Is collaboration always productive?

I was at a meeting hosted at co-working space where I was suddenly struck by something. For a set fee a month, you get to use the co-working space in an open plan area. Walking around there, I saw a lot of people staring fixedly at their screens with their headphones on. This didn’t strike me as terribly collaborative or productive.

Developers like to tune everyone else out to focus on the problem at hand. You need to see the code, the more spiritual might even say feel the code, though I feel that’s a bit of the usual fluffy claptrap really. It’s about getting into the zone, and making sure you stay there so that you are productive. Being in an open plan office isn’t really conducive to that. You are constantly being bothered by interruptions; by people moving past your eye line, it’s loud. Thus, you see a lot of people with their headphones on trying to concentrate; this does seem to be completely at odds with what’s intended to be a collaborative space. You aren’t collaborating and you’re not as productive as you would be in a dedicated environment.

If you truly expect your team to be productive; then you have to make the office space fit your team; not some idealised vision of what a office should be. While it might look quite cool in pictures, having bean bags in the office is never a good idea. My entire team is distributed so we all work where we need to work, sometimes that’s in the office, most of the time it’s from home and we communicate over IM and VOIP. When we all choose to be in the office, that’s when we collaborate, I don’t try and force collaboration on the team. Even so, the office area is still very sparse; we just have a couple of big whiteboards on the wall. It’s quiet to the point of silence, but we schedule regular breaks where we collectively go for coffee, and this is when we start the collaboration process; sometimes moving back into the office to use the whiteboards.

When you’re building a product, at some point talking about what the product is has to give way to actually building it. An office space that favours interruptions isn’t going to help you do the work. Sometimes being left alone is what’s needed

Here’s to a productive day

Lewin

@quotidianEnnui

Image link: http://twitpic.com/dj27dh

What do you do with what you know?

Sir Francis Bacon (1597) said that “knowledge is power“. That term can, no doubt, have so many meanings. Governments use it to keep their citizens in the dark or the more enlightened know that by providing good quality education, it can make a country a great place to live, with civilised and caring citizens. If anyone knows a country that has cracked it, please do let me know. I would very much like to experience it!

In the western world, basic education is given freely, whether it is valued is for another post, but what do you do with all that you learn along your life journey that they don’t teach at school? Do you hold on to it because you want it’s power or do you share it with as many people as possible to help them shine?

There have always been great scholars and teachers that have shared their research, knowledge and experience. Historically, that meant that they had to be part of a religious order or could only pass it on to small groups of local people who had the time and inclination to learn.

With the advent of books and now the internet, we can learn about pretty much anything. So how is it that we keep making the same mistakes? “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” George Santayana.

Humans seem to have this amazing capacity to believe that their way is the best and even though countless people have come before, they can do it better. This often stems from people who feel they can be successful alone. Those that manage to achieve change or make great things happen, know full well, that it takes a team and complementary skills to achieve their goal. They learn from mentors, they reach out and ask trusted advisors, they call on others’ experience to make their solution better.

Often, those with a great wealth of experience and knowledge know that there is always more to learn and by sharing their knowledge they gain even more by learning from those they are ‘teaching’. As Phil Collins stated “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”

Tech Talkfest benefits greatly by having members who share their knowledge and experience with those that value it, to enable others to shine. We pride ourselves on the generosity of our members and it is the overriding factor in deciding who we invite to join. Together we are busy learning and teaching and sharing the wealth of experience and knowledge we have within our membership.

Let us know the greatest lessons you have learned by tweeting with #Ihavelearned, some of them may feature in future posts!