Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a book of interest that’s not directly related to personal finance, but can provide deep insights into the elements of personal success.
One of my favorite books I’ve ever reviewed for The Simple Dollar is Twyla Tharp’s excellent The Creative Habit. In fact, it’s one of the few books that’s found a permanent place in my home after having read it for a Simple Dollar review.
Naturally, when I found that Twarp had written a follow-up of sorts, entitled The Collaborative Habit, I couldn’t resist. Simultaneously knowing the high esteem I gave to her first book and also recognizing the ever-increasing importance of collaboration and collaborative work in modern personal and financial success, I couldn’t wait to tear it open.
Much like its predecessor, The Collaborative Habit is notable for its exquisite design and layout. It’s crisp, clean, easy to pick up, and incredibly easy to annotate with your own personal notes and thoughts. Also like its predecessor, it’s not terribly long – it gets right down to the point and the only anecdotes it offers up are ones that get right to the heart of the matter.
The $64,000 question, though, is whether or not it really says anything useful to us. Let’s dig in and find out.
What It Is, Why It Matters, Why It’s the Future
In its simplest form, collaboration means working with others towards a goal that would be difficult to complete without multiple contributions. It goes beyond that, though – collaboration also has the potential to improve what we ourselves individually contribute to the goal. Many people resist collaboration because interacting with people can be difficult, but that in itself can be a reward if we step back and ask ourselves whether we might be the ones at fault – at least in part – and work ourselves to overcome those faults.
Collaboration Is Second Nature
The core of any great collaboration is, in her words, “a clearly stated and consciously shared purpose.” In other words, collaborations work best when you all have the same end result in mind. Collaborations are often undermined when others are secretly working towards other goals and purposes. How can you overcome this? The biggest step anyone can take to make collaboration work well is to establish a routine of work in which each member contributes – without that, collaboration falls apart. Set that before you ever continue or else you will either fail or have to run a marathon to achieve some semblance of success. Another important element is a champion – someone who …