On Collaboration

Collaboration is a highly underrated skill. One of the questions that is often not asked is - what would it take to collaborate when nobody asks you to?
In most workplaces, this kind of collaboration is not only encouraged, but actively discouraged. People want to work in silos.
If you reach out from another 'department' or 'function', it is often seen as a nuisance and sometimes as a threat.
And this happens especially in well established firms - not so much in startups - because at that point, there are fewer walls between departments if at all.
And therefore collaboration within a firm is fraught with risk - unless it is there as a measurable goal (however that is).

In the outside world, collaboration has its own risks - there is a risk of someone taking away your content/models/clients and so on. But if you can find the right mix of people who can trust each other without cannibalizing, you realize that 2+2 is not 4, but much much more.

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Serendipity and Learning

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