Everyone can agree that design by committee usually fails. But it’s not because there are multiple people involved, it’s because (most) committees are not made up of skilled collaborators with a shared vision and process.

Shared vision and collaborative process don’t just happen when good developers sit around a table. Like anything else, collaborative art and design are skills that people learn and practice. We have to exercise new muscles, not usually covered by a developer bootcamp or design school. The process can have a lot in common with agile approaches, but it’s a different set of skills from collaborating on a codebase.

Skills we can learn. But skills we won’t have unless we study and practice.

Or we can skip all that and get one person to make all the decisions. That’s an option, but it’s not the only way. It’s just the way most of us were taught.

I’m not saying this theoretically. Not all theaters or bands are collaborative, but many are – and there are long traditions around ‘devised’ or ‘ensemble’ theater in particular. Learning to write plays or act in them does not prepare you to devise with an ensemble, but there are many people who do study, learn, practice, document and teach those skills.

(In fact, it’s what I’ve spent most of my life doing, with occasional CSS distractions)

But I suppose Robin is right that even good collaboration generally ain’t a democracy. It’s more involved and messy than voting, or tallying a majority opinion. It requiring deep engagement, and shared ownership of a vision. Let’s call it anarchist, maybe, with an emphasis on mutual aid?

Creative collaboration requires effort, argument, trust, and play. The ability to fight for an idea, and then let it go. To be open, and then decisive. Knowing when to work together, and when to work apart. Cycles of action, reaction, reflection, etc.

Developers have excellent tools for that last bit – working together, while apart. Many artists would benefit from something like GitHub. These skills are not entirely unrelated. But they’re also not directly equivalent.

I don’t remember the source, but at some point I learned that ‘brainstorming’ tends to fail because the strength of collaboration comes from pushing back. Not off-hand rejection, shooting ideas down – but honing our ideas by articulating what makes them work or fail.

What we like about a dictator is that they have a vision, and set the process, and take the responsibility to be decisive when necessary. But it’s not impossible for us to do that together, if we learn how to hold a strong vision collectively.

We must become a team, united against our work. Our job, together, is to hone and curate that work towards the exclusive vision through continuous questioning and articulation.

We define a vision by the choices we make, and we clarify that vision by the choices we reject.

(Now I want to re-read Anne Bogart’s A Director Prepares, and The Viewpoints Book)