In this fast paced working environment, a business needs full team effort and cooperation from all its employees. Thus, for any business to succeed, teamwork and collaboration are extremely essential tools to utilize in day-to-day work life. Today’s businesses need to find new manners to promote and reward information sharing and collaboration. “Collaboration is fundamental because it gets to the notion of participation, which is necessary to understanding” (Regan & O’Connor, 2002, p.44). To succeed in the twentieth century, companies need to enforce teamwork in order to create shared understandings and trust of each other.
After graduating from college in Digital Media Technical Production, my friend and I decided to start our own home-based digital media business. In a partnership business, we must work well as a team and collaborate with each other and also with our clients on a regular basis. We have also been sub-contracting work from bigger companies.
In my opinion, collaboration is extremely significant for us to run our business smoothly. We need to have a good working relationship and be able to understand each other to be productive in our work. After working together for nearly a year, we have come to realize each other’s weaknesses and strengths. For example, I am more optimistic than my partner. When we are assigned a new project, we go over the details and she becomes nervous at times and I find it my job to be positive and encourage her that we can undertake this project. On the other hand, my partner has more stamina to stay patient. When we are stressing to meet deadlines or having a hard time dealing with some clients, my partner stays calm during such situations and helps me stay calm as well as I tend to get tempered and lose patience easily. Hence, she can work better under pressure compared to myself. These are merely two examples of how we help each other with our weaknesses and collaborate in our work.
It is essential to collaborate effectively so all individuals working on a project are well informed and energized to carry out their tasks. Every time we begin a new project, we sit down together and brainstorm ideas. For instance, if designing a logo, we work on all the sketches, thumbnails, etc. and share ideas and critique each other’s work. Then, we both sit down together and design the elements on a computer. Unlike other companies, we work together on each project, side by side, and share ideas and suggestions constantly. To date, we have not quarreled about anything at work and surprisingly, we work great as a team. I believe we have a good mix of characteristics that when brought together, it makes us a strong company. Even our clients notice the way we work and are surprised to see how well we get along.
Hence, “the ultimate goal is for work teams to identify and develop the best ideas from throughout an organization and act with the same unity of purpose and focus that a single, well-motivated person would bring to bear in a situation” (ibid, p.45). I believe that if there is no teamwork, a company cannot succeed. Today’s competitive high-tech world needs strong and motivated individuals who are confident in their work. Only such individuals can succeed and reach higher levels of accomplishment in the digital media businesses. We, as a company, have set both short-term and long-term goals. Hopefully, when we grow big as an organization, we will hire people who work at the same pace and share the same mind frame as us. After all, there is no ‘I’ in team.
Source:
Regan, Elizabeth A. and O’Connor, Bridget N. (2002) End-User Information Systems: Implementing individual and work group technologies- Second Edition Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002. Pages 1-75.
Shahzadi Bhatti is a Digital Media Artist who is currently enrolled in Athabasca University’s Bachelor’s of Professional Arts program to complete her degree. She lives in Toronto, Ontario and enjoys writing, watching -horror films, and traveling.