In my workplace, which is part of the video game industry, it is commonplace for teams to use wiki pages to crowdsource and broadly share documentation. This is one form of collaborative intelligence, defined by the ability to bring knowledge of many individuals and sources together in a socially collective way, with open, multidirectional feedback. Because all of us are well-versed in computing and internet technologies for the office, as well as collaborative software which allow for live edit sharing such as Google Docs, teams can leverage collaborative intelligence to diffuse information with members new and existing, to document complex strategies and processes, and to make future iteration of such materials more seamless. One benefit to this approach is that many members of an organization have the ability to fill in the blanks that others cannot. Sometimes, it underscores misunderstanding among multiple members of a project or team, which promotes further conversation, via comments in the documentation, or in offline conversations. This simulates the feedback piece that collaborative learning depends on -- the ability to share your work with your peers, see their work, see something you know from a new point of view, and exchange feedback for improvements. On my particular team, three of us work together on various complex projects and programs aimed at improving efficiency for a group of hundreds of technologists. When kicking off a project, we often start by meeting around a whiteboard and breaking down all the big problem spaces within the whole. Because we all come from unique backgrounds in the game industry, we may arrive to similar conclusions, but we also tend to have knowledge that another does not, or we may come up with ideas that do not occur to another. This allows us to completely consider the whole. Once we know what the large chunks of work are, we can dive into breaking them into tasks. Frequently, the first tasks in a project involve documentation: what is the strategy of this project or the mission of this organized effort?; what will the structure look like? It’s easy for any one member of the team to take the first approach at a piece of documentation, but it’s not so easy for that same individual to be accountable to the entirety of the document, including its contents, such as a complete project strategy. Instead, the remaining members of the team are able to immediately jump into the first pieces of the roughest version of the document and begin adding their own known pieces of information. I can see my teammate typing out the “Why” and move down the document to start working on the “How”. The ability to continuously collaborate on all aspects of our projects ensures that we as a team have the best available information, despite the disparity between individuals’ knowledge. We can share with our stakeholders and other “customers” across the company and ensure that the work we provide represents the knowledge of every member in the team instead of the limited knowledge of an individual project lead. Finally, we can make an aligned decision on how to move forward as a team and feel connected in our resolution and approach. This not only ensures we have the best information, but it lends to creating more trust and camaraderie within the team.

References:

Cope, B. (2019, January 25). Collaborative Intelligence, Part 5B: Collaborative Learning Dynamics. E-Learning Ecologies MOOC. Video retrieved from https://www.coursera.org/learn/elearning/home/welcome