Collaborating & Engagement with Colleagues

I am on a new project with new colleagues. I had been working with the same personalities for so long now that I forgot what it was like to go through the Forming/Storming/Norming phases again!

It's interesting to see how some people prefer to work alone even when the work requires collaboration. I actually think this is an easy trap to fall into. In this era of the knowledge worker, each worker has such specialized skills and knowledge of his/her area that it requires serious effort for someone else to intervene and pick up a new task or role. It is just easier to wait for the person who specializes in that area to pick up the task. This can result in long wait times for things to get done, but that's a topic for another post.

A side effect of this type of specialization however is that people start to work in their own silos. Because one person can do so much in just their one area, a type of rigidity sets in and people only do what they know. If something is outside their bailiwick, they will assume someone else will pick it up; or they'll punt the task over to someone else and wash their hands of it and rush back to their own specialty business. In fact, that other person may be new and has no clue and is waiting for direction from you!

It's becoming harder to recognize that picking up the phone and talking to your colleague might be a good idea. A few face to face meetings and phone calls are the equivalent of 1000 emails (or IM chats) just as a picture is worth a thousand words. I moved the project many fold in 1 day than it had moved in several months.

There is nothing like the feeling of several of your colleagues hunched over a screen trying to work out a problem together. Research shows group problem solving is way more productive and efficient than solo solving. In fact, in a project management course I took a few months back I was witness to this exact phenomenon. We were told to do an exercise by ourselves. After that, we had to do the exercise as a group. This provided for a lot of debate because each person had their own views on what the correct answer was. We had to come up with a consensus and convince each other. Eventually we arrived at a solution. Then we graded our own individual solutions and then the group solution. What do you think the result was? The group solution score was higher than any of the individual solutions! I was astounded.

I can see myself get lethargic at times as well and just want to stay at my desk and manage from there. I have gotten facile however at recognizing when this happens and am able to override it and keep myself moving. I will make that extra phone call to push a dev ticket ahead or will sit with my colleague at his cubicle for an hour discussing an issue and how to address it. These are the little things that when added up move projects and eventually implement a company's strategy.