Collaboration vs. cooperation: What’s the difference?
Deciding whether you want employees to collaborate vs. cooperate is simple: You want both. The first step is understanding the difference between these two intimately related concepts.
Defining collaboration
Collaboration happens when people work together for a common end. Requiring active participation by every member of the team, collaboration involves brainstorming ideas, sharing insights and utilizing different areas of expertise to complete either one-time or continuing projects. The advantages of collaboration range from innovative solutions to tough problems to a higher-quality output of products. Team members who successfully collaborate not only get the personal and professional satisfaction of seeing their goal achieved, but also typically feel a sense of shared accomplishment and comradery with those who shared the experience.
Defining cooperation
Cooperation means supporting others in work that they’re ultimately responsible for. While those who cooperate may be on the same team, each member of the whole has individual duties they must complete, whether or not others help them along the way. In many cases, team members pull together and cooperate to help each other finish up tasks, especially as deadlines approach. Cooperation like this helps enhance respect and trust between colleagues while adding a sense of inclusion and community to the workplace.
The importance of collaboration and cooperation
A supportive work environment that fosters growth and personal satisfaction begins with both collaboration and cooperation. Innovation often occurs when team members bounce ideas off each other, with the insights gleaned from this collaboration creating opportunities for everyone’s collective growth. Likewise, the new projects spawned from this collaboration encourage cooperation between team members bringing the creative vision to life.
When to collaborate vs. cooperate
Part of providing excellent leadership is knowing when to use all the tools within your management arsenal. These examples of when to collaborate vs. cooperate help you understand when to utilize each concept to its best effect.
Collaboration examples
Within businesses, collaboration takes on many forms and enhances the innovative potential of the company. Here are some common examples and the benefits of each one.
Cross-functional collaboration
Cross-functional collaboration processes utilize the skills and knowledge of disparate teams within your company to achieve a shared result. This method of collaboration helps overcome organizational silos—or isolation of teams—to prevent redundancy, improve coordination and boost efficiency. An example of cross-functional collaboration would be operations and your marketing department working together to create solid products that meet customers’ needs.
Process-improvement collaboration
When companies have bottlenecks that slow down production, process-improvement collaboration may come into play. This type of collaboration encourages every collaborator in the process to identify pain points for troubleshooting, and then figure out how to smooth the process based on the knowledge and experience of everyone, from line workers to upper management. The end result should be the elimination of the bottlenecks so that production returns to normal expectations.
Project management collaboration
The most common form of business collaboration, project management brings teams together to figure out a game plan for a product or service. Those collaborators then put that game plan into motion to create the desired result, and then deliver the project into the right hands, on time and on budget. An example would be aproduct development team working with manufacturing and marketing to get the product to market.
Cooperation example
Cooperation between employees often supports the collaborative process, so collaborative vs. cooperative is less of a question than how to do both things well. Understanding how collaboration vs. cooperation works in action helps sort out when each is necessary. These common examples point to situations where cooperation makes more sense than collaboration.
Knowledge sharing cooperation
Completing assigned tasks with challenging facets makes cooperation between employees a must, especially when it comes to knowledge-sharing. Workers who know the ins and outs of certain processes making themselves available to answer colleagues’ questions is a form of knowledge-sharing cooperation. Even though the worker who shares information isn’t responsible for the end result, they provide valuable insight to those who are. For example, a computer programmermight ask a more experienced code analyst to help debug problematic lines.
Employee development cooperation
When employees want to learn more about other positions, they may seek an employee development cooperation arrangement. This type of cooperation might mean the worker becoming a trainee and helping the trainer complete tasks required for their job. Some direct benefits of this type of cooperation include enhancing cohesion between staff, helping the trainee learn new things, and providing the trainers with further insight and awareness into their own positions.
Deadline-based cooperation
Sometimes teams work hard but still come up short with tough deadlines approaching. In those cases, individual employees may pitch in to help a bottlenecked worker push through their product, especially when they need what that worker has to complete for their own pieces of the project. For example, a member of your auditing department gets essential data later than normal for the month and can’t provide it to other teammates on time. Since the teammates themselves can’t do their jobs without the information, they help theoverwhelmed employee complete their tasks to speed up the process and meet the required deadline.
Collaborative vs. cooperative concepts
Don’t think of it like collaboration vs. cooperation—the two are complementary rather than competitive concepts. Instead, look at opportunities to collaborate and cooperate as an effective way to enhance and encourage teamwork. Recognize that collaboration and cooperation typically happen together rather than in a vacuum. A strong company culture that fosters collaboration and cooperation can make your business more inclusive, welcoming and productive, which in turn may minimize turnover and boost your bottom line.
Collaboration vs. cooperation FAQs
What are important principles of collaboration?
Since collaboration requires various teams work together, one principle is creating a shared vision of the outcome you wish to achieve. These values ultimately guide projects to success and require communicating clearly in jargon-free terms other teams can easily understand. Facilitating successful collaboration also entails managing relationships between various collaborators. In that regard, it makes sense to put someone in charge who has a broad understanding of all the processes involved. This leader should also be able to monitor for problems and troubleshoot issues when necessary.
What are important principles in cooperation?
Cooperation between team members first and foremost requires trust and respect. Since each team member has their own role and responsibilities, it’s important for you to know how each of their duties works together with the duties of other team members. Understanding this can help you determine where cooperation may be necessary for both parties to complete their tasks. Other factors include team members’ ability to communicate effectively and solve problems that might not necessarily be part of their job descriptions.
