We Are the World - Welcome to the Era of Collaboration

In unity there is strength. Consider the fragile snowflake that flutters slowly to earth and disintegrates; however, if enough of them stick together they can paralyze an entire city.
- William Rosenberg

To some it may have been a gradual, expected transition and to others it seemed like it was overnight: we moved from pushing to engaging... 

From pushing our products out to consumers through traditional advertising…
…to engaging them in new media forms (see: Old Spice Guy).

From pushing our employees to trudge through the day…
… to motivating them to take an interest in their work (see: Drive by Daniel Pink).

From pushing the different business departments to work together…
…to providing an open, free and encouraging environment for employees to come together on their own (see: Google's 20% time; IBM encouraging employees to work abroad; the rise and mass acceptance of "crowdsourcing"). 

But we're also at the cusp (or perhaps unknowingly knee deep?) of yet another defining junction: the Era of Collaboration.  It may prove to be a subset of engagement, the natural precursor for collaboration, or a movement on its own.  We'll have to wait and see.  But what's clear even now is that collaboration, as we know it in 2010, would be nearly impossible without the culture of engagement we have in place and without the technology that is readily accessible today.

Collaboration is more than sitting around the table and asking for opinions; it's a philosophy of mutual respect for others' thoughts and trust in others' intentions with a shared, mutually desired result.  Collaboration is being open, not to new ideas, but to the inner-workings of others; being open to different thought processes.

The foundations of engagement are necessary to create an environment of collaboration:

Qualities necessary for engagement…	Additional qualities for collaboration…
Trust in others	Trust in one’s own abilities
Mutualism/Mutual benefits	Shared responsibility
Interconnected	Intra-connected, relying on one another throughout the process not just for results
Acceptance of teamwork	Shedding of the individual’s ego
Transparency to be productive as an individual	Transparency to be productive as a team
Everyone has a voice	Everyone is heard and understood

Are you open to true collaboration?  To waking up without preconceptions, without prejudgments, with a truly open mind?  Share your thoughts below.

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Earlier this year, the earthquake in Haiti showed a great example of people coming together, expressing their own individual support as well as working together toward the greater good.  So many organizations and individuals rose to the occasion through donation efforts and volunteer programs working to support each other instead of against one another.  The result is an enormous outreach effort that has amounted to over $3BN in monetary donations ONLY (Haiti - Earthquakes - January 2010, Table A: List of all commitments/contributions and pledges as of 10 August 2010).


Another great example of collaboration are the group of musicians who came together for both We Are the World recordings:
♫ We Are the World, 1985 http://youtu.be/ne7fPpxAnuM
♫ We Are the World 25 for Haiti, 2010 http://youtu.be/Glny4jSciVI

It has been over 6 months since the earthquake in Haiti that shook the country and the recovery is not yet over.  Please visit The Huffington Post, Haiti Earthquake Relief: How You Can Help for a comprehensive list of organizations and how to help.