Mastering Collaboration: Make Working Together Less Painful and More Productive

by Gretchen Anderson

Overview

Collaboration is key for organizations in the 21st century, yet few business people have been trained to teach this skill. How do you advance ideas in a collaborative way and then communicate them throughout your company? In this practical book, author Gretchen Anderson shows you how to generate ideas with others while gaining buy-in from all levels of your organization.

Product managers, designers, marketers, technical leaders, and executives will obtain better insight into how team members work together to make decisions. Through tangible exercises and techniques, you’ll learn how to turn promising ideas into products, services, and solutions that make a real difference in the market.

• Use a framework to develop ideas into hypotheses to be tested and refined
• Avoid common pitfalls in the collaboration process
• Align communication approaches to ensure that collaboration is effective and inclusive
• Structure events or meetings for different types of collaboration depending on the people involved
• Practice giving and receiving critiques to foster inclusion without resorting to consensus-based decisions

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781492041733
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/04/2019
Pages:	226
Sales rank:	351,088
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Gretchen consults with clients to inform their product strategy and improve team collaboration skills. She spent the first part of her career in design consulting at firms like frog design, Cooper, and LUNAR. She was Head of Design at PG&E, California’s largest energy company; she has led the design of the hardware and software of a next-generation surgical system; and served as VP of Product at GreatSchools.org. Gretchen is a Bay Area native who left only long enough to get a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in History & Literature.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction xiii

Part I Creating the Right Environment

1 Enlist Everyone 3

2 Give Everyone a Role 21

3 Enable Trust and Respect 37

4 Make Space 49

Part II Setting Clear Direction

5 Make a Plan 61

8 Set Clear and Urgent Objectives 81

Part III Exploring Solutions

7 Explore Many Possibilities 105

8 Make Sound Decisions 129

9 Find Out What Others Think 145

Part IV Communicating Clearly

10 Communicate Transparently 161

11 Tell the Story 173

12 Conclusion 191

Index 193