Collective working is ages old management practice which Few managements have now started following practice of making professionals working in different product/ service categories which are synergic; to come together and work collectively to bolster a particular product/ service / process which may require attention due to de growth or requires more thrust.
For a moment let me draw a distinction between project, team and collective working. Apparently all these terms seems to be same but surely have a distinction.
Project working involves people of diverse field/ expertise are to form a group led by Project Leader to accomplish a given task with in a time frame. This is Hierarchy driven.
Team working would mean that a team already exists and each member of the team works together in one direction to accomplish team objective. This is Hierarchy driven.
In Collective working, the people, may be heads of different product groups, are made to form a core group to diagnose, analyze, decide and take corrective measures for Objective to be achieved. The Most senior of the lot represents the collective team’s effort, ideas and actions to management while he is the so called BOSS of this collective group. This can become hierarchy driven or otherwise depends upon the BOSS.
One big hurdle to Collective working is that people may not contribute fully to their potential fearing that credit of their intellect, creativity, knowledge and skills may be taken away by the so called BOSS. Most of the time such Collective working thus, does not lead to desired results or time frame is lost.
The way out is that Management has to keep a keen eye on each person in collective working and clearly identify his or her contribution even without same getting highlighted by the so called BOSS.
This is actually quite difficult and only highly seasoned Management team which knows each of their employee is able to differentiate the contributions and credits to right person in collective working group.
Let me share an example of successful Collective Working from mythological history of Lord Rama getting objective accomplished with Vanar Sena. Lord Rama could judge caliber of each member of Collective work group like Jamwant, Null, Neel, Angad and Hanuman. Lord Rama appreciated each member and rewarded them thus achieving objective thru collective working otherwise the task could not have been achieved singularly by any one.
For the constituents of a Collective Work group the advice is that they must highlight their contributions individually as well, otherwise, how Management would know. In this so called professional world, each one is out to grab credit of others.
Relax, contribute to ur best ability and inform concerned about ur contribution without taking credit away from others for their contributions. A little difficult but beginning has to be made.
All the best.
Life Kraft 