Image by Dalton Ghetti
Your first instinct is to search what you are looking for. Don't waste your time.
Ok, if you must, search Twitter and Alltop - these will narrow you into real time and pre-sorted ideas by people you can communicate with/collaborate with instead of static outdated web pages.
1.) Go copy.
But copy the best in something un-related. Music videos are easily some of the most creative collaboration contributions of all time. Learn from them. Watch a few. Success guaranteed. And look beyond OK-GO. YouTube has a Music Video section.
2.) Go mimic.
Mimic an existing industry:
- Live TV production crew
- Race car pit crew
- TED Talk
- Bee hive
- Emergency Room
- etc. etc. etc.
And don't just mimic, look at why they do things, how they do things. How they are similar but better at what you do. What can you adapt tomorrow. What exercises do they use to get started. What tools do they use to collaborate. You would be hard pressed to not find instant usability.
3.) Go detailed.
Collaboration sometimes begins with filling the walls. NYU Hospital, one of the best hospitals in the country is 3 seconds faster that every other emergency room/operating room...
That s why at NYU Langone Medical Center, surgical instruments are hung on the wall, instead of kept in a drawer. This is one of the many ways we enhance performance and efficiency and, ultimately, deliver a higher quality of care.
4.) Go visual.
A truly fantastic guide to anyone interested in collaboration on and offline. Go Dave Gray. Go Go Gamestorm. Go visual. No really.
5.) Go practice
- Create a PowerPoint, or email or napkin and then record your voice explaining what you wrote. Sounds pretty bad the first time.
- Convert the collaboration idea or project or perspective into a Pecha Kucha presentation. A what. It contains your time and your medium. Have you ever seen a sport that didn't have rules around it?
- Now storyboard your collaboration. Like a film. Draw it out scene by scene. Watch how your 'everything' gets changed and dramatically improved.
- And this time Google for ideas on how to do each of these. Don't Google for your collaboration idea, Google for weak or starter idea you already have in place and it will become excellent.
6.) Go here.
We have a bunch of collaboration ideas right here on this site. In fact, we are already in the first few results on Google for "collaboration exercises." Check out:
- Collaboration exercises
- Collaboration experts - companies and people - they are your best bet to finding true collaboration
- Collaboration random