What Metric Would You Use to Measure Collaboration?

I heard this question asked recently in a meeting and was intrigued. My first response was to reject the question as asking for the impossible.

Every collaboration arises from a specific project with its particular needs and demands and then proceeds through the creativity and cooperation of the specific people involved with their unique contributions and points of view. To apply a metric, which after all is a generalized/standardized model used to make comparisons, is to deny the specifics of collaboration, and in so doing, deny collaboration as such. So to search for a standard measure is to weaken if not disable the collaboration effort before the process even begins.

But I was simultaneously nagged by the very real, legitimate reality that a business, from a mom and pop shop to a major corporation, relies on numbers to understand ● where it is at any given moment; ● where it should and can be going as it continues; and ● to conduct an analysis of its current condition to make the adjustments necessary to right the process if it is failing and to vitalize and maximize the business with the vision and energy it needs to thrive.

If collaboration, in the title question, is parallel to “business” in the above paragraphs, then the collaboration process must be open to an analysis in order for it to remain healthy.

But as I said above, collaborations are unique and resist the heavy-handedness and constraints inherent in numerical analysis. Collaborations are fluid and subtle and those that work the best last until the task is done and then dissolve.

As some of you know, I was a professional stage actor for 15 years and participated in many collaborations---otherwise known as ensemble theatrical productions. Actors would come together and create their personal and specific version of a play---available only through them and or the run of the show. The performance, at its best, was a co-creation, intimately dependent on everyone’s contribution within the bounds established by the play.

In a business context the project is the equivalent of the play and the process to the result is equivalent to the rehearsal. Both project and play exist within specific demands which must be respected to and, when adhered to, both the project and the play create the opportunity for a result to be achieved with maximum individual creativity, commitment, fulfillment, and personal reward. And the key to such success each individual’s dedication to the project. To say this another way---individual dedication, or giving-of-oneself-over, is necessary to that which is bigger than the self, i.e. the project, and simultaneously the project creates the opportunity for the self to experience a new and broader scope of wholeness, accomplishment, meaning, and completion.

So, what to look for in a collaborative process?

Collaboration is an active expression of the concept “and.” There may be, and in a vital collaboration there will be, disagreement. However every disagreement is supported by the knowledge and feeling that what is occurring is for the betterment of the outcome. There is no intent at stopping, or worse, damaging the process or anyone in it. “And” is understood and experienced as additive an enhancing, i.e. building upon and raising to a higher level wherever the process is at the moment. To say it simply, it is and then, and then, and then, and . . .

Many people are not accustomed to this kind of building process and find it jarring to begin with, not accustomed to the experience that a “but” or “not” is ultimately just a different form of “and.”

Emotional openness is the fuel of a successful collaboration: emotional because at any moment in the process each contributor is making a value judgment, i.e. a preference of this over that. This is not only or even fundamentally an intellectual choice but a deeply personal one. But at the same time, because it’s personal does not mean it dominates. Each participant has at heart and in mind the success of the larger event, that is the project to which everyone has given-over. Personal fulfillment does not come as a result of someone’s insisting on or fighting for his or her way. This breaks the “and then and then” structure and can bring the process s to a painful halt.

Deep listening is critical. Another was to say “deep listening” is to ask yourself “What is it like to see this project from within the other person’s point of view.” Not merely at an arm’s length but work to see it as the other person does.

This simple question affirms that there is more than just one point of view, and since all participants will work together, it behooves everyone to get to know the others in the context of the project. This opens the way to the power and satisfaction of co-creativity.

If the word “metric” must be used then it must be re-defined or re-interpreted. The focus of this new application of the idea of “metric” must be on the flow of the process, how people are performing. How are people contributing? How available are they to the process? What kinds of contributions are being made? What is the emotional tenor of the process? Is it fun? Playful? Rigorous? How respectful are the participants of the project, of themselves, and of one another?

Collaboration is a process of working together, co-operating in relationship or in union with one another as the project needs.

Most people, especially ambitious, highly intelligent people are not accustomed to giving-over. And I assume you are to one degree or another ambitious or highly intelligent or both or you wouldn’t be reading this post. So I ask you to scan your life’s history for the kind of experience I’ve been describing. Have you ever participated in this kind of collaboration? If so please leave a comment and let all of us know what it was like for you.

I ask because I believe powerful and successful collaboration is deeply needed in all areas of business for the heart of the business and the health of all those who are involved.

(Photo Credit:  ciokkolata/Flicker.com)

Jim Sniechowski, PhD and his wife Judith Sherven, PhD https://JudithandJim.com have developed a penetrating perspective on people’s resistance to success, which they call The Fear of Being Fabulous. Recognizing the power of unconscious programming to always outweigh conscious desires, they assert that no one is ever failing. They are always succeeding. The question is, at what?

Currently working as consultants on retainer to LinkedIn providing executive coaching, leadership training and consulting as well as working with private clients around the world, they continually prove that when unconscious beliefs are brought to the surface, the barriers to growth are eliminated.

 Jim has recently published his first novel, Worship of Hollow Gods—http.tinyurl.com/hollowgods. In it he bears witness to the world of a sensitive, nine-year-old boy, subjected to the underbelly of his Polish Catholic family in working class Detroit. The year is 1950. The family gathers for a Friday night family poker/pinochle party. The outcome reveals a world no one ever talked about then and are forbidden to talk about now---the unspoken, the impermissible, the reality beneath every family’s practiced appearance---and what lies beneath when the front has been ripped away.

Sniechowski unsparingly yet compassionately evokes the temptations, trials, and tactics of the family characters while revealing the hollow gods they worship without knowing it.

Readers, no matter where in the world, will be prompted if not pushed to confront the hollow gods that reside, like living ghosts, in the unseen of their family’s way of life, the invisible that sources and shapes their beliefs and behaviors. 

Worship of a Hollow God dredges up familial bonds that grip and hold tight, unconsciously dictating our destiny. It is story telling at its caring and compelling best.