Have you supported a crowdfunded project yet? I’m happy to say I have! You’ll want to get involved, too, if you enjoy bringing ideas to life … in a collaborative way. I went through Kickstarter, although there are many crowdfunding sites. What is Kickstarter? It’s an on-line platform for bringing creators and backers together to make a creative project happen through crowdfunding. Those involved create…
Collaboration insight for introverts: Sharing and letting go
As Quiet Entrepreneurs, we often work alone. Could we be missing out on an opportunity to create something extraordinary by collaborating? Julia Barnickle and Julia Elmore took that chance. Their aim in working together was to capture the process of creating art using found materials at a unique London location. Watch them! Their work together leads to insight…
Embracing success: Six signs that your collaboration will survive … and thrive
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…
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…
Collaborative Writing Law 7. Model thy structure and content
Why do we try to reinvent the wheel? The world is full of examples of how information can be organized. Pick a content model. Any model! Well, you’re right. Not just any model will do. You want the one that fits your content best and helps your team manage the work. That’s why knowing the requirements and…
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…
Collaborative Writing is Antifragile
Collaborative writing is a way to make a document better than if it were written by one person. Things can get better through uncertainty and seeming disorder. In his book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb looks at human activity from this unique perspective: Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to…