My colleague Anne Taylor wrote a blog around collaboration and ultimately, how everyone defines it differently. I wanted to share my take on collaboration and why it has evolved since pre-pandemic times.
Prior to COVID, I would have told you collaboration is sitting around a conference room table and utilizing a whiteboard to brainstorm — whether for upcoming customer advisory board meeting topics, volunteering opportunities or what the next client team call should entail. However, if you take that whiteboarding exercise and conference room out of the equation, what are you left with? Your team.
Full transparency — my home was a circus at times over the last year. Trying to complete my work while homeschooling a kindergartener which turned into homeschooling a first grader (and making lunches and snacks on the daily between client calls) and letting the dog outside every two minutes because now that we were home all day, the pooch knew she could go in and out as many times as she wanted. With all of that said, having great team members to turn to has been key — that kind of teamwork is how I would define collaboration today.
Projects are only a success if everyone on the team helps pull together the various pieces of the puzzle. If COVID has taught me anything, it’s that teamwork and the ability to rely on one another is incredibly important. Collaboration only happens when everyone from the team comes together with thoughts or ideas or conducts a ‘sanity check’ review on a document that you have developed without hesitation when you ask them to.
Teamwork has been essential to our continued success during the pandemic and is something I am really proud of in our work at Farland Group — because without the team, there is no collaboration.