Thought For The Day: Collaboration

[Casey H]

My thought for the day on some lessons I learned and am still learning every day regarding collaboration...These three things have a lot in common:Being a parentSupervising/managing peopleCollaborating on musicIn each of these cases, you have to learn the art of letting someone else perform as task, while being coach, supporter, mentor, etc., but resist the strong temptation to do it yourself. One needs to know the difference between something not done the way you would do it and something that is not that way but perfectly acceptable.Recently, my son was writing his essay for his college application. As a parent, this was very challenging for me because he needed a lot of help. However, each time he gave me a draft, I had to choose between describing what should be corrected and just writing the words myself. Looking back, I know I did more of the latter than I should have.Years back when I first became a software engineering manager, I made some mistakes because I wanted those who worked for me to write their code the way I would do it. Silly… If it did the job, why force someone to do it my way?Some of my earlier collaborations failed because I would ask someone else to do their part (e.g. lyrics) and then as soon as I got first drafts from them, start writing lyrics myself. A good friend said to me a while back, “I can write these lyrics or you can write them but we can’t both write them at the same time.” Good words... Many seemingly unrelated things in life have so much in common... In new music projects, I'm learning how to be better and sit back and let the other person to their part. Just my thoughts for the day FWIW... Casey

[ciskokidd]

Hey Casey,Those are wise words my friend. You put collaboration into perfect context with parenting and managing. A post well worth reading and understanding!Best,Cisco

[hummingbird]

I was going to say "wise words, my friend" but Cisco beat me to it

[Telefunkin]

It still makes sense ......... even 13+ years later!

[AlanHall]

because my academic performance is important to me!

I applaude that!

Academic performance, but not academic integrity, apparently