Collaboration At The Center For Collaborating Organizations

Definition:

Collaboration is a practice where an individual or individuals work together to achieve a common purpose and achieve a business benefit. It involves cooperation, forming alliances and partnerships and full participation of the individuals in this kind of undertaking. In other words it is a joint effort of multiple individuals working together for a common goal.It’s mainly characterized by voluntary participation and requires parity among participants. Each members contribution is equally valued because it is based on mutual goals, sharing of resources, time, knowledge and materials to enhance the sense of ownership among the collaborating members is at the center for collaborating parties.

Introduction

Most projects and workplace tasks are no longer singularly managed or accomplished. Departments or sections are now operated under the leadership of for example; Head of departments, Head of programs, line managers and particularly for my case; a Program coordinator to whom I report every program activity to. In my work I supervise six other individuals who I closely work with and this has created a tight bond among the team members because we have developed a sense of trust and complement each others work and because we have the mutual respect and seek each others advice before we draw conclusions on any subject, for example; when finalizing a concept note, a proposal or procurement process. I believe all the successes we have achieved in the programming department has been down to effective communication, the required knowledge and unique skills set that every team member possesses, the high level of motivation and most importantly, the constructive feedback from donors, team members, suppliers and even the direct be...

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...ced poor results, this is especially true because there is a collective need to work together to produce a single result. This sort of partnerships are always complementary and interdependent on each other as characterized by joint undertaking of critical decisions. The level of dedication and energy put into an activity is not diminished since the collaboration is driven by a strong desire and passion to succeed through creativity. In other words, in a collaborative undertaking ‘no one sits on their hands’ as it makes a team function successfully although it has its own limitations in that it tends to drag and requires a lot of discussions and commitment for it to succeed, it takes a lot of effort to see it come to fruition and participation is risky in many aspects especially if a collaborative partner loses interest midway and success is compromised at that cost.