Collaboration is not Just a Cooperative Venture

I was lucky enough to give a couple of presentations recently, one at an intergovernmental social networking workshop and the other was a brief talk at a PS collaborative management day, both were outstanding events and real learning experiences for me. Listening to the other great presenters, re-enforced my fundamental beliefs that collaboration is not just a cooperative venture, but a deeper intellectual interaction based on respect and trust. It is the connection of people into communities, their conversations and relationships that will enable us to make the rich layers of knowledge that are needed to address tomorrows complexities today.

Key Points

• Leadership is not threatened by collaboration, people are. The vertical alignment of the org charts will still exist, the chain of authority, responsibility and accountability haven’t changed, but what has changed is the access to new innovative solutions and possibilities that come with connecting the horizontal lines of collaboration.
• It may well be impossible to implement collaboration and social learning within government if we can’t get past the restrictive policies and realize that collaboration is not a risk but an enabler.
• Simply put, change must start now if we want it to be part of the cultural fabric of the future. ( stop talking about it, and do it, trust your people)
• Just as we create physical workspace to generate creativity we need to design the collaboration spaces that stimulate the mind not close it down with poor design. We need to move from the document and records management architecture that is a “file and forget” system, to one that we can surface the information we need and connect it to the right people, in the right place at the right time.
• Managers exercise the authority they are given, if they are not empowered to say yes, they will say no rather than ask up the chain. The new managers role will shift from being the gatekeepers of the corporate knowledge to enablers of the practices and behaviors that build corporate knowledge from the bottom up.

And finally if I can leave you with one thought on integrating any social technology into our work it is this; stop building policy that keeps telling us what we can’t do and start building policy that tells what we should do. Just imagine the power of policy that encourages us, defining our interactions with each other in positive voice, now wouldn’t that be refreshing.

Ralph Mercer