When we were all
physically located in the same building collaboration was a
collection of meetings to reach the stated goal. First to flesh out
the details of the project – go from concept to specific, consensus
from contributors, logistics & interim deadlines from
participants, and collective review of it all. Meet and work
together – or go away and work, come back & share.
The outcome was
labor intensive and time consuming – all these people meeting
together for all those meetings – to satisfy the original purpose
or charter of the project. The initial development and interim
refinement of the project was a function of the participants' ability
to articulate ideas and persuade others to adopt them – the result
was often consensus conservatism or the leader's fiat.
Innovation is
difficult in such an environment – it's hard for an innovative
thinker to convey a new idea or approach verbally and achieve the
needed consensus – even with visual or written aids. Collaboration
was often just the same old work with a rotating resource pool.
Breakthroughs and radical new approaches or products were rare.
In the environment
of the New
Normal the model is changing (or has) with a number of
independents or small firms coming together from different locations
to collaborate on a project. Once the initial discussion of the
project vision, the goals, the time line, and the assignment of
responsibilities has been completed – usually not
with all participants physically together in the same room – the
work begins. Under the New Normal there is a shift in the method of
approaching the work, however.
It
is common for one of the contributors to work up a high-level but
detailed view of some or all of the project outputs and send it to
the other collaborators for review and comment. During this process,
the contributor has fleshed out specifics, relationships of
components, design strengths & weaknesses, and alternative or
innovative approaches to achieving the project goals. With focus
comes learning, with application comes understanding.
The
other collaborators review what's provided and offer feedback and
alternative ideas. Adjustments are incorporated as necessary and the
next contributor takes this work to build on for the next level of
forward progress in the project.
I
am part of an asynchronous collaboration project to develop a
software tool – one contributor wrote descriptions of what the tool
is intended to do, how he would use it, and an outline of the output
to the user. From these documents, I developed the design
architecture for the tool and noted additions needed, and
interrelation ships in operation. The third collaborator coded the
software from the design diagram and added several additional items
while streamlining access to the different elements. Between each
stage was a brief conversation and agreement on changes &
additions.
Each
of us learned more about the tool and discovered element to add or
modify for greater effectiveness, while gaining a deeper
understanding of how best to support the end user. We have also
noted that this approach does not add to each person's 'hands-on'
time, but it significantly eliminates the non-productive meeting time
of the past collaboration process.
With
collaborators today in many different locations and organizations,
balancing multiple projects, and being compensated on results rather
than time spent, the New Normal asynchronous collaboration is a more
practical approach to working together. In addition, innovation is
built in to each stage – it is implemented and can be reviewed in
practice, not just talked about in concept.
Share
your experience with asynchronous collaboration by commenting on
this post.
SalesLab’s
Rainmaker
series
returns to the Capital
Technology Management Hub,
Tuesday, September 13th
with
300 seconds of Mark
Your Territory.
The featured CTMH speaker will be Professor
Steve Gladis,
author of The
Agile Leader.
Come
join us!
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