The trend in business is Co-opetition. Microsoft and others are finding that their best business strategy is to cooperate with their former competitors. Business Week Online: Sleeping with the Enemy
Over the years I’ve come to realize that most people, teams and organizations settle for a very low level of cooperation when they could significantly improve their results. Here is how it works.
You are arm wrestling. You get one point for each touch to the table. Each of you tries to get points for yourself…or at least prevent the other from getting points.
Level One – COOPERATION
Now you realize that you can OPTIMIZE the number of points you can get by cooperating. You begin to cooperate. It is one point for me and one point for you. Alternating back and forth to make sure the points are evenly distributed.
Level Two - COLLABORATION
You have a brainstorm and realize that if you both stay on the same side of the table you can make even more points. So we begin to collaborate. We move our arms up and down together and double the number of points we earn.
Level Three: CO-CREATION
This is working well, so we decide to really put our muscles into it and see how many points we can rack up. So we begin to co-create points by jointly moving our arms very rapidly up and down. We quadruple the number of points that we earn.
These three levels of cooperation area available to all teams. Simply by the fact that your are part of a team, you and your team members have overlapping interests. By cooperating with one another you can significantly improve your results. Try talking with your team about the three levels of cooperating and work to get a commitment to move to the next level on your new project.
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