The Fabric of Efficient Collaboration

Following the solitude that Covid pushed us into despite online collaboration, we have come to cherish spending “quality time” together as the very fabric of efficient collaboration. There is nothing as productive as trust among people working together, and trust depends on knowing each other in terms of “personality” beyond the professional persona each of us has been cultivating.

Before Covid, consortia met in some town, each partner in different hotels, meeting only during the set meeting hours and perhaps for one group dinner. But beyond that, everyone went their separate ways.

The meetings were often determined by a series of slide presentations, during which those who weren’t involved in the respective task being presented, checked and wrote emails. It wasn’t quite what one would call “intense” or productive. It had more of an administrative feel to it.

Today, “retreat” meetings in secluded environments have become the trend in many projects to ensure that we make the most of the time spent together both in terms of getting things done and in trust-building.

This week, the transnational team of the REAVES platform project has experienced their third intensive consortium workshop near the city of Trakai 30 min from Vilnius, Lithuania, and its famous castle. Enchanted by the surrounding forest on the shore of a picturesque lake, our group of 19 people sat together in 2-3 work groups planning, deciding, discussing the upcoming performance tasks in the project, exploring ideas to inspire best outcome of the activities to be carried out in the coming year. After hours of intensive discussions, with brains nearly fried, spending leisure time together was invaluable, topics from the day were taken up sitting in a hot tub, proving the engagement beyond the end of a work day – motivated by being together and getting to know each other better.

Though projects will end, bonds having been created on the personal level very often proved to lead to new ideas and opportunities for collaboration between partners. If that’s not cementing cohesion, what is?

Keep your eyes peeled for the activities and results coming out of this memorable and work intensive transnational partner meeting.

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