Collaboration is vital in government, espeically if we want to effectively connect with our communities and increase engagement. Organizationally, there can be many barriers to collaboration, from an over-emphasis on program rather than population outcomes to a lack of developed relationships with our colleagues and stakeholders. To do our best work, we need to develop collaborative strategies that empower all stakeholders. However, that work sometimes requires what feel like superhuman powers. So, if you could have a Collaboration Superpower from the list below, what would it be and why?
Signal to Noise Management
Filtering meaningful information, patterns, and commonalities from massively multiple streams of data.
Longbroading
Thinking in terms of higher level systems, cycles, the big picture.
Protovation
Fearless innovation in rapid, iterative cycles. Ability to lower costs and increase the speed of failure.
Influency
The ability to be persuasive in diverse social contexts and media spaces. Understanding that each work environment and collaboration space requires a different persuasive strategy and technique.
Cooperation
The ability to sens, almost intuitively, who would make the best collaborators on a particular task.
Mobability
The ability to do real-time work in very large groups. A talent for coordinating with many people simultaneously for “scalable collaboration.”
Pin Quotient
Measure your responsiveness to other people’s requests for engagement. Your propensity and ability to reach out to others in a network.
Multi-Capitalism
Fluency in working with different capitals, e.g, natural, intellectual, social, and financial.
Open Authorship
Creating content for public consumption and modification.
Would offer that if the “movers and shakers” DON’T have all these attributes collaboration is almost certainly doomed for failure. Perhaps would add the ability to deal with failure
Definitely
Signal to Noise Management
Filtering meaningful information, patterns, and commonalities from massively multiple streams of data.
I’m a fan of protovation myself!
@Henry, I don’t think that each person needs to have every superpower — that’s what makes collaboration so powerful — we all bring different skills to the table!
I would like to select more than one ability (they need not be super-strenght) and use them together.
In the book Collapse Jared Diamond developed a five-point analytic framework he used to understand possible contributing factors to a society’s collapse. He lised these as a checklist at times to answer a question of why, say the Roman Empire failed.
The 5 factors are:
Environmental damage
Climate change
Hostile neighbors
Friendly trade partners
The society’s responses to its problems
I like using a framework to understand why things happen so perhaps your factors can serve a similar role in providing effective collaboration. If you like this involves a “longboarding” view of collaboration.
How about the “Energizer Bunny?” They have the ability to remain upbeat and energetic in the face of seemingly impossible challenges and motivates team members to keep pushing.