In my mind, "Collaboration" invokes images of people communicating with each other. It invokes images of people having and resolving dependencies on each other. It invokes images of multiple parts, each with their own function, working towards a common goal.
Communication
It invokes efficient, necessary and minimalist use of Communication means to ensure that all parties in a project know all information that is necessary for them to get their job done and also necessary for the effective completion of their goals. This does NOT mean all parties need to know everything at all times. This does not mean that all parties need to be communicating at all times.
Two people in a collaborative effort can discuss an issue without needing to involve the entire team and this can still be considered collaboration. Collaboration does not mean clumping an entire team together at all points to discuss. That is an inefficient use of group resources.
Programmers need quiet time. They need a distraction free environment to write code, dig through code, debug code, research issues. If programmers are required to be in meetings for 50-75% of their day, that is not an effective use of their day. If they are not required to contribute in the meeting, but are required to be there for osmosis learning, that is an even less effective use of their time.
Most meetings (in my experience) are 90% waste heat. Sometimes useful things happen, Sometimes useful things are said, but most times, meetings spiral off into tangential, "important" discussions between two parties. Not to detract from the significance of the issue, the question is raised: Do all parties present need to hear/contribute to the issue being discussed? My answer would be, most of the time, a resounding No.
Noise
Wikipedia defines Noise as "any unwanted sound" and discusses "noise as an unwanted phenomenon" Another definition I found appropriate (and amusing) is of Noise pollution as "excessive, displeasing human, animal, or machine-created environmental noise that disrupts the activity or balance of human or animal life." Noise in the workplace is a function of many different factors:
- Poor workspace planning
- Inconsistent expectations
- Differing Priorities
Poor Workspace Planning
This is where the concepts of "Collaboration" and "Disruptive workplace" collide. The notion of wanting peace and quiet to work can not, and should not, in any sense, be taken to construe an anti-social environment or counter-collaborative.
Even in a collaborative environment, people still need to buckle down and do the work that everyone else is discussing. A work space that is "open" is also a workspace with little privacy, or to put it another way, a workspace that affords people little ability to quietly buckle down and do their work. There is frequent contention between the "collaboration needs" and the "peace and quiet" needs of the same team. Collaboration on a team frequently involves the need for individuals to be able to break away from the collective mother-brain, to work on their own. When you have an open-planned workspace, you are enforcing people to always be either part of the glommed-whole or be distracted by the glommed-whole.
Inconsistent expectations
Often times when a team is "Collaborative", the expectation is different between people who have different expectations of what "Collaboration" means. There are those that expect that "Collaboration" means if you are not participating in the current discussion, you are not collaborating. I would posit that this kind of attitude is counter-collaboration. Certain personality types are conducive to receiving instructions, and executing on those. Certain personality types are more attuned to returning to the group whenever some level of contention is encountered. Since so many different people have varying work styles, it is unproductive to enforce one work style on all (independent of personality type). This is an inefficient use of resources. Some may thrive, but some will be stifled. When a team is assembled, the notion of collaboration needs to be agreed on by all members. A useful thing is for a team to agree on "Ground Rules".
Differing Priorities
When any large team is assembled, different members are given different objectives, all contributing to the team's overall goals. At any point in time, different people will have different priorities, and these are often seen as absolute within an individual's personal priority set, as opposed to relative to the global priority of the team's objective. Noise situations arise when "collaborative efforts" draw in resources for "high priority" items that are only high priority within the "local scope" of the highest rank resource or most forceful personality, but not necessarily "high priority" relative to the global objective of the team. If a meeting is necessary and resources are summoned to attend, each person's participation role should be clear both to them and to all other people attending the meeting. The necessity of the meeting should be predicated upon the global priority of the issue being discussed and should take into account the global priorities of all attending members, not just how scope-locally important the meeting is to the caller.
Summary:
Lots of thoughts here, and lots of words but the net is as follows:
- if you have a meeting, do it in a place that does not distract those who are not in attendance
- only include those that need to be there
