Building a Collaborative Workplace

Shawn Callahan, Mark Schenk and Nancy White have just published an Anecdote Whitepaper entitled Building a Collaborative Workplace. They summarize their whitepaper as follows:

This paper has three parts. We start by briefly exploring what we mean by collaboration and why organisations and individuals should build their collaboration capability. Then, based on that understanding, we lay out a series of steps for developing a collaboration capability. We finish the paper with a simple test of your current collaboration capability.

The authors are very clear about the role of technology in collaboration. And given my past comments on technology in the context of collaboration and knowledge sharing, I'm delighted to be able to quote these kindred spirits:

Of course technology plays an important role in effective collaboration. We are not anti-technology. Rather we want to help redress the balance and shift the emphasis from merely thinking about collaboration technology to thinking about collaboration skills, practices, technology and supporting culture. Technology makes things possible; people collaborating makes it happen.