More on Collaboration, No, Not Moron Collaboration

We need a lot more on collaboration.  How to understand it as a resource, as a strategy, as a part of a strategy, as a measure of how much EFFORT is expended, as a measure of how well this EFFORT is expended, as a targeted, internal, organizational outcome that is likely the most crucial and instrumental vehicle towards effectiveness.  

We don’t need any more illustrations of moron collaboration; I couldn’t resist.

A helpful resource in being able to define (and therefore operationalize and therefore formulate evaluation criteria and eventually measures associated with) collaboration is Arthur Himmelman's COLLABORATION FORA CHANGE (revised 2002). At the root of collaboration is the ability and willingness to "work together," but there's a lot of ways to work together (or not), and Himmelman helps to distinguish between 4 ways of working together: in ascending order by magnitude and complexity...networking, coordination, cooperation, and collaboration. Our current fascination with so-called "results" (effects) has inclined us to overlook and underestimate the many critical "means" by which effects are produced. We neglect to focus on and evaluate the many "efforts" required to produce these juicy results (as long as they're performed well enough, right?), and the most critical effort, I believe, typically falls under the ill-defined or completely empty notion of collaboration. We can do better. I believe the presence of collaboration can be evaluated; and logically, I believe the absence of collaboration can be evaluated. Look at Congress. They don't appear to be collaborating, do they? Maybe it's unfair to use Himmelman's definition of collaboration to evaluate Congress, "exchanging information, altering activities, sharing resources, and enhancing the capacity of other partners for mutual benefit and to achieve a common purpose," but why wouldn't we want this dimension (collaboration) of any effort to be treated comprehensively and deliberately by collecting and making use of evaluative information so that it along with other desired internal outcomes might have a better chance of producing desired external outcomes?

(I had already begun this post, when I noticed a discussion on LinkedIn's Performance Measurement group. If you can navigate to that discussion, you might find it of interest.)