When you bring a group of people and organizations together with varied resources, you will run into a problem. Executing what has been discussed during the process of collaboration has a monetary cost and skills cost that often isn’t addressed.

Your career, like mine, has probably been filled with sticky notes with some variation of “collaboration” coating to the walls of every boardroom. “What does this even mean??” You might text your work buddy after your third meaningful collaboration workshop this quarter. It’s a concept that has left many jaded — or rolling their eyes.

In the previous article on collaborating or just validating, we walked through the difference between collaboration and its almost, but not quite, twin: validation. If haven’t yet, check out the first article in this series about the tools you need to help you and your team move from validation to real, inclusive collaboration here.