Skip to content

Yesterday’s collaboration workshop in Canberra

Written by James Robertson, published July 29, 2009

Categorised under: Collaboration, Conferences & presentations

Talk about collaborating on collaboration! I ran the first of our “Succeeding at collaboration” workshops yesterday in Canberra, and discussions were vigorous and insightful from the outset. At some points I could barely get a word in edgeways, which is exactly what you want when so much great experience is being shared by participants! :-)

To share some rough notes from the discussions on the day, without editing …

Why is collaboration important?

  • Prevent reinvention of the wheel
  • Better outcomes
  • Increased staff efficiency
  • Help make decisions
  • “Two brains are better than one”
  • Bringing information together
  • To be better informed
  • It’s a fundamental thing (“we are humans, we collaborate”)
  • It’s a social thing
  • Share knowledge
  • Capture the activity
  • Innovate
  • Progress, improve, reflect, evaluate, learn
  • Empowers people to contribute more
  • Team building

Questions needing answers?

  • Integrate collaboration tools with the intranet?
  • Governance and ownership?
  • How to maintain momentum?
  • Ho much needs to be decided upfront?
  • How to motivate participation without over-selling?
  • Educating management?
  • How to achieve good ROI for people in terms of effort?
  • Convincing managers it’s not dangerous?
  • Good examples?
  • Lessons learnt?
  • Start small? Pilot?
  • Finding relevant expertise?
  • Pros/cons of tools?
  • Choosing tools?

I’m looking forward to the upcoming sessions in Sydney (25 August 2009) and Melbourne (10 September 2009).

Tags: ,