04 July 2009

Collaboration is injurious to growth

1. "Whole is more than sum of the parts".
2. Together, we can do great things

and you can find so many decorative statements and words with hidden agenda. Collaboration and Team work have been misunderstood by many people. Let us take the first statement "Whole is more than sum of the parts" with an example. When you have ten people and if all the ten people work as a team, the team is likely to produce better results. Fair statement. When you have ten mediocre people and all of them show mediocrity, won't the result be uber-mediocrity?

Next, we need understand that each one of us are not always foolish and not always intelligent. In every decision, we show enough immaturity before appearing mature and in some cases we never appear mature simply because we never think sufficiently and we hardly go deeper. When someone says that he understood, it really means that he has started to understand.

With a blurred vision and improper thinking, I don't think collaboration will be a useful exercise. Thinking is fundamental. Without thinking, it is like erecting building with foundation. So, collaboration without thinkers and the decisions made by pseudo collaboration are going to be simply waste of time (now you know why politicians make bad decisions :) ). Being able to think, think right with systemic view, understanding the deficiencies in one's thinking are primary ingredients to even think about collaboration. Getting ready to collaborate had to start well before collaboration. "Being able to think" is required condition to get started with collaboration. Collaboration of non-thinkers is injurious. Remember the story of Paramartha Guru and his disciples.

3 comments:

James Marcus Bach said...

This post is more thoughtful than the others I've seen you do. Good. Keep practicing.

I like how you are questioning commonly accepted truths, here.

Mymymy said...

Thinking about it, In a team / group if everyone think, what will happen ?. I suggest read "Brave New World" ( In Tamil, Nirvana Nagaram by writter Sujatha )

Take the example of Army what will happen if every solider keep thinking / analyzing / questioning every order ????

Lakshmi Narayanan N said...

@ Mymymy

You are shaking the evolution of human race. :-)

There are few things that differentiate human beings from animals. One of the factors is awareness. What is this awareness? Is there any relation between awareness and thinking?

Awareness and intelligence work together and leads to thinking.

Human beings are natural thinkers and in fact everyone things to an extent. What really matters, is how deeper you go and how much aware are you about your deficiencies.

If you have time, I would recommend you to read the book "An Introduction to General System Thinking" by Gerald M. Weinberg". Highly informative book and have been in print for more than 25 years.