Ping. Ping. Ping. That’s it. I’m done with my constant eye on my email and my messages. I now find myself on over 8 Whatsapp workgroups and the recipient of far too many emails and I’m done! According to Forrester research, employees spend 13% of their time creating and 11% of their time reading emails, documents, and presentations. Forrester estimates that the constant interruptions from email reduce the time spent on an “actual task activity” to a scant 18% of a given workday.

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I fully acknowledge that I am not the first to use this analogous tale below, to illustrate a point. But here’s the thing. Last Thursday, I sat in the office of a guy I consider pretty smart. I shared some of the stuff we’re doing in nomadicways.travel and he more or less opposed everything. I shared how we’re building mobile apps in the local tourism space. The focus, I told him, is not just tourism, but enterprise development where every microenterprise on a tourist route, can be promoted to and found by tourists. He said “this sounds like another app just for the sake of an app. Have you asked people if they want and need it?” he asked. He added that people keep creating apps that no-one needs because they fail to consult.

Collaboration does not always have to be the outcome of a lengthy design process and complex tech. Simply getting teachers to collaborate around shared interests, common issues and creative challenges, can start to change performance in schools.

By now we’ve got a good sense of Malusi Gigaba’s ability to collaborate. Tragically it appears to have been misguided, but if I was a religious person, I’d probably be quoting some biblical passage alluding to the forgiveness of sinners. Just last week, the OECD called out South Africa’s poor growth forecasts and Gigaba agreed noting that there was a 14-point plan ready for implementation. I’d be really interested in understanding the 14-point plan, in particular the collaborative aspects of the plan.

The six-year high school, this may just be the kind of collaboration that education needs. You know the saying, ‘if it ain't broke don’t fix it’? Education appears to be broken across many nations from the first world to emerging markets. So why are we not collaborating more, disrupting more and build stuff that works?