Mastering Collaboration: Make Working Together Less Painful and More Productive Paperback – 31 March 2019

In a world where no one person or organization has all the answers, all the resources or all the power to do anything of significance in society, understanding HOW to work with others is an essential knowledge for survival. Anderson's focus on the practical elements of how to collaborate adds greatly to a growing body of knowledge that includes the works of Peter Block, David Straus, Peter Senge, and Frederic Laloux. Understanding the practices and mechanisms of collaboration allows us to become more comfortable with a process that ultimately leads us to accomplish what none of us could possibly do on our own.

While collaboration's at the heart of human experience and especially work, it's not something I've ever really thought about much in terms of a skillset to develop. But recently I've been working on more and more projects that demand increasing amounts of input from a wide range of contributors. So I've been trying to think about collaboration more strategically and systemically. This book has functioned like a great virtual coach for me. It clearly explains how to cultivate a more collaborative mindset, then lays out a series of specific processes and actions you can take to facilitate collaboration at the start of project and maintain it throughout the project's duration. As a result, I've started making the shift from thinking intuitively about collaboration – or really not thinking at all – to thinking more deliberately. It's pretty clear that with the way things are moving with technology, the ability to collaborate well is only going to get more and more important. I'm glad I have this guide to help clarify the things I should be focusing on.

Published in 2019, by an author who has worked extensively in both a consulting environment and inside corporates. Anderson has helped many clients with their product strategy, as well as improving their team collaboration skills/capability. Her work speaks to the often-cited African proverb:“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”The models presented in this book are largely driven by an agile framework, with multiple sprints of: objective setting; expansionary/divergent thinking (in order to explore alternatives); followed by convergent analysis (in order to narrow down options); and finally testing/experimentation (in order to learn and incorporate continuous improvement)…The content is excellent and is well worth engaging with, drawing upon the above framework for structure but supplemented by many helpful examples (which make it practical and tangible). There are dozens of tools and approaches, suggested by the author for specific circumstances. The overall structure of the book is broken into four sensible parts, traversing the lifecycle of a collaborative project.Anderson faces up to the typical challenges of collaborating (especially within large/mature organisations): having to lead and manage teams with a composition that is drawn from the available internal people; leaning into difficult topics and discussions; communicating clearly with stakeholders (including stories and non-traditional alternatives to status updates); and dealing with difficult situations (such as depressed team morale due to a setback, and not being able to meet project milestones).There is some relevance to board members and governing bodies, from an oversight perspective as well as increasing empathy with management (with applications to a range of governance interactions). The most relevant audience for this book is likely to be collaboration leaders within organisations, such as managers and executives, and I would certainly recommend this book to them. The style of writing I found to be a bit difficult to read (a top-notch editor would have helped a lot), but the substance of the content made it more than worthwhile persevering… Proving once again that it’s dangerous to judge a book by it’s cover, and often unwise to draw strong conclusions from first impressions.

Mastering Collaboration is a great book to help teams work smarter together. This book is full of practical tips and templates to improve collaboration in the workplace. I've started using some of the exercises that Gretchen introduces and I can already see how effective they are. Part of the effectiveness comes from the angle that she took in interviewing across disciplines and speaking from her own personal experience to understand how leaders practice and use collaboration in different ways. I'm confident that the learnings from this book will improve your team dynamics and help your team work together in a more productive (and maybe even fun!) manner.

I had low expectations for this book and thought it would talk about collaboration on a very abstract level where it would be difficult for me to implement in real life. I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case. The book offers many very practical examples that one could adopt to be more productive at work. Being a master collaborator is an art form that is highly valuable in any workplace. I love that this book is an easy read and you can quickly pick off where you left off. I found that you don't have to read it from start to finish but you can skip ahead to the chapters that interest you.The only negative I have, and it's a small one, is that SOME of the figures / graphs / pictures are a little bit grainy. The majority are great and easy to read but for some of them it's harder to read.Overall I highly recommend this book.*If you found my review helpful, please let Amazon know by clicking the helpful button below!**Disclosure: I received a sample product from the Amazon Vine program for an honest and unbiased review.