaboration also serves another purpose, recognition of members’ creativity and problem solving ability. Collaboration is a working relationship and the main propose is to achieve a task at hand together that could not be done individually and hence no singling out of one individual as a pro.