Ants and decisions!

Ants and decisions!

Ants have colonized almost every landmass on earth. Their success in so many different environments has been attributed to their social organization and their ability to modify habitats, tap resources, and defend themselves. Ants have division of labor and each individual ant – whether a scout, worker, drone, or queen – knows what their role is in support of the larger enterprise. They communicate using pheromones, sounds, and touch. They share information and react accordingly, and they have the ability to solve complex problems. Ants are collaborators.

Collaboration is the process of working together to complete a task and achieve shared goals. It’s a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals by sharing knowledge, learning, and building consensus.

Collaboration is a buzz. Teamwork benefits from diversity, cross-functionality, and collaboration, with peers providing support in tough situations. Collaboration has been linked to increased innovation; it creates buy-in and empowerment, improves problem solving, and increases creativity and productivity.

Getting sales to work together with the marketing department and R&D to gain better customer understanding, making sure management fully understands and knows the customer journey and their need for the revamping of our product when making strategic decisions – all of these require and benefit from cross-department collaboration. In addition to our own organization, we have people involved in our work through different communities, subcontractors, freelancers, external experts, advisors, external review panels, customers – you name it. Work today, especially knowledge work, is rarely done in silos, at least not successfully. Did you outsource your graphic design? How do you make sure you’re adequately involved with your ad agency? How do you ensure you’re working towards the same goal?

Collaboration feels like the logical answer to better decision-making and creating effectiveness in knowledge work. We humans are social animals after all. Collaboration has even been said to feel like a hug. It feels like such a natural and satisfying way of working. We learn by relating to others.

Through dialogue and interaction we can increase our understanding and make use of different approaches to widen our framing and suppress bias.

It’s good to remember that collaboration is the means, not the purpose. Collaboration also has a downside, and unfortunately we have all experienced it at some point. Collaboration fatigue, poor leadership failing to notice how much time and resources employees are using on the project, inaccurate objectives, certain people experiencing disconnect and hopelessness. We should always carry the curiosity for improving with us. If this isn’t working, what could we do differently? Just try again a little harder, or maybe change something?

Collaborating to reach a solution is an extremely vital part of the social decision-making process. The sharing of a decision – the collaborating – is seen as the means to make sure the best brains, insight, knowledge, and skills are used in reaching a decision.

Beneficial collaboration relies on openness and knowledge sharing – a level of focus and accountability determined on the part of the organization and the accountable. The point is to share the information. You should work toward fostering a culture of openness and make use of true transparency – by adopting the right attitude. We need to be willing to share, and we need to value reciprocity. Responsibility lies with the one who has the insight. The point is to have an open attitude toward sharing and to encourage and reward it.

Collaboration itself produces awareness through a shared purpose. It is an effective engine for finding alternatives and a powerful motivator when aiming for solutions. Collaboration is the beginning of better decisions!