Collaboration

Collaboration is the act of working with others to achieve a common goal or overcome a shared challenge.

One of the main purposes of this site is to try to encourage Councils to collaborate with each other more. Councils are not generally in competition with each other, so sharing information and acting together like one big organisation instead of 550+ smaller ones makes perfect sense. If you can think of a project that Councils could work together on, please add it to the list below.

Collaborative Projects

Mind Map

Collaboration-mindmap2.png

Collaboration Tools

Whilst collaboration is in essence about people working together to achieve common goals, there are a number of collaboration tools that can make collaboration easer. These include:

A Simple Collaboration Checklist

Below are a few questions you can ask yourself that may help you identify people that you can collaborate with - please feel free to add to the list.

  • Have you identified as many potential collaborators as you possibly can?
  • Do you know what skills they have?
  • Do you know what things they are interested in?
  • Do you know what pisses them off?
  • Do you know what projects they are working on or have worked on in the past?
  • Do you know what they would like to change?
  • Do you know what ideas they have for making the world (or a part of it) a better place?

Collaboration Mechanisms

Barriers to Collaboration

Below is a non-exhaustive list of Barriers to Collaboration. Please feel free to add to the list.

  • Not knowing potential collaborators or their skills and interests
  • Physical separation
  • An environment in which collaboration is discouraged
  • A lack of collaboration skills
  • A perceived lack of time
  • Mutually exclusive goals

Related Pages

Contributors

The following site members have contributed to this page:

You can contact them by clicking on their name above and selecting "write private message".

External Links & References

  1. Wikipedia (Collaboration)
  2. Wikipedia (Collaborative Software)
  3. Step Two Designs
  4. Collaborative Governance
  5. Clay Shirky Video - Institutions vs Collaboration (TED)
  6. Wide Bay Burnett Wiki
  7. Google Search
  8. Group Work Institute of Australia
  9. Collaboration Without Boundaries - Wayne Eddy (August 2017)
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