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…
With support, collaboration promotes insight and innovation
Insight is a new way of seeing a problem, a new awareness or understanding. It becomes possible when a problem is first recognized, then addressed and considered in different ways. Insight can lead to discovery and innovation and that is usually a good thing. Writing teams are made up of people from various parts of an organization who…
Law 10. Celebrate, then evaluate
Today, I received a letter from a project leader in the mail. I chuckled and got a warm, fuzzy feeling. Here I was, thinking about the tenth and last law of collaborative writing—how important it is to recognize all collaborators and celebrate your collective achievement. Then a thank-you note arrives. (And I did not Photoshop that time stamp….
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…
Model 2 – The writing shop
Our second model of writing process shows a group of writers working together to produce documents for the organization. On the surface it may seem that nothing is wrong with the writing shop model. One problem is that the shop may be just a collective of lone writers. Other characteristics of a writing shop is that they…
Model 1 – The lone writer: A lose–lose situation
The lone writer model is more common in organizations than you might think. Whenever work is sent to a single person for execution, either to someone in the organization or to a freelance writer (often the same person each time, since that person knows the organization very well), the lone writer model is being put into action….
Which writing process does your organization follow?
There are three main types of writing models that can be used to produce documents in organizations: Model 1. The Lone Writer, where one person does most of the writing for the organization Model 2. The Writing Shop, where a bank of writing specialists produce documentation Model 3. The Collaborative Team, where various writers and subject matter…
Law 5. Agree on practices and tools and track progress
A collaborative writer is someone who works with at least one other person to produce a text and achieve a common purpose. Now, a group of writers can produce a lot of text. To ensure that all those pieces go together well, the team should agree on practices and tools while tracking progress throughout the phases of…