Five Signs Threatening Your Collaboration

I remember Coletta grabbing my left shoulder, shaking her finger at me and stating in no uncertain terms: “You’re known by the company you keep, young lady.”

As I talked about affiliate marketing this week, that conversation drifted back to me. Mom set some clear boundaries. Her parameters contained a common thread: trust. She extended trust until a violation occurred. Then boundaries changed.

What if I applied that thinking to today’s world?

Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace make collaboration easy. Outsourcing sites like Elance match freelancers with employers. ClickBank offers dozens of opportunities to add products to your offerings. Working together in these or other relationships implies joint responsibility as well as trust.

Consider these five red flags that can choke collaboration and then apply one of Mom’s adages:

1. Your partner collaborator misses deadlines. In one case, the deadline for a book collective is now 18 months overdue. Re-evaluate. Constant re-scheduling covers other problems. Question and define those problems. Mom might point out, “Don’t change horses in the middle of the race.”
2. The scope of work remains cloudy. From past experience I see that projects undefined morph into new problems. Clear parameters set at the beginning and benchmarked along the way mean a higher chance of success. It makes sense to articulate opportunities and then further define them in writing. Get the questions on the table early in the game. Mom said, “The devil is in the details.”
3. Promises go unfulfilled. One can forgive and note transgressions. As Mom put it, “Give him an inch, he’ll take a mile.” Be wary of those who don’t value commitments. See flag #1: re-evaluate.
4. No common courtesy exists. Life is too short to work with jerks. A simple thank you or some follow up goes a long way. Once again, the adage Mother used to quote: “You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
5. Frequent mis-communications. “You made your bed, now lie in it.”

My Mom celebrates her 80th birthday today. Happy Birthday, Mom! I owe who I am today in major part to you. All in all, Mom made life sound pretty simple. Why not? As she said, "If one has only a hammer, all problems look like nails!"

Consider collaboration from a new perspective. Run it through the five flag filter.

Synergistic Tactics Generate Success Online and Off

“Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It means that the relationship the parts have to each other is a part in and of itself. It is not only a part, but it’s the most unifying and most exciting part. The creative process is also the most terrifying part because you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen or where it is going to lead.” –The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, May 21 Calendar posting

A single media tactic seldom works because it lacks synergy. For that reason, I tell people to pick three. An Online Media Room won’t work as your only media strategy, for example. Cynthia Morris with Original Impulse discovered that. She posted a press release about the shrine movement on her site and nothing happened.

As we discussed the lack of response, Cynthia began to see the parallels for herself. Not even her own subscriber list of 1,400 was aware of her efforts. She incorporated the announcement of her shrine sales into her regular newsletter. In addition, she customized the release and sent it to a number of local media outlets prior to leaving Denver. It was picked up and published by DailyCamera.com, an online newspaper. In addition, several bloggers wrote about the shrine movement.

In addition to the online media room at JourneyJuJu.com, Cynthia used these tactics:

• Posting on her own JourneyJuJu.com and OriginalImpulse.com blog
• Direct appeal to other targeted blogs on which she’d previously commented
• News releases to specific local media
• Her own newsletter
• Articles posted online

Did it work? In a posting on May 11, Cynthia writes about Dorothy Siaw, the KIVA entrepreneur she launched as a result of Shrine sales. Synergy made the difference.

Have you combined your tactics in a way to create synergy?