Collaborative Effort Quotes

I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.

Collaboration, it turns out, is not a gift from the gods but a skill that requires effort and practice.

Unique is what one person does alone. What is not unique is what others have to collaborate on.

But the main lesson to draw from the birth of computers is that innovation is usually a group effort, involving collaboration between visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from drawing on many sources. Only in storybooks do inventions come like a thunderbolt, or a lightbulb popping out of the head of a lone individual in a basement or garret or garage.

A successful organization relies on the collaborative efforts of its employees, board members, and stakeholders.

Life is a collaborative effort. We can't do it on our own.

Just remember, this is a collaborative effort. We don't have time for creative differences or outbreaks of artistic integrity.

Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers. Further, it is truly international in scope. Any particular advance has been preceded by the contributions of those from many lands who have set firm foundations for further developments. The Nobel awards should be regarded as giving recognition to this general scientific progress as well as to the individuals involved. Further, science is a collaborative effort. The combined results of several people working together is often much more effective than could be that of an individual scientist working alone.

Many of us have spent a lifetime trying to be what we’re not, feeling lousy about ourselves when we fail, and sometimes when we succeed. We hide our differences when, by accepting and celebrating them, we could collaborate to make every effort more exciting, productive enjoyable, and powerful. Personally, I think we should start right now.

Then there’s the issue of cognitive capacity. Deep work is exhausting because it pushes you toward the limit of your abilities. Performance psychologists have extensively studied how much such efforts can be sustained by an individual in a given day.* In their seminal paper on deliberate practice, Anders Ericsson and his collaborators survey these studies. They note that for someone new to such practice (citing, in particular, a child in the early stages of developing an expert-level skill), an hour a day is a reasonable limit. For those familiar with the rigors of such activities, the limit expands to something like four hours, but rarely more.

The problem with enemyfying is not that we never have enemies: we often face people and situations that present us with difficulties and dangers. Moreover, any effort we make to effect change in the world will create discomfort, resistance, and opposition. The real problem with enemyfying is that it distracts and unbalances us. We cannot avoid others whom we find challenging, so we need to focus simply on deciding, given these challenges, what we ourselves will do next.

social loafing’ – the widespread tendency of individuals to decrease their own effort when they start working collaboratively.

If You Respect Their Preparation, You never Drop the Baton

Teamwork and community have been incredibly important to me as of late. You can get a lot done by yourself, but a collaborative effort can take you even further.

In the era of globalization, everything is interconnected. A problem in one part of the world will definitely impact on other parts of the globe. Such phenomenon is also valid for defense and security context. A conflict in a state will bring implications in its neighboring countries or other countries extended in the same region. Therefore, collaborative efforts in tackling common defense and security problems are essentially required.

Game developers know better than anyone else how to inspire extreme effort and reward hard work. They know how to facilitate cooperation and collaboration at previously unimaginable scales. And they are continuously innovating new ways to motivate players to stick with harder challenges, for longer, and in much bigger groups. These crucial twenty-first-century skills can help all of us find new ways to make a deep and lasting impact on the world around us.

It makes me proud of all of us who are secretly going to pieces behind closed doors but still somehow keeping it together for the public, collaborating in the shaky ongoing effort of not letting civilization fall apart for one more day.

The letter is only an aid to philosophical communication, the actual essence of which consists in arousing a particular train of thought. Someone speaking thinks and produces—someone listening reflects—and reproduces. Words are a deceptive medium for what is already though—unreliable vehicles of a particular, specific stimulus. The true teacher is a guide. If the pupil genuinely desires truth it requires only a hint to show him how to find what he is seeking. Accordingly the representation of philosophy consists purely of themes—of initial propositions—principles. It exists only for autonomous lovers of truth. The analytical exposition of the theme is only for those who are sluggish or unpracticed. The latter must learn thereby how to fly and keep themselves moving in a particular direction. Attentiveness is a centripetal force. The effective relation between that which is directed and the object of direction begins with the given direction. If we hold fast to this direction we are apodictically certain of reaching the goal that has been set. True collaboration in philosophy then is a common movement toward a beloved world—whereby we relieve each other in the most advanced outpost, a movement that demands the greatest effort against the resisting element within which we are flying.

Populists have sought to extricate themselves from this conundrum in two different ways. Some populist movements claim adherence to the ideals of modern science and to the traditions of skeptical empiricism. They tell people that indeed you should never trust any institutions or figures of authority—including self-proclaimed populist parties and politicians. Instead, you should “do your own research” and trust only what you can directly observe by yourself. This radical empiricist position implies that while large-scale institutions like political parties, courts, newspapers, and universities can never be trusted, individuals who make the effort can still find the truth by themselves. This approach may sound scientific and may appeal to free-spirited individuals, but it leaves open the question of how human communities can cooperate to build health-care systems or pass environmental regulations, which demand large-scale institutional organization. Is a single individual capable of doing all the necessary research to decide whether the earth’s climate is heating up and what should be done about it? How would a single person go about collecting climate data from throughout the world, not to mention obtaining reliable records from past centuries? Trusting only “my own research” may sound scientific, but in practice it amounts to believing that there is no objective truth. As we shall see in chapter 4, science is a collaborative institutional effort rather than a personal quest.

The quality of results from any collaboration effort are driven by trust and respect

The paintings and objects were not signed; they were not intended to be works of individual expression. Most were collaborative efforts, including many of the paintings commonly attributed to Verrocchio himself. The goal was to produce a constant flow of marketable art and artifacts rather than nurture creative geniuses yearning to find outlets for their originality.20

Three Big Ideas That Drive the Work of a PLC The essence of the PLC process is captured in three big ideas: 1. The purpose of our school is to ensure all students learn at high levels. 2. Helping all students learn requires a collaborative and collective effort. 3. To assess our effectiveness in helping all students learn we must focus on results—evidence of student learning—and use results to inform and improve our professional practice and respond to students who need intervention or enrichment.

When you look at the lives of innovators, there is often little distinction between work and play. And when creative people make it a point to spend time together, new ideas and joint projects emerge with little effort, a natural part of the rhythm of each day.

Torvalds decided to use the GNU General Public License, not because he fully embraced the free-sharing ideology of Stallman (or for that matter his own parents) but because he thought that letting hackers around the world get their hands on the source code would lead to an open collaborative effort that would make it a truly awesome piece of software. “My reasons for putting Linux out there were pretty selfish,” he said. “I didn’t want the headache of trying to deal with parts of the operating system that I saw as the crap work. I wanted help.”136

Synergy refers to the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements. In the context of your business, consider how a team can put forth a collaborative effort that exceeds an individual’s output. Now on task, you may begin to share the key parts of your plan with the pillars of your business or family. Embrace the opportunity and be enthusiastic as you are assigning responsibilities. Everyone needs to have a “paddle in the canoe” and work in synchronicity to achieve the desired outcome.

The basic common denominator of all life is the urge to survive, and the survival of life on Planet Earth is achieved only as a shared initiative with and through all life-forms. Life is a joint effort; no 'man' separate from 'nature.' Homo sapiens as individuals and as species are as much a part of life's overall thrust for survival as any other species. As living organisms, we are part if the greater whole, and as such, we are embodied with exactly the same fundamental purpose: to survive. And to do so--as individuals, families, groups, and as a species--we have to live in dynamic collaboration with the plant and animal kingdoms in a healthy, life-sustaining environment.

Before my first visit to Waorani territory, I was introduced to don Casimiro Mamallacta, a traditional Kichwa healer and family man living in the outskirts of the jungle town of Archidona, by his daughter Mercedes, whom I met at the Jatun Sacha biological station. During the years that I was collaborating on the demarcation effort and in between the work sessions, I lived with don Casimiro's family.

The transformation of a business-as-usual culture into one focused on innovation and driven by design involves activities, decisions, and attitudes. Workshops help expose people to design thinking as a new approach. Pilot projects help market the benefits of design thinking within the organization. Leadership focuses the program of change and gives people permission to learn and experiment. Assembling interdisciplinary teams ensures that the effort is broadly based. Dedicated spaces such as the P&G Innovation Gym provide a resource for longer-term thinking and ensure that the effort will be sustained. Measurement of impacts, both quantitative and qualitative, helps make the business case and ensures that resources are appropriately allocated. It may make sense to establish incentives for business units to collaborate in new ways so that younger talent sees innovation as a path to success rather than as a career risk.

Two all-important lessons of history stand clearly expressed in this our national Capitol. The first is that little of consequence is ever accomplished alone. High achievement is nearly always a joint effort, as has been shown again and again in these halls when the leaders of different parties, representatives from differing constituencies and differing points of view, have been able, for the good of the country, to put those differences aside and work together.

the default self. This self, one of many that makes up who you are, is focused on how you are distinct from others, independent, in control, and oriented toward competitive advantage. It has been amplified by the rise of individualism and materialism, and no doubt was less prominent during other time periods (e.g., in Indigenous cultures thousands of years ago). Today, this default self keeps you on track in achieving your goals and urges you to rise in the ranks in the world, all essential to your survival and thriving. When our default self reigns too strongly, though, and we are too focused on ourselves, anxiety, rumination, depression, and self-criticism can overtake us. An overactive default self can undermine the collaborative efforts and goodwill of our communities. Many of today’s social ills arise out of an overactive default self, augmented by self-obsessed digital technologies. Awe, it would seem, quiets this urgent voice of the default self.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY Before the 1857 uprising it was recognized that British rule in India could not be sustained without a large number of supporters and collaborators from within the Indian population. Recognizing this, it was influential men like Thomas Babbington Macaulay, who, as Chairman of the Education Board, sought to set up an educational system modeled after the British system, which, in the case of India, would serve to undermine the Hindu tradition. While not a missionary himself, Macaulay came from a deeply religious family steeped in the Protestant Christian faith. His father was a Presbyterian minister and his mother a Quaker. He believed that the conversion of Hindus to Christianity held the answer to the problems of administering India. His idea was to create a class of English educated elite that would repudiate its tradition and become British collaborators. In 1836, while serving as chairman of the Education Board in India, he enthusiastically wrote his father about his idea and how it was proceeding: “Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious... It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytise, without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project.

This state of affairs, which bodes ill for the future, causes Us great distress and anguish. But We cherish this hope: that distrust and selfishness among nations will eventually be overcome by a stronger desire for mutual collaboration and a heightened sense of solidarity. We hope that the developing nations will take advantage of their geographical proximity to one another to organize on a broader territorial base and to pool their efforts for the development of a given region. We hope that they will draw up joint programs, coordinate investment funds wisely, divide production quotas fairly, and exercise management over the marketing of these products. We also hope that multilateral and broad international associations will undertake the necessary work of organization to find ways of helping needy nations, so that these nations may escape from the fetters now binding them; so that they themselves may discover the road to cultural and social progress, while remaining faithful to the native genius of their land.

In knowledge work, when you agree to a new commitment, be it a minor task or a large project, it brings with it a certain amount of ongoing administrative overhead: back-and-forth email threads needed to gather information, for example, or meetings scheduled to synchronize with your collaborators. This overhead tax activates as soon as you take on a new responsibility. As your to-do list grows, so does the total amount of overhead tax you’re paying. Because the number of hours in the day is fixed, these administrative chores will take more and more time away from your core work, slowing down the rate at which these objectives are accomplished. At moderate workloads, this effect might be frustrating: a general sense that completing your work is taking longer than it should. As your workload increases, however, the overhead tax you’re paying will eventually pass a tipping point, beyond which logistical efforts will devour so much of your schedule that you cannot complete old tasks fast enough to keep up with the new. This feedback loop can quickly spiral out of control, pushing your workload higher and higher until you find yourself losing your entire day to overhead activities: meeting after meeting conducted against a background hum of unceasing email and chat. Eventually the only solution becomes to push actual work into ad hoc sessions added after hours—in the evenings and early mornings, or over the weekend—in a desperate attempt to avoid a full collapse of all useful output. You’re as busy as you’ve ever been, and yet hardly get anything done.

A lot of the credit, too, should go to Turing, for developing the concept of a universal computer and then being part of a hands-on team at Bletchley Park. How you rank the historic contributions of the others depends partly on the criteria you value. If you are enticed by the romance of lone inventors and care less about who most influenced the progress of the field, you might put Atanasoff and Zuse high. But the main lesson to draw from the birth of computers is that innovation is usually a group effort, involving collaboration between visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from drawing on many sources.

One of the best-known studies of availability suggests that awareness of your own biases can contribute to peace in marriages, and probably in other joint projects. In a famous study, spouses were asked, “How large was your personal contribution to keeping the place tidy, in percentages?” They also answered similar questions about “taking out the garbage,” “initiating social engagements,” etc. Would the self-estimated contributions add up to 100%, or more, or less? As expected, the self-assessed contributions added up to more than 100%. The explanation is a simple availability bias: both spouses remember their own individual efforts and contributions much more clearly than those of the other, and the difference in availability leads to a difference in judged frequency. The bias is not necessarily self-serving: spouses also overestimated their contribution to causing quarrels, although to a smaller contribution to causing quarrels, although to a smaller extent than their contributions to more desirable outcomes. The same bias contributes to the common observation that many members of a collaborative team feel they have done more than their share and also feel that the others are not adequately grateful for their individual contributions

The malicious erasure of women’s names from the historical record began two or three thousand years ago and continues into our own period. Women take as great a risk of anonymity when they merge their names with men in literary collaboration as when they merge in matrimony. The Lynds, for example, devoted equal time, thought, and effort to the writing of Middletown, but today it is Robert Lynd’s book. Dr. Mary Leakey made the important paleontological discoveries in Africa, but Dr. Louis Leakey gets all the credit. Mary Beard did a large part of the work on America in Midpassage, yet Charles Beard is the great social historian. The insidious process is now at work on Eve Curie. A recent book written for young people states that radium was discovered by Pierre Curie with the help of his assistant, Eve, who later became his wife. Aspasia wrote the famous oration to the Athenians, as Socrates knew, but in all the history books it is Pericles’ oration. Corinna taught Pindar and polished his poems for posterity; but who ever heard of Corinna? Peter Abelard got his best ideas from Heloise, his acknowledged intellectual superior, yet Abelard is the great medieval scholar and philosopher. Mary Sidney probably wrote Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia; Nausicaa wrote the Odyssey, as Samuel Butler proves in his book The Authoress of the Odyssey, at least to the satisfaction of this writer and of Robert Graves, who comment, “no other alternative makes much sense.

The focus of history and philosophy of science scholar Arthur Miller’s (2010) "137: Jung and Pauli and the Pursuit of Scientific Obsession" is Jung and Pauli’s mutual effort to discover the cosmic number or fine structure constant, which is a fundamental physical constant dealing with electromagnetism, or, from a different perspective, could be considered the philosopher’s stone of the mathematical universe. This was indeed one of Pauli and Jung’s collaborative passions, but it was not the only concentration of their relationship. Quantum physics could be seen as the natural progression from ancient alchemy, through chemistry, culminating in the abstract world of subatomic particles, wave functions, and mathematics. [Ancient Egypt and Modern Psychotherapy]

The scientific project starts by rejecting the fantasy of infallibility and proceeding to construct an information network that takes error to be inescapable. Sure, there is much talk about the genius of Copernicus, Darwin, and Einstein, but none of them is considered faultless. They all made mistakes, and even the most celebrated scientific tracts are sure to contain errors and lacunae. Since even geniuses suffer from confirmation bias, you cannot trust them to correct their own errors. Science is a team effort, relying on institutional collaboration rather than on individual scientists or, say, a single infallible book. Of course, institutions too are prone to error. Scientific institutions are nevertheless different from religious institutions, inasmuch as they reward skepticism and innovation rather than conformity. Scientific institutions are also different from conspiracy theories, inasmuch as they reward self-skepticism. Conspiracy theorists tend to be extremely skeptical regarding the existing consensus, but when it comes to their own beliefs, they lose all their skepticism and fall prey to confirmation bias. The trademark of science is not merely skepticism but self-skepticism, and at the heart of every scientific institution we find a strong self-correcting mechanism. Scientific institutions do reach a broad consensus about the accuracy of certain theories—such as quantum mechanics or the theory of evolution—but only because these theories have managed to survive intense efforts to disprove them, launched not only by outsiders but by members of the institution itself.

By looking after his relatives' interests as he did, Napoleon furthermore displayed incredible weakness on the purely human level. When a man occupies such a position, he should eliminate all his family feeling. Napoleon, on the contrary, placed his brothers and sisters in posts of command, and retained them in these posts even after they'd given proofs of their incapability. All that was necessary was to throw out all these patently incompetent relatives. Instead of that, he wore himself out with sending his brothers and sisters, regularly every month, letters containing reprimands and warnings, urging them to do this and not to do that, thinking he could remedy their incompetence by promising them money, or by threatening not to give them any more. Such illogical behaviour can be explained only by the feeling Corsicans have for their families, a feeling in which they resemble the Scots. By thus giving expression to his family feeling, Napoleon introduced a disruptive principle into his life. Nepotism, in fact, is the most formidable protection imaginable : the protection of the ego. But wherever it has appeared in the life of a State—the monarchies are the best proof—it has resulted in weakening and decay. Reason : it puts an end to the principle of effort. In this respect, Frederick the Great showed himself superior to Napoleon—Frederick who, at the most difficult moments of his life, and when he had to take the hardest decisions, never forgot that things are called upon to endure. In similar cases, Napoleon capitulated. It's therefore obvious that, to bring his life's work to a successful conclusion, Frederick the Great could always rely on sturdier collaborators than Napoleon could. When Napoleon set the interests of his family clique above all, Frederick the Great looked around him for men, and, at need, trained them himself. Despite all Napoleon's genius, Frederick the Great was the most outstanding man of the eighteenth century. When seeking to find a solution for essential problems concerning the conduct of affairs of State, he refrained from all illogicality. It must be recognised that in this field his father, Frederick-William, that buffalo of a man, had given him a solid and complete training. Peter the Great, too, clearly saw the necessity for eliminating the family spirit from public life. In a letter to his son—a letter I was re-reading recently—he informs him very clearly of his intention to disinherit him and exclude him from the succession to the throne. It would be too lamentable, he writes, to set one day at the head of Russia a son who does not prepare himself for State affairs with the utmost energy, who does not harden his will and strengthen himself physically. Setting the best man at the head of the State—that's the most difficult problem in the world to solve.

The key point here is Macaulay’s belief that “knowledge and reflection” on the part of the Hindus, especially the Brahmanas, would cause them to give up their age-old belief in anything Vedic in favor of Christianity. The purpose was to turn the strength of Hindu intellectuals against their own kind by utilizing their commitment to scholarship in uprooting their own tradition, which Macaulay viewed as nothing more than superstitions. His plan was to educate the Hindus to become Christians and turn them into collaborators. He persisted with this idea for fifteen years until he found the money and the right man for turning his utopian idea into reality. He needed someone who would translate and interpret the Vedic texts in such a way that the newly educated Indian elite would see the superiority of the Bible and choose that over everything else. Upon his return to England, after a good deal of effort he found a talented but impoverished young German Vedic scholar by name Friedrich Max Muller who was willing to take on the arduous job. Macaulay used his influence with the East India Company to find funds for Max Muller’s translation of the Rig Veda. Though an ardent German nationalist, Max Muller agreed for the sake of Christianity to work for the East India Company, which in reality meant the British Government of India. He also badly needed a major sponsor for his ambitious plans, which he felt he had at last found. The fact is that Max Muller was paid by the East India Company to further its colonial aims, and worked in cooperation with others who were motivated by the superiority of the German race through the white Aryan race theory. This was the genesis of his great enterprise, translating the Rig Veda with Sayana's commentary and the editing of the fifty-volume Sacred Books of the East. In this way, there can be no doubt regarding Max Muller’s initial aim and commitment to converting Indians to Christianity. Writing to his wife in 1866 he observed: “It [the Rig Veda] is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last three thousand years.” Two years later he also wrote the Duke of Argyle, then acting Secretary of State for India: “The ancient religion of India is doomed. And if Christianity does not take its place, whose fault will it be?” This makes it very clear that Max Muller was an agent of the British government paid to advance its colonial interests. Nonetheless, he still remained an ardent German nationalist even while working in England. This helps explain why he used his position as a recognized Vedic and Sanskrit scholar to promote the idea of the “Aryan race” and the “Aryan nation,” a theory amongst a certain class of so-called scholars, which has maintained its influence even until today.

In a famous study, spouses were asked, “How large was your personal contribution to keeping the place tidy, in percentages?” They also answered similar questions about “taking out the garbage,” “initiating social engagements,” etc. Would the self-estimated contributions add up to 100%, or more, or less? As expected, the self-assessed contributions added up to more than 100%. The explanation is a simple availability bias: both spouses remember their own individual efforts and contributions much more clearly than those of the other, and the difference in availability leads to a difference in judged frequency. The bias is not necessarily self-serving: spouses also overestimated their contribution to causing quarrels, although to a smaller extent than their contributions to more desirable outcomes. The same bias contributes to the common observation that many members of a collaborative team feel they have done more than their share and also feel that the others are not adequately grateful for their individual contributions.

The subtitle of this book is Spirituality and Strategies. In Reconciliation, I had proposed that reconciliation is more a spirituality than a strategy. It seemed to me that reconciliation had to be a way of living, had to relate to the profound spiritual issues that reconciliation raises and requires. To think of it only as strategy is to succumb to a kind of technical rationality that will succeed at best partially. Yet strategies cannot be dispensed with. Concrete experiences of struggling to achieve some measure of reconciliation require decisions, and those decisions must have some grounding. I still believe that reconciliation requires a certain spiritual orientation if it is to be successful. The challenge of reconciliation today is such that it requires an interreligious effort. Religious difference is sometimes the cause of social conflict; in all instances, religious people must find ways to work together to achieve reconciliation. What this book hopes to offer is the spirituality that will sustain Christians in their efforts to collaborate with others in that process.

If men brought their hearts together beyond a certain degree, if they were intent upon making their hearts one, did not a reaction set in after that brief fantasy had passed, a reaction that was more than simply alienation? Did it not inevitably provoke a betrayal that led to complete dissolution? Perhaps there was some unwritten law of human nature that clearly proscribed covenants among men. Had he impudently violated such a proscription? In ordinary human relationships, good and evil, trust and mistrust appear in impure form, mixed together in small portions. But when men gather together to form a group devoted to a purity not of this world, their evil may remain, purged from each member but coalesced to form a single pure crystal. Thus in the midst of a collection of pure white gems, perhaps it was inevitable that one gem black as pitch could also be found. If one took this concept a bit further, one encountered an extremely pessimistic line of thought: the substance of evil was to be found more in blood brotherhoods by their very nature than in betrayal. Betrayal was something that was derived from this evil, but the evil was rooted in the blood brotherhood itself. The purest evil that human efforts could attain, in other words, was probably achieved by those men who made their wills the same and who made their eyes see the world in the same way, men who went against the pattern of life’s diversity, men whose spirit shattered the natural wall of the individual body, making nothing of this barrier set up to guard against mutual corrosion, men whose spirit accomplished what flesh could never accomplish. Collaboration and cooperation were weak terms bound up with anthropology. But blood brotherhood . . . that was a matter of eagerly joining one’s spirit to the spirit of another. This in itself showed a bright scorn for the futile, laborious human process in which ontogeny was eternally recapitulating phylogeny, in which man forever tried to draw a bit closer to truth only to draw a bit closer to truth only to be frustrated by death, a process that had ever to begin again in the sleep within the amniotic fluid. By betraying this human condition the blood brotherhood tried to gain its purity, and thus it was perhaps but to be expected that it, in turn, should of its very nature incur its own betrayal. Such men had never respected humanity.

If men brought their hearts together beyond a certain degree, if they were intent upon making their hearts one, did not a reaction set in after that brief fantasy had passed, a reaction that was more than simply alienation? Did it not inevitably provoke a betrayal that led to complete dissolution? Perhaps there was some unwritten law of human nature that clearly proscribed covenants among men. Had he impudently violated such a proscription? In ordinary human relationships, good and evil, trust and mistrust appear in impure form, mixed together in small portions. But when men gather together to form a group devoted to a purity not of this world, their evil may remain, purged from each member but coalesced to form a single pure crystal. Thus in the midst of a collection of pure white gems, perhaps it was inevitable that one gem black as pitch could also be found. If one took this concept a bit further, one encountered an extremely pessimistic line of thought: the substance of evil was to be found more in blood brotherhoods by their very nature than in betrayal. Betrayal was something that was derived from this evil, but the evil was rooted in the blood brotherhood itself. The purest evil that human efforts could attain, in other words, was probably achieved by those men who made their wills the same and who made their eyes see the world in the same way, men who went against the pattern of life’s diversity, men whose spirit shattered the natural wall of the individual body, making nothing of this barrier set up to guard against mutual corrosion, men whose spirit accomplished what flesh could never accomplish. Collaboration and cooperation were weak terms bound up with anthropology. But blood brotherhood . . . that was a matter of eagerly joining one’s spirit to the spirit of another. This in itself showed a bright scorn for the futile, laborious human process in which ontogeny was eternally recapitulating phylogeny, in which man forever tried to draw a bit closer to truth only to be frustrated by death, a process that had ever to begin again in the sleep within the amniotic fluid. By betraying this human condition the blood brotherhood tried to gain its purity, and thus it was perhaps but to be expected that it, in turn, should of its very nature incur its own betrayal. Such men had never respected humanity.

This entails certain corollaries on which true individualism once more stands in sharp opposition to the false individualism of the rationalistic type. The first is that the deliberately organized state on the one side, and the individual on the other, far from being regarded as the only realities, which all the intermediate formations and associations are to be deliberately suppressed, as was the aim of the French Revolution, the noncompulsory conventions of social intercourse are considered as essential factors in preserving the orderly working in human society. The second is that the individual, in participating in the social processes, must be ready and willing to adjust himself to changes and to submit to conventions which are not the result of intelligent design, whose justification in the particular instance may be recognizable, and which to him will often appear unintelligible and irrational. I need not say much on the first point. That true individualism affirms the value of the family and all the common efforts of the small community and group, that it believes in local autonomy and voluntary associations, and that indeed its case rests largely on the contention that much for which the coercive action of the state is usually invoked can be done better by voluntary collaboration need not be stressed further. There can be no greater contrast to this than the false individualism which wants to dissolve all these smaller groups into atoms which have no cohesion other than the coercive rules imposed by the state, and which tries to make all social ties prescriptive, instead of using the state mainly as a protection of the individual against the arrogation of coercive powers by the small groups. Quite as important for the functioning of an individualist society as these smaller groupings of men are the traditions and conventions which evolve in a free society and which, without being enforceable, establish flexible but normally observed rules that make the behavior of other people predictable in a high degree. The willingness to submit to such rules, not merely so long as one understands the reason for them but so long as one has no definite reasons to the contrary, is an essential condition for the gradual evolution and improvement of the rules of social intercourse; and the readiness ordinarily to submit to the products of a social process which nobody may understand is also an indispensible condition if it is to be possible to dispense with compulsion. That the existence of common conventions and traditions among a group of people will enable them to work together smoothly and efficiently with much less formal organization and compulsion than a group without such common background, is of course, a commonplace. But the reverse of this, while less familiar, is probably not less true: that coercion can probably only be kept to a minimum in a society where conventions and traditions have made the behavior of man to a large extent predictable.

Not only was all this collaboration conducted with no transparency, but it contradicted public statements made by Skype. ACLU technology expert Chris Soghoian said the revelations would surprise many Skype customers. “In the past, Skype made affirmative promises to users about their inability to perform wiretaps,” he said. “It’s hard to square Microsoft’s secret collaboration with the NSA with its high-profile efforts to compete on privacy with Google.

According to Johnson, we should find ways to increase the density of ideas to which we are exposed and to increase our contact with creative people. We should foster serendipity—the random collision of ideas. We should increase our intersections with different communities, using real and virtual gathering places such as coffeehouses and social networks. We should encourage group and network collaboration as opposed to individual efforts. We should take on multiple hobbies. Each of these recommendations would strengthen our chances of making unexpected connections.

What to Do with Freed Capacity Freeing capacity is a vital way for labor-intensive organizations to increase the proportion of revenue to labor. The effort, though, should not result in layoffs. Rather, freeing capacity enables an organization to accomplish one or more of the following outcomes: Absorb additional work without increasing staff Reduce paid overtime Reduce temporary or contract staffing In-source work that’s currently outsourced Create better work/life balance by reducing hours worked Slow down and think Slow down and perform higher-quality work with less stress and higher safety Innovate; create new revenue streams Conduct continuous improvement activities Get to know your customers better (What do they really value?) Build stronger supplier relationships Coach staff to improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills Mentor staff to create career growth opportunities Provide cross-training to create greater organizational flexibility and enhance job satisfaction Do the things you haven’t been able to get to; get caught up Build stronger interdepartmental and interdivisional relationships to improve collaboration Reduce payroll through natural attrition

Indeed, as evidenced in a CIA memo contained in the 2017 released documents, Zahedi’s having been a Nazi collaborator was seen as an asset to the Americans. As the memo, detailing US assets in Iran, explains, “Associated with the Nazi efforts in Iran during World War II, he has long been firmly anti-Soviet. A pro-Western orientation is reflected in the education of his son in the U.S. and the activity of his son in the Point IV [Truman’s Cold War technical assistance plan to developing countries] in Iran….” The memo goes on to say that the CIA’s contacts in Iran believed Zahedi “to be the only military man on the scene who would stage a coup and follow it through with forcefulness.”20

While the seven essential elements are a distillation of what we did on an everyday basis, they represent long-term discovery too. An important aspect of this book is the way we built our creative methods as a by-product of the work as we were doing it. As all of us pitched in to make our products, we developed our approach to creating great software. This was an evolution, an outgrowth of our deliberate attention to the task at hand while keeping our end goal in mind. We never waited around for brilliant flashes of insight that might solve problems in one swoop, and we had few actual Eureka! moments. Even in the two instances in my Apple career when I did experience a breakthrough—more about these later—there certainly was no nude streaking across the Apple campus like Archimedes supposedly did. Instead, we moved forward, as a group, in stepwise fashion, from problem to design to demo to shipping product, taking each promising concept and trying to come up with ways to make it better. We mixed together our seven essential elements, and we formulated “molecules” out of them, like mixing inspiration and decisiveness to create initial prototypes, or by combining collaboration, craft, and taste to give detailed feedback to a teammate, or when we blended diligence and empathy in our constant effort to make software people could use without pulling their hair out. As we did all this mixing and combining of our seven essential elements, we always added in a personal touch, a little piece of ourselves, an octessence, and by putting together our goals and ideas and efforts and elements and molecules and personal touches, we formed our approach, an approach I call creative selection.

L’extrait du Journal de Gide n’est peut-être pas mauvais au point de vue de mes livres, mais il est vraiment terrible pour Gide lui-même, ou plus précisément pour son “intellectualité” ; du reste, malgré ce que semblait espérer Secrétant ! qui se trouvait à ce moment-là chez P. Georges, j’aurais été bien étonné que le résultat soit autre ; Gide paraît être de ces gens pour qui la question de la vérité des idées ne se pose même pas ! - Quant à ce M. Étiemble, je n’en avais jamais entendu parler, et je ne sais pas du tout à qui il a pu s’adresser pour tâcher de me trouver. J’ai eu seulement connaissance, dans le même ordre d’idées, des efforts qu’a faits F. Bonjean pour me rencontrer, d’abord en allant dans l’Inde, puis encore tout récemment en retournant au Maroc... Pour en revenir à Étiemble, je suis très heureux de ce que vous lui avez dit pour le décourager ; il faut en effet faire tout le possible pour empêcher ces “intrusions”, surtout du côté des écrivains et journalistes, indiscrets par profession, et qui au fond ne comprennent rien, ainsi que vous avez pu tout de suite vous en rendre compte dans ce cas ; vous pouvez penser comme je serais disposé à donner, à quelque titre que ce soit, ma collaboration à une “propagande” quelconque ! Si tout cela s’amplifie ces temps-ci comme vous le pensez, il va falloir que je prenne de mon côté plus de précautions que jamais pour éviter tout ce monde... lettre du 10 novembre 1945 à un correspondant inconnu

There’s a strong impulse in our culture to run away from these little corners. We’re told that society’s winners will be the thinkers who network, collaborate, create, and strategize in concert with others. Our kids are taught to study in groups, to execute projects as teams. Our workplaces have been stripped of walls so that the organization functions as a unit. The big tech companies also propel us to join the crowd—they provide us with the trending topics and their algorithms suggest that we read the same articles, tweets, and posts as the rest of the world. There’s no doubting the creative power of conversation, the intellectual potential of humbly learning from our peers, the necessity of groups working together to solve problems. Yet none of this should replace contemplation, moments of isolation, where the mind can follow its own course to its own conclusions. We read in our little corners, our beds and tubs and dens, because we have a sense that these are the places where we can think best. I have spent my life searching for an alternative. I will read in the café and on the subway, making a diligent, wholehearted effort to focus the mind. But it never entirely works. My mind can’t shake its awareness of the humans in the room.

Withorn asserted that the concept of professionalism itself was based on capitalist premises about work and social status. The “ideology of professionalization” (Wenocur & Reisch, 1983) led social workers to establish a form of monopoly control of the helping process and, inevitably, to hierarchical relationships between workers and clients and the rejection of collective forms of organization such as unions. Unionization of social workers had, in fact, slowed dramatically since the early 1970s. Radical social work unions had virtually disappeared since the early 1950s despite intermittent efforts of groups like RASSW and the Radical Social Work Collective in Philadelphia to organize them (Radical Social Work Collective, April 26,1978; RASSW, October 20,1979; Tambor, 1981, 1973). Calls by radical social workers to form or collaborate with unions continued to fall on deaf ears into the 1990s (Epstein, 1991).

As with Lawrence, these other competitors in the field tended to be young, wholly untrained for the missions they were given, and largely unsupervised. And just as with their more famous British counterpart, to capitalize on their extraordinary freedom of action, these men drew upon a very particular set of personality traits—cleverness, bravery, a talent for treachery—to both forge their own destiny and alter the course of history. Among them was a fallen American aristocrat in his twenties who, as the only American field intelligence officer in the Middle East during World War I, would strongly influence his nation’s postwar policy in the region, even as he remained on the payroll of Standard Oil of New York. There was the young German scholar who, donning the camouflage of Arab robes, would seek to foment an Islamic jihad against the Western colonial powers, and who would carry his “war by revolution” ideas into the Nazi era. Along with them was a Jewish scientist who, under the cover of working for the Ottoman government, would establish an elaborate anti-Ottoman spy ring and play a crucial role in creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. If little remembered today, these men shared something else with their British counterpart. Like Lawrence, they were not the senior generals who charted battlefield campaigns in the Middle East, nor the elder statesmen who drew lines on maps in the war’s aftermath. Instead, their roles were perhaps even more profound: it was they who created the conditions on the ground that brought those campaigns to fruition, who made those postwar policies and boundaries possible. History is always a collaborative effort, and in the case of World War I an effort that involved literally millions of players, but to a surprising degree, the subterranean and complex game these four men played, their hidden loyalties and personal duels, helped create the modern Middle East and, by inevitable extension, the world we live in today.

Research by Neilson, Martin, and Powers shows that execution exemplars focus their efforts on two levers far more powerful than structural change: • Clarifying decision rights—for instance, specifying who “owns” each decision and who must provide input • Ensuring information flows where it’s needed—such as promoting managers laterally so they build networks needed for the cross-unit collaboration critical to a new strategy Tackle decision rights and information flows first, and only then alter organizational structures and realign incentives to support those moves. Armed

One of the worst disconnects of a business software development effort is seen in the gap between domain experts and software developers. Generally speaking, true domain experts are focused on delivering business value. On the other hand, software developers are typically drawn to technology and technical solutions to business problems. It’s not that software developers have wrong motivations; it’s just what tends to grab their attention. Even when software developers engage with domain experts, the collaboration is largely at a surface level, and the software that gets developed often results in a translation/mapping between how the business thinks and operates and how the software developer interprets that. The resulting software generally does not reflect a recognizable realization of the mental model of the domain experts, or perhaps it does so only partially. Over time this disconnect becomes costly. The translation of domain knowledge into software is lost as developers transition to other projects or leave the company. A different, yet related problem is when one or more domain experts do not agree with each other. This tends to happen because each expert has more or less experience in the specific domain being modeled, or they are simply experts in related but different areas. It’s also common for multiple “domain experts” to have no expertise in a given domain, where they are more of a business analyst, yet they are expected to bring insightful direction to discussions. When this situation goes unchecked, it results in blurred rather than crisp mental models, which lead to conflicting software models. Worse still is when the technical approach to software development actually wrongly changes the way the business functions. While a different scenario, it is well known that enterprise resource planning (ERP) software will often change the overall business operations of an organization to fit the way the ERP functions. The total cost of owning the ERP cannot be fully calculated in terms of license and maintenance fees. The reorganization and disruption to the business can be far more costly than either of those two tangible factors. A similar dynamic is at play as your software development teams interpret what the business needs into what the newly developed software actually does. This can be both costly and disruptive to the business, its customers, and its partners. Furthermore, this technical interpretation is both unnecessary and avoidable with the use of proven software development techniques. The solution is a key investment.

By viewing others as collaborators and colleagues instead of competitors and by generously sharing their work, you can help expand interest in the topic and increase the reach of all your efforts.

Here are some other items you can include on your Project Completion Checklist. I encourage you to personalize it for your own needs: Answer postmortem questions: What did you learn? What did you do well? What could you have done better? What can you improve for next time? Communicate with stakeholders: Notify your manager, colleagues, clients, customers, shareholders, contractors, etc., that the project is complete and what the outcomes were. Evaluate success criteria: Were the objectives of the project achieved? Why or why not? What was the return on investment? Officially close out the project and celebrate: Send any last emails, invoices, receipts, feedback forms, or documents, and celebrate your accomplishments with your team or collaborators so you receive the feeling of fulfillment for all the effort you put in.

The reorganisation of the world has at first to be mainly the work of a "movement" or a Party or a religion or cult, whatever we choose to call it. We may call it New Liberalism or the New Radicalism or what not. It will not be a close-knit organisation, toeing the Party line and so forth. It may be a very loose-knit and many faceted, but if a sufficient number of minds throughout the world, irrespective of race, origin or economic and social habituations, can be brought to the free and candid recognition of the essentials of the human problem, then their effective collaboration in a conscious, explicit and open effort to reconstruct human society will ensue. And to begin with they will do all they can to spread and perfect this conception of a new world order, which they will regard as the only working frame for their activities, while at the same time they will set themselves to discover and associate with themselves, everyone, everywhere, who is intellectually able to grasp the same broad ideas and morally disposed to realise them. The distribution of this essential conception one may call propaganda, but in reality it is education. The opening phase of this new type of Revolution must involve therefore a campaign for re-invigorated and modernised education throughout the world, an education that will have the same ratio to the education of a couple of hundred years ago, as the electric lighting of a contemporary city has to the chandeliers and oil lamps of the same period. On its present mental levels humanity can do no better than what it is doing now. Vitalising education is only possible when it is under the influence of people who are themselves learning. It is inseparable from the modern idea of education that it should be knit up to incessant research. We say research rather than science. It is the better word because it is free from any suggestion of that finality which means dogmatism and death. All education tends to become stylistic and sterile unless it is kept in close touch with experimental verification and practical work, and consequently this new movement of revolutionary initiative, must at the same time be sustaining realistic political and social activities and working steadily for the collectivisation of governments and economic life. The intellectual movement will be only the initiatory and correlating part of the new revolutionary drive. These practical activities must be various. Everyone engaged in them must be thinking for himself and not waiting for orders. The only dictatorship he will recognise is the dictatorship of the plain understanding and the invincible fact. And if this culminating Revolution is to be accomplished, then the participation of every conceivable sort of human+being who has the mental grasp to see these broad realities of the world situation and the moral quality to do something about it, must be welcomed. Previous revolutionary thrusts have been vitiated by bad psychology. They have given great play to the gratification of the inferiority complexes that arise out of class disadvantages. It is no doubt very unjust that anyone should be better educated, healthier and less fearful of the world than anyone else, but that is no reason why the new Revolution should not make the fullest use of the health, education, vigour and courage of the fortunate. The Revolution we are contemplating will aim at abolishing the bitterness of frustration. But certainly it will do nothing to avenge it. Nothing whatever. Let the dead past punish its dead.

The value proposition is the articulation of the benefit that the collective effort of the ecosystem will create, and hence sets the direction of the activities and collaborations that follow.

June Brought, a leadership collaborator of mine, works in corporate wellness for the successful women’s clothing company Eileen Fisher. The company has flourished since its founding in 1984, currently earning revenue of more than $300 million a year. What truly sets the company apart, however, is its early adoption of conscious capitalism and a sincere desire to enhance the lives of all its stakeholders. Eileen Fisher was one of the first clothing companies that insisted on using sustainable materials such as organic cotton, and implemented programs to reduce fabric and fiber waste. Eileen Fisher’s philanthropic efforts focus on business leadership grants to develop and benefit the careers of young women around the world. The company is also committed to enhancing the well-being of its own employees at every level, which is why June was hired. According to June, “Eileen Fisher is not just another company that claims to care about the well-being of its employees but really only cares about how they can contribute to the well-being of the bottom line. Eileen Fisher truly is concerned with its staff as human beings first.” One of the tools June uses to help individuals at Eileen Fisher and elsewhere find a healthy balance between life and work involves what she calls “completing your own circuit.” She believes it is essential that we plug into our own beings first in order to feel empowered, fulfilled, and complete. As June explains, when we outsource our power to a job, a romantic relationship, or any external condition, “we compromise our emotional welfare and risk having someone cut off our power.” She says that completing our own circuit involves a deep internal knowing that “we are fully charged and complete unto ourselves without any need for outside support or validation.

In a math department that thrived on its collective intelligence—where members of the staff were encouraged to work on papers together rather than alone—this set him apart. But in some respects his solitude was interesting, too, for it had become a matter of some consideration at the Labs whether the key to invention was a matter of individual genius or collaboration. To those trying to routinize the process of innovation—the lifelong goal of Mervin Kelly, the Labs’ leader—there was evidence both for and against the primacy of the group. So many of the wartime and postwar breakthroughs—the Manhattan Project, radar, the transistor—were clearly group efforts, a compilation of the ideas and inventions of individuals bound together with common purposes and complementary talents.

Student success, and the success of the American k-12 education system, will be based on collaborative and cooperative efforts by all stakeholders....

The Ticklish Subject shows how today, in spite of the decline of the paternal metaphor and the inefficacy of ethical-political principles, global capitalist relations of production actually structure an ever more prohibitive and homogenized social reality: The true horror lies not in the particular content hidden beneath the universality of global Capital but, rather, in the fact that Capital is effectively an anonymous global machine blindly running its course; that there is in fact no particular Secret Agent animating it. The horror is not the (particular living) ghost in the (dead universal) machine, but the (dead universal) machine in the very heart of each (particular living) ghost. The conclusion to be drawn is thus that the problematic of multiculturalism (the hybrid coexistence of diverse cultural life-worlds) which imposes itself today is the form of appearance of its opposite, of the massive presence of capitalism as global world system: it bears witness to the unprecedented homogenization of today’s world. (Ticklish, p. 218) Multiculturalism – as well as postmodern efforts to reduce truth to “narratives” or “solidarity of belief” – simply further the interests of global capital. Žižek notes wryly that liberal pseudo-leftists really know all of this, but the problem is that they want to maintain their relatively comfortable lifestyles (bought at the expense of suffering in the Third World), and meanwhile to maintain the pose of revolutionary “beautiful souls.” Postmodern “post-politics” replaces the recognition of global ideological divisions with an emphasis on the collaboration of enlightened experts, technocrats, and specialists who negotiate to reach compromises. Such pragmatic “administration of social matters” accepts in advance the very global capitalist framework that determines the profitability of the compromise (Ticklish, p. 199). This suspension of the space for authentic politics leads to what Žižek calls “postmodern racism,” which ignores the universal rights of the political subject, proliferates divisions along cultural lines, and prevents the working class from politicizing its predicament. Even more seriously, according to Žižek, post-politics no longer merely represses the political, but forecloses it. Thus instead of violence as the neurotic “return of the repressed,” we see signs of a new kind of irrational and excessive violence. This new manifestation of violence results from the (psychotic) foreclosure of the Name of the Father that leads to a “return in the Real.” This violence is thus akin to the psychotic passage a l’acte: “a cruelty whose manifestations range from ‘fundamentalist’ racist and/or religious slaughter to the ‘senseless’ outbursts of violence by adolescents and the homeless in our megalopolises, a violence one is tempted to call Id-Evil, a violence grounded in no utilitarian or ideological reason” (Ticklish, p. 198). Where then, is the power to combat such foreclosure? The Ticklish Subject shows that the subversive power of subjectivity arises only when the subject annuls himself as subject: the acknowledgment of the integral division or gap in subjectivity allows the move from subjection to subjective destitution. Insofar as the subject concedes to the inherent failure of symbolic practices, he no longer presupposes himself as a unified subject. He acknowledges the nonexistence of the symbolic big Other and the monstrosity of the Real. Such acceptance involves the full assertion – rather than the effacement – of the gap between the Real and its symbolization. In contrast to the artificial object character of the imaginary capitalist ego, The Ticklish Subject discloses the “empty place” of the subject as a purely structural function, and shows that this functioning emerges only as the withdrawal from one’s substantial identity, as the disintegration of the “self” that is situated and defined within a communal universe of meaning.

These days, writing is a team effort. The traditional image of a writer is of a rather solitary figure, but the reality is that technical writing is now often a highly collaborative process. Don’t be surprised if you end up more in the role of an editor rather than a writer – collating, assembling and editing chunks of documentation from subject matter experts into a coherent whole. That’s fine – you’re writing a technical document, not a novel!

WORK TOGETHER TO ALIGN EMPLOYEE, MANAGER, AND COMPANY. Once everyone’s values and aspirations have been articulated, all parties should work together to strengthen the alignment between them. This is a collaborative rather than top-down effort. It’s not just a job for you, but for the employee as well. The good news is, working together on this can actually help build the long-term relationship.

The apostolic teams were “on call,” praying, corresponding, and sending people to serve the needs of God’s people. The apostolic team’s ongoing commitment was to complete whatever was lacking among the local bodies. They helped believers break open the natural opportunities that surrounded them. The local believers strengthened the apostolic effort by supplying people, funds, and hospitality. They collaborated in prayer. The two were interdependent, yet neither attempted to own or to control the other. The authority on either side was earned and voluntary, the product of mutual trust and commitment. Sometimes there were tensions and conflicts between the two. But much of the gospel’s expansion in New Testament times has to be attributed to the cooperation of these two expressions of God’s people.

When Bouchard’s twin-processing operation was in full swing, he amassed a staff of eighteen—psychologists, psychiatrists, ophthalmologists, cardiologists, pathologists, geneticists, even dentists. Several of his collaborators were highly distinguished: David Lykken was a widely recognized expert on personality, and Auke Tellegen, a Dutch psychologist on the Minnesota faculty, was an expert on personality measuring. In scheduling his twin-evaluations, Bouchard tried limiting the testing to one pair of twins at a time so that he and his colleagues could devote the entire week—with a grueling fifty hours of tests—to two genetically identical individuals. Because it is not a simple matter to determine zygosity—that is, whether twins are identical or fraternal—this was always the first item of business. It was done primarily by comparing blood samples, fingerprint ridge counts, electrocardiograms, and brain waves. As much background information as possible was collected from oral histories and, when possible, from interviews with relatives and spouses. I.Q. was tested with three different instruments: the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, a Raven, Mill-Hill composite test, and the first principal components of two multiple abilities batteries. The Minnesota team also administered four personality inventories (lengthy questionnaires aimed at characterizing and measuring personality traits) and three tests of occupational interests. In all the many personality facets so laboriously measured, the Minnesota team was looking for degrees of concordance and degrees of difference between the separated twins. If there was no connection between the mean scores of all twins sets on a series of related tests—I.Q. tests, for instance—the concordance figure would be zero percent. If the scores of every twin matched his or her twin exactly, the concordance figure would be 100 percent. Statistically, any concordance above 30 percent was considered significant, or rather indicated the presence of some degree of genetic influence. As the week of testing progressed, the twins were wired with electrodes, X-rayed, run on treadmills, hooked up for twenty-four hours with monitoring devices. They were videotaped and a series of questionnaires and interviews elicited their family backgrounds, educations, sexual histories, major life events, and they were assessed for psychiatric problems such as phobias and anxieties. An effort was made to avoid adding questions to the tests once the program was under way because that meant tampering with someone else’s test; it also would necessitate returning to the twins already tested with more questions. But the researchers were tempted. In interviews, a few traits not on the tests appeared similar in enough twin pairs to raise suspicions of a genetic component. One of these was religiosity. The twins might follow different faiths, but if one was religious, his or her twin more often than not was religious as well. Conversely, when one was a nonbeliever, the other generally was too. Because this discovery was considered too intriguing to pass by, an entire additional test was added, an existing instrument that included questions relating to spiritual beliefs. Bouchard would later insist that while he and his colleagues had fully expected to find traits with a high degree of heritability, they also expected to find traits that had no genetic component. He was certain, he says, that they would find some traits that proved to be purely environmental. They were astonished when they did not. While the degree of heritability varied widely—from the low thirties to the high seventies— every trait they measured showed at least some degree of genetic influence. Many showed a lot.

To write the history of neighborhood strife during this period of time without describing the efforts of people like Louis Wirth and his collaboration with the psychological warfare establishment during World War II, or the American Friends Service Committee and their work in both Philadelphia and Chicago, or Paul YIvisaker and his creation of the Gray Areas grants for the Ford Foundation and their subsequent takeover by a quintessential establishment figure like McGeorge Bundy, or Leon Sullivan, one of the players created by the Ford Foundation, and his collaboration with Robert Weaver while head of the Federal Housing Administration, is to tell less than half of the story. It is to do a remake of King Kong without the gorilla. It is also a bad example of whiggish history, a genre depressingly familiar to anyone who has done any reading in the conventional accounts of the sexual revolution and the civil rights movement, where effects have no causes and actual people making actual decisions in actual rooms are replaced by broad historical forces and Enlightenment melodramas like the triumph of liberation over bondage and light over darkness.

Although no man can know everything, everyone ought nevertheless to work with a view of enriching the common treasury of knowledge, and in the degree to which he is conscious of this collaboration, the result of his effort will endure and be useful.

We believed others would likely follow if they stepped up as leaders of a collaborative effort to save the stricken bank.

This compulsive propensity to accumulate material without regard to its relevancy would reach its zenith with yet another collaborative effort.

In all but the smallest endeavors, a leader’s primary contribution is not doing the work required to achieve the goal. Instead, they are responsible for everything required to enable that work to be done easily and well. This is achieved through the social circuitry by which people’s collaborative efforts are easily coordinated and integrated.

P4 - The good news is that there is at least one emerging technology out there that is looking mighty promising right now: it’s called helium persufflation, and I’m currently orchestrating the funding of the most critical research into making it work. Over the course of 2023 LEV Foundation has coordinated an effort, conceived by Martin O’Dea and Dr. Aubrey de Grey, to lay to rest the lamentable opinion that aging, along with the disease and death it brings, is inevitable - and by extension, that attempts to combat it are unworthy of serious recognition or support. We assert instead that an immediate expansion of work to extend healthy lifespans is not only credible, but indeed crucial to the quality of our collective future. In collaboration with primary author Professor Brian Kennedy, with input and enthusiastic endorsement from iconic researchers and leaders across the field of longevity medicine and allied fields, we are now able to publish the result of that effort - the Dublin Longevity Declaration: Consensus Recommendation to Immediately Expand Research on Extending Healthy Human Lifespans. Whatever your background, we encourage everyone who reads the Declaration and agrees with its message to add your signature, and encourage your friends and colleagues to consider doing the same: www. dublinlongevitydeclaration. org More on all of this here: www. quora. com/profile/Aubrey-de-Grey/answers

Which company is best for using construction Project work? The Shree Siva Balaaji Steels project is a significant endeavor that encompasses the establishment and operation of a modern and advanced steel manufacturing facility. This project represents a fusion of innovation, cutting-edge technology, and industrial expertise, aimed at delivering high-quality steel products to meet the growing demands of various sectors. Key Features: State-of-the-Art Manufacturing Plant: The project involves the construction and operation of a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant equipped with the latest machinery, automation systems, and environmentally friendly processes. This allows for efficient production and reduced environmental impact. Diverse Product Range: Shree Siva Balaaji Steels aims to offer a diverse range of steel products to cater to different industries such as construction, automotive, infrastructure, and manufacturing. This versatility enables the company to meet the varying needs of clients and partners. Quality Assurance: A cornerstone of the project is its commitment to delivering high-quality steel products. The facility adheres to strict quality control measures and follows international standards to ensure that the end products are durable, reliable, and meet or exceed industry specifications. Sustainability Focus: The project places a strong emphasis on sustainability and environmentally conscious practices. Energy-efficient processes, recycling initiatives, and waste reduction strategies are integrated into the manufacturing process to minimize the ecological footprint. Employment Opportunities: Shree Siva Balaaji Steels contributes to local economies by creating employment opportunities across various skill levels, from skilled labor to technical experts. This helps stimulate economic growth in the region surrounding the manufacturing facility. Collaboration and Partnerships: The project fosters collaborations with suppliers, distributors, and clients, establishing strong relationships within the steel industry. This network facilitates efficient supply chain management and enables the company to provide tailored solutions to its customers. Innovation and Research: The project invests in research and development to constantly improve manufacturing processes, product quality, and the development of new steel products. This dedication to innovation positions the company at the forefront of the steel industry. Community Engagement: Shree Siva Balaaji Steels is committed to engaging with local communities and implementing corporate social responsibility initiatives. These efforts include supporting education, healthcare, and other community-centric projects, fostering goodwill and positive impact. Vision: The Shree Siva Balaaji Steels project envisions becoming a leading name in the steel manufacturing sector, renowned for its exceptional quality, technological innovation, and sustainability practices. By adhering to its core values of integrity, excellence, and environmental responsibility, the project strives to contribute positively to the industry and the communities it operates within.

The coffee he made was like a collaborative effort with people around him. A flavour unique to him, and the folks at Goat Beans and the bookshop. With good vibes coming together, there was no way the coffee would turn out bad.

Pooled interdependence is least demanding. That’s when organizations combine, or “roll up,” the separate and independent efforts of people or parts. They have little need—or it is impossible—for them to communicate or collaborate. Think of the team gymnastics competition at the Olympics. Teammates give one another advice and support. But team performance is based solely on adding up individual scores on the floor exercise, parallel bars, and such.

Some populist movements claim adherence to the ideals of modern science and to the traditions of skeptical empiricism. They tell people that indeed you should never trust any institutions or figures of authority—including self-proclaimed populist parties and politicians. Instead, you should “do your own research” and trust only what you can directly observe by yourself. This radical empiricist position implies that while large-scale institutions like political parties, courts, newspapers, and universities can never be trusted, individuals who make the effort can still find the truth by themselves. This approach may sound scientific and may appeal to free-spirited individuals, but it leaves open the question of how human communities can cooperate to build health-care systems or pass environmental regulations, which demand large-scale institutional organization. Is a single individual capable of doing all the necessary research to decide whether the earth’s climate is heating up and what should be done about it? How would a single person go about collecting climate data from throughout the world, not to mention obtaining reliable records from past centuries? Trusting only “my own research” may sound scientific, but in practice it amounts to believing that there is no objective truth. As we shall see in chapter 4, science is a collaborative institutional effort rather than a personal quest.

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I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual. Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners. (I’m talking about all ideas here—artistic, scientific, industrial, commercial, ethical, religious, political.) When an idea thinks it has found somebody—say, you—who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention. Mostly, you will not notice. This is likely because you’re so consumed by your own dramas, anxieties, distractions, insecurities, and duties that you aren’t receptive to inspiration. You might miss the signal because you’re watching TV, or shopping, or brooding over how angry you are at somebody, or pondering your failures and mistakes, or just generally really busy. The idea will try to wave you

In view of the cataclysmic changes that followed, it is significant that the initiative in bringing about the release of nuclear energy, the central event in the recrudescence of the megamachine in modern form, was taken, not by the central government, but by a small group of physicists. Not less significant is the fact that these advocates of nuclear power were themselves unusually humane and morally sensitive people, notably, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Harold Urey. These were the last scientists one would accuse of seeking to establish a new priesthood capable of assuming autocratic authority and wielding satanic power. Those unpleasant characteristics, which have become all too evident in later collaborators and successors, were derived from the new instruments commanded by the megamachine and the dehumanized concepts that were rapidly incorporated in its whole working program. As for the initiators of the atom bomb, it was their innocence that concealed from them, at least in the initial stages, the dreadful ultimate consequences of their effort.

In hunting and agriculture work had been a sacred function, one of collaborating with the forces of nature, and invoking the gods of fertility and organic abundance to countenance with their favor the efforts of the human community: pious exaltation and cosmic wonder mingled with strenuous muscular exercise and meticulous ritual. But for those who were drafted into the megamachine, work ceased to be a sacred function, willingly performed, with many pleasurable rewards in both the act and its fruition: it became a curse.

My main work is to clear out debris and clutter, making room for My Spirit to take full possession. Collaborate with Me in this effort by being willing to let go of anything I choose to take away. I know what you need, and I have promised to provide all of that—abundantly!

That's why I'm a proponent of collaboration. It's not because working together feels good. If it felt good and the results were mediocre, then collaboration wouldn’t be worth the effort. Collaboration is valuable because it helps us transcend our individual limits and create something greater than ourselves.

Without an innovation strategy, innovation improvement efforts can easily become a grab bag of much-touted best practices: dividing R&D into decentralized autonomous teams, spawning internal entrepreneurial ventures, setting up corporate venture-capital arms, pursuing external alliances, embracing open innovation and crowdsourcing, collaborating with customers, and implementing rapid prototyping, to name just a few. There is nothing wrong with any of those practices per se. The problem is that an organization’s capacity for innovation stems from an innovation system : a coherent set of interdependent processes and structures that dictates how the company searches for novel problems and solutions, synthesizes ideas into a business concept and product designs, and selects which projects get funded.

First, a school with a strong, shared sense of mission is more likely to initiate improvement efforts. Second, norms of collegiality are related to collaborative planning and effective decision making. Third, cultures with a strong dedication to improvement are more likely to implement complex new instructional strategies. Finally, schools improve best when small successes are recognized and celebrated through shared ceremonies commemorating both individual and group contributions (Louis, 1994; Fullan, 1998; Abplanalp, 2008).

Once we understand Hillary as single-mindedly pursuing her own interest and financial gain, we can for the first time make sense of recent Clinton scandals. Consider the email scandal. What we know is that Hillary created and maintained an entirely private email server, insulated from her State Department requirements. This took great effort and required the collaboration of a whole team of aides as well as State Department bureaucrats. Why did Hillary do this? Her official explanation is convenience. Hillary simply wanted to get things done, and she was a little careless about how she went about doing them. She claims she got into all this trouble because she didn’t want to have to carry two phones.1 But setting up a parallel email system is actually very inconvenient. Far from being careless, Hillary was careful to do it in a manner that would allow her to carry on private communications that would not show up on an official network, rendering the Freedom of Information Act useless. By doing this, in essence she stole the people’s property. Sending classified and secret information through a private network is not merely harmful to the national security; it is also illegal. Former CIA director John Deutch, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, and General David Petraeus were all punished for doing it. Their offenses pale before Hillary’s. Moreover, Hillary, in the middle of a government investigation, went through her private emails, deleting thousands of them that she didn’t want the government or the public to see. Normal people who do such things end up in prison. Hillary, clearly, sees herself as politically protected by the Obama gang. She acts like she’s above the law, and so far she has been proven correct.

We’re getting to the point where the very sight of a straight, white male is an affront. They even have a term for us average folks: “cis”—as in “cisgender.” I’m not sure whether we’re supposed to think being “cis” a good thing or a bad thing. But what else do we expect from an educational system that subverts competition, champions unrealistic levels of collaboration, and neuters male behavior in a constant effort to “feminize” boys and men?

CHAPTER FIVE Collateral Damage “In an ordinary war, we differentiate between combatants and civilians. Not everyone is part of a nation’s army. But what about a corporation? Surely security and fleet forces are combatants in the traditional sense. Are executives valid targets? Paying taxes is generally compulsory for a nation’s citizens, but are shareholders equally detached from a military effort? Are they collaborators? Where does one draw the lines, or are there any?

A Hard Left For High-School History The College Board version of our national story BY STANLEY KURTZ | 1215 words AT the height of the “culture wars” of the late 1980s and early 1990s, conservatives were alive to the dangers of a leftist takeover of American higher education. Today, with the coup all but complete, conservatives take the loss of the academy for granted and largely ignore it. Meanwhile, America’s college-educated Millennial generation drifts ever farther leftward. Now, however, an ambitious attempt to force a leftist tilt onto high-school U.S.-history courses has the potential to shake conservatives out of their lethargy, pulling them back into the education wars, perhaps to retake some lost ground. The College Board, the private company that develops the SAT and Advanced Placement (AP) exams, recently ignited a firestorm by releasing, with little public notice, a lengthy, highly directive, and radically revisionist “framework” for teaching AP U.S. history. The new framework replaces brief guidelines that once allowed states, school districts, and teachers to present U.S. history as they saw fit. The College Board has promised to generate detailed guidelines for the entire range of AP courses (including government and politics, world history, and European history), and in doing so it has effectively set itself up as a national school board. Dictating curricula for its AP courses allows the College Board to circumvent state standards, virtually nationalizing America’s high schools, in violation of cherished principles of local control. Unchecked, this will result in a high-school curriculum every bit as biased and politicized as the curriculum now dominant in America’s colleges. Not coincidentally, David Coleman, the new head of the College Board, is also the architect of the Common Core, another effort to effectively nationalize American K–12 education, focusing on English and math skills. As president of the College Board, Coleman has found a way to take control of history, social studies, and civics as well, pushing them far to the left without exposing himself to direct public accountability. Although the College Board has steadfastly denied that its new AP U.S. history (APUSH) guidelines are politically biased, the intellectual background of the effort indicates otherwise. The early stages of the APUSH redesign overlapped with a collaborative venture between the College Board and the Organization of American Historians to rework U.S.-history survey courses along “internationalist” lines. The goal was to undercut anything that smacked of American exceptionalism, the notion that, as a nation uniquely constituted around principles of liberty and equality, America stands as a model of self-government for the world. Accordingly, the College Board’s new framework for AP U.S. history eliminates the traditional emphasis on Puritan leader John Winthrop’s “City upon a Hill” sermon and its echoes in American history. The Founding itself is demoted and dissolved within a broader focus on transcontinental developments, chiefly the birth of an exploitative international capitalism grounded in the slave trade. The Founders’ commitment to republican principles is dismissed as evidence of a benighted belief in European cultural superiority. Thomas Bender, the NYU historian who leads the Organization of American Historians’ effort to globalize and denationalize American history, collaborated with the high-school and college teachers who eventually came to lead the College Board’s APUSH redesign effort. Bender frames his movement as a counterpoint to the exceptionalist perspective that dominated American foreign policy during the George W. Bush ad ministration. Bender also openly hopes that students exposed to his approach will sympathize with Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s willingness to use foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution rather than with Justice Antonin Scalia�

Hoshin Kanri Business Methodology The balanced scorecard had its origins in Hoshin Kanri, so it is appropriate to examine this business methodology. As I understand it, translated, the term means a business methodology for direction and alignment. This approach was developed in a complex Japanese multinational where it is necessary to achieve an organization-wide collaborative effort in key areas. One tenet behind Hoshin Kanri is that all employees should incorporate into their daily routines a contribution to the key corporate objectives. In other words, staff members need to be made aware of the critical success factors and then prioritize their daily activities to maximize their positive contribution in these areas.

Mr. Alexander Graham Bell claims to have invented [photophone transmitter], though really it was created through a collaborative effort with Mr. Charles Sumner Tainter. In all honesty,” she said, “a great inventor needs a healthy amount of conceit. Mr. Bell and, fellow inventor, Mr. Edison would declare they’d created the moon and the tides between them if they could get away with the claim.

The over-reliance on high-stakes standardized testing in state and federal accountability systems is undermining educational quality and equity in U.S. public schools by hampering educators’ efforts to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that promote the innovation, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and deep subject-matter knowledge that will allow students to thrive in a democracy and an increasingly global society and economy,” the organization states.5

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Tool 1: Evernote I’ve already mentioned Evernote, but it’s worth bringing up again. I use Evernote as my personal “ubiquitous idea capture device.” Not only is it good for recording messages and ideas, it also fully syncs between mobile and desktop devices. This means I can record an idea in my car and have it accessible when I’m in front of my computer. How is Evernote helpful for streamlining your inbox efforts? It can handle email services, collaboration ideas, reminders and anything that might be important for your job. If you’re running errands and suddenly remember that you have to email someone, then you can create an “Email Reminders” folder on Evernote and have the list ready to go when processing your inbox. Tool 2: Sanebox    Sanebox is a third-party program that works with all email clients. Its purpose is to only allow important messages to show up in your inbox. The rest are sent to a separate folder. Then at the end of the day (or a time that you specify), it will send you a message that contains everything in the “separate” folder. The main point behind this tool is to rate the emails you receive based on your personal reads, replies and when you mark things “up” as important. Therefore, the more you use the system, the more accurate it becomes.

Managing up requires the mentee to take responsibility for his or her part in the collaborative alliance and to be the leader of the relationship by guiding and facilitating the mentor’s efforts to create a satisfying and productive relationship for both parties

the school leadership team should specifically: • Build consensus for the school’s mission of collective responsibility • Create a master schedule that provides sufficient time for team collaboration, core instruction, supplemental interventions, and intensive interventions • Coordinate schoolwide human resources to best support core instruction and interventions, including the site counselor, psychologist, speech and language pathologist, special education teacher, librarian, health services, subject specialists, instructional aides, and other classified staff • Allocate the school’s fiscal resources to best support core instruction and interventions, including school categorical funding • Assist with articulating essential learning outcomes across grade levels and subjects • Lead the school’s universal screening efforts to identify students in need of Tier 3 intensive interventions before they fail • Lead the school’s efforts at Tier 1 for schoolwide behavior expectations, including attendance policies and awards and recognitions (the team may create a separate behavior team to oversee these behavioral policies) • Ensure that all students have access to grade-level core instruction • Ensure that sufficient, effective resources are available to provide Tier 2 interventions for students in need of supplemental support in motivation, attendance, and behavior • Ensure that sufficient, effective resources are available to provide Tier 3 interventions for students in need of intensive support in the universal skills of reading, writing, number sense, English language, motivation, attendance, and behavior • Continually monitor schoolwide evidence of student learning

Today’s collaborative efforts often are negotiations rather than new creations born out of what has most heart and most meaning. To practice courageous collaboration is to commit ourselves to something that is worthy of our whole selves. And, we invite others to show up in the same way. From that new place different possibilities emerge.

The power of proximity—spending time side-by-side—had pulled us all to compromise in our efforts to help these children. Relationships matter: the currency for systemic change was trust, and trust comes through forming healthy working relationships. People, not programs, change people. The cooperation, respect and collaboration we experienced gave us hope that we could make a difference, even though the raids themselves had ended in such catastrophe.

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