Embracing Collaboration
If you’ve spent any time thinking about embarking on a personal project, you know the feeling of that initial queasiness. Perhaps you’ve wanted to pursue an interest, maybe with paying customers who value your service. Or, you’ve thought about joining, or maybe even starting a non-profit to feel a sense of purpose.
For whatever reason, you’ve wanted to seek something new and challenging to shake things up. But this disruption requires risk taking. You can opt out and do what you’ve always been doing, or welcome your fears.
Rather than resisting, lean into the unknown. One way to do this is by asking yourself some questions to rate the potential pursuit in terms of its complexity. The more complex, the more you will need to adopt a collaborative approach. I know it sounds like some strange form torture, but it’s meant to get you past the initial resistance, and move from a bunch of unknowns to knowns.
Tony Llewellyn, who helps build collaborative teams for highly complex projects, describes the characteristics of complex projects as emergent, evolving, and uncertain. The higher degree of complexity means the more focus is needed on building and maintaining a high performing, collaborative team. Why does this matter? Too often the strategic and team development aspects of projects fall by the wayside in favor of the technical stuff. If left unaddressed, when the team runs into an “Oh Sh*t” moment, the potential for conflict and wasted time and money are huge.
Whether or not the pursuit you are dreaming of is personal, or work related, it’s worth asking the following questions to rate it’s complexity:
Is this similar to something I’ve done, or is it completely new?
Are there potentially only a couple of stakeholders (investors, employees, customers, etc), or several?
Is there a moderate sense of urgency or will there be a specific target date for completion/launch?
Will the work require people living in a couple of locations, or will they be in several locations?
Will there be a few specific skills required or will there be several?
It’s clear that the more complex the pursuit is, the more you will need to pay close attention, particularly at the start, to team collaboration.
Helpful books on Team Coaching
The Team Coaching Toolkit by Tony Llewellyn
The Beauty of Conflict by CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke