Good cooperation online does not begin with tools. Tools change, and almost any of them will do if the people using them know what they intend to do together. What lasts is a small number of principles.
They apply on site as well. Online, however, they cannot be left to chance. On site, the shared room takes care of a great deal in passing: you see who is working, you hear when something goes wrong, you run into each other in the corridor. Online, that room has to be created deliberately, and the six principles below describe what it is made of.
They are drawn from practice: reading groups, teaching, court hearings and years of working together across borders. Each section gives the principle, the reason for it and an example.
1. Extend trust, save on control
What holds. You begin with an advance. Anyone working with others online assumes, to begin with, that they are doing their part, even when it cannot be seen.
Why. Control is expensive and imprecise online. Constantly checking whether someone is available tells you little about their work and a good deal about your own distrust, and the others notice. Trust, by contrast, grows through experience: every promise kept makes the next one more credible. Research on teams that work together exclusively online describes a trust that forms quickly but remains fragile unless it is confirmed by reliable communication (Jarvenpaa and Leidner, Organization Science 10 [1999], 791–815). The advance therefore has to be covered early: the first promises kept count for more than all later ones.
Example. Two partners agree at the outset that each organises their own work and writes three sentences every Friday on what is done and what is stuck. There is no other control. After a few weeks, both know where they stand with each other.
2. Answer every contribution
What holds. Every contribution is seen and acknowledged, including the inconspicuous ones.
Why. On site, people see each other at work. Online, work only becomes visible when it is shared, and it stays invisible if nobody responds. People who deliver into a void withdraw. Recognition is more than praise. It means treating the other person as someone whose contribution shapes the shared result. That is what distinguishes cooperation from mere exchange (see Recognition).
Example. One participant does not just return a draft with corrections. She notes which idea carries the section and that she is taking it into her own part. It takes a minute, and it changes what the next draft looks like.
3. Say who is responsible
What holds. Everyone knows who does what: who decides, who prepares, who records, who keeps in touch with the outside.
Why. Online, the incidental signs that show on site who is taking something on are missing. Without clear roles, either two people do the same thing or nobody does it. Roles also relieve people: whoever knows what they are responsible for need not feel responsible for everything. Roles may change, but the change is said out loud.
Example. In a working group, members take turns chairing the meetings and keeping the task list for a month. Everyone knows whom to turn to, and everyone gets to know both sides, leading and contributing.
4. Keep the state of play in one place
What holds. There is one place where the current state of affairs lives: documents, decisions, open questions.
Why. Online, the shared workspace is what the meeting room, the filing cabinet and the corridor are together on site. If you first have to search three inboxes for the latest version, you are working next to others rather than with them. A shared workspace also makes the cooperation verifiable: you can look up what was agreed instead of arguing about it.
Example. A small project sets up a shared folder. In it, a “status” document keeps the overview: goal, next steps, open questions and decisions taken, with dates. Anyone joining reads this document first.
5. Use shared time for shared work
What holds. The participants decide what they do at the same time and what each does in their own time. Meetings live online are for what only succeeds together. The rest is done in writing.
Why. Synchronous time is scarce, especially across time zones. Filling it with reports that could be read uses it up. Conversely, a conflict or a difficult decision can rarely be resolved by message. A fixed rhythm, such as one meeting a week with written work in between, lets everyone plan their own work around it (more under Synchronous and asynchronous).
Example. A team circulates its reports in writing the day before. The weekly meeting then does not begin with reading aloud but with the question of what in the reports is open or disputed.
6. Raise disruption early
What holds. Disruptions are raised early, preferably in conversation. And it has been agreed beforehand what happens if the parties cannot agree.
Why. Online, misunderstandings grow more easily, because the tone of a message is open to interpretation and silence is ambiguous. A brief email is read as irritation, a missing reply as lack of interest. So whoever notices friction switches medium, from writing to talking. For serious conflicts, an agreed sequence of steps helps: first a direct conversation, then mediation by a neutral person, and only then a formal procedure. Technical disruption belongs here too. People who know what happens if the connection drops do not get flustered.
Example. After a tense exchange of messages, one participant suggests a twenty-minute video call. It turns out that both had understood the same deadline differently. The matter is settled in ten minutes, and the other ten go to the next step of the work.
Law
Law does not enforce these principles, but it can give them a form. Roles, workspace, reporting lines and escalation steps can all be agreed, from a simple arrangement to a cooperation agreement with cooperative clauses. Whoever runs a shared workspace needs to settle who is responsible for the data in it (Data and rights). For conflicts, Resolving conflicts describes the path from negotiation through mediation to a decision by an arbitral tribunal or a state court.
Further
The six principles describe practice. Why they work depends on the conditions under which a cooperation succeeds, so that individual contributions turn into acting together. Those conditions are the subject of The click and its conditions.
Read on: Live online: sound, picture, roles · Misconceptions about online cooperation · Cases