Collaborative Product Design

Chapter 4. Collaboration in Practice: Frame, Facilitate, and Finish

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Collaboration in Practice: Frame, Facilitate, and Finish

Often when we think of collaboration, we think about working directly with others, the facilitation of conversations and discussions. Yet facilitation is probably the least important part of collaboration.

Collaboration includes three parts:

• The frame: what and how you will collaborate
• The facilitation
• The finish: the final outcome of the collaboration

In this chapter, we’ll look at how Frame-Facilitate-Finish helps you put better collaboration into practice.

Every tool in this book follows this same roadmap: frame, facilitate, finish. Whether hallway conversations or CEO presentations, the same roadmap applies. Once you learn and follow this roadmap, you improve how you collaborate with anyone about anything.

Collaboration Is Its Own Problem

When someone asks you a question, you reach into your years of experience, your education, and your own bank of knowledge. A design expert answers questions from a design perspective. A developer answers questions from a development perspective. This happens when you visit the doctor. You tell the doctor, “it hurts when I do this.” Immediately, the doctor shifts into medical expert mode to offer a diagnosis and treatment.

Edgar Schein, a prominent thinker in organizational development, has a term for when you respond to situations as an expert. Schein calls this “process consulting.”1 When you react ...