Process & Place: Dealing with Complexity in Collaboration

This is the final post in a 3 part series from Lokesh Datta on dealing with complexity in collaboration. Lokesh is a veteran project manager, collaborator and management consultant and he writes extensively on collaboration at All Collaboration. Enjoy!

Collaboration is usually a good thing. However, as technology makes it increasingly more easy to collaborate, our work frequently becomes more complex. In the first post in this series, I detailed some of the sources of complexity in collaboration, such as working in teams across geographies and bringing in external contributors. The second post focused on how to deal with the complexity that comes from collaboration – specifically the elements of Purpose and Place.

In this post, I give some practical advice on how to manage the complexity of collaboration related to Process and Place – the other P’s of holistic collaboration – for a total of 17 tips for how to manage the complexity introduced during collaborative work:

Process

• Design the process for the effort: What worked before may not work for the effort on-hand, particularly given the composition of the collaboration team. Design the collaboration process for this team collaboratively with all members. Starting slow with due attention to fundamentals will in fact help you get there faster. But, avoid the analysis paralysis trap, and get going. This brings us to the next point.
• Be flexible: Remember the old framework of team dynamic: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning! This team will experience these stages as well, but now in the networked world. Observe, learn and seek opportunities to make various aspect of the process more effective. These include: communications, meeting management, collaborative writing, project coordination, and so on. By design, include time for debriefing, feedback and discussions on process improvement. For example, set aside 10 minutes at the end of each meeting to discuss what worked and what can be improved. Then, act on it, so that is not just talk. You can also have a discussion forum for such discussions.
• Include face-to-face meeting: Trust and team building dynamics become more challenging in the virtual world. To the extent possible, bring the team together for face-to-face meetings, which could certainly include work but also team building and fun activities.
• Inject transparency: Sunshine is the best antidote, as the saying goes! Make the progress, documents, status, issues and discussions transparent. No gatekeepers! Lack of knowledge about who is doing what to who and when adds risk, confusion and potential conflicts. Lack of full access to information can hinder work, create duplicate work, and fester frustrations. Transparency builds and sustains trust (trust is at the core of collaboration) – particularly when you are collaborating in a far-flung team.
• Plan for managing security and compliance issues: Understand the challenge and complexity posed by collaborating with people with different affiliations. Have a game plan to deal with this explicitly and early on. Depending on your ability to overcome such constraints may indeed impact the team composition.

Place

• Select the right tools for the effort: As the saying goes, pick the right horse for the course! Understand: 1) How will the team conduct its interactions? 2) What is the mix of real-time meetings (physical, phone, or web) versus non-real-time interactions (message boards, wikis, email exchanges, etc.)? 3) How might the mix of interactions or “place” change over the course of the collaboration project — perhaps kicking off with more direct contact, separating into more virtual interactions, then coming back together with direct contact to converge on the solution? 4) Collaboration tools can be effective to help a team work together, but only in the broader context of “place” and how the team members will interact. Select the tools that address the team needs. Oh, and don’t forget that tools should be such that they provide transparency.
• Keep it simple on tools: This does not need much explanation. I would however like to remember Einstein at this time: Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler! A collaboration tool must not get in the way of collaboration.
• Ensure training and comfort with use of tools: Collaborators should be comfortable with using the selected tools, or else they could create detours around them. This can multiply complexity and can in fact derail the effort.
• Lead through tools and enforce discipline: The leader must lead through tools. If and when a team member does not use the right tool, address and remedy the situation promptly. There could be many reasons for not using the tool appropriately; for example, hesitation in editing the work of a superior which all others can see, lack or training or comfort with the tool, just a feeling – right or wrong – that the tool is not effective and is getting in the way of productive collaboration, and so on.

There you have it. What aspects of collaborative work do you think are most crucial to success? Are you proactively considering the complexity introduced by collaboration?