5 Myths About Collaboration

I guess it’s collaboration day at ReadWriteEnterprise. Earlier today we looked at Jeff Jarvis’ thoughts on collaboration and left you with some questions to ponder.

So here are some more things to think about. Gartner has identified five common myths about collaboration.

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The five myths are:

1. The right tools will make us collaborative
2. Collaboration is inherently a good thing
3. Collaborating takes extra time
4. People naturally will/will not collaborate
5. People instinctively know how to collaborate

The first and fifth are the most interesting points to me. As I’ve mentioned before, “groupware” has been around for quite sometime and the idea of using computer networks like the WELL for online collaboration is pretty old.

Having better tools for collaboration is important, but people have been collaborating since long before groupware, and some groups fail to collaborate even with new tools. Sometimes people really do just want a plain old physical white board.

Which brings us to issue number five. Just because you have the right tools in place, be they a white board, an enterprise microblog or a high-end telepresence system, collaboration won’t necessarily “just happen,” especially not in ways that actually benefit the goals of the organization.

Discuss