It’s easy to view collaboration skills as part of an individual’s capabilities; we all know people who’re plain easy to work with. While individual skills are important, and we can all work to develop better collaboration skills, there are other major factors to consider. Successful collaboration often has less to do with individual skills, and more to do with the dynamics of the system in which the collaboration is taking place.

Systems language and analysis can be an immediate turn off. I sometimes tune out when consultants drift into the stratosphere of nebulous day dreamy org fluff. Other times though it’s worth paying attention – understanding basic systems thinking can improve your ability to make good business decisions.

Here’s a useful tip from Eugene Eric Kim that can help you to apply systems thinking skills to improve workplace collaboration. Consider:

“To be good at collaboration, you have to treat it as a system. That system includes things like communication, community, KnowledgeManagement, learning, and leadership.”

“Most CollaborativeTools companies are either in the communication or the KnowledgeManagement business. They’re usually selling pipes, PIMs, or document management tools. All of those things have something to do with collaboration, but they are not in and of themselves collaboration. Then again, no tools are. A hammer is a tool for hammering, but it is not itself hammering.”

Pipes = process integration technology, PIMs = personal information management systems. Also, I’d add “context” to the list of key system variables.

[tags]collaboration, applied systems thinking[/tags]