Working collaboratively during COVID-19

Eradication or controlled suppression of COVID-19 is the difficult choice facing Australia right now. Almost 100 researchers have been tasked with analysing the consequences of the options of maintaining restrictions and eradicating COVID-19, or easing restrictions and letting the disease run.

Working collaboratively during COVID-19 by Jennifer Burrows

Eradication or controlled suppression of COVID-19 is the difficult choice facing Australia right now. The Weekend Australian (April 18 2020) described a project being undertaken by almost 100 researchers from Australia’s Group of Eight universities who have been tasked by the government with analysing the consequences of the options of maintaining restrictions and eradicating COVID-19, or easing restrictions and letting the disease run.

Working collaboratively during COVID-19

An innovative process was used to create the draft report, called the Roadmap to Recovery, within a two-week timeline. The members were asked to work anonymously using pseudonyms so ideas were judged on merit and not impacted by reputation or hierarchy, which encouraged risk-taking and honest debate. The participants included established academics and also talented early career researchers and PhD students which supported a diversity of opinion and a variety of thinking. The members were drawn from a wide range of disciplines including medicine, epidemiology, health sciences, economics, psychology, political science, education, and other social sciences.

The problem was split up into 10 interrelated questions flowing from the first: which model should Australia follow, eradication or controlled suppression of COVID-19? A specialist software platform supported members to work collectively on the questions and used “collaborative reasoning” techniques to come to a consensus view and produce a short report from a complex collection of information. No one was nominated to be a leader or told what part of the problem to focus on. The developing work was available to all members so they could comment on drafts, rate the readiness of completed work, offer assistance and invite co-authors. This group-sourced intelligence encouraged contending analysis and a better product.

This process is a remarkable shift from the usual way of working in traditional academia, which is often slow, individualistic, and hierarchical. It is an example of collaborative thinking being used to address the collective need, which is being practised at macro and micro levels as a response to the pandemic.

At the macro level, it is seen in the sharing of data and breakthroughs by scientists working across the world to find ways to fight the virus, in Germany taking France’s most critical patients, and in the establishment of the Australian National Cabinet. At the micro level it is found in communities (physical and virtual) connecting to share and support each other through the crisis, the level of compliance with social distancing to protect the most vulnerable, and people reaching out to help family, friends and neighbours.

With collaborative thinking to respond to the collective need being widely practised, and the benefits experienced by so many of us, what might we learn about this way of working that we might continue to use in our families, community, workplace and globally? The Roadmap to Recovery project contained a clear purpose, task and timeline, merit-based recognition, a diversity of thinking and tolerance for difference of opinion, self-management and emergent leadership, transparency of the developing product and an emphasis on both the individual and collaborative contribution.

Could the Roadmap to Recovery project be an example of being able to find a balance of both the individual and the collective engagement, so they can be integrated to produce a unique solution? The contribution required of the individual is their expertise, the ongoing finding of their role in the project and the ability to offer leadership as required, their willingness to share resources and the vulnerability of making draft work visible and welcoming feedback. The value of the collective is in the diversity of contribution, thinking and the clash and building of ideas leading to a co-created outcome. The shared purpose, held by all, for a collective benefit provides the glue to unite the members in the face of the inevitable challenges of working in this way.

My hope is that having practised this way of working and experienced the benefits of it we will not return completely to our old ways of working after the crisis but will endeavour to bring the experience of collaborative thinking and a collective perspective to our future relationships, leadership and work.

Jennifer Burrows

Jennifer Burrows
Symposium Committee Member, NIODA

24 April 2020

Working collaboratively during COVID-19

ps Leaders and managers are invited to think deeply about working collaboratively into the future at the 2020 symposium: Working into the Future: Building Individual and Organisations Culture Beyond 2020

Working collaboratively during COVID-19 by Jennifer Burrows

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