5 Ways To Foster Collaboration in Your Organization
Shifting a culture is not an overnight project, and establishing a more collaborativeapproach to business is a process, not a project. Instilling new and different cultural valuesin an organization is an effort that takes several years, and is an ongoing quest rather thana firm destination.So if that's true, how do you start with practical actions that can establish that culture inrealistic, manageable pieces? Think in terms of initiatives that are concrete in scope butthat demonstrate and depend on collaboration throughout. Collaboration then becomesabout not just talking about the value, but experiencing it through tangible efforts.
Start: End: Publication Date: 2016-06-15
Organization: SideraWorks (SW)
Submitter: Owen Ambur (Owen.Ambur@verizon.net)
... a more collaborative approach to business
To document practical actions that can establish a collaborative culture in realistic, manageable pieces
Values
... collaboration is simply the act of working with someone else to createsomething.In business, that definition gets expanded a bit to imply that the product of collaboration creates value that wasn't there before, and that wouldn't necessarily be possible through individual efforts alone.
Every manager and leader within an organization knows that they're responsible for achieving certain objectives. Those objectives are usually part of their job description, their annual performance evaluation, even their financial compensation.Professionals tend to invest their efforts in two things:1. The things that they are compensated and rewarded for investing in; and2. The things that give them an intrinsic sense of purpose, contribution and value as a professional.
If we want our organizations to be more collaborative, we have to make it both aleadership imperative and something that is attractive, interesting, and rewarding for those leaders to do.
Company values and culture are established and socialized both from the top down and from the roots of the organization upward (and outward). As collaboration's value increases in tomorrow's businesses, we have to embed it as not just an activity, but as an attitude that we foster through our actions, behavior, and consistent language.
Individual Investment -- As individuals, we are wired first to look at most situations through a personal lens. Organizations are perpetually strapped for resources, and always asking their employees to do more with less.When it comes to collaboration in the workplace, the most prominent question in an employee's mind is often "How is this going to help me?" or sometimes more realistically, "How much more work is this going to create for me?"And while company objectives for collaboration can be motivating for the executive board -- cost savings, efficiencies, ideation and innovation -- the individuals participating in collaboration initiatives also need to be personally invested in the outcomes.How will their jobs be made easier by collaborating? How will they feel a deeper sense of individual achievement and contribution? How will they be recognized and rewarded for their efforts? Are their opinions and ideas welcome even if they aren't considered "experts" in a topic? Share this information with them at the start of your collaboration program to help ensure your employees are personally invested in collaboration.Collaboration programs must be established from the point of view of the people who will be charged with driving them: the employees themselves
Goal 1:
Conduct a Readiness Assessment
Objective 1.1:
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When you talk to people across the organization, how do theydescribe your culture? How does it differ in varying levels of the organization, or acrossdepartments or business units? Are those values in conflict or well-aligned? Are thereways to balance them better?Objective 1.2:
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How invested are your senior leaders in collaboration as a core componentof your culture? How do they describe “collaboration” and what do they see as itsbenefits to the organization? Do their actions seem to support that vision, and if not,where are the disconnects?Objective 1.3:
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How are your departments and teams designed on paper?Does that design enable or inhibit collaboration and how? Are there adjustments thatcan be made to reduce friction in communication or reduce barriers to more collectivework effort?Objective 1.4:
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Are the "right people on the bus"? Are there gaps in skills, capabilities, orpersonality and work style that need addressing? Do you feel like you have adequate leadership and ownership potential for expanding your collaboration efforts internally?Objective 1.5:
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How well versed do you believe your teams to be in collaboration? Are they enthusiastic or skeptical, or somewhere in between? Are there successful collaboration projects taking place now, and what makes them successful?Have there been failed projects in the past, and do you have a good understanding of why they didn't succeed? How much education will you need to do to socialize collaborative values, approaches, and expectations?Objective 1.6:
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Do you have the tools, budgets, processes and other infrastructure necessary to expand your collaborative culture and projects? If not, what are youmissing?Goal 2:
Model scenarios.
Objective 2.1:
Brainstorm all of the best-case and worst-case scenarios.
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Gather stakeholders from varying levels in the business or department, considering carefully who might be indirectly impacted by social business efforts, or directly accountable for their success. Bring in everyone from executive management through your practitioners, from HR to marketing to legal and operations.Bring in remote employees or employees in different offices virtually, and use video conferencing to connect everyone in a face-to-face environment, since it’s really helpful to see each other during these kinds of exercises. Then, brainstorm all of the best-case and worst-case scenarios you can imagine that social business practices could create.What if a collaboration project with a partner results in a strained relationship? What if someone shares personal or confidential information on an open company platform or on a social network? What if a customer helps you find a critical flaw -- or an unprecedented opportunity for -- one of your key products?Objective 2.2:
Prioritize scenarios.
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Prioritize those scenarios.Objective 2.3:
Walk through a few of the scenarios in detail.
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Then use a few of them to walk through in detail. You can post the scenarios to a private workspace in your internal collaboration platform to continue brainstorming the details, or you can post it to a wider group for ideating on additional scenarios that might come up in the future as a sort of "living resource".Objective 2.4:
Uncover interpersonal dynamics and potentially limiting or incomplete processes, resources, and decision paths.
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You'll uncover interesting interpersonal dynamics and potentially limiting or incomplete processes, resources, and decision paths.Objective 2.5:
Devise playbooks, guidelines, or other governance tools to better manage your programs.
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And you can use what you learn to devise playbooks, guidelines, or other governance tools to help you better manage your programs.Objective 2.6:
Demonstrate the value of gathering a cross-disciplinary team to solve a business problem through collaboration.
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Most importantly, you'll have demonstrated right out of the gate the value of gathering a cross-disciplinary team to solve a business problem through collaboration. And once you learn scenario modeling in practice, it's a technique you can use to address unfamiliar business situations anywhere, anytime.Goal 3:
Invest in the infrastructure that allows collaboration to be part of the corporate culture.
Objective 3.1:
Establish an accountability structure.
Objective 3.2:
Establish a way for each part of the organization to be represented in strategic direction and planning efforts.
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Consider designing a Collaboration Hub or laboratory in your organization that can function as a collective authority and embassy for this mindset in your organization.Objective 3.3:
Meet and work together on a regular basis.
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Get representation in the Hub from across your company (all those same groups you used in your scenario modeling is a great start), and focus on involving those with a passion and enthusiasm for what collaboration can help accomplish. They can and should meet and work together on a regular basis, whether in person or virtually, and establish a vision and goals for the group that align collaboration with core business objectives.Objective 3.4:
Establish a vision and goals for the group that align collaboration with core business objectives.
Objective 3.5:
Evaluate resources
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The Hub can also become the entity responsible for evaluating resources, reporting on initiatives to executive management, carrying back executive vision to share with the group (if an executive isn’t a regular participant), and developing a comprehensive collaboration program that considers mindset as well as practice, and how both can become better established within the business.By formalizing an infrastructure to support a collaboration culture, collaborators know they have resources and organizational support for their efforts, and the company has a scalable, sustainable structure that makes collaboration an integral function in the business rather than an abstract idea.Objective 3.6:
Report on initiatives to executive management
Objective 3.7:
Carrying back executive vision to share with the group
Objective 3.8:
Develop a comprehensive collaboration program
Goal 4:
Engage and connect employees.
Stakeholder(s):
EmployeesObjective 4.1:
Find and recognize Experts in Residence.
Stakeholder(s):
Experts in ResidenceOther Information:
Find your Experts in Residence in different topics, letting them self-identify, connect with each other, and recognizing them as publicly and enthusiastically as possible.Objective 4.2:
Establish education programs for the organization.
Stakeholder(s):
Experts in ResidenceOther Information:
Task this group with helping to establish education programs for the organization on different topics, delivering workshops, webinars, or other interactive programs to help get other people immersed in and excited about new areas of expertise. Allow them the time and authority to explore topics outside their typical role to highlight the diversity of knowledge in your organization and provide satisfying, enriching experiences for the Experts in Residence.Objective 4.3:
Develop some best practices or guidelines for collaboration
Stakeholder(s):
Experts in ResidenceOther Information:
They can also be an excellent resource for developing some best practices or guidelines for collaboration within the company. Encourage your Experts in Residence to be ambassadors for the platforms and technology you've invested in to show others what's possible with a combination of knowledge and tools.Goal 5:
Establish a pilot project.
Objective 5.1:
Choose a specific business challenge to solve.
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Choose a specific business challenge you're trying to solve, like a plan for a new product launch, or outlining an ongoing employee engagement initiative, or working with partners to come up with more innovative ways to leverage those relationships.Objective 5.2:
Ask for participants.
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Then ask for participants from all across the organization, at all levels, from the areas of the business that will be impacted -- either directly or indirectly -- by the project.Objective 5.3:
Form a project team.
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Form a sort of ad-hoc project team that will be the "pilot crew" for this initiative. The more cross functional and diverse this team can be, the better. Remember, you're working to solve a problem, but the long-term goal is to embed these kinds of approaches as cultural values for the organization.Objective 5.4:
Meet regularly.
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Meet regularly and consistently outline the goals, explain what sorts of things you hope to demonstrate (i.e. using collaborative practices to solve these problems), and track what you learn along the way, including both the challenges and the successes, many of which may be unexpected.Objective 5.5:
Consistently outline the goals.
Objective 5.6:
Explain what sorts of things you hope to demonstrate.
Objective 5.7:
Track what you learn.
Objective 5.8:
Employ all the existing tools you have at your disposal.
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Employ all the existing tools you have at your disposal, like web conferencing,collaboration platforms, and internal social communities. Resist the urge to rely solely on things like email for this purpose; you're trying to show the potential of collaborative work and technology, and email's closed system won't cut it in the collaborative work environment.Objective 5.9:
Secure buy-in for larger projects.
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Pilot programs can be excellent for helping to secure buy-in for larger projects, and for demonstrating the real-world obstacles and benefits of having a collaborative culture. They can be run for a fixed amount of time (ex. 6 months) or for a relative amount of time (ex. until X goal has been achieved or a project milestone has been reached).Objective 5.10:
Demonstrate obstacles and benefits of a collaborative culture.