Implementing collaboration correctly in your company will work wonders for workload, the creative process, team building, development, and more.
Where to Start
Often times, collaboration begins through observation. Whether a manager sees his team to work together to get a project done on time, or a team member watches two top executives meet up to get an important deal closed, these are two great examples of collaboration simply by watching what your peers are doing.
As your employees see the amount of work, and the quality of work, that can be achieved through collaboration, it will encourage them to do the same, should the opportunity present itself.
Crush Your Goals
Encourage your team and various departments to work together to ensure that goals are met. The greater number of contributors, the greater the amount of brainpower, resources, skills, and abilities to get things done correctly, on time, and successfully.
Nielsen research shows that teams comprising six or more people generate significantly higher number of creative concepts than smaller teams. Time management is a huge priority for meeting goals and with more contributors actively participating, goals can be met more efficiently.
Build Common Ground
Have your team members from all departments discuss the problems and obstacles they encounter to discover some common ground. There may be an simple solution for some that can be easily resolved.
For example, it may help to meet once a month to find some pain points amongst the various departments in your company to see if there's a common problem everyone is experiencing. And if so, working together to determine what a viable solution would be.
Document Everything
Keep track of what worked and what didn't so moving forward, you have an accurate history lesson on what went right and what needs to be optimized in the future. This can be a simple spreadsheet broken down by department, listing what teams you've collaborated with for specific projects, and how each team or team member felt the project went, with suggestions to improve for future work.
What are your company’s goals in terms of collaboration?
Is this something you are prioritizing this year? We talk a lot about collaborating on the blog, especially mixing departments together because we’ve found some of our best work is done when our engineers, developers, marketers and salespeople are all sitting at the same table, brainstorming and delivering ideas together. While this may not work for every business model, we encourage you to step out of your comfort zone this year and see what your departments can do when they work together more.
