Collaborative Intelligence

Chapter 7Collaboration Insights

Analyzing Collaborative Capacity

Collaborative intelligence starts with being intentional about how teams work together. Collaboration design is the new discipline for crafting practices with that intentionality in a way that is accessible to everyone. You don't have to be a facilitator—or a manager—to make a difference; change starts with small steps, ritual by ritual, habit by habit.

Structured methods greatly accelerate improvements in team collaboration. They are a key ingredient in making a difference. You can use methods to not only solve problems, but also to form real, lasting connections between team members.

Teams need a shared space in order to collaborate. But while shared physical spaces are still important, collaborating in‐person is no longer the default way of working. Increasingly, the ability to work across different contexts is vital. Modern workers are expected to move fluidly from in‐person to remote collaboration and from synchronous to asynchronous modes of working.

Each of these elements—intentional design, structured methods, shared spaces, and fluidity across modes of working—is individually important, but it's imperative that they be taken together in a holistic approach to collaboration.

Bringing these key elements together is exactly what Intuit did with its Design for Delight (D4D) initiative, spearheaded in 2008 by ...