The Blue Oxen Way
From BlueOxen
Ever since Chris and Eugene founded this company, we've been referring to The Blue Oxen Way, which embodies our philosophy about Collab:Collaboration and how to make the world a better place. Of course, we never bothered defining it. Defining things is hard.
That, of course, is a cop-out, and so this page marks an exploration into what that definition is. You can help by asking questions and challenging what we say.
Develop Shared Language
Alignment around Collab:Shared Language and Collab:Shared Understanding is 60% of collaboration. That alignment is best built through co-creation -- through actually doing the work together. Developing shared language is a messy process, but it can't be skipped.
Tools that are good for this:
Bridges -- folks who speak languages of multiple communities -- are a critical prerequisite in developing this Collab:Shared Language. Build community among the bridges, and you make them more effective. Shared Language will follow.
Bridges
Collab:T-Shaped People. Multidisciplinary.
Learning / Doing Partners
We don't tell you what to do. We partner with you to learn and do.
Playing and learning toward greater impact.
Be Less Dumb
Through Shallow Thinking.
And Deep Thinking.
Bootstrap
- Collab:Dynamic Knowledge Repository
- Organizations with high Bootstrapping Index
Make the Invisible Visible
Perhaps more appropriately, make the technological systems invisible and the social systems visible.
Good Strategic Planning Is Itself A Change Process
The planning process itself must be a change process so that the group has ownership over the plan and so the plan has a chance of being implemented.
People Come First
Collaborative / Experiential / Experimental Learning is the Best Kind
On experimenting:
Feed the Ecosystem
Collaboration is a systemic challenge, a WickedProblem. A PatternLanguage offers a collection of named, concrete solutions that help attack different aspect of the challenge.
Small, Concrete Steps
Go after the low-hanging fruit first. This is true of both tool evolution and of tackling and systems or WickedProblem. By definition, every solution you come up with for a WickedProblem creates ten more problems, so ruminating over long periods of time over the solution is misguided. Attack small problems in parallel rapidly, iterate, and evolve.
Facilitate / Accelerate / Representation
A play on some principles from the Collab:Compendium community. See also Al Selvin's, "Unity of purpose, communication, and representation."
