I posted yesterday about how creativity was the first “C” required for success. From my experience, the second one is collaboration. For every one who claims success, I say that somewhere along the lines there must have been collaboration. There are varying levels of collaboration--from bouncing ideas of others and surveying their thoughts all the way to joining hand-in-hand with others all sharing equally in the effort.
When I think my efforts to launch my printing business 10 years ago, I often think my success was entirely due to my efforts. However, there was a lot of thing that went into making it a successful venture. First of all, being a sales agent I was a facilitator. Therefore, I needed a partner who would act as my supplier. I partnered with a company in South Korea that extended me credit terms and preferential schedules with no credit history, D&B ranking, or personal guarantee from me. With that partnership, the collaborative effort began. Later, as my business continued to double every year for the first 4 years, I employed a team of people to help meet the needs of our growing client base. In the office, we worked together in a collaborative effort to provide a high level of service to clients as well as managing print projects with our supplier.
As a church planter, I again could look at all of the things that were handled by me and there were many days I felt alone. However, in hindsight, it is easy to see all of the hands that were involved in getting us through our first year. We had ministries graciously helping to support us financially and prayerfully, there were people coming together as a collective of ideas and experiences to help us stay on track and focused on fulfilling the vision of the church plant. Of course, it was a collaborative effort of people with different gifts that came together to form our launch team. The church plant was my baby and I held control and steered the direction of a lot of things, but it required much from others to get as far as we did.
For every major undertaking I’ve embraced, I can’t think of one where collaboration was not important to the success of it. What about you? Where has collaboration been important to your success? Has there been failure in your life due to your unwillingness to collaborate? Your comments are always appreciated!
Of the 3 C’s: creativity, collaboration and commitment, I feel like commitment is the most important. So often we end up so close to realizing success, yet we quit just short of realizing the dream.
