Cooperation vs. Collaboration
While both can be challenging to do, they are different and most people will say that they are skilled at cooperating and collaborating. Let me share a personal example of cooperating and collaborating with others. I will not state the name of the company or exact job title for confidential reasons. I worked at company XYZ as a customer service representative. My co-workers and I were responsible of helping as many customers as possible because it meant meeting some type of sales revenue. There were five different departments under this building. There were different personalities, responsibilities but all shared some type of goal. Our department was at the forefront of the building, so we got the happy and unhappy customers. However, customers always assumed that they had spoken to one of us on the phone. All departments were never on the same page, but that was due to management and lack of collaboration, which I will further explain. Someone from another department will come up to us at the front desk and request a document, meanwhile we had customers payments to collect and receipt them. To help customers in a timely manner and meet our sales revenue, we cooperated with other staff. When we cooperated with one another, and with other departments it did not mean that we were all on the same page or satisfied, it just meant we got the job done faster than doing it alone. Quality was lacking, and eventually there were high turnovers, followed by lack of productivity, morale, and especially motivation.
Today you might find yourself having to collaborate more than just cooperate with others, and though it is challenging, collaborating is a skill that everyone should have. In a collaboration team, each person has an essential task just like cooperating, but the difference is you gain more critical feedback and different perspectives that can turn your effective work into more efficient by working together. While it may be challenging to collaborate, people are open to ideas, critical constructive feedback, and are able to not just give feedback but to receive it as well. Take my previous example, as the company was experiencing a high turnover, a supervisor decided that there had to be a meeting where all departments had to be present. Before this meeting is highly encouraged for staff to fill out surveys about their satisfaction or unhappiness in the workplace with different day-to-day tasks to how well did we get along with others. After collecting surveys and data, the report was summarized and across all the departments, some topics were the same. Majority of staff was frustrated about lack of communication and felt that others did not value their work because no one understood their contribution to the workplace, unless they mostly worked together. To foster a healthier environment and get to know more about other departments, the supervisor asked for volunteers from each department to take charge and recommend strategies. I decided to represent my team in our "collaborative communication group". My responsibility was to ask my department for feedback and report to everyone recommendations by our next meeting. I took lead on communicating with the rest of my team. We all had similar recommendations, to have one person from each department sit in a department meeting and shadow to be familiar with different roles. In a collaborative group, we still had a common goal and worked together, but the difference was being able to give, receive, and most importantly practice the constructive feedback to improve our problem and provide higher quality work.
Three Criteria for Successful Collaboration
- Successful outcome
- Example "Did we do it within the time and budget allowed?"
- Growth in team capability
- Example "Did the team get better?"
- Meaningful and satisfying experience
- Example "Is this task important to us?"
Four Primary Purposes of Collaboration
I have given you an example of a cooperation team and a collaboration team and three criteria for successful collaboration, but you have to know why it is essential to collaborate instead of just cooperating with others. There are four primary purposes of collaboration, become informed, make decisions, solve problems, and manage projects. Have you ever heard the saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?" Well, that is information that is being perceived, and different people will have different interpretations of the same task. For example to have a successful outcome, everyone needs to be on the same page. There should be an agenda, notes drafted, a summary emailed to everyone so anyone that could not attend, has the same information as those who did. Once informed then staff can make decisions accordingly. These can be operational, managerial, or strategic decisions. The decision process can be structured or unstructured depending on team goal and business industry company's goal as well. As making decisions become more unstructured and strategic, there is a higher increase in the need for collaborating with others. When decisions are finally made, teams can solve the problem and manage projects.
Collaboration Information System
The five components of an information system (IS) are hardware, software, data, procedures, and people. Collaborating with others using data, could be project data or project metadata base. There are different collaboration tools that are required to meet each team purpose of becoming informed, making decisions, solving problems, and managing projects. These will all depend on the team and business needs. They can be either done in a synchronous communication way like making a phone call or sharing whiteboards. They can also be asynchronous communication like emailing or using surveys. When I was in my collaborative team, I used Google Doc and Google Calendar for everyone to see, input ideas, and meet deadlines. Our asynchronous way to communicate was when each of the leaders from the departments conducted surveys.
Use Collaboration Tools instead of emailing
Technology is advancing and using collaboration information systems eventually will move away from emailing someone to having virtual meetings, screen-sharing applications, performing webinars, videoconferencing, or discussion forums. Emailing teams is not effective because it may not be structured and sometimes information can be misread depending on how emails are written. More and more content applications will become the norm, as they are accessible and easier for teams to be on the same page. Documents can be shared through Google applications or Microsoft SharePoint for more control instead of emailing with attachments. For example, Google Drive is free and you can select who you want to share your document with, if any one can edit or comment on it. It tracks changes and automatically saves changes to determine who was the last person who updated that document. When you send an email and have to update it, it is hard to determine who made the changes and what changes were done, unless that person resending it tells you. Collaboration tools can also be used to manage tasks, especially for project management. Tasks can be delegated just like in person, but sharing them through a collaboration tool allows every team member to see progress from others, instead of relying on assumptions of who will be doing what and when they will be doing it. Depending on your team, a collaboration tool might be selected depending if it requires minimal, good or comprehensive support.
The future of Face-to-Face meetings
By 2026, collaboration will no rarely be done face-to-face. Students will be taking classes and attending conferences via virtual reality, or all online. International and global companies will greatly reduce cost and employees time through video conferencing. Top talent does not have to be lost by outsourcing everything, it can be shared and valued by meeting virtually and collaborating different ideas from no matter what destination. Imagine how many people you can network with? Most important is how much impact you can have by sharing valuable feedback and innovative ideas to solving perhaps world hunger.
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