Col­lab­o­rais­ing — A Word That Did­n’t Exist

For weeks we had been gath­er­ing words. On sticky notes, on the backs of notepads, on a large sheet of paper that even­tu­al­ly cov­ered the entire wall of our work­space. We were try­ing to name what we keep observ­ing in the organ­i­sa­tions we work with – that pecu­liar mix­ture of con­nec­tion, devel­op­ment, and shared move­ment for which no exist­ing term seemed suf­fi­cient. “Col­lab­o­ra­tion” felt too nar­row, “organ­i­sa­tion­al devel­op­ment” too tech­ni­cal, “trans­for­ma­tion” too grand, “cul­tur­al change” too vague. Each term had its mer­it, and yet all of them missed the core of what we meant.

The wall filled up, then emp­tied again. Some words stood there for days before we took them down, oth­ers flew into the wastepa­per bas­ket with­in hours. At some point we realised that sit­ting in front of this wall was­n’t get­ting us any­where, and we did what we often do when a thought has stalled: we set off. Out of the office, into nature, sim­ply along the next path. When we walk, our thoughts are dif­fer­ent. They no longer line up neat­ly one after the oth­er but flow, con­nect, leave space between them­selves. And some­where between an uphill stretch and a bend in the path, one of us spoke the word out loud for the first time, and the oth­er heard it, and in the same sec­ond both of us knew: this is it.

Col­lab­o­rais­ing.

Two Move­ments in One Word

Col­lab­o­rais­ing joins two move­ments that we have most­ly thought of sep­a­rate­ly. Col­lab­o­ra­tion stands for the delib­er­ate work­ing togeth­er, for the shared act that aris­es when peo­ple con­tribute their per­spec­tives, strengths, and respon­si­bil­i­ties, instead of mere­ly func­tion­ing side by side. Rais­ing stands for the mutu­al lift­ing, for the process of learn­ing and devel­op­ment in which no one moves for­ward alone but in which all those involved grow with one anoth­er.

When we speak of rais­ing, we explic­it­ly do not mean quan­ti­ta­tive growth in the sense of high­er, faster, fur­ther, but rather the lift­ing of qual­i­ty: the qual­i­ty of rela­tion­ships, of aware­ness for the whole, of an organ­i­sa­tion’s abil­i­ty to grow beyond itself. We are speak­ing of a dif­fer­ent kind of move­ment than the one we know from growth curves – a move­ment into depth and breadth, not only into height.

The word Col­lab­o­rais­ing joins these two move­ments because they con­di­tion one anoth­er. Gen­uine work­ing togeth­er lifts those who take part, and only peo­ple who are tak­en seri­ous­ly in their own devel­op­ment are capa­ble of com­mit­ting them­selves to a shared some­thing larg­er. At its core, Col­lab­o­rais­ing describes the delib­er­ate cul­ti­va­tion of what Michael Tomasel­lo calls our “we-capac­i­ty”: that char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly human abil­i­ty to set aside short-term self-inter­est in favour of shared goals, and through this to bring forth insti­tu­tions, cul­tures, and organ­i­sa­tions that no indi­vid­ual could ever have cre­at­ed alone.

Fric­tion as a Sign of Life

Col­lab­o­rais­ing lives from dif­fer­ence and dis­agree­ment. It needs irri­ta­tion, diver­si­ty, and the will­ing­ness to have one’s own con­vic­tions exam­ined, because only where per­spec­tives meet and rub against one anoth­er does the kind of move­ment arise from which some­thing new can grow. An organ­i­sa­tion in which every­one thinks the same is essen­tial­ly an echo cham­ber and not a liv­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

This is why it needs an hon­est foun­da­tion, so that col­lab­o­ra­tion does not fall into the trap of group­think – that famil­iar phe­nom­e­non in which every­thing diver­gent is qui­et­ly fil­tered out until the group drifts off into a world of its own appar­ent agree­ment, where it then often makes deci­sions that no indi­vid­ual mem­ber would ever make on their own. Real col­lab­o­ra­tion tol­er­ates fric­tion, because it knows that fric­tion is a sign of involve­ment and not of dis­tur­bance.

Many organ­i­sa­tions still treat col­lab­o­ra­tion as a tool to be deployed when things get stuck, when silos cause fric­tion and a work­shop on inter­faces is meant to bring the solu­tion, or when inno­va­tion is need­ed and “cre­ative spaces” are sud­den­ly set up. Our expe­ri­ence shows some­thing dif­fer­ent. Where col­lab­o­ra­tion tru­ly suc­ceeds, the very log­ic of val­ue cre­ation changes, and per­for­mance aris­es not despite, but through rela­tion­ship and dia­logue. Mar­tin Buber put it well: “Through the Thou, a per­son becomes I.” Only in res­o­nance with oth­ers do we unfold our full poten­tial, and the same is true for the organ­i­sa­tions in which we move.

More Than a New Label

When we speak of Col­lab­o­rais­ing Organ­i­sa­tions®, we don’t mean ide­alised images or per­fect sys­tems, but organ­i­sa­tions that are alive, that remain capa­ble of learn­ing, and that have under­stood that last­ing impact aris­es where devel­op­ment is not imposed but shaped togeth­er. For us, col­lab­o­ra­tion is not a soft top­ic but the actu­al infra­struc­ture of an organ­i­sa­tion, com­pa­ra­ble to the root sys­tem of a for­est – some­thing one does not see, and yet with­out which noth­ing could grow.

A new word alone changes no organ­i­sa­tion, we know that. But it can open a door, behind which a dif­fer­ent way of look­ing becomes pos­si­ble, and some­times it is pre­cise­ly this dif­fer­ent way of look­ing that makes the dif­fer­ence between yet anoth­er effi­cien­cy pro­gramme and a real devel­op­ment. Per­haps this is the actu­al task of lan­guage: not to describe real­i­ty as it is, but to make vis­i­ble what could come into being if we took it seri­ous­ly.