Collaboration: Accelerator or Excuse?
Collaboration can be an accelerator or an excuse.
It’s an accelerator when collaborators excel at their individual work before reaching out to others. That’s when knowledge builds upon knowledge, creating real synergy.
It’s an excuse when people walk into meetings half-prepared, assuming others will cover for them. Meetings end with “next steps”, only to meet again, half-prepared.
When accelerators meet: they produce quality at pace. When excusers meet: they produce a series of meetings. When accelerators and excusers meet: there’s either exploitation or fireworks.
This is why many high-performing individual contributors shy away from collaborative working sessions. They genuinely care about pace and quality and would rather put in the extra work than get dragged through weeks of inefficiency.