Clear Collaboration is a method for prejects (Preject).
A project can be described as an activity that is formally pushed forward. To move forward, management is required, and since management is monitoring gaps, you need both a “definition of the ideal” and “measurement of the current state.” Because of this nature, you must prioritize consistency and drive the entire team forward with strong discipline, which demands soft skills even before hard skills. Above all, adaptability—whether you can fit into the template assumed by the project—is valued most. To put it extremely, it’s like a cult. One particularly popular belief is “hard work,” and to justify this high-load way of working, leaders use vision and rewards. Modern people aren’t ignorant, and they’ve begun to look skeptically at such cult-like approaches. Quiet quitting is probably one of the most famous countercultures today.
In contrast, a preject (Preject) is exploratory activity carried out before a project. This book also introduced exploratory and creative thinking as methods for developing soft skills, and these are exactly preject-like. You don’t manage; you set only minimal constraints; then you act freely—while each individual focuses deeply to collect and synthesize information, and present some kind of conclusion.
Of course, business cannot be sustained on prejects alone. But with projects alone, only cult believers can survive, and disparities arise. To resist this structure, we must develop ways of working other than projects. The preject is one of them. Even someone ill-suited to projects might be able to handle a preject. Conversely, those suited to projects should focus on projects. It’s a division of roles. This increases diversity and makes it possible, even in today’s VUCA world, to achieve both business momentum and respect for employees.
It is a method for driving prejects asynchronously.
Overall flow:
In other words, you write down anything related to the theme and have conversations and discussions. The viewpoints follow 3T, and each page transitions as Talk → Topic → Task. The image is that you start with Talk, and gradually Topics and Tasks emerge. As you increase the number of pages, you ultimately decide (or create) the essential pages you want to submit. These are called boosters. Think of them as fuel you bring in when you later start a project.
Let’s talk about 3T.
Talk
Talk is the initial state of a page, representing a casual, chat-like page. Anyone can write anything, and there are no assignments or constraints. If you want, it can even be unrelated to the theme. You could even create a “wish list” page and have everyone write what they want. You’ll learn what kinds of things people want, and it can serve as a small break. It’s unrelated to work, but this kind of casual exchange is important. In other words, you’re making small talk asynchronously.
Topic
Next, Topic is the state after Talk, and a Topic page has exactly one owner. The owner is the person who energizes the page: they proactively dig deeper, and they reference it from other pages to make members aware of it. It’s not as heavy as being a person in charge, but it’s not as undefined as Talk. In other words, when someone becomes the owner of a Talk page, that page becomes a Topic. A Topic should become more actively energized than Talk.
Note that declaring ownership is done via a cue. The owner is whoever declares first, but others can also declare. If the first owner can no longer keep it going, the next person advances it as a proxy. However, this is a backup measure, and note that the owner themselves is always only one person. In other words, a single owner is free to decide how to move the Topic forward. The owner has decision-making authority over the Topic. To enable smooth decision-making, there must be only one owner.
Of course, since anyone can create pages in Clear Collaboration, if you don’t like a Topic, you can simply duplicate it and create another version.
Task
The state after Topic is Task. This is where, in addition to having an owner, a concrete “task list” is added. The task list should be created by the owner, though other members can propose items.
At this point, you don’t have to actually do the tasks. If something can be finished quickly, you may do it (and the results or insights gained can be turned into separate 3T pages), but Clear Collaboration does not assume executing or managing tasks in the first place. Clear Collaboration is a preject—the stage where you think and examine.
Rather, in Task, you research in advance and organize “the tasks that will be necessary when you later drive this theme forward as a project.”
Developers will find this familiar, but component-like concepts such as functions, classes, modules, and components are simple. They express a single function or meaning. People call it the KISS principle, but you achieve complexity by combining simple parts. This is more flexible and easier to maintain.
Similarly, in Clear Collaboration, you should create pages with single-topic clarity in mind. If multiple topics are mixed within a page, you should deliberately split them. Typically, multiple topics sprout within a Talk page, and you move them to separate pages. This single-topic work is the core of Clear Collaboration; in software development terms, it corresponds to refactoring, or clean coding to avoid creating technical debt. You must not cut corners.
Of course, what identifies a page is its page name, so the page name must also be thoroughly easy to understand. It can be sentence-like, or you can even use the conclusion as the page name. In fact, if you can tell at a glance what it says, the cognitive cost goes down. In software development terms, it’s like readable code.
Boosters are the pages you ultimately submit in Clear Collaboration.
Ideally they are Task pages, but Topic or Talk pages are also fine. Also, you are free to specify how many pages. For example, Clear Collaboration might produce 1,000 pages, and the boosters might be 20 pages—or more, or fewer. In a small preject you might create 200 pages, and the boosters might be around 10 pages.
For Clear Collaboration, it’s recommended to use one of QWINCS: Wiki, Issues, or Notes. In terms of requirements, they are as follows:
For a wiki, Cosense would be a good choice. Other wikis, especially older ones, don’t have enough potential to meet the requirements.
For Issues, GitHub Issues or Discussions is enough, but there’s a high chance old issues will get buried. For example, after writing more than 1,000 items, can you quickly find and relate past issues? Honestly, I think it’s tough. You’ll probably need to build your own search and discovery system involving generative AI. If you can’t do that, you should give up on Issues.
There are various Notes tools, but they are probably tough. I don’t think they can meet the requirements above. It’s one thing if you’re using it alone, but in Clear Collaboration multiple people will write freely and relentlessly. With the potential of Notes tools, it would be difficult unless you unify the rules extremely well, and such rules are likely too cumbersome for humans. At least, I can’t picture Clear Collaboration working.
That’s why I recommend Cosense.
Finally, I’ll also explain why chat or whiteboards are difficult. In Clear Collaboration, topic orientation—expressing one topic on one page—is the most important thing. You want to maintain a state where topic A is written on page A. And since everyone should be able to write freely and increase 3T, adding and renaming pages must also be done freely. Business chat like Slack or Teams, or digital whiteboards like Miro, simply can’t measure up.