Jean-Michel Cornu : Cooperation in 28 keywords
12. Conclusion : cooperation in 28 key-words, what to remember ?
JM Cornu - La Coopération en 28 mots-clés - 12. Conclusion
So with cooperation, we have seen plenty of things with plenty of facets. In fact 28 facets. Why ? Because some things are about understanding what is happening in the group. It's not only about deciding what is going to happen but rather about understanding what is up in order to size opportunities, and then, we have seen 12 facets to understand, plus 4 more which are little bit more specific about conflict, agression, withdrawal, coherence, sometimes with very interesting things because conflict is not always negative, as we pointed out, even if hard to manage. And then we have also seen 12 facets to act. But in the end, it's all very well, but how do you explain all this to people easily ? Moreover, we asked ourselves how could we explain cooperation in a few words only, even to people not ready at all for it, saying : “Well, listen to me, it's all very nice that cooperation, but I have no time, no money to do it.” In fact, we came up with a whole group, with 250 persons who worked together on the topic, on something rather simple by saying : first cooperation is to have an interest in converging, personal and collective interests. It's not altruism at all, it's something else. Altruism, we saw it, is a different matter, which exists too but is very different. But cooperation means causing the convergence of personal and collective interests, and according to cases, it can cause a loss or a gain of money, a loss or a gain of time. That means that today, if the world is simple and that you manage very well without cooperation, why not ? Fair enough for you. Today, the world is far too complex, so even with all of what we could do before, it's not enough to prevent the loss of money, the loss of time. And so by cooperating in the right direction, when you can use the different facets, you can manage to gain time and money and then, dooing things simply for the common welfare, without necessarily putting the whole world in jeopardy. It's not necessarily a “Care Bears” or altruistic thing, well no, it's a thing that we are going to try in order to enable us to do that, spending less time because the time invested will be broadly made up by the time gained with cooperation. A last thing I wanted to say too is that, of course, we have seen 28 facets and you have forgotten them and I wanted to tell you what a good thing it was, first because it's impossible to remember 28 facets straight away and because you have at your disposal a complete e-book, with the presentations of many aspects, with examples, etc., to go back to. You can go back to this presentation too, to have an overview on the different aspects and ask yourself questions, with a little quiz. But on the contrary, there are 3 questions that I would like you to remember, it's what I called the “ICE” conditions. I-C-E, i.e. the 3 questions to ask yourself when you are about to join a group and that you are wondering a few things. Before going back to your books or on the internet, before seeking information, try to keepp in mind “I-C-E” : I for Involvement. Are people involved in the group ? You see a group, are people involved in it or not ? Not everyone gets involved, I pointed it out, it's not the goal but if you have 10% people involved, it's very well. But if you have no one or if the manager says “my first goal is to hand the group to someone else, and I want someone else to do this or someone has to do that ...”, you can tell that the group is dead. So I for involvement. C for commons. What are the common elements that we display ? How can we find them easily ? How is that going to enable us to live together ? I.e. to share the same vocabulory, the same history, the same commons, the same contents, to understand the same things with our diversity. To benefit from the group's diversity, commons are absolutly needed. So C for commons and E for Exchange, that is to say that a group which withdraws into itself is a calcified group, so getting information from outside, giving out information in order to get some back, once again enriched, instead of keeping it for yourself, or worse to hide it : exchange !
I for implication, C for commons and E for exchange. Three things to do which need to be efficient but not only. Efficient because we always want to do efficient things. But also diversified. And diversified means sometimes less efficiency, but we need, some recent scientific studies prove it, a third of efficiency and two thirds of diversity.
So, with this magic formula of one third of efficiency and two thirds of diversity, of involvement, of commons and exchanges, you have the first items to keep in mind for cooperation and for what is left, keep on using these tools, keep on reading the texts, the quiz, the diagrams, etc., which you already have, in order to ask yourself the right questions and if you have the right questions, I have no doubt, you will find the right answers.
