Opening Insights: Let’s Collaborate
Our world is so divided and disconnected. We all know that’s part of the problem, so we are all looking for ways to correct the problem. Years ago, it was all about change, today it is all about collaboration.
Collaboration is the new buzz word in life, academia and business! Everyone wants it. Everyone says they do it. BUT, the reality is collaboration requires more than just a platform, process or feel good lecture or book.
We recognize the people today are more connected, yet more disconnected from ourselves and each other. We have been socially conditioned to hide behind texts and screens. Millennials in particular are disengaged from working, learning, communicating and in some cases living, unless communicating behind social media.
While collaboration is required the reality is collaboration can only work if it provides a foundation for not just what to do, but how to do it.
Informational Insights: Collaboration Realities
Businesses are looking for several things in today's economy... their primary desire is productive, effective and dependable employees.
According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, collaboration means:
1 : to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor - An international team of scientists collaborated on the study
2 : to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one's country and especially an occupying force - suspected of collaborating with the enemy
3 : to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected - The two schools collaborate on library servicesSource: https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/collaboration
Traditional Collaboration seeks to bring people together. There are platforms and processes in place to achieve this goal, however, there are some limitations:
- Everyone just waits for their turn to talk: Two monologues do not make a dialogue.– Jeff Daly
- Talk turns into negotiation (getting the best for their side)
- Differences and diversity are perceived as the greatest weakness
- Data is infected by the undermining force of the “Shadow” Culture (social media, entertainment and other social conditioning)
Hence...COLLABORATION BY ITSELF DOESN'T WORK.
Resistance, bullying, personality conflicts will always come into play. What is needed is real collaboration, true collaboration that provides not ONLY the platform in which collaboration can be facilitated, but the foundation for which people CAN LEARN HOW TO COLLABORATE, COMMUNICATE, THINK CRITICALLY, CREATE, ENGAGE AND UNIFY!
PWI Collaboration Laboratory ( Co-Lab™ ) provides the platform, process and foundation needed to provide an collaborative environment that supports a readiness for change, transformational learning and experiential learning! The PWI Co-Lab™ environment is created through a blend of technology, methodology, human understanding and data science.
This environment looks like:
- Everyone is focused on the common goal and not just being right
- Talks turns into creative collaboration (getting the best for ALL stakeholders)
- Differences and diversity are perceived as the greatest strength
- Data is transformed into insight by the empowering force of a trust culture
Remember: Words are cheap, especially in today's world. Like the experience of seeing the ocean for the first time... we can see pictures and videos, but until we are at the beach, with our feet in the sand, hearing the waves crash, feeling the cool mist of the ocean breeze and the cool water brush across our skin... The Co-Lab experience is the same. We can tell you what it is like and why it is important, but to truly understand and KNOW the value of The Co-Lab... it must be EXPERIENCED.
PWI Co-Labs reinstate self-authority, develop trust and keep the team engaged in the Collaboration process.
Possibilities for Consideration: Back to the Future
When we look at the world today many of us cannot help but be nostalgic. Nostalgic for a time when we sat on a bus and saw people smiling and speaking with each other, instead of staring blankly into their screens, oblivious of those around them and smiling only at a like or bodily excretion. The problem of division and disconnect is great. COLLABORATION IS A SOLUTION... BUT IT HAS TO BE THE RIGHT TYPE OF COLLABORATION, that incorporates and addresses the full extent of the problem.
- What if we could unite in solidarity and purpose?
- What if we could foster and grow true collaboration in businesses, organizations and schools?
- What if we could provided an environment of effective learning, thinking and communication?
- What if we could reverse social engineering and conditioning that has occurred and infected our world?
- What if we could CHANGE OUR WORLD AND ENVIRONMENTS FOR THE BETTER TODAY AND TOMORROW?
Add Your Insights: Better Together
The main thing I've learned is that we're better together and that our society needs inclusion - right? - not exclusion.
KEITH ELLISON
United we fall, divided we stand! The questions is do we come together, collaborate and solve problems, or do we just talk about the problems and watch our world continue to fall apart.
