Tag: collaboration culture

THE COLLABORATION KILLER HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

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We tend to think a thank you is always harmless. In teams, it might be the quietest killer of collaboration.
Why? Because in flat, peer-led projects, the person who says “Thanks everyone, great job” often does more than express gratitude — they assume the role of evaluator. Recognition flows down, not across. Without meaning to, they create hierarchy where none was intended.
Collaboration depends on fairness, psychological safety, and shared ownership. A misplaced thank you can erode all three.
Gratitude isn’t the problem, but the way we structure it is. In my latest Roadmender blog, I explore how recognition can either strengthen or sabotage collaboration, and what simple governance tools can fix it.

APPLYING THE OPEN SHIFT PROTOCOL TO BUSINESS COLLABORATION

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This blog introduces the Open Shift Protocol—a simple yet profound method for enhancing collaborative thinking and decision-making. By encouraging individuals and teams to iteratively adopt and emotionally inhabit opposing perspectives, the method loosens rigid thought patterns and fosters deeper, more creative insight. Drawing on principles from emotional intelligence, dialectical reasoning, and creativity research, it offers a unique and structured approach to co-creation that transcends conventional brainstorming or debate, making space for innovation to emerge from complexity and discomfort.

THE HIDDEN PATH: What Quantum Tunnelling Teaches Us About Organisational Change

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Organisations, like molecules, can become locked into a particular configuration. Old routines. Entrenched identities. Layers of habit that make change feel uphill. Conventional thinking tells us to overcome these barriers, kick off another reform, realign the structure, or roll out a new “change management” strategy.
But what if the most interesting changes don’t start that way?

people are not apps

PEOPLE ARE NOT APPS: THE HUMAN TRUTH BEHIND ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE

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People aren’t apps, and motivation isn’t something you can install. Unlike money or tech, human beings can’t be managed—they choose, adapt, protect, or engage depending on the culture around them. Enterprise roadmending is about spotting the quiet cracks before they break the whole system. It’s not about control, but conditions. You don’t engineer trust or performance—you make them possible. In the digital age, real leadership means tending the soil, not writing the code.

Collaboration vs. Cooperation: Understanding the Critical Distinction

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When discussing collaboration, it’s crucial to differentiate it from cooperation. While often used interchangeably, their distinctions are significant. Cooperation involves individual responsibilities, while collaboration entails a broader, interconnected approach. The mindset also differs, with cooperation focusing on individual tasks and collaboration emphasizing collective contribution and innovation, essential for workplace success and effective leadership.

Collaboration Insights

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“We know that workplace productivity is linked not only to person’s skills but also to their sense of identity and esteem.” – Jelenko Dragisic, Author of ‘The Collaboration Instinct‘ Small selection of collaboration insights to help managers improve their team performance with simple culture shift towards real collaboration.

What makes collaborating teams tick?

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On the surface everyone is a collaborator, and every team is a collaborating team. That is the ‘sell’ in contemporary workplaces. Businesses invest in collaboration as a part of their business strategy for a variety of reasons; improving organisational culture, trust, productivity, competitiveness or even, more imaginatively, to […]

De-risking collaboration

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While collaboration has often been praised and promoted as a cure all, endorsing it in this way borders on irresponsible.  In business there are no easy, fail-safe ways of finding good business solutions to complex problems, designing winning strategies or delivering results that meet everyone’s expectations.  The appeal […]

Reclaiming collaboration

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It’s time to wrest the subtle art of collaboration from the jaws of everyday spin. The famous co-founder of once widely popular start-up WeWork claimed that the majority (70%) of those who paid to use the WeWork shared space collaborated.  This always seemed like a possibility given that […]

Collaboration: newspeak, a euphemism or a real deal

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We’re nearly at the 2-year mark since COVID 19 disrupted our universe.  Businesses have learnt many lessons, and many have embraced new strategies such as collaboration, even with competitors.  In fact, competitors tend to embrace collaboration with each other more often than is recognised.  This is not surprising […]

ROADMENDER Recommends

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Can a business be serious and ignore collaboration?  That is a question I have in mind often when dealing with virtually any enterprise, regardless of circumstances.  It is not so much about a right or wrong answer, as much as it is about the way it is answered […]

ROADMENDER Recommends

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Start any conversation on business collaboration and pretty soon it will generate a common question; can competitors collaborate. My own consultancy is based on a firm conviction rooted in firsthand experience that the answer is affirmative. Going a step further, competitors soon realise their competitive edge gets blunt […]

When ‘good enough’ is not enough

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Collaboration, like virtually every aspect of business strategy and performance, has elements that are deceptively simple. In the case of everyday collaboration, what often remains completely unobserved is the fact that simple, transactional engagement and information sharing between parties does not lead to the best that collaboration offers […]

ROADMENDER Recommends

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A collaborative culture in any enterprise allows for the mediated design of a trusted environment (or at the very least, trust-building environment).  Collaboration in any organisation allows for creation of a culture which offers employees the ability to create new meaning which is an essential form of motivation […]

ROADMENDER Recommends

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“Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.” This is a famous insight by legendary American biologist E.O. Wilson which may likewise form the baseline of a good collaboration […]

Convincing your boss to collaborate

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A couple of  years ago researchers at Berkley published a paper titled “Failure at the Top: How Power Undermines Collaborative Performance” which concluded that when asked to collaborate “groups of high power individuals performed worse because they fought over their relative status in the group, were less focused […]

ROADMENDER Recommends

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“Collaboration is good business”. So asserts Forbes’ contributor Erica Dhawan in “The Secret Weapon For Collaboration”; an article that is included this edition of recommended reading. That simple message is worth repeating as we know that collaboration thrives when the right culture is in place. And, as with […]