FAQ – Business Management

Collaboration and the Nature of Human Interactions

Overview

In his bestseller, Sapiens, author, and historian Yuval Harari recites the story of the cognitive revolution which happened approximately 70,000 years ago.

During the Cognitive Revolution, humans acquired the ability to share larger amounts of information about their relationships, the world, and imagined orders that did not really exist, like nations, corporations, and limited liability companies. Particularly interesting is that last one.

Imagined orders allowed people who were essentially strangers to collaborate in large numbers.

According to one theory, Homo Sapiens evolved language not just to understand the world around them.

In fact, social animals like ants and bees have the ability to inform other individuals within their groups of where food can be found, or when threats are imminent. On the other hand, humans needed to know who to trust and who to avoid, who was a threat, and who was a friend, if they wanted to survive and reproduce. Language was a powerful vehicle for gossip.

What to Expect

This long introduction has, I hope, given the reader some idea of how complex human interactions are and how they shape our social behaviour.

Professional environments are no different than any social group, with complex hierarchies, imagined orders, and dynamic relationships.

In this series of articles, I will focus on important topics that can make or break professional teamwork and the team’s ability to deliver.

Although the context is set in the software industry, some of the topics like efficient collaboration, change management, and decision-making can be extrapolated to other domains.

FAQ