Intro - Myrtle's story

what is collab.?
Ask the audience what they understand it to be

5C's is a methodology you can use to help you plan impactful and successful collabs

Using the 5C's for planning

In the oxford dictionary, the definition of collaboration is the act of working with another person or group of people to create or produce something.

We collaborate for a number of reasons – for higher input, gain ideas, and also look for a better quality of output. ​ Effective collaboration in the workplace is the foundation of successful outcomes. Workplace collaboration has unlimited benefits, such as increased job satisfaction, employee retention, increased autonomy, gaining valuable skills and learning and much more.....

QUESTION FOR AUDIENCE: What prevents you from collaborating?

E.G. HelpNewham initiative

Clarify purpose – to ensure all collaborators are aligned and working towards the same goal

Convening the right people – ensuing you have a good mix of people who each can bring different skills, experience and personality etc

Cultivating trust – Trust is paramount, you cannot assume it is there, you will be actively a cultivating and mindfully looking at your actions to ensure trust is being developed throughout the process

Coordinating existing activities – ensuring that the collaboration you are about to undertake is aligned to other projects and outcomes in Newham

Creating the right environment – The environment you chose will depend on the activity. One survey showed that 58% of employees said that when problem solving they needed a quiet workspaces, while 54% said they find the office environment too distracting when collaborating (Talentworksinternational.com)

When we collaborate - starting by clarifying the purpose and goals we are trying to achieve, will make the outcome increasingly powerful.
Once we are clear about our purpose and goal – you can then decide HOW you are going to achieve it and WHAT you are going to achieve

This powerful story shows that standing firm to your purpose will bring you results – FLESH IT OUT

The benefits of convening the right people at this stage is that those involved tend to learn new things and enhance their existing skill set.

Convening the “right” people means bringing together whoever is needed to tackle the challenge at hand.

Create a diverse team – different ages / backgrounds / experience ethnicities / life experience

Understand & celebrate your team members’ strengths and weaknesses (team building exercises SWOT analysis, talking and planning sessions to draw out what each person can bring to the team...)
Provide opportunities for them to use and grow their strengths and improve their weaknesses


Don’t critique weaknesses. Mistakes help you to learn and grow as you develop as a team together.

Question in the chat box: What other attributes could you use to ensure you are getting the most diverse skill set possible.

Think of a time when you worked in a team where there was a very high or very low level of trust - what impact did it have on your team?


Emotional bank account:
Author Stephen Covey uses the metaphor of the Emotional Bank Account to describe “the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship”. Its really one of the most powerful concepts to date on building relationships based on trust.

Covey describes how to make deposits to the a/c:
This simple principle is that we maintain a personal “emotional” bank account with anyone who works or relates with us. This account begins on a neutral balance. And just as with any bank account, we can make deposits and withdrawals. However, instead of dealing with units of monetary value, we deal with emotional units.

Six major deposits we can make to the emotional bank account:

Understanding the individual – spend time with your team member, make sure you know them as an individuals and you treat everyone according to their needs

Attend to the little things – keeping consistency in your regular 1:1 meetings to build on trust as a source of reliability

Clarify expectations - reinforcing goals agreed and objectives

Show personal integrity – Be open and honest in your conversations what ever it is you need to discuss or share

Be loyal to those not present – That means not gossiping about someone because they are not present. Being loyal to those not present, you’ll earn the trust of those who are present and who are not present.

Apologise sincerely when you make a withdrawal. There are always lessons to be learned in everything that we do. If you had not followed through a particular action you had promised, quickly rectify the situation to bank an emotional deposit.

Identifying a shared purpose:
When people identify a shared purpose and have built trust, they are far more likely to strive forward in following through on opportunities to support others. 
This could be sharing work they have done relating to the collaboration’s purpose. Finding quick wins, and avoid duplication of efforts.


Working together:

Working together allows individuals to strengthen their relationships with one another, creating a good cycle of trust and action.

Collaboration of personal and organisational objectives: (voluntary service is a personal objective). Looking after the menal health resdients


Collaboration must also serve personal and organisational objectives of individual. Otherwise, individuals will not be able to justify the time it requires to participate fully. Ensuring we work towards something the organisation values. Look at everything else that affects it – Example befriending service – personal

Best practice:

People - should have an opportunity in the early stages of a collaboration development to publicly identify their gives and gets. 
For example - what can they give collaboratively to support other participants ….and what do they need to get out of collaboration to make their participation worthwhile.

Examples of gives:

Some examples of gives include connecting with people that may have a wealth of experience for example: Vanessa has worked in 13 different boroughs around London so clearly has a wealth of knowledge she can give to our concils


Access to a volunteer centre

Putting in time and energy towards the work of other services

Examples of gets

Getting the expertise to support a project
A conference room to host a meeting
Another get is the befriending service:

Purpose - The main purpose of this service was to reach Newham residents who were vulnerable, lonely and needed someone to talk to.

Why - This came about due to COVID 19 as the country went into lockdown, vulnerable residents were able to get the support they needed with a weekly call from a Newham volunteer member of staff, who would give an hour of their time to talk with a resident

How – The befriending service was offered to vulnerable Newham residents on registering their personal details to receive our services on the Help initiative.

Steve Jobs Story…..

Steve Jobs was one of the co-founders of apple who was forced out of his job, so he then bought himself a small computer manufacturer named Pixar.

In 2000, he relocated the company to an abandoned factory. The original design for this factory was to have three buildings, for computer scientists, animators, and the Pixar executives. He decided to scrap the idea and instead of three building, he decided there would be a single huge space (like an atrium centre).

The philosophy behind this design was to put the most important functions at the heart of the building. Steve Jobs saw the most important function to be the interaction of his employees, so he created this open space so that people would always talk to each other.

For Steve – it was not just creating space but getting people to go to that space. He saw it as a way for different cultures to work together and collaborate. Steve realised that when people run into each other when they make eye contact, things happen. That’s why collaboration is so powerful.


Newham Collab spaces:

See Pics: (PICS) Add why are we doing it – which is to enable the flexiable working process, work remotely for innovaton

Creating the right environment:

Try to create workspaces for different types of work (e.g. silent, collaborative, quick conversations).

Staff should not be afraid to use spaces workspaces such as lounges or coffee bars, walking meetings.

Physical workspace needs to evolve to support collaboration.


Taking time away from the usual place of work: (Example of going to Rebecca’s)

For example our team had the privilege and opportunity of having a team away day at the home to one of our colleagues.

Being away from our usual environment (which was meetings by zoom for the last three months due to COVID 19) created a fun relaxed atmosphere where the team freely discussed and presented ideas for our workstream. It also brought that personal connection that we had been missing for so many months.

Place:
The Place Workstream is tasked with transforming our office space

This is to make revening savings through rationalisation of our office accommodation.  It is also to intensify the use of Dockside and bring it up to modern standards.  

This includes enhancing our collaboration work spaces by adding: lockers, breakout spaces, touch down areas and semi-enclosed open plan meeting space and height adjustable desks.

All of these changes to our work spaces are aimed to enable you and your teams to improve the way we work and make you more productive

COLLABORATION
Prior to COVID these tools were hidden and not really used. During lockdown, tech has been our best friend.

Brainstorming and Planning:
This exercise takes you through the process of generating ideas and then putting them into a plan.


Skype Whiteboard:
Is a blank page that you can use to work together with other meeting participants with access to type notes, draw, or import images. When your meeting is over, you can save the whiteboard with the data from the participants’ collaboration.

O365 Microsoft Whiteboard. “Digital online whiteboard app from Microsoft integrated with MS Teams and Surface Hub.”. (https://www.microsoft.com/en us/microsoft-365/microsoft-whiteboard/digital-whiteboard-app)

Zoom:

Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing service you can use to virtually meet with others - either by video or audio-only or both, all while conducting live chats. It also lets you record those sessions to view later.



Microsoft Teams:
Microsoft Teams, also referred to as simply Teams, is a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines persistent workplace chat, video meetings, file storage, and application integration.
Document sharing – you can both work on the same document.


Google Doc:
Create a new document and edit with others at the same time—from your computer, phone, or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.” (https://www.google.com/docs/about)