We love the word collaboration.
Put a few people from different departments in a room together and we're collaborating.
Schedule a brainstorming session? Collaboration.
Ask someone for their opinion? Collaboration.
But sometimes what we call collaboration is really: I want to tell you what I think, and I'd like you to listen.
That's communication. It might even be good communication. But it isn't necessarily collaboration.
Merriam-Webster defines collaborate as “to work jointly with others.” That distinction is important.
Collaboration requires us to actually work together.
I studied communication theory in college, and one of the things I find interesting about collaboration is how closely it follows the basic communication process.
Someone has an idea and encodes it into a message. They share it. Someone else receives that message and decodes it based on their own knowledge, experiences, assumptions, and perspective. Then they respond.
And around we go.
The important part is that what I say isn't necessarily what you hear.
There's dissonance throughout the process. We have different experiences. We may use the same words differently. We might have different priorities or different information.
That's why effective collaboration requires feedback.
"What I hear you saying is..."
"Let me make sure I understand..."
"So, if we did that, how would it affect your team?"
"Here's what I'm taking away from what you said..."
Those aren't throwaway phrases. They're part of the work. You're checking your understanding before moving forward.
Brainstorming can absolutely be part of collaboration.
But getting six people into a conference room for an hour and covering a whiteboard with sticky notes isn't the same thing as collaborating.
Collaboration continues after the meeting.
Let's say a company wants to improve its customer onboarding process. Sales has a perspective. Operations has another. Finance may see something neither of them sees. And the people actually responsible for onboarding customers probably have a few thoughts too.
You bring everyone together and identify some ideas.
Great. Now what?
Effective collaboration happens when those ideas continue moving between those groups.
Someone develops the first version of the new process. The other teams review it. They identify something that won't work. The plan changes. You try it. Someone discovers another issue. You adjust again.
Information is shared.
Information is received.
Feedback is given.
The plan evolves.
That's collaboration.
This might be one of the harder parts.
If I ask you for your perspective, but I've already decided what we're going to do, I'm not really asking you to collaborate.
I'm informing you.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Leaders make decisions. Sometimes there isn't time for a collaborative process, and sometimes a decision simply doesn't require one.
But we should be clear about which one we're doing.
Collaboration means I have to be willing to hear something that changes my thinking.
That doesn't mean every suggestion gets incorporated. It means the people involved genuinely have the opportunity to influence the work.
That's a very different expectation.
When organizations talk about breaking down silos, the instinct is often to create more opportunities for people to communicate.
More cross-functional meetings. More shared channels. More updates.
But more communication doesn't automatically create more collaboration.
Your sales team can send Operations a weekly report and still operate in a silo.
Marketing can sit in a meeting with Sales every Monday and still operate in a silo.
Finance can share a beautiful dashboard with every department and still operate in a silo.
The question isn't simply whether information is moving between groups.
What happens to the information after it's shared?
Does the other group respond?
Do people ask questions?
Do they confirm that they understood it?
Does their perspective influence what happens next?
Do the teams continue working together toward a shared outcome?
That's where collaboration starts breaking down silos.
You don't necessarily need another meeting. You need a better process for working together.
Start with a shared outcome.
What are we trying to accomplish together? If Sales thinks the goal is revenue, Operations thinks the goal is efficiency, and Finance thinks the goal is margin, you may have three teams working very hard in three different directions.
Share information, not just conclusions.
Give people enough context to understand how you got there. What do you know? What assumptions are you making? What constraints are you working within?
Actively listen.
Don't spend the time someone else is talking preparing your response. Ask questions. Be curious about why they see the situation differently.
Check your understanding.
Try saying, "What I hear you saying is..." and give the other person the opportunity to correct you. You might be surprised by how often your interpretation isn't quite what they meant.
Integrate the feedback.
This doesn't mean using every idea. It does mean demonstrating that you considered it. What changed because of the conversation? What didn't change, and why?
Keep the cycle going.
Collaboration isn't finished because the meeting ended. Decide how you'll continue sharing information, gathering feedback, and adjusting as you work toward the goal.
There's a reason the definition says work jointly.
Good collaboration takes time. It takes active listening. It takes curiosity. And sometimes it requires us to change our minds.
But think about the alternative.
How much time does your organization spend fixing something because another department wasn't involved early enough?
How often does a project get almost to the finish line before someone says, "Wait, this isn't going to work for us"?
How many times have you heard, "Nobody asked our team"?
Maybe the solution isn't another meeting.
Maybe it's making sure we're actually collaborating.