Collaboration
The meeting where someone's about to throw you under the bus
You can sometimes see it coming before it happens. Here's how to recognize the signal, what to do in the room, and the one thing never to do afterward.
Read the piece →Topic
Collaboration
How to work with coworkers, clients, and cross-functional partners without burning goodwill.
Good collaboration is small. It’s clear handoffs, explicit ownership, and feedback that lands without ego. There’s nothing clever about any of it, which is why so many teams are bad at it — the things that make collaboration work aren’t impressive enough to brag about, so they don’t get prioritized until something breaks.
The single biggest predictor of whether a cross-functional project goes well isn’t talent on the team. It’s whether, for every piece of work, one person knows they own it. “We’ll figure it out” and “let’s both look at it” are how weeks get lost. A simple rule: after every meeting, write down who owns what by when, and send it to everyone in the room. If nobody pushes back, you’ve just prevented three follow-up meetings.
Feedback inside a collaboration is its own skill. Criticism that sounds neutral in your head almost always lands sharper than you meant. Lead with the thing you’re trying to protect (“I want this launch to go well, so…”), name the specific behavior, and offer one concrete alternative. People will remember that you were thoughtful long after they’ve forgotten exactly what you said.
Start here
The one to read first.
This topic maps to Chapter 6 — Working across teams of the book. See the full chapter →