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The Progression of Collaboration

At Peopleology, we often see teams in the transport and infrastructure sectors using the word collaboration, but not always in the same way. True collaboration doesn’t just happen because it’s written into a contract. It evolves through intention, trust, and shared purpose.There’s a clear progression that teams move through as they learn to work together effectively:...

When Meetings Feel Like Quicksand

Ever been in a meeting where the harder everyone pushes their point, the more stuck the group becomes?At Peopleology, we call that a quicksand meeting. It’s what happens when people start defending their ground rather than working together to find solid footing. The more energy poured into being right, the faster progress seems to sink.Just like real quicksand, thrashing only makes it worse.Here’s what helps when you feel that pull:...

Nodding Is Not a Strategy

We’ve all been there. You’re in the room, opposite the client. Everyone’s smiling and nodding like bobbleheads on a dashboard.The ask sounds clear-ish, everyone seems aligned, and you leave thinking, “Great meeting.”Then three months later, you’re reworking half the deliverable because it turns out “value for money” meant something entirely different to each person in the room.This is one of the most common collaboration traps, assuming understanding instead of confirming it.If y...

Where’s Your Team on the Collaboration Maturity Matrix?

At Peopleology, we know that effective collaboration doesn’t happen by accident, it’s something teams build, refine, and grow over time. The Collaboration Maturity Model (Col-MM) describes this journey in four key stages, showing how teams evolve from working beside each other to truly working with each other....

Collaboration Starts After the Contract

Signing a collaborative contract isn’t the finish line — it’s barely the starting gun.True collaboration begins after the ink dries, when teams show how they’ll work together in practice, not just on paper....

What Kind of Collaborative Legacy Are You Building?

What will people remember you for?The bridges you helped build? The projects you delivered on time? The budgets you nailed?Or will it be the way you brought people together, how you helped teams work with more trust, more clarity, and more care?...

Closing the Gap Between Collaboration Ambition and Implementation

Across the transport and infrastructure sectors, there’s growing recognition that collaboration is essential for delivering better outcomes. But wanting to collaborate, and actually doing it well, are two very different things.Recent research shows there’s a significant gap between ambition and implementation in collaborative contracting.To close that gap, three essential enablers stand out:...

Are You Brave Enough to Look Through the Window?

When collaboration stalls, it’s rarely because people don’t care. More often, it’s because something unseen is getting in the way — misunderstandings, assumptions, or unspoken concerns that hold teams back.Here’s a deceptively simple tool that helps teams uncover what’s really happening beneath the surface:...

Collaboration Requires Both Competency and Capacity

Knowing how to collaborate (competency) doesn’t always guarantee success, if your team is stretched too thin, even skilled individuals may struggle to show up well.Conversely, a team might have time and headspace (capacity) but lack the skills or behaviours to work productively with others (competency)....

Staying Constructive When Emotions Run High

In high-pressure meetings or complex projects, emotions can run high, and staying constructive isn’t always easy.Here’s a simple, practical approach teams can use:...

Stop Bad Decisions Before They Happen

You know what’s easier than fixing a bad decision? Not making it in the first place.One of the simplest and smartest tools I’ve seen teams use is a decision pre-mortem. Instead of asking, “What went wrong?” after the fact, try asking before the decision is made:“Imagine it’s six months from now. The decision we make today fails spectacularly. Why?”This one question can:Surface assumptionsReveal blind spotsInterrupt groupthinkCatch bias before it becomes reality...

Collaboration Is a Learned Skill

Collaboration is a learned skill.Yet too many leaders still treat it like a personality trait, something you either have or you don’t, or a by-product of people simply “getting along.”It’s not.You can learn how to collaborate. You can teach it. You can practise it, just like any other core skill worth mastering....

Team Coaching: More Than Just a Day Out

When people hear “team coaching,” they often think of a one-off team-building day or a few personality profiles. But team coaching is so much more than that.It’s about:...

Simplicity Creates Space for True Collaboration

We talk a lot about collaboration — but often what we really mean is coordination, compliance, or “just make it happen.”The project teams I work with aren’t short on effort. More often, they’re short on clarity:...

Infrastructure Is a Living System

How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra is brilliant. It shifted the way I think about infrastructure, not as static objects we build, but as living systems we maintain together.Chachra’s challenge resonates deeply:“How do we work together to transform these collective systems? Because the one thing we do know is that these shared systems that shape our lives… can’t be changed appreciably by individual action alone.”...

Wanting to Collaborate Isn’t the Same as Doing

Most teams want to collaborate well. The intent is there — people talk about trust, alignment, and shared goals.But wanting isn’t the same as doing. When you look at how teams meet, decide, and manage tension, behaviours don’t always match the ambition....

Real Collaboration Isn’t a Committee

Collaboration isn’t about looping everyone into everything. Real collaboration happens when teams are clear, empowered, and accountable.As highlighted in the latest McKinsey Quarterly:“They enable decision-making and assign real accountability… Charging a broad slate of owners with specific remits and incentives to collaborate encourages an atmosphere of empowerment and trust.”...

What Four Thousand Weeks Taught Me About Team Collaboration

I loved reading Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. While the book is written for individuals, the more I reflected on it, the more I realised how much its lessons apply to teams.So much collaboration gets stuck because we chase comfort, perfection, and certainty. We hold back waiting to feel ready. We compare ourselves to others. We get tangled in outcomes instead of focusing on how we work together right now....

What Is Co-ology?

I coined the term co-ology to describe the study and practice of all things “co”: collaboration, co-creation, cooperation, coordination — and more.It’s about how we work together in “co” environments: companies, consortiums, collectives, and even contracts....