Pass the collaborative buck and the burden adds up

Ever been tempted to kick the can down the road rather than drive a collaborative task to completion? To send a quick email reply with a vague answer that will surely stump the email’s recipient? To skip the part where you commit to clear next steps and a due date?

You can admit it. You’re among friends. At one point or another, we’ve all volleyed a hot potato back to someone else rather than take the time to clarify, commit, and complete.

Sadly, the data suggests we’re now finding new, AI-powered ways to pass the buck. A recent Harvard Business Review article coined the term “workslop” to describe the AI-generated, “low-effort, passable-looking work that ends up creating more work for their coworkers.”

Now, AI can help expedite the collaborative crimes we once enacted manually. To create yet more work (and frustration) for your teammates while easing your own load, you could:

• Make unclear requests: These require rounds of clarifying questions before they can be acted upon, such as “Can you look at this when you have a chance?” or “Have you done a competitive analysis? I need one.”
• Provide non-specific feedback: This response checks the box but doesn’t provide a “why” to help the originator advance the work, such as “This isn’t what I was looking for,” or “I think it could be tighter,” or “I’m not sure I agree with your conclusion.”
• Don’t read feedback: Then critique a work-in-progress, perhaps evencontradict it, leaving the author to guess how to reconcile the comments. Or worse yet, schedule a meeting to do so.

Crossing something off your list is a joy for most of us, but let’s face it–passing the buck is no real accomplishment.

I believe generosity is the key to a thriving collaborative system. But who has time for generosity in a world where time scarcity is an epidemic

Therein lies the challenge. Being a generous contributor makes sense when other people do the same. To offer generosity and save the recipient time, take a few extra seconds to reread an email before you send it for clarity. Provide more detail on what you’re actually asking for.

When your recipient reciprocates, everybody wins. When they don’t, you just feel like a sucker.

So how do you escape this prisoner’s dilemma? Call it out. If your work suffers due to crappy collaboration, step back from the fray long enough to reset expectations with the whole team.

Collect specific examples where feedback was unclear, or communication was overly terse and use them to demonstrate what not to do. If possible, use yourself as a prime example so it doesn’t seem like you’re just calling others out.

Then establish expectations for what good asynchronous collaboration looks like, and set norms that allow you and your team to enforce them.

In a world where we’re all moving at a breakneck pace, unnecessary collaborative friction is a speed bump slowing (and wearing) us down. If you can make it easier on yourself and others, why wouldn’t you?