If You Want to Go Far.... the Power of Collaboration

You’ve probably heard the African proverb,

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.” [see note below]

Have you seen how it can take forever to get people moving? As a person who tends to operate (like it or not) with a fairly high degree of personal autonomy, I am taken off guard by this. For example, when you’re trying to herd a family, small group, or – say – a short-term mission team, the lag time between “Where should we go to eat?” and actually putting the first bite in one’s mouth can be - well, huge!

So if you are working with a group of people you may need to schedule a lot more time to accomplish things.

That’s why when I organized a church event a few weeks ago I did most of the work myself and held the event in the church lobby so people wouldn’t have to go anywhere.

On the other hand, projects undertaken together are usually stronger, and better, and wiser, and tend to produce relational fruit that may last much longer than the impact of the actual project.

So ultimately it’s a better approach. Next time I’ll handle the church event differently. I need to deal with some of the internal obstacles that keep me from being as effective in collaborating as I might be.

Thursday I had coffee with a guy I met more than a decade ago in a class about fostering collaboration. Although I do not know him well, Dave and I share a good deal of common ground and I was pleased that he wanted to get together and talk shop. Dave serves on a small team with Phill, and Phill is one of my all-time ministry heroes. Phill’s ministry had put on the training event where I met Dave.

One thing we talked about is how in American churches as in many other kinds of communities individuals have a tendency to say, “Hey, I have a great idea. How can I get people to rally to me and carry out this great idea?” We try and try to interest others in the things we’re doing and then get prematurely discouraged and give up when this approach doesn’t work.

We might be a lot more effective if we started asking different questions. Changing our focus from “what can I do?” to “what should be done?” can make a huge difference in how we go about things - in ministry or other endeavors. Here’s how Dave puts it:

The Four Key Questions of Collaboration

A culture of partnership is created and sustained by realizing that neighborhood- or wider-world partnership can power your vision and scale up the objectives your ministry can accomplish.

The goal is no less than reexamining everything we do through the lens of partnership. This is the choice for those who want to make collaboration the default setting under which we operate because it is who we are, not just what we do in certain isolated situations.

Those with this commitment will at some point – and again and again! – ask these four key questions of collaboration:

1. “I have a ministry vision that God is calling me to do! Do you suppose God has given this vision to others as well?”
   
   
2. “Would it make sense to find them and see how we could work together to accomplish this ministry vision better than by working apart?”
   
   
3. “Is there a set of skills that we might need to successfully meet and collaborate?”
   
   
4. “How and where might I gain those skills?”

Read the rest of the article here.

Note: To all who googled that particular proverb seeking a source - I found it many places but have not been able to confirm a more specific origin. If you're feeling generous and find something solid, let me know. And just for fun, check out this:

http://twitter.com/AfricanProverbs