Collaboratives vs. Teams

I noticed that there are some confusion about two concepts that may be considerate similar, but they are not the same.

I talk about collaborative work and team work.

The main, and first, difference is about the objectives that they try to achieve. While collaborative work goal is getting a larger quantity of knowledge, teamwork try to achieve an specific objective.

By example, a soccer team objective is goal scoring. All players plays in order to do that, they collaborate from their own task (goalkeeper, defense, forward) and following a direction indicated by the coach. That is a teamwork.

On the other hand, when those same players was training, playing to kicking a ball, then they produce a collaborative work. They don’t have any collective objective to achieve, and each individual give to the play his own capabilities, and in the collective work those capabilities are improving individually, producing at the same time a collective improvement. That is collaborative work.

Well, as you can see, the confusion appears because frequently is necessary both kind of work in order to do anything. But if keep in mind the former examples, I think that we can differentiate it easiest.

Moreover, next I show an useful table, getting from Wikipedia

As you can see, the objectives are not the only one difference between those two concepts, another one, and very important is the Coordinator or Director Role. Collaborative groups are self-managed and self-determined groups, they usually comes together spontaneously and carry out their activities voluntarily and freely. Teams, instead, needs a directing because |their task are necessarily complementary, and the head of the group need all members in order to complete their goals.

Well, if you confuse those concepts in your daily work life, may be that you don’t have any problem and in the organization all continue in the same way, but I think that is important to know this distinction in order to know exactly what we are talking about when we mention one or another.

Projects: In the Trust is the Danger

It just happened to me.

After a successful implementation project, it was decided that the same consultant would make the following implementations or re-engineering that were needed.

During the first project, a trust relationship was established based on the consultant’s results and accomplishments.

Therefore, when delays started during the second project, the first thing was to ask the consultants their opinion, to which they replied that I did not worry that everything would be on the way. However, they comeback days later, since there was no way to recover, and indicating that my users were the ones who had caused much of the problem!

In view of the great difference between the first and second responses, I reviewed was made of the causes of the delay, finding that most were attributable to operational problems of the supplier.

Fortunately, it was possible to restructure the work plan of the project. But the final dates became moved twice after that, and the relationship with the consultants was damaged without fix possible. The most important thing, was the lesson learned from understanding that a successful project and without delays in the past is no guarantee that the supplier who did it behave In the same way always, and that you have to have a policy of zero tolerance to deviations and shortcut them immediately.

That is, you always have to keep in mind:

Successful past projects do not guarantee future success, even with the same team.
A detour, however insignificant it may seem, can turn into a giant snowball in no time.

In the Trust is the danger.

Don’t celebrate yourself so much and leave from your comfort zone

Yes, is very important celebrate our victories and goals. But, If we only celebrate all time, Could we explore new horizons, or to be innovative, or to be disruptive?

The answer is NO.

Celebrate and congratulate us for our success, produces into we selves a dangerous wish to repeat the behavior to achieve the fact to celebrate again. Then if we repeat, we obtain the good results again easiest than previously, because we was gain in experience… then we celebrate again because not only we achieve expected goals, we raise them faster!

And we repeat all again, and again.

That is the danger of celebrations, create a loop of auto satisfaction that avoid that we get out in order to do new things, achieve new goals, create new things or, finally grow.

What I do with my teams?

Limit the celebration. That can be achieve by two ways: Limit in time quantity or limit in the number of times that we do it.

By example, If you want limit in time quantity, you must create the rule that permit congratulates and talk about during the same day when the goal was achieved. The day after is reserved to do new plans or visualize new goals and we stop congratulations.

If you want limit the number of times that we celebrate, you must create the rule that the celebration will be only for the first time that something has been achieved. If that thing became into a repetitive task, new successfully ending will be not celebrated. That forces to the team to create new goals in order to get new reasons to congratulate themselves.

I know that some people will not agree with me, but that method was worked for me until now, and I open to ear other choices in order to stay in constant motion without vicious cycles.