To be collaborative means that you embrace a certain way of life and work ... an openness to the ideas of other people, and in particular to how their ideas and perspectives may mold, change and transform your ideas. The heart of collaboration is openness to the ideas of others, and a stated and acted upon willingness to explore those ideas, rather than assuming that everything you think is right and correct from the get-go. To be collaborative then, is in essence a human process, that plays out over whatever modality of interaction you use with other people, be that face-to-face, email, a wiki or any other "collaborative technology".

- Michael Sampson http://www.michaelsampson.net/

This blog post by Michael Sampson really hit home when I was reading up about collaboration in project management. It was always clear to me that strong collaboration between teams, between management and their teams and between geographic locations is a critical factor for projects success. Michael, though, turns collaboration into a fundamental human desire that needs to be facilitated and nurtured by the correct environment and possibly, the right set of tools.

Before introducing tools and processes for team or organizational collaboration, the first place to start is to introduce ‘Everyday Tools’ for collaboration. These are things that may be a no-brainer to facilitate within a centralized organization but become even more important when an organization is distributed with teams sitting in different locations and time zones with different languages and cultures.

- Personal Responsibility – Team members need to find the channels and methods that work best for them to communicate within their groups effectively. This may be through email, phone, twitter (or other social media platform) or even water cooler conversations. In addition to the traditional (and recordable) forms of communication, these informal forms of communication allow team members to adapt the project communication tools to suit them.

- Build Relationships – Team members need to master their communication skills to build relationships with co-workers even when in person work is not possible. There is nothing unusual or hard about following this recommendation but with fewer opportunities to work together in person, it is more important to do these things to show that you are a real people. Here are some simple examples:

* Pick up the phone and call a co-worker when there has been too much electronic interaction and you are feeling disconnected
* Express an interest in both the work and personal lives of others, notice birthdays, children, hobbies
* Learn what you can about your co-workers strengths and passions

- Collaborative Environment – The culture of an organization must encourage collaboration through various communication and collaboration technologies for any true collaboration to take hold. This is where talking the talk meets walking the walk. Encouraging collaboration includes instilling a sense of trust between employees and management, encouraging freedom to speak and discuss topics across teams and hierarchies, building seamless communication channels between teams and removing any sense of fear or retribution for speaking your mind.

Once the foundations of collaboration and communication are built, bringing in the appropriate tools to facilitate that collaboration will be welcome and easily adopted amongst the team.

Stay tuned for my next post on how to propel team collaboration by using the right project management tools.