Detail the devils in it, executives delegate it, and consultants typically fear it. Detail is the stuff that you can work on later when you are alone. Detail is the ultimate conversation and collaboration killer.

Or is it?

Wiki technology today is capable of presenting content to a community for collaboration at any level of detail. But only those who are ready, willing, and able can participate at the detail level. Most arent, at least when we are talking about collaboration at the team level as opposed to mass collaboration. In a previous post, I suggested that team collaborations are often hurt by an unintentional disregard to the collaboration-among-equals principle. In this post Im postulating a new theory: Great synergies are possible when collaborating at a detail level, but traditional mindsets around collaboration prevent it.

For most of us, collaboration has traditionally meant getting together with other people. We brainstorm, share, ponder, explore, critique, analyze, or improve something. You know the old sayings: Two minds are better than one; no idea is a bad idea; yada, yada, yada. Historically, the most likely forum for this is a meeting, often with all parties gathered in the same room or on the same conference line. The more people involved, the more costly the meeting. So we all learned to focus the meeting on the best use of the time and expense of bringing people together which was rarely on details. Such meetings end with the classic next steps of allocating assignments for independent development. Divide-and-conquer! someone will say and all will quickly agree this is the only way to get results when working with details.

The classic divide-and-conquer process works something like the picture above. It starts with some sort of get-together at which people converse, ultimately leading to assignments being made. Then people leave the group and work by themselves and develop a first-cut at the details. Sometimes the next step after that consists of everyone sending everyone else their detailed work for review and people may or may not actually give review. In any case, the review is most often provided independently. Finally, someone consolidates the detail and there may or may not be another review. In the end, everyone pats each other on the back and calls the process a great collaboration. It might be in one sense, but it could be so much better.

How could it be better? Examine each step in the process and notice when people are working independently versus working in a way that is truly interactive with others. All steps other than the initial meeting are more independent   in nature thancollaborative. Even the review step is mostly an independent act. If you are asked to review someone elses detail, you read it and comment on it based on your own, individualthoughts. If someone else also does a review and shares their comments with you, their comments might give you new insight, but absent of that, you are acting pretty independently as you formulate your feedback. Contrast that to when you work directly with someone else, particularly someone you trust, admire, and has opinions you value. The synergy comes from the conversations, the banter, the candor, the debate, the excitement you get from learning and growing, and the pride you get from shared creativity. You say something, she thinks of something that helps the thought process that she would have never thought of if you hadnt said what you said. You in turn add a twist to her thoughts that gets you both excited because you have helped each other reach a new level of insight you would never had achieved independently. This is synergy, and it is a true joy to anyone who has ever experienced it. But more than the personal reward to participants, synergy is also required   to solve many if not most complex problems. Im amazed how often business leaders fail to understand this point. A project team is more often than not comprised of roles based on how much competency in different areas is thought to be needed as opposed to how much synergy is need to solve the problems being addressed. The mindset behind this kind of resource allocation is the same mindset taken to the divide-and-conquer approach: When it comes to detail, it is best to work independently.

I disagree! When it comes to practically anything, it is best to seek synergy with others. But up until now, it has been more expensive to seek synergy in details. It is the perceived expense   that has lead to the traditional mindset and the new Wiki tools we have now give good reason to re-evaluate that mindset in order to open doors to vast creativity improvements. If the problem domain is complex and hard, synergy (not independent activity) is the best approach including   at the detail level. While the problems remain unsolved and conceptual thinking is needed, we need to find ways to encourage synergy while working on details.

Here is a great advantage of the Wiki. The cost of synergy while working on details can be reduced dramatically as the collaboration spans space and time and the subject area of collaboration becomes more atomic. The process is just like the synergistic conversation described earlier: You post something, she thinks of something that helps the thought process that she would have never thought of if you hadnt posted your original thought and she updates your post. You in turn add a twist to her post that gets you both excited because you have helped each other to a new level of insight you would never have achieved independently. Of course, all this is visible to a larger audience in a Wiki environment giving even more potential to greater synergy. Review is not an independent activity that occurs after the detail is complete, but another opportunity for synergy (and quality) to be built into the process.

The technology makes this possible, but our mindsets prevent it. We have to get used to a new paradigm for attacking detail than the traditional divide-and-conquer. We need to allocate detail to teams that have (or can develop) the synergy that has the best chance to solve specific problems. We need those teams to learn the mutual-adjustment etiquette to work effectively in an environment in which we dont necessarily see one another on a daily basis. We also need to learn the skills to break the problems and solution domains on the Wiki to an atomic, highly modular level of detail to enhance our ability to create a synergy that converges   to solutions rather than a synergy that diverges   to the constant discovery of more problems. I will comment on both of these needs more in subsequent posts.

Have you ever been assigned to work on detail independently before the problem was formulated or the solution was conceived? Who do you wish you could have worked with during that time and what prevented that person or those people from working with you? Have you experienced the rewards of a synergistic relationship and do you want to have that experience more frequently with less constraints? I think you can!