"Don't tell me how to collaborate, I do it all the time!"

Your worst nightmare is someone who egotistically sates something like the above. Perhaps they do not say it so much in words, perhaps their body language says more. Society has been organised, perhaps misorganized around the concept of leaders. The autocratic leader thinks their job is to tell others what to do. This could be done in terms of dictating processes, "do this, do that". It could be couched in a "this is what I do, so you had better do the same if you want to keep your job!" kind of emotion. Our world is full of such people. These people tend to push for what they want by bullying techniques.

Well, the world is changing. The future climate is moving more towards decision by consensus. A major tool of the bully is ignorance. If you keep a measure of "control of information" then you can maintain control of people. The Internet is here so stay and it is making fundamental changes in how society operates.

Take the UK election that is in progress at the moment. It used to be that the media controlled people's thoughts so much. In 1979 "The Sun" newspaper proudly boasted that they were the ones who were the deciding factor in getting Maragaret Thatcher into power as the 1980's. Could they have the same influence today? Broadband is now very common in the UK. A lot of people simply do not buy newspapers anymore. The result is that far more people get their news from the Internet than they do from printed paper. And although The Sun has a website it is competing on a playing field with a million other news feeds and "sexy" websites, not to mention comic sites. In short any monopoly on information and attitude is being continually eroded.

As we all become more "informed" we can better criticize. We can better judge if what others say is valid for us. And so collaboration of the future is less about "hear what I say and follow", andd more about "discuss and consider".

The challenge for companies right now is that they are largely led at higher and middle level management in the old style. In embracing new collaborative technolgies such as Groove management style will change. And if particular management personnel cannot adapt fast enough then they will find their jobs threatened and new less abrasive and more collaborative and supportive management styles become pre-requisites at the job interview. And then they will learn how to do it all the time. Then they will do 21st Century collaboration, their job prospects will depend on it.