The Swing Exercise

"Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."

Henry Ford

Collaboration is a process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, (this is more than the intersection of common goals seen in co-operative ventures, but a deep, collective, determination to reach an identical objective by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group.

In particular, teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources. Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and communication.  These methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as they engage in collaborative problem solving. Forms, rubrics, charts and graphs are useful in these situations to objectively document personal traits with the goal of improving performance in current and future projects.

The Swing Exercise: examine the illustration above and answer the following questions.  To view the picture in a larger format just click anywhere on it and it should open up in a new tab.

• How do you interpret this image?
• Why does this happen in an organization?
• Have you ever witnessed this happen first hand?
• How can collaboration prevent this from happening?
• What traits and habits are people not practicing that allows this  situation to develop?
  
• What other traits and habits can individuals use to prevent this from happening?