Two heads are better than one.

Working with other people pushes our thinking into new places. Collaborating helps us come up with better ideas by finding inspiration from different ideas. We generate better ideas by building off of what others say.

But what if I told you that most people aren’t capturing the true value of their team’s collaborative activities?

It’s true.

We’re leaving value on the table during brainstorms, project kick-offs, and research analysis sessions.

Collaborative activities are about much more than information sharing. To be successful, everyone must share their perspectives. You need a willingness to combine ideas together, and add to what others have started.

This brings your work to a higher level.To make the most of your next brainstorm (or other collaborative activity), you need to capture the value of the team beyond just the idea generation.We rely on a process called the Collaborative Cycle to do that. (See the video at the top of this post for even more details!

All that’s needed is a few extra steps after completing your collaborative activity. These steps will help you to speed up your progress while you still have an engaged group in the room.

Step 1: Sorting and organize the content that you created. Bring order to the chaos.

Step 2: Share thoughts from the activity with those who participated. Sharing forces you to synthesize some of the best parts of the activity to speak about them in a concise manner.

Step 3: Conduct some focused reflection with the group. This helps you run the activity better next time.

Step 4: Plan next steps and assign responsibilities to those involved.

To learn more about how to run a collaborative cycle in your work, check out the video at the top of this post!

Or, download the collaborative cycle how-to card right here: