We’re volunteering to lead a neighborhood team for the Obama Campaign for Change (www.barackobama.com). Often the work that needs to get done in political campaigns doesn’t seem to fit under the rubric of “Collaboration” . The work often seems like grunt work — making phone calls, knocking on doors, getting voters registered, etc. However, we think that if we approach this with a “Collaborative Frame of Mind” (which by the way the campaign staff is encouraging) and not with a “hierarchical” frame of mind we will be more successful with the volunteers.

We have an inital one hour meeting with potential team members planned for this week. What we plan to do at that meeting is build on the Obama Campaign for Change guiding principles that are being taught to all campaign workers: Respecting + Empowering + Including. All those who are working on the campaign are being taught these guiding principles. We’ll communicate them to the neighborhood volunteers as well. Then becauseTrust is so important to all team efforts, and since we haven’t worked with 99% of these volunteers, we intend to build “quick trust”  by stating the expectations for team members up front in the form of the following guiding actions:

• Connection:      Being with other(s) (Presence)
• Community:     Being together for a common purpose
• Collaboration:  Doing for a common purpose
• Commitment:    Staying together
• Contribution:    Sharing time & talent

These guiding actions come out of our many years of working with both volunteer and non-volunteer teams. By articulating the specific guiding actions of Being, Doing, Staying and Sharing with the end result of these actions being Connection, Community, Collaboration, Commitment and Contribution we believe that the team members will have a clearer understanding of what is expected. 

We’ll let you know how the volunteer team members take to the guiding principles and the guiding actions; and whether trust was established more quickly by making these statement. Ideally, if we had the time, we would work with the team on establishing the team expectations.

What do you think of the guiding principles and guiding actions?

What’s challenges do you face in your collaborations?

We’d like to hear from you about the challenges you face when  you’re collaborating. These could be challenges you face a a team member, team leader, facilitator, manager, or n your informal collaborations with friends and partners,

Having someone to talk to — to dialogue with — when we have those challenges is extremely valuable. 

Here’s some tips that we use to get into the “Collaborative Zone”.

• Listen with our whole Self
• Respect ourself and others fully
• Suspend our assumptions, beliefs, and opinions
• Voice our truth clearly and accurately, knowing that it is not the truth  

“Empowering” the team a key element for successful collaboration. Empowering the team members is done by increasing their knowledge about collaboration and providing the tools to use that knowledge in productive ways.

The “Knowledge” that empowers team members falls into two categories:

First and foremost is knowledge about people and the variety of styles, or ways of being, that we have when we work with others; knowledge about the various ways that people respond to conflict, as well as general personality traits that influence and determine how we communicate.

Secondly, knowledge of how to use specific tools to communicate with other team members. Symbolic systems like pictographs, the alphabet, and numbering systems were the earliest tools that were mastered by humans. Now the tools that we must master are project management systems, Wikis, Blogs, and oh yes email to name a few.

In future postings we’ll talk about these knowledge sets in more detail. Stay Tuned . . .

I’m  working on several “de-centralized” teams right now. One of the teams is spread out all over the state (New Mexico) and there are a lot of complaints about the ineffectiveness of our communication as we work on projects together. Sound familiar?

I brought up Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com) about 18 months ago and have been trying to get everyone on board. But there have been the usual barriers to implementation.  They range from one end of the spectrum to the other. From lack of basic computer skills and not being able to access the website to advanced computer users thinking that basecamp is too simplistic and ”there’s got to be somthin’ better out there”. 

So for the past couple of weeks I’ve revisited what is available on Web 2.0 for collaborative teams and found that there are many, many good tools out there.

Now my quandary is . . . do I switch from the relatively simplistic Basecamp to one of the other tools, or do I stay with Basecamp.

Ultimately this is a people issue and not a technology issue because almost all of the tools are adequate and would improve the effectiveness of this teams communication. So how am I going to address the ”people” issues. Stay tuned . . . for how I’ll do it AND my comments on some of the other tools I’ve been working with and why I use them.

Yes, one more site about collaboration . . . but this one is different, it’s more about the people “factor” and less about the technology . . . although we will talk about technology (how could we not!)

When 2 or more people work together with a common purpose there is the potential for collaboration. I say potential because what most people call collaboration is most often “cooperation”. Which isn’t bad . . . but it’s just not the same as full-on “collaboration”.

Collaboration brings out the best in people and they bring their best to the table. The creative leaps are made by teams that can really collaborate. The best prpoducts come from teams that collaborate well.

On this blog we’d like to explore with you tips, techniques, tactics and strategies that help people collaborate better. We’re calling the teams that outperform all the others, the teams that have the most satisfied members, as well as the most satisfied clients and customers . . . “Advanced Collaborative Teams”, because they are!

. . . More to come.