A reveal is not collaboration
One of the things I've been asked to speak about at community talks over the last year is my 3 Cs framework that revolves around the sequential relationship of Communication, Collaboration, and Coordination. What has been odd to me, however, is that when I reach the point in a talk when I'm speaking about collaboration, so much of it seems to mythbust, come as new, or surprise people in attendance. And, to be frank, that surprised me.
It seems that so many in the product and tech industries are new to true collaboration or are surprised it's not what they've experienced or have been taught. Many of these folks are newer to the industry, but some have also spent a long time in command-and-control/waterfall-style organizations, where they've been conditioned to think "We're collaborating" when their boss shares a finished product and asks for feedback they'll never incorporate.
It made me sad.
AI as a hindrance to collaboration
For the new wave of folks entering the industry, this seems especially exacerbated by generative AI use. Think about a common AI workflow: you get it to consume information and spit something out. Early in the wave of corporate folks adopting LLMs, they'd use it for an early draft, edit it to incorporate their own voice, and then collaborate with their team on any edits going forward. Manageable. As the AI brain rot has continued to eat away at people's curiosity and agency, though, many are now incapable of collaboration without asking their AI to make a new version. They're effectively debilitated; intellectually maimed by their addiction to an easy out from doing the work themselves. Their curiosity has been hampered, their capability has declined instead of increased; they've given up their agency. The issue compounds as those they work with do the same.
Rather than any work artifact being something that's organic, where collaboration continuously iterates on the thing, it's slowly changed to the point where any feedback leads to a new version of the artifact regardless of whether the feedback is major enough to warrant it or not. Those I've spoken to or now personally worked with have seen how this leads to the opposite of what AI use promised us: It's not faster, more efficient, or helping us cover our bases.
This way of working in particular has created a cycle of big reveals followed by big reviews, then new versions and new reviews.
So, whether folks have been infected by this AI workflow or just never had the blessing of true collaboration before, when I spoke about the 3 Cs, it raised eyebrows and hands.
What the hell is collaboration anyway?
Well, I can tell you that if you're being presented with what seems like a finished product, you're just getting a reveal. If you haven't been part of the messy, shared process of creating it, you don't get any of the benefits collaboration can bring.
When you just reveal something, you are asking for feedback or approval on work that is already done. When you collaborate, you are inviting others to shape the outcome from the beginning.
Here are a few core aspects.
| Feature | A Reveal | Collaboration |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | Happens at the end or causes milestone-like hiccups. | Happens continuously throughout. |
| Power Dynamic | Authoritative, whether intended or not ("Here is what I made"). | Equal partnership ("What should we make?"). |
| Feedback | Reactive, cosmetic, or too late to change core ideas. | Generative, structural, and deeply integrated. |
| Ownership | Solo ownership by the creator. | Shared ownership by the entire team. |
A reveal certainly has its place, like when a team presents a final client deliverable or launches a finished feature. However, mistaking a reveal for collaboration usually leaves people feeling left out or ignored because their input can no longer impact the final result.
When your team becomes disengaged from the act of creation, they learn less together, their expertise that would normally mitigate risk or open new opportunities is wasted, morale may drop, and the team begins to wait for direction rather than act proactively. When you have a smaller team, issues can be easier to diagnose and mitigate, but as you grow, everything compounds and breaks.
How I define collaboration in the corporate sphere
In the context of product and tech teams, the way I define collaboration is as follows:
True collaboration invites diverse perspectives, reducing risk and increasing opportunity, improving productivity and efficiency, and building trust and empowerment.
How I differentiate bad collaboration or a lack of it from good collaboration
Sometimes, all people need is a good comparison, and I make many of these in my presentations.
| Bad / lack of collaboration | Good collaboration |
| Protective of someone's role, or otherwise territorial | Cross-functional by default, shared ownership of outcomes |
| Alienating | Engaging |
| Disabling | Enabling |
| Happens late or reactively | Continuously, proactively |
| Creates silos and solo heroics | Customer-centric |
| Coerced or performative, more about optics | Learning is more important than ego. Team tests assumptions. |
| Consensus-based, deferring to a top position or voice | Navigates conflict constructively |
| Absent in discovery, misses or adds risk, blind to many opportunities | Uncovers problems and opportunities earlier through a larger blanket of diverse views and expertise |
| Lacks clarity in who's ultimately responsible, accountable, or who should be consulted or informed | Has role and expectation clarity |
Getting it to work
For teams trying to inspire good collaboration, here is some of what I recommend in my 3 Cs talks
Tools & frameworks
- Building a trio or quad model where collaboration is the expectation
- Opportunity Solution Trees
- Product Development Lifecycle definitions with clear RACIs
- Value Stream Mapping
- Journey maps and service blueprints
- Definitions of Done & Ready
Rituals
- Problem-framing
- Team retrospectives
- Co-designing / co-development
- Co-discovery
- Pre-mortems
Best practices
- Alternating facilitators & presenters
- Disagree & commit behaviours
- Teaching teams to fall in love with the problem, not the solution
- Include others early
- Teaching the scientific method
Now, you may look at a few of the things on these lists and think, "We have that, but our collaboration still sucks." This is common. For example, I come across teams running what they think are effective retrospectives that are really just a waste of time.
The retrospective as a means for meaningful improvement to collaboration
Do you run retrospectives? What do they look like?
If your retrospectives aren't intentionally asking hard questions of each other, and they don't produce actions (with accountable folks for those actions), then you aren't running a retrospective. You're running a time suck on everyone's calendars.
A proper retrospective is one of the most important rituals a team can have. If you're doing it properly, your team should feel safe digging in and discussing the hardest topics so they can improve together, and they should be empowered to make changes to their processes, behaviours, and other working norms.
If you want to start improving collaboration, begin with meaningful team retrospectives.
What about the other things on that list of tools and frameworks? I'm not going to go into each one and explain how it helps with collaboration in this post (but you can attend one of my talks). What I can say is that if you've tried it and it didn't help with collaboration, then do a rewind. Perhaps it was more about a single person doing a reveal, or a lack of safety and transparency that kept people from digging in together.
