What's gonna work? Teeeeeamwork!

Apologies to those who aren't fans of Wonderpets for the title of this week's column. Today is all about collaboration. It is great when it's great but it has a few pitfalls to steer around. At it's best, there is nothing finer and I'm enjoying the benefits of such a project that I'm very, very pleased to announce...

I’m a big fan of a quote from Henry Ford that I learned by playing Civilization V: “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.” It’s a philosophy I try to apply to many areas of my life these days. When a task seems too big, it is likely an illusion I’m creating in my head. Breaking it down into smaller chunks helps dispel that illusion and make the task easier to wrap my brain around.

But I also love bringing to bear another old saying: “Many hands make light work.” I’m naturally a very social person and I have lots of friends. I absolutely enjoy helping them and I’m honored when they offer to help me in return. Those small jobs that Mr. Ford talks about become even easier when you don’t have to do all of them yourself.

The right person doing the right job is a powerful thing. It’s so vastly more efficient than the wrong person tackling something they detest. Jobs we don’t want to do, attempting things we find difficult, confusing, or frustrating, take us a lot longer and produce tons of stress. That kind of thing leads to burnout and stagnation.

The answer to this problem in most instances is Teamwork. If you have a group of folks working on a project and the wisdom and flexibility to assign each person the work that feels best for them, it all feels like a breeze. Progress comes easier and you feel the glorious sense of traction as it moves forward.

Using a team approach is a method of which I’m a huge fan. But I sometimes fall victim to the initial excitement of a project and think I can do it all by myself. So it was when I came up with the idea to write the book I’m working on.

It’s nothing too surprising. Basically an extension of the concepts I bring here each week to my ENWorld column. It’s called Experience Points: How Gaming Makes You Better At Life, and Vice Versa. As I type this, the rough draft is complete and editing is somewhere around a quarter done. To be honest, this project would probably be dead in the water without a brilliant suggestion from my wife.

When I came to her with the idea, her immediate response was, “Why don’t you write this book with a partner so you can include another perspective and you’ll have somebody to bounce ideas off of?” This was genius, of course, because I’m a verbal thinker and need to talk out my ideas with other people before they are “real” to me. There was one obvious choice as to who this partner would be and I only had to wait a heartbeat for my wife to concur. “Why don’t you call Kevin Kulp and ask him?” (If any of you don’t know who Kevin Kulp is, he’s a little known poster around ENWorld called “Piratecat”.)

As great as collaboration is, there are risks. First of all, people might not want to work with you for various reasons. That’s kind of a showstopper with regards to that individual. But I find it even worse if they get on board with a project and then don’t follow through. Suddenly you find yourself frustrated, having to do the part of the work you’d shared with somebody else. Worse, you may end up feeling like the whole project is destroying your relationship with what used to be a valued friend or colleague.

So when I approached Kevin about co-authoring the book with me, I was very watchful about his response. If he didn’t seem to be genuinely excited about it then I needed to make sure the partnership never got started. I bounced the basic idea of the book off of him and he grinned all the way so I took a deep breath and asked, “How would you feel about writing it with me?” Then I held my breath.

“[expletive deleted] yes!” was his response. I was prepared to go forward with a milder expletive than he offered so I took this as a very good sign.

I’m pleased to report our creative partnership has turned out something I think is going to be great. Along the way we discovered a fast and fun method of creating our raw material was, instead of typing out our thoughts individually, to create an outline, discuss the various topics on a recorded Skype call, and have the resulting recording transcribed into a rough draft.

I LOVE talking about gaming and I especially love talking about it with Kevin. Always have. It became obvious that if we edited everything into a singular “voice” in the book that we’d be losing a piece of what made it so fun to discuss these topics. So ultimately we opted to keep the book as a conversation between the two of us. The back and forth, each of us clearly contributing different parts of the discussion is a bit different from most other books I’ve read but I think it works really well for this and I’m hopeful that our readers will find the same.

As of right now we don’t have a solid publication date (we’re almost certainly going the self-publishing route) but it won’t be long. What is helping tremendously along the way is the teamwork (there’s that word again) we’ve fostered not only between each other, but with the other people who have been instrumental in bringing the book this far. I especially want to give a nod to our wonderful transcriptionist, Katherine, and our hard working editor, Kit. Also why am I the only person working on this book whose name doesn’t start with K?

Seriously, our team has made creating this book such a vastly easier process and the final product will be way better than anything I could have done on my own. I’m incredibly excited and can’t wait to share it with you fine folks here at ENWorld.

What awesome thing have you accomplished lately as part of a team? Have some of the pitfalls of collaboration bitten you in the past and made you wary of the process? What are you currently working on alone that could use some assistance?

 

[Janx]

teamwork only works when everybody wants to be on the team.

In corporate life (or even school), most teams are formed because managers assigned employees to be on that team to work on the project.

I'm suspecting that most people (such as my self) who shudder at the mention of "team projects' have been through a few of those.

In these stereotypical situations, slackers tend to slack, and the one person who actually cares about the project is pulling all the weight.

Or one person is trying to be the boss, when no clear hierarchy was set and there's too many chefs in the kitchen.

Now a team made of a person who says "I want to build X, who wants to help" usually does a bit better. it solves the motivation problem and establishes a final decision maker.

After that, barring bad volunteers, it's just a matter of delegating and being a reasonable leader (communicating well, not being a jerk)

The other important aspect to the success of a teamwork project, is hiring and firing those team members. Bad volunteers wreck projects. They may want to do it, but they may not be qualified to do it. Or they may be disruptive in other ways.

In my current job, I am the hirer/firer. I look for people who I can get along with, and who seem to be able to get along with me. But I also look for technical competence because if one or the other falls short, we're going to have problems which lead to imbalance which leads to anti-tearmworkism.

 

[howandwhy99]

I'd suggest teamwork in games be designed for as a better strategy for succeeding in a game, but not necessarily required. Lots of cooperative games assume teamwork, but I think they are better designed when not assuming strategies. For the latter, I *believe* Arkham Horror allows players to scatter around separately slowly realizing they should work together or everyone perishes, but it doesn't enable PvP

I like D&D's cooperate, compete, or go it alone alignments. Also each player may always choose to operate separately or together, sharing rolls or making individual ones. Depending on the situation and desired outcome different tactics are relatively better. For instance, opening a door with a single roll by many people takes less time than each person working separately, but individual saving throws work better against area effects than a single group save.

 

[Jhaelen]

Our current 4e Darksun campaign has two DMs working as a team. They usually take turns DMing while the other plays a pc, switching roles after every adventure. But we also sometimes have sessions with both DMs, to allow the party to split up and do things in parallel, which is very cool. It's also interesting because each DM has a very distinctive style, one preferring somewhat railroady scenarios but with very elaborate scenes, while the other is a sandboxer. Originally they decided to do this because they wanted to divide the workload, otherwise there wouldn't have been a campaign! Apparently it's working very well for them, since they can bounce ideas between them and inspire each other.

 

[Henry]

First of all, let me know where to send the money.

Second, I can honestly say I have never collaborated on a project outside of work or school - i've never had anyone that interested in seeing an idea through, or who shared my interest in a given project for that long. Then again, I suppose I've never had a project I've been passionate enough to see through to the end on a personal note, either - only work related.

 

[Janx]

First of all, let me know where to send the money.

Second, I can honestly say I have never collaborated on a project outside of work or school - i've never had anyone that interested in seeing an idea through, or who shared my interest in a given project for that long. Then again, I suppose I've never had a project I've been passionate enough to see through to the end on a personal note, either - only work related.

that's an excellent datapoint actually. How many people HAVE worked on a collaborative project outside of work/school. Basically something you chose to do, rather than HAD to do (I realize some people get to volunteer for things at work/school, but in the grand scheme of things, you were paid/expected to be involved).

Personally, I recorded an album for the 2008 Record Production Month challenge with a friend. That meant writing and recording an album in 28 days (the challenge runs every February). I wrote most of the songs, but my friend did the singing, drums, recording and mixing. At times, he didn't think we'd make it, so I had to keep pushing to get us to the last weekend. Once the last song was laid down, he did all the mixing until we got the final cuts uploaded and done by deadline.

so there were some times he had less to do, and times I had less to do. But it worked out and we met the goal.

Other than that, I can't think of any larger personal projects that I've worked with others on outside of "build a shed in a weekend" kind of things.

I wonder if 'lack of collaborative personal projects" is a common thing for people or not? I would think working for volunteer organizations would count as having done a collaborative project, at least if there was a specific project to be done (handing out soup every weekend is just a task, organizing resources and and doing a habitat for humanity house is a big deal).