Understanding the difference between communication and collaboration

Communication (exchanging information) is necessary for Collaboration (working together on a common objective) and in a knowledge organisation, the communication medium must not inhibit the flow of knowledge i.e. If we need cognitive CAD packages and to see people’s facial reactions to ideas the communication medium must allow this. Clearly, if all parties in a collaborative meeting are not ‘on the same page’ and cannot see each other’s reactions to the project ideas, the collaboration process will be flawed.

It is only around forty years ago that business communications were confined to the letter and the telephone. Since around 2000 desktop collaboration media have emerged such as Webex and Lync and others. In English we are confined to two words Communication and Collaboration; the modern media technologies are confined to the same categories despite having hugely different capabilities. For example, E-mail is collaborative and so is audio conferencing and WhatsApp and video conferencing, but all these media have massively different capabilities and CONSTRAIN remote cognition (comprehension) in various ways. The nearer they are to face to face the better the cognition between the collaborating parties.

In order to apply the correct remote collaboration medium examination of the type of meeting is required. A failure to do this is likely to have a major impact on the innovative function of the organisation, e.g. If a marketing agency with remote offices rules that they are universally going to use audio conferencing, they would have just vastly limited their capability by removing visual collaboration. (Going blind!)

Therefore In order to select the correct media for remote collaboration, it is necessary to understand these fundamentals otherwise major errors may be made.