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The Weakest Link: Context
Productivity
Collaboration is the greatest productivity tool. No other tool or activity can provide
productivity like collaboration. This is true not only for humans, but for all species,
in all forms of life, as well as for all groups and organizations.
Complexity
Collaboration is a complex activity requiring coordination and orchestration of all
contributors and contributions, typically to achieve common and complementary objectives.
Communication
The coordination of contributions depends on various factors but a single one is more
important and critical than all others, and that is communication, which applies at
all levels of collaboration and is the main key to coordination and effective collaboration.
Applications
While this is true and applies to all forms and applications of collaboration, it
is especially true in emergency and crisis response and preparedness, where it is
simply crucial.
Process
To begin, communication, in every form, is the most sophisticated activity that beings
are capable of. It is especially sophisticated as it requires each and every communicating
being to use its experience, knowledge, and motivation to imagine, articulate, formulate,
encode, transmit, perceive, receive, decode, understand, consider, evaluate, and assimilate
knowledge.
Fragility
Communication is also our most fragile activity as issues happen at every step and
because no two beings are the same, each having its own experience, knowledge, motivation,
imagination, as well as articulation, formulation, transmission, perception, reception,
decoding, understanding, consideration, and assimilation processes.
Organizations
More so, in most collaboration environments and especially in emergency preparedness
and response, beings are also typically organized into multi-level groupings, and
each of these groups is also a communicating being, with its own complexities, experience,
knowledge, motivation, imagination, and communication processes.
Differences
Communication and collaboration are no small feat, and we have not yet even considered
the physical aspects, constraints, limitations, and failures that are so common and
natural, especially in crisis and emergency conditions, and especially if the collaborating
beings have not been trained together, come from very different backgrounds and environments,
and more so, if they do not even know each other.
Value
Collaboration success is indeed something to be proud of, and worth every bit of productivity
that it provides.
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