Articulating the purpose of any project is not as easy as it seems. A lack of clearly-defined business reasons and clarity of purpose create at least confusion, if they don’t derail the effort and its impact altogether. We have proposed the 4 Ps Model for Effective Collaboration: Purpose, People, Process and Place. The PURPOSE is the starting point. The purpose of any collaborative effort must have a business context; after all, you are trying to solve a business problem that would have a demonstrable business impact, at least presumably. Or else, you would have no valid reason. Here is a set of proposed steps for articulating the PURPOSE of your collaborative effort.

Click to read more ...

What is effective collaboration? Well, it depends! The short and sweet answer is that a collaboration effort is effective when it achieves its goals: high quality deliverables, on-time, every time during the project and within budget. Note that this description of effectiveness focuses on the destination only, and not the journey. This is a good enough answer, if the collaborative effort is a one-off, discreet occurrence. What if there were many more journeys to be had, in the enterprise, to reach many more destinations, for success of the business! Now the journey becomes as important, if not more, as the destination.

Click to read more ...