Quotes About Collaboration

What does it mean to not be alone? I've approached that question through music, technology, writing and other means.

I am proud, and more than a little excited, to be asked to work with Faber in an editorial capacity. It is my dearest hope that we will produce some fantastic books together.

One day as we were doing our bookwork, a teacher suddenly asked us to help him remove all the desks and chairs from the center of the classroom. Then he sat us all down in a circle, brought out his guitar, and sang songs. We recognized the lyrics—the poems and stories we ourselves had written! After that I wrote more, searching dictionaries for new words to express myself. Every day we walked out of class believing that what we did mattered.

I think it's important for artists to work together. It's great for fans to see, like, Ludacris came out to our show in Atlanta and kinda made a surprise appearance there, it shows a mutual respect for what each other does.

I played a ton of team sports growing up, and team wins are just incredibly gratifying.

To those who had a chance to watch them both work, the minds of William and Elizebeth appeared equally amazing and equally incomprehensible. Their brains were Easter Island statues, stony and imposing.

Any conversation with more than three people is typically a conversation with too many people.

you'd be amazed how much quality collective thought can be captured using two simple tools: a voice connection and a shared screen.

Modern-day offices have become interruption factories. Merely walking in the door makes you a target for anyone else's conversation, question, or irritation. When you're on the inside, you're a resource who can be polled, interrogated, or pulled into a meeting. And another meeting about that other meeting. How can you expect anyone to get work done in an environment like that?

We don't throw more people at problems, we chop problems down until they can be carried across the finish line by teams of three

Meetings should be great—they're opportunities for a group of people sitting together around a table to directly communicate. That should be a good thing. And it is, but only if treated as a rare delicacy.

great work ethic isn't about working whenever you're called upon. It's about doing what you say you're going to do, putting in a fair day's work, respecting the work, respecting the customer, respecting coworkers, not wasting time, not creating unnecessary work for other people, and not being a bottleneck. Work ethic is about being a fundamentally good person that others can count on and enjoy working with.

The technology is here; it's never been easier to communicate and collaborate with people anywhere, any time. But that still leaves a fundamental people problem. The missing upgrade is for the human mind.

As Sir Richard Branson commented in his ode to working remotely: "To successfully work with other people, you have to trust each other. A big part of this is trusting people to get their work done wherever they are, without supervision."fn3

Just like work expands to fill the time available, work expands to fill the team available. Small, short projects quickly become big, long projects when too many people are there to work on them.

Following group chat at work is like being in an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda.

If a worker's motivation is slumping, it's probably because the work is weakly defined or appears pointless, or because others on the team are acting like tools.

Remember, there's no such thing as a one-hour meeting. If you're in a room with five people for an hour, it's a five-hour meeting.

pulling seven people away from their work for an hour is worth seven hours of lost productivity.

They're need, must, can't, easy, just, only, and fast. These words get in the way of healthy communication. They are red flags that introduce animosity, torpedo good discussions, and cause projects to be late.

Just like work expands to fill the time available, work expands to fill the team available.

Following group chat at work is like being in an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda. It's completely exhausting.

As a business owner, you should share everything you know too. This is anathema to most in the business world. Businesses are usually paranoid and secretive. They think they have proprietary this and competitive advantage that. Maybe a rare few do, but most don't. And those that don't should stop acting like those that do.

La clave es ésta: es preciso que todos puedan disponer de todo en todo momento.