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A common eye on collaboration

How do you ensure a shared view of collaboration? In other words: how do you make a collaboration successful? It is a joint quest to create the right conditions. Common Eye developed a coherent way of looking at these conditions and offers your organization a starting point on collaboration. Our five perspectives:

1. Work toward a shared ambition

Parties will only collaborate when they believe that the collaboration is meaningful and adds value to their own organizations. All parties must recognize themselves in the shared ambition of the partnership. A good conversation about this with each other is essential.

2. Doing justice to all interests

There are three types of interests: individual interests, organizational interests, and collective interests. The point is to do justice to all these interests. The trick is to reach solutions with respect for each other’s interests.

3. Eye for personal relationships and group dynamics

Collaboration is people work. Personal relationships and relations always play a role and are just as important as substantive arguments. So you need to have an eye for socio-psychological processes and group dynamics.

4. Professionally organizing collaboration.

Any partnership must be well organized and professional. A suitable organizational form matches the joint ambition one on one and is organized as lightly as possible. This offers the most flexibility in the follow-up process.

5. A meaningful process

An important question: how does one approach such a collaborative process? A good process answers these questions: how can we do the right things at the right time? How do we properly engage in conversation and reach agreement? What is everyone’s role and who is in charge of the process?

Our ‘common eye’ on collaboration provides partners with a common framework to look at their collaboration. This connects parties, reduces confusion and ensures a successful collaboration. It is important to monitor the follow-up process to ensure that the collaboration continues to meet the expectations and interests of the parties involved. Our model can help with this as well.

Want to know more about making your collaboration successful?

Please contact
Ruben van Wendel de Joode.