Measuring Collaboration

How does one measure collaboration? One measure obviously is the end product – results and their impact. This however does not provide a measure of collaboration – contribution and performance - of individual collaborators. Individual performance should be measured against expectations, set at the beginning of the process, based on person’s role and expertise. A systematic assessment of enablers, namely process and tools, should also be a part of the review, for continuous improvement and making collaboration as a cultural norm.

A study by Cisco shows that personal performance expectations and evaluations influence uptake in collaboration. The study also shows that two critical factors in collaboration are: personal attitudes and collaborative culture.

This leads us to a set of larger questions: How much to collaborate? When to collaborate? Does more collaboration necessarily mean better results?

Collaboration should be goals-driven. Goals-Driven Collaboration (GDC) focuses on objectives and pools together the best available talent, for a given project. As we can see, this has implications for: i) organizational structure, at least for the reporting structure, ii) processes and cultural norms, in which the talent flows naturally to optimal productivity, and iii) collaborative technology infrastructure, to overcome the time and distance barriers.

Update on 24 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

See Related Posts:

• The Four Ps of Effective Collaboration
• The 4Ps of Effective Collaboration - Redux
• Measuring Collaboration Behavior
• How’s your collaboration effort going?