Collaborative Strategy

In order to create a collaborative strategy and implement it, some things need to be taken into account. Both the outcome and the relationship are important. Therefore in this situation with my roommates, I need to make sure I am focused on both our relationship but also a good outcome. I could apply this strategy in the following ways. The first step is identify the problem. The problem is that my roommates and I are having issues paying our utility bill on time. This is causing me to take the fall for them and set out more money in order to cover them until they pay it back. Our goal is to get the utility bill paid for on time and to keep our apartment clean. The next step is understand the problem. There can be many different things that are causing my roommates to be late to pay the bill. For example, they could be short on money because of school, just lost their job, or have some other financial trouble that I truly don’t know about or understand. My interest to pay the bill on time might not be their interest so I have to understand their interests. It may be paying for gas or rent or car problems and they really don’t have any more money for utilities because they are just getting by with other expenses. Next I have to generate alternative solutions. I can either redefine the issue to find a win-win or to take the problem at hand and list options for solving it. In this situation, I would make a list of options. My list might include: talk to my roommates and confront them about what’s going on, offer to help pay but be ensured to be paid back, talk to the landlord and see if there is something the roommates can work out about paying once they get a paycheck from a job, etc., do their dishes, ask them to clean their dishes, or make a chores list so that everyone keeps the apartment clean. Once I make the list, I will go through options and reduce the list. I would probably stick with making a chores list in regards to the dishes and then talking to my roommates about paying the utilities and talk to the landlord about payment options. The last step is selecting a solution. A positive idea to fix the dirty dishes would be to create a chore checklist that ensures we all check off certain chores. This creates responsibility for all of the roommates. A positive fix for the utility bill would be to talk to the roommates to find out if there’s something else going on in their lives that is making it difficult. The entire time, I need to value the other sides opinions and allow them to have a fair side too. They might be going through something and are so busy they can’t do the dishes just when I am using the kitchen. They might not be able to pay the bills due to financial issues that just came up. I think I would maximize our relationship by making the issues about everyone including me and also maximize the final outcome.