When you are collaborating, it’s a lot like dancing. There are steps, actions, paths, communication, coordination, skills, postures and positions, and it all takes time and practice. How do you know if it will work or not? Today, I’d like to offer you six signs to look for. They are inspired by the dancers in Roberto Blizzard‘s video “Dancing…
Perfect Collaborators
We often have a pretty good idea about who we’d like to work with on a project: people we like, especially folks who have the skills and qualities the project needs but we lack. Yet finding the perfect collaborators is not a cat-and-mouse game. Collaboration is about having a shared purpose. Everyone involved in a project brings a unique perspective and they…
Collaborative Writing Law 6. When in doubt, check your assumptions
Assumptions create obstacles to free-flowing collaboration. If a project is not advancing as expected, there are probably some hidden assumptions to bring to light. Assumptions can affect anything from the writing mandate to the final output, and all the activity and people in between. The root of assumptions is expectations—something every project and everyone involved comes ready charged…
Your collaboration tools may be useless
State-of-the-art collaborative tools are about as useful as a box of hammers (see photo) if no one is clear on the aim of the project. It is misguided to think that your team has a good collaborative environment just because everyone shares the same database, or that a specific social media tool is all you need to get…
Is your organization losing its mind?
Your team is compiling hundreds of pages to support your organization’s product. It takes months, sometimes years. So you can expect the faces at the table to change over time. Writing in organizations takes planning. If the team members take all the expertise with them, the collaborative writing project could be affected. And the organization might feel…
Law 4. Assess the requirements for the project (even if there’s no time)
You have already established your writing mandate with Law 3. So does the team start scribbling yet? Not quite. There’s an Arabic saying about good, expressive prose: (If it takes) No skill to understand it, (then it takes) mastery to write it.” — cited by Taleb in his book on anti fragility (I’ve added parenthetical notes) In writing,…
Law 3. Identify the writing mandate and agree on a process
When there is writing to be done, most people expect some magic to happen. The mystique surrounding the creative process is powerful. There is no magic, though. Setting words on the page is a process and having a plan is key. Very early on in the development process, your team must capture the expectations for the project….
The 10 laws of collaborative writing
How do you make sure you are collaborating effectively with your writing colleagues? Here are 10 laws to guide you: All writing in organizations is collaborative. Respect thy collaborators as thyself. Identify the writing mandate and agree on a process. Assess the requirements for the project (even when there’s no time). Agree on practices and tools, and…
Writing in organizations: Gaining a competitive edge
The need to create documentation is greater than ever. There’s text for the Web, sales and promotional material, product descriptions, manuals, reports, one-pagers—most organizations are pushing out a lot of text these days. With all this production happening, you’d think the writing process was getting better, easier and more effective all the time. But is this the…
The Write Stuff
Yikes, the report is due Monday and it’s Thursday already! Does your organization have a plan to meet tight deadlines? How would your team pull together the information and resources to meet your organization’s goals? First reactions to a situation like this would say a lot about how the team understands its mandate. What people say reflects…